random reflections

Warm Wishes X3

My hairdresser of 44+ years is retiring at the end of the month. My last appointment is this week, and I wanted to create a special card for her. Her birthday is on Christmas Eve, so the inside messages wishes her a Happy Birthday, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy Retirement! She'll not be sitting still on retirement. She's a marathon runner (has run the Boston Marathon an amazing 15+ times!) and a triathlon competitor as well. And yes, if you saw her, you'd be sure she started her career as an infant! 

I fell in love with the Folk Snowflake by Pinkfresh Studio as soon as I saw it, and although I did not need another snowflake stamp this one hopped right into a shopping cart along with the coloring stencil and die. I have no regrets, and you'll be seeing more of this elegant snowflake very soon. I found the glittery background in my stash. I had used Nuvo glitter paste with My Favorite Things Basket Weave stencil but for some reason had never used it. I die cut a large circle from it, added a piece of vellum behind it to soften the color of the blue card base. 

After embossing the snowflake in silver, I used three Pinkfresh Studio inks with the stencil to color it. I added some dimensional tape to the back of the snowflake. For the silver embossed sentiment (also from Folk Snowflake) I die cut three additional layers and stacked them.

This card is off to Inkspirational where the challenge is Add Glitter, to The Paper Players: Christmas, and the Peace on Earth Challenge: Anything Christmas.

Snowing here as I type this, but I don't think we'll see a lot of accumulation. The first several inches we had a week or so ago was gone within two days.

Late Fall Birthdays

In the midst of creating Christmas cards, I needed to stop and make two cards for late November birthdays. Later this week I'll be back with cards for early December birthdays. Interestingly, there are two challenges now that are looking for fall inspired cards: The Card Concept: Fall Leaves, and Seize the Birthday Topping: Fall Items. I used only the theme from the Card Concept as neither of my cards showcase the colorful leaves in their inspiration photo.

The Card Concept always asks you to identify the style of your cards. In both cases, I think Clean and Graphic best describe these cards, although they are quite different. 

First the birthday card for my nephew:

This card was quick and easy to create: one die cut (Papertrey Ink's Bold Borders: Foliage,) cut with a lovely piece of specialty paper that was in my stash, and one stamp from The Greetery's Arched Sentiments.

You can see the detail in the die in this photo more easily, but the subtle color changes of the paper didn't photograph well.

The second card went to a friend of mine and is much more colorful. I started by embossing stamps from Altenew's Leaf Canopy with white embossing ink on black watercolor paper. I used my metallic watercolors to color each of the leaves in hues that reminded me of fall leaves. 

I used some deep gold text weight paper (again from my stash) to border the leaves, and adhered it to some purple shimmer paper. I used the same papers to create the banner sentiment which comes from Pink and Main's Special Day which I embossed in gold.

This angle captures the beautiful shimmer of the metallic water colors from the watercolor set by Paul Ruebens which I purchased on Amazon several years ago. 

It seems a lot more like fall than early winter here--very gray, very chilly and very wet. Altogether a great day to be creating or reading!

November Woodblock Wednesday

These months fly by. As I have in the past two months, I took this opportunity to make another Christmas card for Woodblock Wednesday. I chose a very old Magenta stamp that reminds me of vintage woodblock prints. (In fact, when I tried-unsuccessfully-to see if this stamp had a name many of the Magenta stamps I owned are now listed as vintage!) When I took the stamp out of the drawer I thought I'd used colored pencils with it, but I decided the image needed no color whatsoever. I remembered that Sunday Stamps' current challenge is a color challenge, and chose the colors for the card and layering from this palette.

When it came to choosing the card design, I was happy to discover that one of the Simon Says Stitched Rectangles was the perfect size for cutting the image. That made layering it on the red cardstock so easy.

The red came from my scrap file and the sentiment is, once again, from Memory Box's Greeting Tabs. They've been the perfect size for quite a few of my Christmas cards this year. 

The lighting (always a challenge in an old house) on the close-up produced a brighter green than the actual card. It's evergreen from Concord & 9th. I think I'll be out of it by the time the holiday roll around.

I'm also sending this to the Triple B Challenge-where your card must have a bird, bloom and/or a butterfly. Their November challenge inspiration board features lots of beautiful fall images, but there doesn't seem to be any requirement to get your inspiration from the photos. 

I'll be back on Friday with the new Color Hues Challenge--I think you'll love the color combination Nancy has chosen!

Christmas Hats

The challenge Christmas Craft Creations is to “add a hat.” I actually bought the Colorado Crafts Christmas Hats stamp specifically for this challenge when I was at Buffalo Stamps and Stuff a couple of weeks ago. It’s not something I’ve ever done before, but I thought it would make good Christmas cards for my grandchildren.

I started by lightly stenciling some clouds on a white panel with My Favorite Things Clouds and added some snow drifts with Papertrey Ink's In The Meadow: Snow.

I cut the images with my Scan 'N Cut and colored them with Copic markers. I then arranged the trio in the snow and splattered white ink to add snow to the whole panel. The final touch was to add some glitter to the tops of the snow drifts.

The best spot for the sentiment was on the bottom snow drift. It's another one from Reverse Confetti's Christmas Card Greetings which is turning out to be a real workhouse this year. Sadly, Reverse Confetti is now out of business. 

In addition to Christmas Craft Creations, I'm sending this off to a new-to-me challenge, Krafty Chicks Challenge where the challenge is "All Occasions," and to Tic Tac Toe where either the far left column or the top row across work for this card.

A Two-fer

A lot of things came together with these two cards. After receiving the Altenew Festive Greenery, 3-D Embossing folder and stencil I decided to challenge myself to come up with some different designs after creating two pretty traditional designs I posted here. Shortly afterwards, I watched a video by Ardyth where she created a two-fer using circle dies and decided to give it a try. Before I finished, the Just Us Girls new challenge appeared: CAS and In a Circle.

The first card definitely goes to the JUGS Challenge as well as the challenges listed at the end of the post which fit either/or/both cards.

I die cut a circle from one of the stenciled panels, attached an ornament hanger from The Greetery's Jumbo Curiosity: Round Ornament, and tied a gold bow on it. The sentiment is from Memory Box.

To add a bit of interested to this very CAS card, I die cut a panel with Pinkfresh Studio's Rounded and Braided Rectangles and attached it all to a white card base.

I added the stencil panel to a red card base and then inlaid the red frame and white circle with the sentiment from Penny Black's Happy and Bright collection.

There are, not surprisingly, a lot of holiday themed challenges in the works. I'm sending these off to Inkspirational: Seasonal and Time Out: Winter Holiday.

Variation for CH 76

When I made the card for the current Color Hues Challenge I made a second one, and inlaid the leaves in green metallic paper--couldn't do that for a two-color challenge. But I forgot to add my Color Hues card to The Colorful Options Challenge (RED), so I wanted to get this one posted as well.

Since I gave more detailed information here, I won't go over it all again. The lovely ornament is from The Greetery, The Jumbo Curiosity Ornament: Round. All the papers for the ornament are metallic, and the sentiment is a premade one from Memory Box.

It's been raining all day (and cold) so it doesn't seem like Christmas is right around the corner, but I know how fast the time flies, so I need to be focused the next couple of weeks if I'm to have the cards, baking, and gifts wrapped in time for the holiday. I'll be glad to take the day off on Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving with Tracy's family. I'm the "pie lady" so I do have to make three pies, but that's far easier than roasting a turkey and getting all the elements of a traditional dinner together. 

Here's the lovely moodboard for this month's RED challenge at Colorful Options.

The Paper Players Color Challenge

The Paper Players have the perfect color combination for holiday cards:

Recently, Altenew notified me that I had reward points that ought to be used. It didn't take long for me to order their Festive Greenery 3D Embossing Folder and Stencil set. It seemed like the perfect time to break it out, and after playing with some possibilities I ended up with two cards. 

This card is pretty much the way Altenew shows it in the layering stencil guide. I use Simon Says Pawsitively Saturated Cherry ink for the berries and two new Pinkfresh Studio ink colors: Spruce Tips  and Lush Forest. I trimmed the edges so I could add a thin gold frame before adding it to a red cardbase.

The sentiment is a prefoiled one from Pinkfresh, Foiled Sentiments 4 Holiday which I adhered with dimensional tape. I added just three gold pearls as a final accent.

For this card, I embossed Evergreen cardstock from Concord & 9th. I wasn't sure how it would work, but I lined up the first stencil for the berries and ran a VersaMark clear embossing pad across the berries. Then I sprinkled some Zing Red Glitter embossing powder on the berries and heat set them. Aside from red glitter on the desk and on me, it worked out great.

It sometimes happens that a mistake is the first step in creating a card with a different design. I over-trimmed the long edges of the panel but didn't want to cut it down any more. In my stash where I keep folded cards I didn't end up using for a project I found one with an off-set front panel. It worked out perfectly for the embossed panel to which I again added a narrow gold frame. The sentiment is the same style as the one above, but this one I gold foiled on black cardstock which I liked much better for this card than the versions on white cardstock.

This card was finished yesterday, but it gets dark so quickly now that I had to wait until this morning to photograph it. Thus I am getting these into the challenge just in the nick of time.

I'll be sending another card over to Darnell's NBUS Challenge. Another new item used (rather quickly this time!)

 

Joy to the World & Peace on Earth

*Note: if you're here to see today's Color Hues Challenge post (more Christmas, of course), click here.

It may be a bit early for the sentiment in the title of the post, but definitely NOT too early to be thinking about Christmas cards. Last year at this time all the cards that I needed were completed. There's a long story behind the fact that I am not nearly ready, but I'll save it for later if the original plan pans out in the end. In the meantime, I'm making Christmas cards when I can. Work on our house last week and the fact that volunteer work always seems to increase at this time of year, has meant crafty time has been diminished for the last couple of  weeks. I'll be working with our Dining Room Ministry program Saturday, but there appears to be a good amount of time for crafting as well. I have big plans . . .

For today, I'm sharing two cards that were quick to make since the gold foiled backgrounds were already prepared. I'm entering them in the Peace On Earth Challenge where they have a lovely mood board for inspiration, but where any Christmas themed card is welcome. This time I'm not focused on anything on the moodboard.

The beautiful foiled background is Pinkfresh Studio's Lush Vines which I've used over and over. This time it was foiled on Concord and 9th's Evergreen cardstock.

Both of the sentiments were die cut once from gold metallic paper and layered on four green die cuts for dimension. This JOY is from Savvy Stamps and has been in my collection for years. 

The die cut for this sentiment ended up in the envelope with the Savvy die. I haven't (yet) figured out where it came from. The sub-sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Sending Joy set. 

The sun is shining here and we're due for possibly 60° temperatures, possibly the last day this fall. I'm hoping to get out for a long walk after lunch.

Color Hues #76

Jules has chose a wonderful color combination for our new Color Hues Challenge.

There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to create a Christmas card. When I flipped through my holiday dies I found The Greetery's Jumbo Curiosity Round Ornament. I'm not sure if I've ever used it before, but I ended up making a card for this challenge and another one I'll share later. 

I die cut the ornament from gold mirror cardstock which always poses a challenge when you want to photograph it, but it certainly fills the bill for Gold Metallic. The red card base and circle are my favorite red cardstock, Pure Poppy by Papertrey Ink. The hanger for the ornament was die cut with gold glitter paper as well as the band in the middle. 

After adding the band to the ornament, I inlaid some cream shimmer paper and some red metallic paper for the berries.  The sentiment is from a new packet I purchased this year from Memory Box called Greeting Tags. They come in a variety of fonts, but what I love about them is their thickness--no need to add any dimension. 

I'm way behind in making holiday cards this year, so it's good to have another one in the stash. I hope you'll take time to visit the Color Hues Blog to see the creativity of our Guest Designer, Claire, and the Design Team. And please join us if you can!

 

Time to Party

Ella's birthday is coming up, and I designed her birthday card not only with her in mind, but also a couple of challenges. She's having a splatter party (I asked for, and received an explanation, but still can't describe it for you.) I thought the Concord and 9th Celebration Turn About stamp would be close to splatters (and more festive). I've had this stamp for months but this is the first time I've used it. While I had it out, I made three extra panels with different color combinations.

The balloon and sentiment were CASEd from a card Laura Bassen posted awhile ago. The large sentiment was just what I needed for the challenge at AAA Birthday's challenge: use a large sentiment and came from Simon Says Life is a Party set. I knew I wanted a shaker so after die cutting the balloon-shaped window with Simon Says Balloons die, I filled it with an assortment of jewels and sequins, staying as close to the color combination as I could.

The balloon string was die cut with black cardstock with a die from The Greetery that was part of a thank you gift on their 4th anniversary. 

I'm sending this to AAA Birthday and also to Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes and NBUS since I finally broke out the turnabout stamp.