random reflections

Curved Florals

One of my most recent purchases was the Gina K Curved Floral stencil and die set. I set out to see how different combinations might work. I started with light colors, using Pinkfresh Studio inks for all the stenciling. For the first two cards, I stenciled first and then used the outline die cut to place over the stenciling.

For the light colored stencil, I chose a white die cut and placed the curved floral on a scalloped oval I found at Dick Blick’s several years ago.

The sentiment is also from Gina K’s Wreath Builder set. I used that sentiment on the second card as well, choosing brighter colors and a black die cut.

The last card doesn’t use stenciling at all. I die cut the solid die cut from a piece of patterned paper—Altenew’s Gel Printing, and used some light shading with a small brush to highlight a few spots in the centers of the flowers. I found a dark gray panel using the Altenew Deck Planks 3-D embossing folder in my box of precut panels, and was surprised at how much I liked it. Definitely a different look.

The sentiment here was one I had foiled earlier from Spellbinder’s Everyday Sentiments II, and was die cut with a banner die from The Greetery.

I’m adding my brightly colored florals to the Paper Players Challenge. It’s a fun Tic Tac Toe challenge and I chose bright colors, die cut, and birthday running diagonally from left to right. I’m also adding one of the cards to Seize the Birthday Challenge—no topping, but I do expect to be back with one for the balloon topping soon.

Woodblock Wednesday

It's the April Woodblock Wednesday, and I had time this afternoon to put together a card.

I love this challenge because it encourages me to look back through the wooden stamps I chose to keep. I wonder now how many I sold or gave away, I'd be glad to have back again. This Memory Box stamp has always been a favorite. I love it's artsy look.

After coloring the image with Copic markers, I trimmed it down and mounted it on a piece of black cardstock and then onto the card base with some dimensional tape.

The sentiment is also a woodblock stamp. It's so old I can no longer read the name of the company, but it was made in Redwood City, CA.

I'm in the process of making and addressing 17 birthday and anniversary cards that need to be mailed in May, so I'm happy to have another birthday card in the stash.

Many Thanks

I’m basically in recovery mode after a very busy and emotional weekend. My MIL’s memorial service was on Friday. It was a beautiful service and brought the entire family to Rochester—all 38 of us from six different states, including, of course, Sarah and her family. Sarah was the liturgist for the service, and it was wonderful to see her participating in a service in the church where she grew up and was ordained.  We had a dinner Friday night and gathered together Saturday at the Air B&B my brother-in-law rented for his immediate family of thirteen. We hired a professional photographer who did a fabulous job of capturing every possible family configuration! She sent us over 100 photos. Here's one taken of the whole group. It was supposed to be a very rainy day, but the rain held off until late afternoon allowing for photos outside and lots of running and playing by the kids.

These two cards were made last week prior to the memorial service to thank our pastor and organist for their participation in the memorial service.

I pulled out one of my all time favorite Simon Says stamp sets, Be Kind. After stamping the leaves on white cardstock I colored them with Copic markers, using two blue markers that I blended with a yellow marker. I'm really pleased with how it worked.

The sentiment is from another favorite set, Thank You Kindly, by Papertrey Ink.

These cards fit two Clean and Simple Challenges open now:  Less Is More: Anything Goes and Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion.

 

 

Catching Up

It's been hard to find time to get back to crafting, but I finally made one of the last two cards from the February Create and Connect event. It's an interactive slider card, and the dies make creating it so easy. The class event used a new Washi tape suite called Fruitalicious, but I opted to use a floral Washi tape suite, In the Meadow, that I already owned. The pink flowers were inspired by the Just Us Girls Moodboard this week. I haven't had a chance to play along since February when I was Guest Designer for a month, and I've missed playing along with their fun challenges. 

Here's the card (almost) flat. It does easily fit into an A2 envelope.

When you pull the tab, a second message emerges from the top, and another set of florals is revealed behind.

Here's the message that pulls up:

I made this card for one of my best friends, and knew she'd love the pretty florals. The sentiments are also from Pinkfresh Studio: Friendship Blooms, and Beyond Happy.

I'm also sending this off to Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes. This is another challenge I've missed playing along with. I keep forgetting that you always have the option to use any kind of birthday card!

 

Color Hues #62

Cindy has chosen a great color combination for this round of Color Hues: Purple and Green.

I couldn't resist the chance to break out Pinkfresh Studio's Nothing But the Best stamp, stencil, and die set. It was part of the package that I received for the February Create and Connect event. We used watercolors in class, but I chose the stencils this time. 

Over time I've acquired a few sets of Simon Says Pawsitively Saturated Inks which are fabulous for ink blending and come in set of three. I used the two lighter shades for the large flowers and then the darkest shade for the centers of the small flowers. The centers were colored with a gray Copic marker, and I added some dimension with a black Glaze pen.

After die cutting them, I arranged the florals on the large Rounded Braided Rectangle that was also included in our kit, but was made available during the March release. The gold foiled sentiment and Gold Glitter Drops are also from Pinkfresh Studio.

I hope you'll check out all the amazing cards created by our Guest Designer, Amanda, and the Design Team on the Color Hues blog, and then add your own creative take to the gallery. 

March Roadtrip

Before the month slips away, I've promised some folks some photographs of our March Roadtrip. We were gone three weeks and traveled first to Wisconsin to see Sarah and her family (I took almost no photos!), then on our way to the Florida Panhandle we stopped for brief visits in Indianapolis, IN, Nashville, TN, and Montgomery, AL. After two nights on the Panhandle we joined friends on Longboat Key for several days. On the way home, there were stops in Savannah, GA (no time to explore, but we've been there several times), Roanoke Island, NC, Richmond, VA and Pittsburgh, PA. 

Two stops proved to be the highlights. The first was in Montgomery where we visited the Legacy Museum and National Monument for Peace and Justice. It was a sobering and moving experience. Both were organized and developed by Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative. If you haven't read Just Mercy or seen the movie of the same name, I can highly recommend both. You can read more about the organization here. The Legacy Museum does not allow photographs inside. We spend 1 1/2 hours there and barely touched the surface of what is presented. More information here.

The second highlight was not in the least somber. We had been told about the Phipp's Conservatory in Pittsburgh, but had no idea we'd be so lucky to arrive during their annual Flower Show. We were able to get timed tickets, and I took more photos here than on the rest of the trip combined. I'll be back soon with a blog post devoted to flowers.

The Eiteljorg Museum is devoted to Native American art. It's a lovely museum. We had an excellent lunch in their cafe, and here are two of my favorite photos.

A year or two before the pandemic, we spent a few days in Nashville, and enjoyed it. This time we, once again, headed right to Parnassus, a wonderful bookstore owned by Ann Patchett and a friend of hers. We both left with new books in hand, two of which I read while on our trip. Pineapple Street is a light read and just perfect for a road trip. Still Pictures: On Photograph and Memory is a memoir based on family photographs by Janet Malcolm. It probably isn't everyone's "cup of tea," but I loved it. I have a terrible memory of my childhood which was certainly a happy one, but I do think I could take some photos and write a brief essay about it which would make a great project for the winter months. No photos there, but I do have a couple of the main drag in downtown Nashville, taken on our way to the Ryman Auditorium where we saw Margo Price in concert.

Oh, and we had the best dessert of the trip at Hampton Social. Their version of banana cream pie (Tracy's favorite) was served on a hot waffle with a huge mound of whipped cream.

Here are some photos of the National Monument for Peace and Justice. It's a powerful statement of the cruelty directed to Black Americans. Each large rectangular block lists the names (if known) and the date of the lynchings by county in every state. Some counties had so many lynchings the font was tiny and there were two columns of names. This racially motivated and sanctioned terror prompted millions of Black Americans to migrate to the northern states. 

For quite a few years I've read about a "charming" town on the Florida Panhandle. In fact, in our opinion, there aren't any charming towns on the Panhandle. It's basically a long road filled with condominiums and rentals with "locked" beaches. You can only get on the beach in the populated areas if you have a code from the place where you are staying. We were not staying at any high end rental, so this is the only photo I got of the beaches.

We did find some nice places to eat, and we spent our full day there exploring the different areas (I wouldn't call them towns, but that's what it looks like on a map.) We wouldn't choose to return.

Longboat Key, on the other hand, is lovely and we spent five days with our friends there. Before the pandemic we rented a place there for two weeks several times with our friends. They now rent for two full months, which we are not interested in doing. But we do love visiting!

The beach on Longboat certainly is a contrast from the one above this!

There are more birds than people on the beach.

Another highlight of our time on Longboat was an opportunity to meet in person two women I know through Instagram and the Color Hues Design team.

Our first stop on the way home was Savannah. We paid for all our hotels with points we've accumulated so when we could, we booked rooms with a view.

We were right on the River Walk, and walked the length of it which was a great thing to do after being in the car all day.

Our next stop was in Raleigh and visited the Duke Chapel and Gardens.

I gave Tracy a book, Blue Highways, for Christmas and our stop on Roanoke Island was a result of curiosity raised by the book. Once again, I took few photos, but this one was taken near the restaurant where we had lunch.

We arrived in Richmond, VA too late to do more than find a place for dinner, and the rest of the photos from the trip are of Phipp's Conservatory Flower Show. I'll try not to overwhelm you with photos from that in a later blog post.

 

 

New Arrival

I'm attending a baby shower for a friend's daughter on Saturday, so the Card Concept Challenge: New Arrival was so timely.

The expected baby is a boy, so I took my inspiration from the theme rather than the colors. I decided against a sentiment on the front of my Clean and Simple card.

I embossed both the card front and the white layer with Spellbinder's Star Gazer embossing folder. The images are from Waffle Flower's Little One Baby set which I colored with Copics and then die cut. I added some dimensional tape behind the baby.

We're having unusually warm weather with lots of sunshine. Even though it won't last quite yet, it's such a welcome change. I've managed a bit of crafting between packing and then unpacking all the items on a built-in desk in my office/craft room. The painting is done for that portion of the project, and I took the opportunity to organize and purge my book collections on photography, watercolor, sketching. There are two big bags ready to donate to our library. Like working on the inventory of my stamps and dies (still ongoing), one of the biggest bonuses to this kind of organizing is knowing (once again) what I have! 

Easter Bunnies

There's a lot going on here, including some painting in my craft room/office which is complicating my efforts to get some serious card making done. Some of it I can't share for awhile, but two of these Easter bunnies are now on their way to Wisconsin, and the rest will be hand delivered on Sunday.

I'm trying to get away one more year with giving each of the grandchildren the same card with different colored backgrounds. Next year, there will be two in middle school, and I may have to find some more sophisticated images. Nonetheless, I love this new Bunny Kisses die cut that was part of the most recent release from The Greetery.

I die cut all the pieces from white cardstock, and then ink blended each piece with Distress Oxide inks. They were arranged on one of the Tag Team Duo tags also from The Greetery. The grass was die cut with one of  the Simon Says dies in the collection Box Card Borders. Three of the bunnies got a tiny pom-pom added for the tail. I decided against that for the two that needed to be mailed.

The patterned paper backgrounds from very old AMuse papers were die cut with The Greetery Postal Frame die.

Here's a bunny without the pom-pom tail. The sentiment is from Sugar Peas Everyday Sentiments.

As you might expect there are quite a few challenges calling for Easter/Spring cards. One of these is headed to: 

Colorful Options: Pastels (some of these definitely qualify) or Rainbow
The Four Seasons: Anything Spring
Inkspirational with a Moodboard for Spring and Easter
NBUS - This is the first run for Bunny Kisses

We're expecting rain and very warm temperatures today, then chilly again through the Easter weekend. I hope the long range forecast is accurate which call for temps in the 50's and 60's for the week after Easter. I'm so ready for some green to show up!

 

Color Hues #61

It's April first, and there's no fooling around here! I'm back to share the next Color Hues Challenge chosen by Stef:

One of the things I love most about this challenge is working with color combinations I would never think of myself. This is one of them, and I turned to a new favorite coverplate of mine,  Decorative Circles by Papertrey Ink. I waited a long time for this to be back in stock, and it was worth the wait. It covers an A2 sized card, but this time I cut it down to create a square card.

My best match for peach cardstock was Concord & 9th's Grapefruit which I paired with Classic Kraft and Rustic Cream, both by Papertrey Ink. I created a frame using Simon Says "Stitched Squares" die.

I wanted a simple sentiment on a circle die to coordinate with the coverplate, so used Ellen Hutson's Essential Circles die. The sentiment is from Waffle Flower's Classic Sentiments. Finally I added some Pinkfresh Studio Metallic Enamel Dots to the center of each circle. 

Please hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what our Design Team has created with this color combo. It's sure to inspire you, and I hope you'll add your cards to our gallery in the next two weeks!