random reflections

Another Coneflower

I'm really enjoying my new Altenew "Build-a-Flower: Coneflower" stamp set, and when I saw the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge come up with this sketch, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I'm also entering this in the AAA Birthday Challenge: Flowers.

I colored this image with Copic markers last night while I listened to a video (no need to watch!) Finding the patterned paper I wanted was the most time-consuming part of the process, but when I remembered my folder of (very old) AMuse papers, the card came together quickly.

I die cut the gingham paper with a Simon Says "Stitched Square" die and added it to a pre-embossed square card. I added the coneflower with some dimensional tape.

The sentiment came from my favorite Pink & Main "Special Day" set.

Off to tackle the HUGE pile of things on my desk that need to be dealt with. I've been super busy with church business the last few days, but think I tied up most of the tasks for that today. 

 

 

 

Seize the Birthday

Seize the Birthday has a new challenge up: Use an Embossing Folder. It's a favorite technique of mine when I need some interest for the background of a card. 

I used part of a lovely birthday gift certificate to Altenew to order the "Build-a-Flower: Coneflower" and the matching dies. I stamped multiple images of the two outline images, some on watercolor paper. This is the first of three cards I made with them.

After embossing some cream colored cardstock with one of Tim Holtz's Alteration embossing folders, I decided it was best to cut it down which added just the right amount of texture and contrast with the brown textured card base.  

I watercolored the flowers with my Daniel Smith watercolors. The watercolors weren't moving as well as usual, and I couldn't figure out why until I remembered I was using a piece of Simon Says watercolor paper that had come with one of the card kits. I'm not a fan. Although the final outcome was acceptable, it was much more difficult than it should have been. 

The sentiment,"Easy Expressions: Birthday," is also a new acquisition, and I love it! It's from The Ton, and has 10 sentiments. I stamped and embossed all ten at once, and then added the black sentiments. When that was done, all 10 are die cut at once. The Ton has a variety of stamp and die sets that are grouped with guides that make it so easy to line every thing up perfectly. For someone who has difficulty with layering stamps and dies, this is one fabulous set. 

Since all the stamps and dies are new and have never been used, I'll be linking this up at NBUS as well.

Birthday Balloons

One of my stamping goals each month is to enter My Favorite Things Outside the Box Challenge if I have the appropriate stamps. This month the theme was balloons, and yes, I have the right stamps. I started the card over a week ago, and then got busy, so here I am posting my entry at the last minute again. This card is for my granddaughter, Maddy, who will be six years old in July.

I started by stamping and coloring four sets of the "Balloon Bundle" by MFT as well as the cute little girl holding the cupcake and a couple of gifts from the "Sweet Birthday Wishes" set.  I have the dies for the balloon bundle, but fussy cut the little girl and the gifts. Next, I die cut the pieces to create the "Outside the Box Level Up," die cutting the decorative stitched insets for the outside of the box from a piece of patterned paper from the "Birthday Brights" paper pad (also by MFT.)

Deciding where to attach all the pieces takes me longer, and this time I used some clear acetate to stabilize the balloon bundles as well as the little girl since I wanted her shoes to show. The sentiment is also a die cut from the "Box Card Greetings" die. In the next photo, you can see that the card folds flat so it can be mailed. Typically it would fit in a standard envelope, but in fact, the way I attached the balloons, the ones in the back extend above the top of the box just enough that it will require a slightly larger envelope. This one isn't going through the mail in any case.

I do enjoy putting these together, and hopefully Maddy will enjoy it as well!

Celebrate!

There are three current challenges all looking for flowers. Two of them are also CAS challenges, and I've got a card for them: The Flower Challenge, AAA Birthday, and CAS on Friday.

This fabulous die cut is from Altenew--Spring Rose. The roses here are just gorgeous right now. Although we have many different flowers in our yard, we do not have any roses. As soon as Tracy finishes staining our fence, we plant to put in one or more climbing roses. To create this rose, I watercolored a panel in pinks and greens. I lightly penciled in where the rose and leaves would be and it came out pretty well. 

Then I die cut the rose again in the center of my white panel as well as the watercolored piece and inlaid them onto the white panel. After stamping the sentiment form Pretty Pink Posh's "Everyday Greetings," I added some dimensional foam to the back and adhered it to a white card.

Hope your weekend is off to a good start. We're having friends here for dinner tomorrow night. Entertaining was one of the things I missed the most during the pandemic. Hopefully, it will be nice enough to spend some time on the patio.

 

Color Hues #20

It's hard to believe, but we're already at the 20th challenge for Color Hues. Sheri chose Aqua and Black for this round.

It's not the first time that I've ended up making two cards for the challenge. Although I liked the first card, it really "wasn't me." Meaning, of course, not Clean and Simple enough. So here's card #2, much more to my liking.

I knew right off that I wanted to use an older set by Papertrey Ink called "Life is Beautiful." I thought the black butterfly against an aqua background would be striking. (And you'll see that the first card I made has the same main elements, but different products.) I die cut the open butterfly die twice, once with black shimmer cardstock and once with gold. I off set the two of them and adhered them to a piece of aqua shimmer paper cut with The Greetery's "Crimped Frames." You can see the shimmer better here:

Then I layered the aqua layer onto a larger Nordic frame in black shimmer before adding it all to a white cardbase. 

The sentiment is from Pink and Main's "Special Day," embossed in gold and die cut with The Greetery's "Pretext Banners"--possibly the best banner set I've found.

Here's the first card I made. This time I started with the "Cover Plate: Butterfly" die from Papertrey, die cutting it from the same black shimmer paper I used above. 

After adding it to a piece of the aqua shimmer paper, I colored the insides of the butterfly wings with a Copic marker to give them some contrast. 

The sentiment from Taylored Expressions was embossed in white and added with a thin strip of dimensional tape.

Finally, I added some aqua and silver sequins. It's a bit busier than the card above, but I'm quite sure I'll find a recipient who will enjoy it.

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

 Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 

 

No Stamping!

It's been well over a week since I've blogged. Last week was the busiest week I've had since the pandemic lockdown ended, and I've been fully vaccinated. Then at the end of the week, I started having intense pain from my shoulder to my elbow on my right arm. It turns out I have an impinged nerve in my neck, and it totally took me out of commission for two full days. Following surgery about 10 years ago, I had my first experience with nerve pain and (fortunately) had forgotten how debilitating it is. Luckily, I saw a doctor before the weekend, and the medication has begun to do its work. The last couple of days the pain has been intermittent, so I'm back in the craft room, and out and about.

Just Us Girls has an interesting challenge this week: No Stamping. My three granddaughters all made me special hand-painted plates, and I wanted to send each of them their own thank you note. I had previously die cut a huge selection of letters in bright colors with Papertrey Ink's Block Alphabet, and managed to find the right letters for three separate cards.

To add some interest, I scored a series of lines across the middle of the cards, and then adhered the letters. 

They needed just a "little something" and the tiny heart stickers did the trick!

A Little Bit of History and A Card

A conversation on the Color Hues DT Facebook page prompted me to look at the Stats page of my blog this morning. It turns out June 5th was the 16th anniversary of my blog, and as of this morning, I had written exactly 2400 posts. Quite a surprise, I have to admit! Starting a blog was not my idea. During his first visit, my future son-in-law talked me into setting up a blog. Actually, he set up the blog, and I’ve been going along merrily ever since. I’ve paid little attention to the technical aspects of the blog, and still fight with it every time I want to change some of the sidebar items. I think it may be time to be a bit more proactive about my technical skills.

Then out of curiosity, I started scrolling through the early archives of my blog. Although I started stamping and making cards about 25 years ago, the first papercrafting I shared on the blog were scrapbook pages. 

In March 2007 I took my first online photography course through Big Picture Scrapbooking—Photography 101 with Barbara Carroll—without a doubt the best online course I ever took. Following that I started sharing more photography and entering a variety of photo and scrapbook challenges I found online.

Finally, in January of 2009, I actually posted a photo of cards I had made for a charity project, but it wasn’t until February of that year that I started sharing individual cards when I started purchasing stamps from Papertrey Ink online and following their blog. The first online card challenge I entered was in March of that year. My card style has definitely changed over the years—lots less patterned paper now, and much more CAS. But there are stamps I used that year, that I still own and use today. No wonder I have such a big collection!

It was quite a stroll down memory lane: lots of travel posts, posts about teaching (the joys and frustrations), and gratitude posts where I find the same things listed year after year—a testimony to my blessed life!

Interestingly enough, just yesterday I put together six cards after finding a series of already stamped and colored images in one of my reorganization projects (more to come on that.) One of those images was stamped with one of the wooden stamps that I purchased on my very first trip to a stamp store. The company has long gone out of business, although you can still find their stamps on Ebay and Amazon. I love this little girl with her hands full of flowers.

The stamp was made by the Delafield Stamp Company. There were no acrylic stamps when I started, and I must say stamping is much easier with clear stamps and a stamping platform like the MISTI. 

The image was colored with colored pencils, and the sentiment is from a well-used and older Papertrey Ink set, "Wishes Come True." I die cut it with the Hero Arts "Rounded Rectangles" and then cut a narrow frame from Blueberry Sky paper and added it all to a cardbase of Spring Rain. The Papertrey Ink cardstocks have been my favorite for many years.

Thanks for taking a little trip down memory lane with me. Enjoy your weekend!

Spots or Dots

"Spots or Dots"---that's the challenge this week at Just Us Girls.

It's been awhile since I've joined in at JUGS, and in my continued effort to use stamps that I haven't played with, I came upon The Stamp Market's "Dotted Background" stamp. I had already started playing around with The Stamp Market's "Party Pieces," and ended up with a birthday card for Tracy's cousin.

It's a mini-slimline card which is becoming one of my favorite designs, and worked well with this little stamped and die cut birthday cake. The chocolate cake with blue decorative icing is sitting on a silver cake stand. I used some dimensional tape on the white frosting as well as on the die cut sentiment.

I added some glitter to the candles, and "painted" the flames with a gold paint pen. The sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio's "Happy Birthday Sentiments." I love the font and the die works perfectly every time. After cutting down the dotted background, I added it to a layer of Blueberry Sky paper from Papertrey Ink which matches the blue stamped images. 

I'm also adding this to the June NBUS Challenge which already has some great cards in the gallery. Darnell, who hosts the site, is correct that it's a great place to scroll through the gallery for design ideas. 

 

A Nautical Birthday

I was in need of a masculine birthday card and was inspired this morning by two challenges: The Card Concept: Anchors Aweigh! and The Paper Players Tic Tac Toe Challenge.

It's easy to see the photo inspiration in my card, and not hard to find the diagonal blue, red, white on the tic tac toe board.

I already had this W+9, "Dockside" stamp set laying on my desk with another project in mind, and I had just received The Greetery's "Crimped Circles," part of an order that was placed with a generous birthday gift certificate. And that was really all I needed.

It's easy to see the crimped edge on the circles, but not so easy to see that the navy cardstock has a raised dotted pattern to it that adds a bit of texture.

I love the rope-like font of the "Happy" that mimics the red stamped circle, and the little bar with the anchor and stars seemed like the perfect stamped embellishment. As always, The Card Concept asks you to identify the style of your card, and as usual, this one fits the Clean and Simple category.

Color Hues #19

The weeks fly by and here we are with another great color combination for the Color Hues Challenge. This round it's Blue and Brown.

I cased myself for this challenge and returned to a design I used last September. I love the closed and open leaves of Altenew's "Leaf Canopy" set.

To color the closed leaves, I added two shades of Pinkfresh Studio blue inks directly to the stamps, spritzed them with water and stamped them onto a piece of Altenew's watercolor paper. Once that had dried, I overstamped with the open leaves in Dark Chocolate ink from Papertrey Ink.

I stamped the sentiment from the same set in Dark Chocolate, and use my favorite Gina K "Master Layout" dies to cut a thin border of Dark Chocolate cardstock before adding it all to a Blueberry Sky (also Papertrey Ink) card base.

As always, I hope you'll pop over to the Color Hues Challenge and check out the great cards by the Design Team and our Guest Designer, Michel.

   Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

And please come join the fun!