random reflections

Happy Birthday!

I'm celebrating the birthday today of one of my longest and best friends. Her birthday was last week, but we weren't able to get together. This morning, we're sharing a take-out breakfast at her home. Since she periodically visits my blog (but never comments!) I decided not to post her card until today. The main image of her card was actually one of my birthday presents a year ago. It comes from the Altenew Watercolor Coloring book.

This floral provided me with an opportunity to do some mixing of colors using both some new Winsor & Newton watercolors and some Daniel Smith watercolors. When I was immersed in Sarah Simon's watercolor class, I purchased a few small tubes of Winsor & Newton watercolors. I had previously tried to mix this color with my yellows from Daniel Smith, but I could never get the peachy color I wanted. The Yellow Ochre is just enough different to easily mix it.

I've also learned to walk away and let the watercolors dry before adding a new layer. Being someone who is used to completing a card in one session, it takes more patience than I usually exhibit!

After attaching the panel to a green card base, I added the sentiment from The Ton - "Easy Expressions: Birthday." I considered adding a few pearls, but decided to leave it very CAS.

I'm sending this off to two challenges: Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes and Happy Little Stampers: Watercolor.

           

Abstract Designs

 A week or so ago Ellen Hutson posted an Instagram reel using her "Stay Cool" stamp set. Since I had yet to use mine, I pulled it out and created three abstract cards intended for guys on my January birthday card list. (They're all in the mail now.) This is a bit of a departure for me, but I quite like them.

I used the same color combination on all three cards, varying the designs and the sentiments. All three were matted in Dark Indigo (Papertrey Ink) cardstock. The first card is a standard A2 card created with Concord and 9th's Marmalade cardstock. The sentiment is from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday," a set I use over and over again.

The other two designs looked better in a square format and I used the same cardstock as the base for them as well. The sentiment for this one is from Simon Says Stamp's "Tiny Words."

I think this one is my favorite, and it's sentiment is one from Pink and Main's "Special Day." I'm throwing this in the ring at Addicted to Stamps and More where the challenge is "Make Your Mark."

My card making these last few days has been derailed by a massive overhaul of my craft closet. I didn't take before photos, but there's been a major transformation. I have half an empty shelf, everything has been moved to clear containers that I can see into, and all the containers are labeled. I had so much! ribbon and much of it is in bags to take to the charity craft shop. I did take a basket filled with ribbon to the basement where I wrap gifts because I'm much more apt to use it on a present. Nonetheless, I did keep all my Papertrey Ink ribbon which coordinates with their cardstock and their inks. Aside from a fresh, new look, the best part of the project is knowing exactly what I do have and what ought to be used. Next up are the drawers in the two units under the shelves. Those I can tackle at a slower pace, one drawer at a time. But it's good to have one of my 2022 intentions well on its way to being completed.

Foiling and a First Valentine

For Christmas I received a Spellbinder's Hot Glimmer foiling machine. I knew it would be under the tree, so during sales events after Thanksgiving and Christmas I purchased a few foiling plates (all 50% off). Then I won the grand prize at Pinkfresh Studios which included several more. Traveling right after Christmas and devoting a lot of time when we returned to the watercolor class, it took me until this week to break out the machine. I'd seen some very helpful videos on Jennifer McGuire's blog*, but I'd also read on Instagram and elsewhere that the foiling process could have a rather steep learning curve. Luckily, the first two foiling projects were a success which resulted in the valentine below. Afterwards, I tried a couple other plates that didn't turn out so well, so I think it will be a process with mixed results for awhile.

The foiling is much easier to see here:

I foiled a piece of Raspberry Fizz cardstock with silver foil using the Pinkfresh Studio "Heart Grid" foiling plate and die cut it with one of MFT's "Nested Hearts." The foiled sentiment is one from Pinkfresh Studio's "Brush Sentiments." That set includes the foiling plate, the stamp set, a die, and a stencil you can use to color the dies. Lots of options and I would never have spent the money to purchase them all. Truthfully, when I saw the release I thought the sentiments would all be larger than I would like, so I wouldn't have any of them had I not won the whole release. I see now that they will get quite a bit of use. 

I used the Sunny Studio " Quilted Hearts" embossing folder for the background and a piece of silver glitter paper to frame it. To save on the glitter paper, I cut it the size I needed, and then die cut the middle of it with a smaller rectangle die and put that piece in my metallic paper folder. The small sentiment is from an old Simon Says stamp set "Love" which I use frequently. 

I'm sending this off to two challenges: Time Out's: In Love and Happy Little Stampers Dies: Anything Goes. 

*If you're a cardmaker and aren't aware of Jennifer McGuire's site, she provides wonderful videos showcasing all kinds of techniques as well as process videos. I rely on her advice for so many things.

 

 

 

OLW: Balance

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but 
of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton

This post has been percolating for several weeks now, and the middle of January is quickly slipping by so it’s time to take a look at my OLW for 2022.  I had no trouble finding my word this year. In August we were in a lovely gift shop in Traverse City, MI and I spotted a series of books with single word titles. The one that jumped out at me was Balance, and I was pretty sure that described what I needed in my life. Interestingly, it turned out to be a repeat of the word I chose exactly 10 years ago. Time to revisit it again.

I’m prone to going all in on a project and by the time I’m done, I’ve let lots of other creative pursuits fall to the wayside. A blogging friend has decided to choose a word quarterly, and I’m wondering if that’s not also a way to balance the things you hope to do. I’ve just begun Atomic Habits after hearing references to it all over. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but already one of the big take-aways is that setting goals doesn’t help you create habits; it’s the process that changes who you are. And that change is what you’re really after. 

When I started thinking about balance I was looking for ways to incorporate learning, practice, and self-reflection into my days. I recognize that it’s an ongoing process. It’s the day-to-day, moment-to-moment choices you make for yourself. Creating balance means understanding that you can’t do it all.

So I’m going to practice balance—staying open to opportunities and reminding myself of the things that bring me joy.When we returned home from visiting Sarah and her family, I downloaded a Habit Tracker and laid out some of the things I’d like to pay attention to this year. I’m quite sure the list will change from month to month, but it’s already helping me find time for things that might fall off my radar. Although I divided some of them into weekly and monthly categories, that’s not really working the way I wanted. For example, this month I want to explore some possible photography projects, but I don’t expect to start working on one until next month. The one very important omission on the Habit Tracker is a list of all the things I do without thinking: household chores, errands, meal planning, volunteer work several times a week, and work for my three church committees. But, in fact, I'm looking for balance in my creative time. 

As I often do, I’ve made lists of ideas for things I’d like to do, and truthfully, most years by the summer I’ve stopped going back to the lists to review them. I think my friend’s idea to look at the OLW quarterly is a great idea. Although I’ve enrolled in Ali Edward’s OLW class a couple of times, doing a deep dive into it each month was really overload for me. 

As a "reward" for sticking with me for a very word-heavy post, here's a look at a cute little nuthatch at our feeder this morning, and a broader look at the landscape outside our kitchen window. By noon we had well over a foot of snow. Tracy went out to do the driveway this afternoon (fortunately neither of us had any reason to leave the house), and just as he finished our snow blower quit working. He did the sidewalk by hand, but our long and steep driveway requires a machine. Matt's coming over tomorrow with his truck to get it to the service provider. 

If you choose a word for the year, I’d love to hear about it. 

Color Hues #33

Julie has a sparkling challenge for you at the Color Hues Challenge this time around.

My card evolved during the rush of making holiday cards. I had recently purchased the Simon Says "Triangle Burst" 3-D embossing folder, and embossed this silver paper after seeing two cards, one Instagram and one on a blog, using this embossing folder. Finding just the right focal point to add to it took me longer than I expected, but this snowflake was just right.

I immediately thought of this upcoming color challenge and abandoned any idea of creating a holiday card. I have several January birthdays and this card will soon be on its way to one of my best friends. 

The beautiful snowflake is Simon Says' "Marie Snowflake" and is cut from white glitter paper. The sentiment is from one of my oldest Papertrey Ink sets "Vintage Picnic Sentiments." I embossed it in silver on the same silver paper I used for the embossing folder.

Although you can see some of the glitter and shine in the photographs, this card is much more beautiful in person. 

I hope this wonderful color combination inspires you to make a card and join us at Color Hues this time around. Check out all the inspiration the Design Team and our Guest Designer, Stephanie, have in store for you.

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 Tracey

Folk Garden 2

We've been home a week, and I've been immersed in an online class, "Beautiful Blooms," a botanical watercolor class hosted by Karen Abend and taught by Sarah Simon (also known as the Mint Gardener.) I have two of Sarah's books and have perused both of them, but found the prospect of working through them a bit intimidating. Being able to watch Sarah work in watercolor was so enlightening, and it was easy to see the simple things I need to improve. More water when working wet on wet, learning some excellent "recipes" for mixing colors, and how to work in layers on a piece are just a few of the things I've been working on. Her books are a lot more inviting now! I'll have more to share later. 

But, finally, yesterday, I was able to get back to card making and my newly acquired Pinkfresh Studio goodies won back in November. I started off by stamping and stenciling the Folk Garden 2 set. It's a beautiful design that really appeals to me. The stamp creates a lovely background pattern, but what's especially wonderful is that an accompanying die will cut out (in one go) all the individual floral patterns. The open design could easily be colored with Copic markers or colored pencils, but the coloring stencil does it all with ink blending in six separate stencils --- a much quicker process. I ended up with three different cards from the session, with a few blooms left over.

I used two of the blooms on this card, arranging them at the bottom of an oval cut with Ellen Hutson's "Essential Ovals.

The sentiment is from another new Pinkfresh set, "Always Uplifting," and the Pinkfresh Jewels are in Sapphire, my favorite blue ink color from Pinkfresh, and one of the inks I used in stenciling the florals.

The next card is a CAS thank you note.

This time I added just one floral to a red panel die cut with The Greetery's "Crimped Frame."

The sentiment is also from Pinkfresh. I don't have many word dies with shadows, but I do love them. This one accompanies a stamp set "Sentiment Suite: Thank You."

Lastly, a birthday card with another die cut sentiment from the Pinkfresh "Happy Birthday Sentiments." Both this and the thank you set have been in my collection for awhile. Because they are a larger format, I often forget about them when I'm looking for sentiments for my cards. 

This card had a previous iteration that I tore apart this morning after deciding it was just "too busy." I like this version much better. 

It's always a bit nerve wracking to tear a card apart, but if I'm slow and steady, I can usually salvage the important elements. The only things that were trashed were a white panel and a blue card base. You can see I reversed that here. 

I'm entering this one in two open challenges:  Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes and Happy Little Stampers Dies: Anything Goes. 

 

 

Watercolor Anemone

In preparing for my Guest Designer jig on the CAS Mixed Media Challenge, I watercolored this Honey Bee "Winter Anemone" as well as the one I finally submitted. This was done with loose watercoloring. I got each petal and leaf wet with clear water, and dropped color in and let it do what it wanted. Because I had gold embossed the image first, it stayed within the lines, and didn't look all that "loose" in the end. I did do some loose watercoloring as a background which I'm frequently reluctant to do for fear I'll ruin the whole card. This time it worked.

This weekend I pulled it out and decided on a sentiment from the Gina K set "Wreath Builder. It fit in the open space perfectly, so I gold embossed it to match the florals.

After matting it in black, I added it to a card base created with Gina K's "Fuchsia" cardstock. I decided there was some room for a few gems, so that was the final touch.

I'm throwing this in the mix at the Happy Little Stampers Watercolor Challenge which is Anything Goes.

It's 17° now and headed downward. By tomorrow morning, we'll be at 6° with a wind chill of -9°. Good thing I have lots to keep me busy inside, and no reason to venture out!

A Little Sparkle for a Friend

We got home just in time for me to get a card posted for The Paper Players Challenge: Sparkle.

In November I won the prize of all prizes: the complete release of the new products at Pinkfresh Studios. Since I was in the midst of card making and preparation for Christmas, I barely had time to even look through the collection of stamps, stencils, dies, and foiling plates. (Luckily, Santa brought me a Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil machine, so that's high on the list of things to do in January.) I did have time to play with one of my favorite stamps in the collection, "Charming Floral Border." I also used just one of the several layering stencils to add a touch of shadow to the image. I got the card in the mail to my friend, but had no time to get a blog post written. 

I embossed the floral border in silver and then added the detail with a medium shade of gray ink with one of the stencils. It's hard to see the sparkle in the photo above, but here's a clearer look.

You can also see here where I added a few quick strokes of a dark gray Copic marker to add some detail to some of the stenciled areas.

The sentiment from Simon Says "Sketched Flowers" was also embossed in silver. I trimmed the stamped piece down just enough to show a narrow border from the card base.

We had an easy drive home, thanks to Tracy's foresight. There was a band of lake effect snow predicted for the area west of Buffalo extending to Batavia (about 40 minutes west of Rochester.) Instead of taking a chance with the weather, we headed south  and east on Rte. 86 just after Erie, Pennsylvania and then north on Rte. 390 to Rochester. There were only snow flurries on our route for about 20 minutes, and then we had partly sunny skies a good part of the way. When we watched the news last night, we discovered the Buffalo airport recorded the highest snowfall in one day---17.8 inches!!! Our usual route takes us right by the airport. The change in route took about an hour longer if done in good weather, but most likely saved us time---and certainly saved me a lot of anxiety. 

Happy 50th!

It's amazing to me that our nephew turns 50 today! I remember well when he was born. After using the Ellen Hutson "HB2U" stamp for an earlier masculine card, I decide to give it another try using some different stamps in the set as well as different colors of Concord&9th papers.

The stars came from an old Simon Says set that arrived as part of Card Kit called "All Boy." I'm being more proactive about going through my stamp sets looking for smaller stamps that might work well with another set. I like these a lot. 

It's impossible to tell from the photographs, but I added just a touch of glitter to the tiny opening in each heart.

A favorite add-on to Photoshop Elements will no longer work with my computer. I recently got a new laptop when there wasn't enough memory to update to the latest operating system. It's a sneaky way to force you to upgrade even when you weren't planning to. It's proven to be worthwhile since my old laptop's battery ran way down during one of my Zoom/GoogleMeet meetings. This one barely notices. At any rate, I'm giving the RadLab replacement a trial run. It has more features, but has to be used (to the best of my knowledge) as a separate editing tool. I have mixed feelings about it, but it does streamline the editing process, and uses many of the same filters I was used to. I have a week to use it before purchasing, so I have some time to play around before making a decision.

We're head home from Wisconsin today. The virus is so rampant we considered driving straight through, but there's also the weather to contend with. It appeared two days ago we'd miss the snow, but it looks now that from eastern Pennsylvania to home might be a bit snowy. We'd rather not drive that in the dark, so we'll split the trip up into two parts. I had an email chat with a friend today, and admitted my Covid fatigue was increasing. She replied that she's now in Covid despair. I'm not quite there yet, but I do understand where she's coming from.

 

 

Christmas Card Roundup

I made far too many Christmas cards of a single design this year. My goal for 2022 is to make a set of Christmas cards each month, so there's not a big rush at the end. I post a few as I go along if I create one for a challenge, but typically wait to post until I know they've been received. So today, I thought I'd do a Christmas card roundup of some of the cards I particularly liked. And, in fact, there's still one challenge looking for Christmas cards.

First of all, two cards created with one of my favorite 3-D embossing folders: the poinsettia from Altenew.

This was was embossed with red paper and lightly swiped with a white pigment ink. I tried a couple of variations with this technique, but this was the only one I liked enough to make into a card.

I made two or three variations of this card with the same embossing folder and a red frame from The Greetery.

This card went to one of my best friends, a single man. It got posted on Instagram, but not here. I dry-embossed the frame and added the gold embossed deer and sentiment to a Nordic Circle die from The Greetery that a friend had die cut for me. 

I used this oversized Joy stamp from Waffleflower on several cards--all a slight variation of this one.

Another card made with a 3-D embossing folder and a sentiment from The Stamp Market. I should have made a few more of these.

This was one of the cards I made early on, and I made a set of them. It's a set I've owned from Altenew for awhile, but never found a design I was happy with. Stamped on white and then die cut with a pierced frame.

This was the biggest set of cards I made--25 in all. There were four different snowflakes so I could die cut them in sets so it went pretty quickly. I did the die cutting at home, and stamped and assembled them in November when we were visiting Sarah.

And one variation on the card above, I only made one or two of these because they required embossing of the sentiment which takes more time. I already know the first set of cards I'm making for next year and they do require embossing, but if I'm working well ahead of time, it shouldn't be a problem.

All the following cards were made in one session with a group of pre-made tags and die cuts from 2020. Several of them use a new tag die from The Greetery that die cuts two tags at a time. I have more ideas for those tags for 2022.

And my favorite of the bunch:

There's still one of my favorite challenges open for Christmas cards, so I'll be posting to AAA Cards, and then calling this season of card making done.