random reflections

Wishing You

This card was designed with three challenges in mind. First, Fusion with the interesting title of "Laugh Decor," which I didn't understand until I saw the inspiration photo:

The title for the challenge clearly comes from the quote on the wall. I decided to combine both the photo inspiration and the sketch this time around.

The second challenge, The Great Coverup, is a new one to me. Papertrey Ink has started a new series where the emphasis is on technique or using a particular product. The current challenge is to use only white cardstock in creating your card. All the color on this card was created with ink blending.

The last challenge is the Less Is More Challenge which asks you to use a favorite technique. That was easy---die cutting is very definitely one of my favorite techniques, and this card clearly relies on die cutting.

Now that we have the inspirational challenges out of the way, here's the card:

I used the inspiration photo for the color scheme of the florals, looking at the vase of flowers on the desk as well as the pink chair, and pink pot with a green plant.

Rather than use a strip of patterned paper or cardstock for the right-hand strip in the Fusion sketch, I opted to score a series of lines, making this a much more CAS design. The beautiful die cut flowers were ink blended with a trio of Pinkfresh Studio inks. Many card makers swear by Distress Oxide Inks for blending, and although I own a few pinks I wasn't happy with the shading or the hues I could achieve, so I moved to the Pinkfresh trio and was much happier. The dies are from the new Papertrey Ink Blooms II dies which arrived last week. The leaves were ink blending with two Distress Oxide inks. 

The sentiment came from a Pinkfresh Studio stamp set called "Folk Hummingbird" and was stamped in green to match the leaves in the floral arrangement.

Although it took me a lot longer than I anticipated to get the flowers inked, I'm quite happy with the outcome, and will likely recreate this design with other colors in the future. 

I'm also popping this in the NBUS Challenge gallery since the dies are definitely products that have never been used before. I am proud of myself, however, to pulling them out relatively quickly after receiving them. (We all know I have a large basket of unused stamps that I've owned for way too long!)

 

 

Welcome to Our Neighborhood

Once again two challenges showed up just as I needed to make a card to welcome new neighbors to our street. We live on a dead-end street and there are only 28 homes on the street. Most were build in the early 1930's and are a very diverse group architecturally as well as in size. Years ago, a freeway was scheduled to be built near one end of the street, and in anticipation five homes were destroyed. Then the freeway went in another direction, so shortly before we moved on the street two very large homes were built in that space at the top of the hill. I would have been furious if I had been one of the homeowners who had to give up their property, and then discovered it was unnecessary. One of the joys of living on this street is the location (near so many places) and yet feeling somewhat remote from the city. 

The first challenge is a sketch challenge from Freshly Made Sketches. It's not how I typically start a card, but this sketch was right up my alley.

The second challenge is Just Add Ink where they're looking for a slimline card. Two challenges made to work together!

I also had the perfect stamp set that was part of a Simon Says Card Kit awhile ago, "Home Sweet Home."

Knowing I was going to color the images with Copic markers, I started with a piece of X-Press Blending cardstock, Before stamping the street scene, I stenciled some clouds in using My Favorite Things Cloud stencil. I added the sun from the Simon Says set and colored the scene. 

I die cut the focal panel with Lawn Fawn's "Slimline with Flaps" die and then added a narrow border of Blueberry Sky and True Black before adding it all to a white slimline card base. And here's the inside sentiment:

Our new neighbors have two young children, and I hope they enjoy raising their family here as much as we did.

I'm also throwing this in the gallery at the Wednesday Simon Says Challenge: Anything Goes.

Inspired By: Hello Baby Flowers

Not often, but occasionally, card challenges align with real life events. That was certainly true this week. The Inspired By: Hello Baby Flowers could be interpreted two ways---a baby card or baby flowers. I have both!

We have a new grand-niece born in Oregon. Her grandparents flew out there this week, and I sent this mini-slimline card with them.

It gave me a chance to used several never-used products: The Greetery's "Bold Alphabet," The Ton's "Ditsy Bits," and Trinity Stamps "Slimline Mini Envelope Builder" (the scalloped and stitched rectangle.) I have my friend, Michelle, to thank for the tiny flower stamps and the die cut set, both of which she shared when we stamped together. I tried them at her house, and later ordered them for myself. 

I love the detail on the alphabet and tucking the tiny flowers in among the letters of the baby's name seemed a perfect embellishment, along with three tiny pale pink pearls.

The sentiment from Papertrey Ink's "Boutique Borders: Baby" set was stamped and then die cut with one of The Greetery's "Pretext Banner" dies--quickly becoming a favorite!

Sadly, given the distance between us and the new baby, it's likely going to be awhile before we get to hold the new bundle of joy. We've seen lots of photos, though, and she was a cutie from Day 1!

Given all the new products used on this card, I'll be adding it to the very large gallery at NBUS.

A Tulip Bouquet and a Favorite Flower

There are several challenges open now, and two of the themed challenges were the inspiration for these cards. The first is Seize the Birthday where the challenge is "Make it a Bouquet."

When I saw The Greetery's April Release, my resolve to refrain from buying new stamps and dies dissolved, and it was these tulip dies and the "Market Basket" that did me in. This is a pretty close, but simpler, CASE of one of the cards Betsy Veldman made for the release. I know my mother-in-law will love this, and her birthday is in early July.

I die cut the tulips and leaves from Bristol Smooth paper and used a variety of Distress Inks to color them, and then assembled them. When I arranged the bouquet I also added some of The Greetery's Botanic-cut Wildflowers that I had previously made. I added the bouquet to a slimline die by Pinkfresh Studio, and then to a white slimline card base. 

The Market Basket was die cut from gold paper and lined with a piece of vellum. I love the little handles and label. The stamp set for the labels covers a multitude of occasions, so I expect I'll fill the basket with flowers frequently. There are also two smaller baskets in the die set.

The second floral challenge was The Flower Challenge's Favorite Flower challenge. 

When we arrived on Kiawah Island in April, I purchased a lovely little bouquet for the table from a local farmstand. The purple anemones were just gorgeous, and I ordered some for our garden. They're just beginning to come up, but we think we may have lost a couple to the squirrels. Tracy covered them with netting yesterday, so I'm hopeful. This Honey Bee set called "Winter Anemones" called to me when I saw this challenge. 

I pulled out my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors after embossing the image in gold ink on Altenew's watercolor paper. After watercoloring the image, I die cut it with Hero Arts Rounded Rectangles. The Amethyst Allure cardstock from Papertrey Ink was a good match for the purple flowers.

I was too anxious about ruining the focal image to emboss the sentiment directly on the white card, so opted to emboss one of The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday" greetings  on a small banner, which worked well.

I'm entering both cards into the AAA Birthday Challenge where they're celebrating their 2nd birthday as well as AAA Cards Challenge which is celebrating it's 7th birthday.

Hope your week is off to a good start. We're enjoying another wonderful sunny day, although quite a bit cooler than it's been recently. It might be close to perfect. 

 

In The Garden

I've known all month exactly what I wanted to do for the current My Favorite Things Outside the Box: Florals Challenge. I've been spending most of my free time in my own garden, but finished all the planting on Tuesday. Yesterday I finally made time to create the card---and just in time, as the challenge ends at noon today!

I've had the very cute "Sunflower Sweetie" set from MFT for quite awhile, and it's another of my NBUS! After coloring the cutie with Copic markers and fussy cutting her out, I started creating the garden flowers with the MFT "Box Card Bouquet" dies. These flowers will get a lot of use, I think, beyond the Outside the Box cards.

I used Ellen Hutson's "Landscape" dies to create the grass, and Honey Bee's "Slimline Borders" for the fence which I die cut from woodgrain paper. Once I had all the elements, I assembled the box with the "Outside the Box Level Up" dies, and added the sweet little girl, the fence, and all the flowers.

The patterned paper is also from MFT -- "Tiny Checks" -- as is the sentiment from "Bitty Birthday Wishes." One thing I love about these cards is that they fold and can be mailed in an A2 envelope. It's really a genius design.

In addition to the Outside the Box Challenge, I'm adding this as a second card to The Card Concept Challenge: Garden Pleasures inspired by the Black-eyed Susans in the photograph. Trying to determine a style for this card is a bit more complicated than my usual CAS--I've settled on Freestyle Collage as the closest candidate. And a third challenge, that opened up yesterday--Simon Says: Use Dies or Punches. Almost totally dies in this case! And, of course, an entry to NBUS!

AAA 2nd Birthday Party

The AAA Birthday Card Challenge is celebrating their second birthday. I needed a birthday card for a friend this week, and thought I'd contribute to the celebration.

I still have a small stash of already colored images made during the #100DayProject last year. I pulled the envelope out and found this brightly colored floral from Simon Says "Even More Spring Flowers" which seemed so appropriate right now. We couldn't be happier with the beautiful spring weather we're having and flowers are blooming earlier than usual.

I'd never realized before how well Pinkfresh Studio's "Braided Circles" goes with Reverse Confetti's "Lacey Scalloped Circles," but they play together quite nicely--one die cut from Raspberry Fizz cardstock and one in white. 

I added them to a pale grey card base with a white embossed sentiment from Altenew's "Sentiment Strips."

Wishing all the folks on the DT at AAA Birthday Challenge a Happy Birthday!

Color Hues #18

The new Color Hues Challenge is for Purple and Teal which ends up being a really lovely color combination.

Pretty or not, it did take me awhile to come up with a design I was happy with. I started out with some stencils, but you can see that is not where I ended up!

After the stencils didn't work out quite the way I envisioned them, I headed to my die cuts. Almost immediately I came upon Mama Elephant's "Botanic Envelope" and knew just what I wanted to do. I love the gold detail on the envelope, and filled it with a variety of die cuts in shades of purple and teal.

Some of the foliage came from the Mama Elephant die, but I also add some die cuts from Pinkfresh Studio's "Delicate Blossoms" and Althenew's " Star Flower Pop-Up" die. All the colored cardstock is from Memory Box.

Then I added a small piece of the reflective gold paper (from Tonic) behind the star flower, and attached the envelope to a "Nordic Frame" from The Greetery.

The sentiment was gold embossed from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Thank You."

Hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what our Guest Designer, Janet, and the rest of the Design Team has come up with . . . and join in the fun!

 Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 

 

 

Garden Pleasures

It's finally warming up enough here to think about getting some plants for the patio, and start planning my perennial/annual cutting garden. The Card Concept has the same idea in mind with their new challenge, "Garden Pleasures."

Last weekend I got together with two card making friends for the first time in nearly 16 months. We did more talking than creating, but we always end up sharing "new" products and ideas. I was able to bring home The Greetery's "Botani-cuts: Wildflower" dies to play with for a few days. I die cut multiple sets from both watercolor paper and paper for ink blending before I returned the dies. I finished one set with ink blending and some Polychromos colored pencils for details. The flowers in the photo definitely called to mind these wildflower dies.

I need a few thank you notes, and the wildflowers to good use.

I gathered up two or three of the wildflower stems and tied them with a piece of thin twine. I decided to stick to The Greetery products, and die cut three "Nordic Frames" from white cardstock to use as a background for the wildflowers. I added a sentiment from The Greetery "Sentiment Suite: Thank You." After adding the flowers to the frames, I adhered them to 4-bar Kraft cards by Paper Source. 

The Card Concept always asks you to identify the style of your card and, as usual, I'd call these Clean and Simple. Once the wildflowers are die cut and colored, putting the cards together didn't take long. I have a nice little collection to add to other projects, and I'm looking forward to trying watercolors as well.

I'll also be linking these up to The Happy Little Stampers: Dies May Challenge: Anything Goes.

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day here in the States, and we're lucky to be able to celebrate the occasion with Tracy's family this year since everyone is vaccinated and well beyond the two weeks needed after the second shot. My nephew bought his first home during the pandemic and has been eagerly awaiting a time for the family to some see his new house. We gathered there late this afternoon for a celebration and a meal. It's the first time we've all been together since Christmas of 2019. I fully intended to take a lot of photos, but it was so good to see and talk to everyone, I never took my phone out of my purse!

Before we left for Marc's, Matt and his family came for a long visit. Then when we returned we had a long visit via Facebook with Sarah and her family. It was a very lovely Mother's Day for this mom.

As I always do I made cards for each of the moms in Tracy's extended family as well as for Betsy and Sarah. 

Here's the card I made for Betsy:

I posted this one earlier for a challenge. I ended up being the randomly chosen winner of that challenge which netted me a $20 gift certificate! Later, after they went home, Betsy sent me a photo. She had removed the floral piece from the card and turned it into a magnet that's now on her refrigerator!

And Sarah's card which was also posted for a challenge earlier. Neither of these women frequent my blog so the cards are "new" to them. 

Tracy's mom got the newest of all the cards. I broke my resolve about purchasing new stamps when I saw The Greetery's Spring Market release. This card uses two new products, the "Always in Bloom" layered stencils and the "Bold Alphabet" dies. After ink blending the florals in the stencil, I added some details with Polychromos pencils and a few Raindrops from The Stamp Market.

I'm linking this card to two challenges: The Card Concept: Mother's Day and Happy Little Stampers Stencils: Anything Goes. The Card Concept asks you to identify your style. This one most closely matches their definition for Clean and Simple. (No surprise there!) The inspiration was clearly the bouquet of flowers in the photograph. 

My two sisters-in-laws received these cards:

I broke out the last of my Simon Says Card Kit stamps for this card. I love the images in the "Spring Windows" set. I've had a lot of difficulty with my subscription for this kit since the December and almost didn't get this one. I used a stamp from this set on Finn's birthday card which I posted on Friday. I finally decided not to renew my subscription since almost all the stamp sets can be purchased separately. It was a good value most months, and I've been a long time subscriber, but this decision feels right for now. 

The last Mother's Day card was also part of the Stock Your Stash post:

I'm not sure I've ever reposted cards before, but I decided it would be nice to have all the Mother's Day cards in one spot.

Here's the photo inspiration from The Card Concept.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday!

My grand-nephew and grand-niece both celebrate birthdays this month. I was inspired to get a jump on creating their cards by some current challenges. The first one, for my grand-niece was posted on Instagram in order to make the deadline for one of the challenges. The two challenges were "Sky" and "Float," and this cute little bunny is floating in a sky created with a My Favorite Things cloud stencil. The bunny and sentiment are also from MFT--the "Birthday Buds" set. 

After coloring the bunny with Copics, I added some Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the balloon for some dimension and some Distress Glitter for some sparkle.

My Favorite Things has the best stamp sets for kids that I know, and I chose the "Woof Pack" for Finn's card. 

They have a dog, so I thought he'd enjoy this one, dreaming of a birthday treat. 

After coloring the puppy and the treat I ink blended a circle using Taylored Expression's "Masking Stencil" and added some splatters with a new splatter stamp that was included in a Simon Says set, "Spring Windows. Then I added the two images with dimensional tape. Hope Finn understands the punny sentiment. The inside reads "Woofing You a Happy Birthday."

The challenge at Seize the Birthday is "Furry Friends," so I'm linking this there and to The Paper Players where the challenge is "Cards for Boys," and soon to close!