random reflections

Happy Birthday

If you read my blog regularly, you might remember I borrowed the Vintage Type dies by The Greetery from a friend to create this card. Before I returned them I die cut several from black cardstock, and here is the first of them. They make for a great masculine card, and this one is off to a very close friend of ours. 

I love black and gold on kraft cardstock so used that to die cut the mat with the Crimped Frame from The Greetery. The sentiment is from Just My Type, also from The Greetery.

Photographing this card gave me my first opportunity to show off a birthday gift that I picked up at The Blue House bookstore in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Both Sarah and Tracy gifted me my purchases that day! These are paper pens. They write beautifully, and are almost perfectly flat so they can act as a bookmark as well as a pen. I'm saving them for photo props for the time being. 

Here's a closer look at the typewriter. 

It's off to the Seize the Birthday Challenge where Use Metallics is the special challenge. I'm not sure the typewriter has enough gold to qualify, but Seize the Birthday always allows an "anything goes" birthday card as well. I thought I had lined up the sentiment appropriately, but when I finally realized how it should have been done, it was too late to move it--everything was glued down!

 

 

A Sketch Challenge

I don't often play along with sketch challenges (and you'll see my lack of experience soon), but when I saw the Paper Players Sketch Challenge I knew it was the perfect opportunity to use one of Gina K's Master Layout 11 dies which have been housed in my NBUS box for a very long time.

It's a "window die" with four sections so you can see why I was anxious to use it. However, I did not look at the sketch carefully enough, so the first card I made looks like this:

Not necessarily a bad card, but you can see that I totally ignored two major portions of the sketch. The second time around, I was much more careful, and I much prefer this card:

Most of the ingredients remained the same: Hawaiian Shores cardstock, white woodgrain cardstock, butterflies and leaves from Pinkfresh Studio's Fluttering Butterflies Washi tape and dies, and the beautiful patterned paper from Altenew,  Gel Printing Soft Washes. Both sentiments were foiled in gold on white. The first sentiment came from Pinkfresh Studio's  Favorite Things Sentiments, and the second from Spellbinders Betterpress Always and Forever.

I'm not likely to forget the need to commit all the parts of a sketch to my memory the next time, but it's nice to have two more cards in the stash. I'm sending the top card off to the Triple B Challenge: Birds, Blooms &/or Butterflies. Triple B always offers a gorgeous inspiration piece, but it's truly just that, and there's no requirement to follow the colors (as beautiful as they are for May)!

 

Woodblock Wednesday: May 2024

It's time for a new Woodblock Wednesday! I'm throughly enjoying going through the collection of wooden stamps I've kept. I wish I'd saved a few more. When I went through them looking for an image for April's Woodblock Wednesday, I pulled out the two stamps I knew I wanted to use this month. They've been sitting on my desk, patiently waiting. Both stamps are from Uptown Design Co. and designed by Holly Pond Hill.

I don't have any memory of purchasing them, but I'm quite sure my daughter and her love of chocolate cake was a motivation for the purchase. Since she doesn't read my blog, it's likely this will be her birthday card this year. In some cases she has a great memory for things given to her many years ago, so I wonder if she'll have any recollection of it. Luckily for me, both stamps stamped perfectly the very first time. I pulled out my Prismacolor pencils to color the cute little mouse.

After trimming the card down and adhering it to a light gray card base, I cut three Double Scalloped Stitched Frames from Poppy Stamps and layered them for some dimension before adding them around the image. It's another CAS card as it needs no embellishment. 

More Embossing Folders

On Day 3 of the Extraordinary Embossing Folders, Laura Basson walked us through using an embossing folder that comes with an accompanying die. I recently purchased two of these embossing folders from Simon Says and put the Party Candles to work over the weekend.

There are lots of possibilities for using this folder, and I'm glad to have something that will work for both kids and adults. I die cut a group of the candles and ink blended them in bright colors for the Just Add Ink Challenge: Choose Two: Balloons, Bright Colors, and Birthday. The sentiment was already die cut from green glitter paper and filed with the Pinwheel Party dies from The Greetery. I backed it with vellum before adding it to the front. The die cut candles were then arranged over the embossed candles from the folder. I have to say the vellum looks much heavier and less transparent than it does in real life.

The card didn't need much embellishment but I added some of Honey Bee's Aurora Borealis gems which catch the light and really sparkle.

The challenge at Just Add Ink is ending tomorrow so I'm making this the second post of the day, so I won't forget to get it linked up in time.

Pinkfresh Studio May Challenge

It's a puzzle to me why I rarely get a card made for the Pinkfresh Studio Challenge. My collection of Pinkfresh Studio stamps and dies is one of my biggest and most favorite collections. The challenge is always on the to-do list, but rarely do I get it finished in time. Today I am down to the last few hours, but I was happy to put my newest Pinkfresh Studio purchase, Amazing Things, to work. I used just the theme for this card, and not the color palette. 

This is actually a Betterpress Plate. Once PFS realized that foiling works beautifully with a Betterpress plate, they discontinued manufacturing hot foil plates. This is the second time I've tried it and it works just as they promised. I think PFS's coloring stencils are the easiest ones to use, and I love how soft and beautiful this floral is. I used just one green ink pad, but applied it more heavily at the base of the leave for some additional dimension. The blues were also used in a light application and then a darker one. I often have a hard time ink blending with a light hand, but it certainly does work well if I slow down and pay attention.

The sentiment was gold embossed with Papertrey Ink's Banner Sentiments and die cut with Honey Bee's Sentiment Banner dies.

This is off to the Pinkfresh Challenge (you can find the graphic here; it would not load for me this morning) and a second entry to Just Us Girls for their Anything Goes with Stencils.

Poster Prints

As soon as I saw the new challenge at Just Us Girls I knew just what I wanted to do. This week's challenge is Anything Goes with Stencils. Last week I received the Create in Quads: Poster Prints stencils from Taylored Expressions. I don't often purchase from there but I saw a set of sentiments I could use with several "arts and crafts" stamp sets that I own. When I went to the site, I saw these amazing designs and couldn't resist adding them to my cart.

Once again the light was a problem this morning, and now it's gray and raining so the photos are as good as they're going to be for now. 

I used Simon Says Stamps Pawsitively Saturated inks in Surf, Ocean, Lilac, Orchid, and Amethyst with some Hero Arts Spicy Mustard as an accent. What's not very visible is a final layer of Gold Lunar Paste. It was the first time I'd ever used it, and for this project it gets mixed reviews. I had to redo two panel because the application wasn't even enough. It's not as bright gold as I'd like. Taylored Expressions sells some gold foil layovers for these stencils and next time I order from there I'll definitely pick up a couple of packs. 

Of the four patterns, I think this one is my favorite. All the sentiment strips were stamped with Papertrey Ink's Banner Sentiments and die cut with Honey Bee's Sentiment Banners dies.

The lines on the tulips are the gold Lunar Paste.

I added a few Pinkfresh Studio gold pearls to this card and the next one.

In real life all the centers of the flowers are gold (applied with Lunar Passte). I laid gold pearls over all the centers but it was just too much, so chose to add them to just five flowers.

The whole concept of creating four cards all at once with one large stencil is unique and would have been quite a time saver if I hadn't decided to mess around with the Lunar Paste. I'm anxious to try these in a different color combination as well. These are pretty bold and I'm happy with that, but next time I'll try some softer colors.

In addition to the Just Us Girls Challenge, I'm sending this off to NBUS as this is the first outing for this stencil set.

 

 

Celebrate

It's been quite awhile since I took one of the Online Card Classes so when a new one,  Extraordinary Embossing Folders was advertised, I decided to enroll. There's so much going on at our house right now, it's hard to find the time to watch all the videos. As always, they are long and comprehensive. It's Day 3, and I have watched Day 1's videos and managed to create this card.

The topic was partial embossing which is something that seems so obvious, I'm rather chagrined that I never thought of it myself. I do like it, however, and will use it again. I was also inspired by a challenge that's relatively new to me: As You See It. Here's there image for the challenge that calls for 1) an embossing folder, 2) a die cut, 3) white, and 4) one additional color. 

The embossing folder is Tapestry from Gina K and the die cut sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio. I decided to score a line between the embossing folder and the bottom portion of the card. 

Hopefully, I'll be back before too long with some more cards from class.

Cheers!

A quick and CAS birthday card for one of our male friends. It was quick because the foiled background, Spellbinders' Skinny Stripes Background, was in my stash, and the gold foiled sentiment was one of Pinkfresh Studio's Foiled Sentiments 3. 

I trimmed down the foiled background and added a gold border before adding it to the black card base.

I backed the sentiment with dimensional dots and punched three stars from a very old paper punch, adding them as well with some dimension. If only every birthday card for a guy came together so easily!

I'm sending this off to both of the AAA Challenges: AAA Birthday where CAS is the challenge, and to AAA Cards Challenge where they are celebrating their 10th birthday--quite the accomplishment! It's also off to Addicted to Stamps and More where Birthday is the theme.

Color Hues #87

The new Color Hues Challenge is live. It took me awhile to come up with an idea for this color combo chosen by Jules:

The obvious choice was florals, but I really wanted to stretch myself to come up with a different theme. Thanks to my friend, Kelly Schirmer, who loaned me the necessary die and stamps I got just what I wanted--a very cool typewriter. (The only typewrite die I own is very tiny, and would not have made much of a statement.)

The fabulous typewriter dies & stamps are from The Greetery, Vintage Type.  I die cut the pieces from two hues of teal, adding some gold accents and embossing.  The florals (which I own) are also from The Greetery, Wildflower Mix. The blooms were die cut from coral cardstock, and the stems and leaves from a dotted vellum purchased years ago from Papertrey Ink. The accompanying stamps from Vintage Type are for the flourishes on the typewriter, and for the letters and numbers on the keyboard.

I wanted a sentiment with a typewriter font, and found one on display in a printer's drawer that hangs in my craftroom. It's a wooden stamp by Hero Arts, and I had to stamp it multiple times on the cute paper die that comes out of the typewriter. It makes me even more appreciative of acrylic stamps and my MISTI. 

The only embellishment were three hearts die cut in coral with Simon Says Holiday Shapes. Once I added the typewriter to the black card base, I put some dimensional squares behind the paper, and tiny bits of black dimensional adhesive to a few of the flowers.

There is, as always, lots of inspiration for this color combo on the Color Hues blog. Take a look, and then join us. 

 

A Snappy Birthday

I still have two puppy cards to share, but I'm not sure whether one of my great nephews was a dog lover or not so I pulled out an old favorite from Neat and Tangled--Later Alligator--and came up with this card:

Once again I used my Scan-N-Cut to cut the stamped images before coloring them with Copic markers. I used a new-to-me coverplate, Doubled Striped Card Front from Concord & 9th for the background and added some grass from Papertrey Ink's Into the Meadow dies.

I don't think I've ever used the cute little bird balloon, but it added just enough extra interest. The sentiment was stamped and then die cut with Honey Bee's Sentiment Banner dies.

"Animal Antics" is still live at The Paper Players Challenge so this is headed their way as well as to NBUS since the Concord & 9th coverplate finally saw some action.