random reflections

The Flower Challenge

The Flower Challenge is looking for floral cards with embellishments. In addition to creating sets of Christmas cards throughout the year, I've made a few single cards. 

I originally pulled out the Memory Box "Blooming Poinsettia" die for a big project as a Guest Designer. In the end, I made another card for that project, but had a quite a few poinsettias left over. The vellum circle was cut with Papertrey Ink's "Shape Shifter: Circle 1." I die cut the flowers from pink and white cardstock, but added some light ink blending in pink to the center of the white poinsettia. 

I added silver pearls to the centers of the poinsettias, and an additional three to the vellum circle. The sentiment is one of Waffle Flower's "Essential Christmas" premade die cuts.

Thanks for stopping by! 

 

Fanciful Snowflake

A coverplate that had been out of stock for months arrived in-house at Papertrey Ink last week. When I put the order in, I added the Fanciful Snowflake hot foil plate as well. Yesterday I spent some time just foiling with holiday and background hot foil plates. I should have done some of it much earlier, but I now have a wonderful stash of foiled holiday sentiments which you'll see later for sure. I love this beautiful snowflake, and although it's large, it makes a wonderful clean and simple card. 

I used a holographic foil from Spellbinders for the first time, and it's just stunning in real life. You do get a good sense of it in the photos, though. It's also a bit hard to tell that the card is a dark navy blue.

It really didn't need any embellishment, but I added one iridescent jewel from Pinkfresh Studio to the center of the snowflake.

I didn't trust my hot foiling skills enough to try and hot foil a sentiment onto the card front. This sentiment is from Gina K's "Blizzard" which I embossed in silver and die cut.

I'm entering this in several challenges. First, CAS on Friday where the challenge is Sparkle (and this is very sparkly in person). Next to The Paper Players who are looking for CAS Christmas cards. Then Simon Says Monday Challenge: Fun with Foil, and finally, the Merry Little Christmas challenge (my first ever entry) where Anything Goes that's Christmas. 

 

Peace, Love, and Joy

Last week I die cut a series of JOY die cuts from Waffle Flower's "Oversized Joy" set and created a series of cards all with different backgrounds that I had already created or started. This is my favorite of the bunch, and when I saw the Just Us Girls challenge for creating matching envelopes, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. 

The background for this card had already been gold embossed. Although the stamp comes with coloring stencils, I opted to color it with Copic markers this time around. For the envelope I gold embossed just the flap of the envelope that is so much prettier in real life than in the photo.

The Waffle Flower set comes with many different sub-sentiments and this one was gold embossed on black and trimmed out. The gold "joy" was die cut from my favorite gold metallic paper that I purchase at Michaels in the scrapbook department. It's resting on a die cut shadow cut from vellum.

Here's a look at the beautiful textured gold paper. This is off to JUGS as the challenge closes tonight. I've been inspired, though, so I think you'll see more matching envelopes.

 

Coffee with Friends

Coffee with friends is always a good idea, and I wanted to get a card into the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop. I found three stamp sets with cups and coffee sentiments, but chose to use one I purchased some time ago and never used. Along with the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop, I'm making my second entry into the Just Us Girls challenge to make a matching envelope. 

I chose a piece of woodgrain paper for the card base, thinking it would represent the table. The cute doily under each of the cups is from a very old die set from Papertrey Ink called 
Doily Details. So I have very old and very new represented on this card. All the images on the card as well as the sentiment are from the new set from Simon Says, "Cup of Love." The tag is also very old and goes back to the days when I was on a design team for an internet scrapbook company. I acquired a lot of Spellbinder products during those days that have held up against the test of time. The image on the envelope came from another older set that was part of a Simon Says card kit, "Coffee and Tea." I found the heart in a Papertrey Ink set, "Be Mine."

The cups, leaf sprigs, and spoon were all stamped in black and embossed with clear after adding the latte designs with Cocoa Bean ink. (Pretty perfect ink name!) I added some Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the heart. 

I love this Coffee Lovers Blog Hop logo, and I'm sending this off to Darnell's November NBUS since Cup of Love had never been used before.

I have one last card for the JUGS challenge, so I'll be back again tomorrow!

 

 

 

 

Color Hues #53

The holidays are sneaking up on me once again, but Julie's choice of Scarlet and Green for this round of the Color Hue Challenge is perfect timing.

I've been working on creating sets of holiday cards this year, so there are ten of these.

I purchased Simon Say's Holiday Sprigs stamp, stencil, and die set last year, but never used it. (I already have a list of products I want for next year, but I'm restraining myself from any purchases until I'm ready to make the cards! Using what I have must come first.) I love using layering stencils with stamps and it certainly speeds up the process when making multiple cards.

I used two shades of red and green for the stenciling to give the flowers and sprigs some dimension. Once the stenciling was complete, I die cut two flowers and sprig, attaching the flowers with a bit of dimensional tape.

I love this sentiment from Simon Say's Inside Christmas Greetings--not only the sentiment itself but the more modern combination of fonts. It turned out to be perfectly sized as well. The focal panel was added to the card base with dimensional tape. It's nice to have another set of cards ready to go.

Scarlet and Green screamed holiday to me, but there are other options to be sure. Check out the cards by the Design Team and our guest at the Color Hues blog and play along!

Birthday Snowflakes

After seeing the new challenge at Seize the Birthday for "Many of Something" I was looking through the stamps I keep nearby that I want (need!) to use and saw Simon Says' "Snowflake Season," and knew just what I wanted to do. Then Just Us Girls popped up with their new trend challenge, "Make a Matching Envelope" so I did that, too. It is a trend I see frequently, and never take the time to do. 

To make the card, I started with a piece of Surf Blue cardstock by Simon Says and embossed a variety of snowflakes in white. I embossed the greeting from Papertrey Ink's "Winter Hills" on a slightly darker cardstock scrap I found in my scrap folder and die cut it with one of the Simon Says "Stitched Rectangles." The sentiment square was added with dimensional tape, and then I added a tiny snowflake die cut from My Favorite Things "Stylish Snowflakes." (It's bent a bit in the photo, but has now been fixed. I hate that I don't notice these things until after I've taken the photo!)

The final embellishment was to add a sparkling jewel to the center of each snowflake. 

I embossed three snowflakes on the front of the envelope, and a series of them on the back flap. This took so little time, and I love the coordinating envelope. I hope this inspires me to take the time to do this more frequently.

In addition to Seize the Birthday and Just Us Girls, I'm adding this to NBUS since I've finally put the "Snowflake Season" to use. 

Fall Birthdays

When I turned the page on my birthday calendar to November I discovered a long list of birthdays and anniversaries. Several of the birthdays were for male friends and relatives, so I decided to make a set of cards that would be appropriate for guys. In the end I made four cards (two identical) and one for my sister-in-law who decorates with, and loves, leaf patterns.

The first two cards differ only with the woodgrain patterned paper. I made two of the first one because I had two pieces of that paper. The card design is a CASE of one Debby Hughes made years ago when the Simon Says "One With Nature" was released. The kraft card is a premade one by Paper Studio, and the tag has long been in my stash. I gold embossed the leaves and used three Karin watercolor markers to color them before die cutting  them and adding them to the tag. The sentiment, stamped in Dark Chocolate ink is from The Greetery.

While I was looking through my patterned papers, I came upon the one used on the next card for my sister-in-law. I just love this design and wish I had more of it. It's also been in my stash for quite some time, and I have no idea who made it.

I added the leaves for this one on a dark brown tag, luckily found in the "tag drawer" and gold embossed the sentiment from Altenew's "Happy Sentiments" stamp which might have been a freebie at one time. This tag got two gold pearls as a final embellishment. 

I'm sending the last card to a new-to-me challenge site The Four Seasons and to Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenge. Here's the inspiration photo for Four Seasons and HLS's Birthday challenge is always an Anything Goes challenge. 

I'm happy to report that (finally!!!) TypePad is back to operating as it should. What a relief!

Belated

It was certainly my intention to post these cards on Halloween, but alas, TypePad had other ideas. I did share them on Instagram, but forgot that I never shared the Halloween cards I made for the three little girls here on the blog. (Actually, the oldest is now 11, and I'm quite sure she'd be offended by the "little girls" description.) She's not too old to appreciate a Halloween card, however!

I had a lot of fun making these cards. I try very hard to resist buying new products as soon as I see them, but I broke my "wait and see" rule when Ellen Hutson released her Halloween products. These cards use two of those products, and the card itself is a CASE of Carissa Wiley's card created for the release.

I just loved these cute ghosts who can hold a piece of candy, a paper heart . . .  the options are limitless, but the girls were happy with my choice of Starbursts. (Unbelievably, only one of them likes chocolate!)

The patterned paper is from an old 12X12 piece of scrapbook paper still in my stash. The die cut sentiment is the other Halloween product I purchased from Ellen's release. I purchased the orange glitter paper last year from Simon Says. 

The card was cut with Ellen Hutson's Essential Ovals die cuts--three times from True Black, the patterned paper, and once with glitter paper for the border.

I also "made" some Halloween notebooks for all five grandchildren. In their goodie bags, I had Halloween pencils and erasers as well as other goodies, but couldn't find any notebooks. I transformed some simple notebooks from Staples with some black card stock and a few stickers.

This was the first year in several where we handed out candy on Halloween. Last year we were in Wisconsin for Halloween, and there was no trick or treating during the pandemic. We only had about 20 trick or treaters, but the first group of about 10 was the cutest we've ever seen, Over the past several years, quite a few young families have moved onto our street. The parents banded together so all of them arrived at once. The costumes were original, and the kids were just adorable! I should have had my camera out!

 

With Sympathy

This card went to a friend, but I never got it posted. Addicted to CAS's challenge right now is Sympathy, so it seems to be a good time to share it. I saw a very similar design somewhere on the internet, but didn't pin it, so I can't tell you who I am CASEing. But it's a design I know I'll use again.

It's important to me that sympathy cards be clean and simple designs. I like this one a lot. The strips of True Black and Smoky Shadow cardstock were added to the side of a cream card base. The leaves were snipped off a Pinkfresh Studio die, "Frame Builder Botanical Circle." I don't often leave the insides of a leaf die intact, but here I liked it better than when I tried it with open leaves.

The sentiment from Altenew's "Wildflower Garden" was stamped in black ink. No embellishments on most sympathy cards either.

We're having such wonderful fall weather here. Today is cloudy, but very warm. The last few days have been sunny and warm. Every day like this in November is a gift!

Holiday Tags

My stash of Christmas cards is in pretty good shape, so when I saw the new challenge at Just Us Girls for holiday tags I decided I'd make a couple since I have no new ones for this year. Then TypePad went down, and now I'm just getting this posted at the last minute! The old adage, "Better Late than Never" seems to fit.

The first tag was inspired by a post on Ellen Hutson's blog for layered tags. Mine looks nothing like theirs but I did layer one tag on top of the other.

I started with a tag from Simon Says and ran it through an old embossing folder by Cuttlebug. I die cut the red tag with Pinkfresh Studio's "Mini Tags with Fillable Words," and die cut Cheers from it layering bright green paper behind the word. The greenery is from Pinkfresh Studio's "Festive leaves stencil," which comes with coloring stencils and dies.

The second tag is a monochrome one. I made my own tag this time around and stenciled Nuvo Silver Glitter Paste through the Simon Says "Falling Stars" stencil.  The trees and house were die cut with Gina K's "Winter Wonderland" dies.

I used tiny strips of dimensional tape behind one of the trees and layered three houses together for some dimension there as well. The sentiment was silver embossed on black and is from Reverse Confetti's "Christmas Card Greetings" that I purchased just before they closed the shop.

In addition to Just Us Girls, I'm adding the second tag to the CAS on Friday challenge which is Winter. I'm not sure if a tag is allowed at CAS on Friday, but I'll take my chances.

I'm happy to have my blog back, but writing this post took at least twice as long as usual. Obviously, things are not quite working as they should. Hope it improves soon!