random reflections

Seize the Birthday: Candles

I'm on a blogging roll here. It's either feast of famine. Hopefully, I'll get a regular schedule going here soon. But I'm back today with another card for Seize the Birthday. This time with the topping: Candles, as well as Just Add Ink Challenge: Choose Two--candles, cake, celebration. I used candles for a birthday celebration card.

Like the earlier card for Seize the Birthday, this one came together quickly thanks to another My Favorite Things die: Happy Birthday Candles. I have used this one before and I had a little bag filled with colorful candes I'd already die cut as well as the flames that had had Glossy Accents applied to them. It was just a matter of deciding which five candles to use. I used a template I had saved from the die to place the candles in a straight row and equally spaced.

The sentiment is a hot foiled one from Spellbinders  Everyday Sentiment. I die cut it with a banner die from The Greetery that has stitched ends. 

It's good to have a few birthday cards tucked away as there are six birthdays on my birthday calendar for February and eight in March!

Just Us Girls Challenge #665

It is such a pleasure to be asked to Guest Design with the Just Us Girls Challenge for the month of February. I love their rotating weekly challenges, and it’s long been a favorite of mine.

The first week is a color challenge-pink, white, and kraft.

This was a perfect opportunity to make a valentine, and I had just received The Greetery’s new Heart and Arrow die which I love. It’s a large die, and luckily had this large tag from Pinkfresh Studio’s Essential Tags. After die cutting the tag, I ran it though again with Honey Bee’s Fluttering Hearts Pierced Coverplate, which is much easier to see in the second photo.

I die cut the heart from a piece of Bristol cardstock that I ink blended with the Simon Says Pawsitvely Saturated Ink trio in pink. The arrow was die cut from some white shimmer cardstock from Papertrey Ink. Then it was all layered onto a panel of Party Pink cardstock from The Stamp Market and then onto a white card base. A pretty pink ribbon and the stamped sentiment from The Greenery’s Sentiment Suite: Love finished it off.

I hope you’ll hop over to the JUGS blog and join in the fun! I’ll see you again next Saturday for the new challenge.

Joining in at Inkspirational where their Moodboard is all things valentine!

CAS Birthday

Just Us Girls is looking for Clean and Simple Birthday cards this week. I'm always in need of birthday cards, so found some time yesterday to make this card:

Edited to add, I found time to make the card, but neglected to get it posted on JUGS before the noon closing time! It's not the first time, I've written the post a day early, and then neglect to get it linked. So annoying! At least it made it to the other challenges.

I'm in the process of creating spreadsheets to inventory all my craft supplies. It's not as tedious as I expected and easy to do if I'm watching a television show at the same time. This week I went through three drawers of card stock and patterned paper, and reacquainted myself with Papertrey Ink's Bitty Big line of patterned papers. This die from My Favorite Things, Happy Birthday Balloons, creates a CAS card in one run through the die cutting machine. It's another one of those dies that I've had for a long time, and never used. The three balloons were backed with Raspberry Fizz, Green Parakeet, and Orange Zest Bitty Big papers, and one large stripe of the Green Parakeet papers backed the sentiment.

In addition to Just Us Girls, I'm adding this to Seize the Birthday (no topping), and to Darnell's NBUS Challenge.

 

 

Guest Designer for Time Out

Thanks to the honor of winning one of the December challenges at Time Out, I've been invited to be a Guest Designer for the current challenge. It's being sponsored by Gina K, and the challenge is to CASE the Designer. Here's the card we're to CASE.

I've seen a couple of definitions for CASE: 1) Copy And Share Everything or 2) Copy and Selectively Edit. I think for the majority of card makers, it's the second definition that's usually followed. I thought there were several elements that needed to be included: the rainbow ink blending, a floral on top, and a black border. I decided to change up the ink blending and used a circle stencil from Taylored Expressions to do my rainbow ink blending. I will say it took me three or four tries before I had one I liked. 

I also changed up the color of the floral, choosing a silhouette from Gina K's Friendly Silhouette set---one that I had yet to use! I also used the Gina K Master Layout 1 to die cut the focal panel and the narrow black border. The sentiment is also from the same stamp set, die cut with a banner die from The Greetery.

I'm really anxious to see what the Design Team at Time Out has created, and I'll be watching the gallery as well. I hope you'll take a look, too, and join in the fun!

I'm also sending this to Darnell's NBUS Challenge since the stamp is one that's never been used, and also to Colorful Options where rainbow cards are always welcomed.

 

 

Color Hues #57

One of our new Design Team members, Jules, chose this round's colors. It's not one I would have thought of, but it makes a lovely floral.

Initially, I wanted to create a card with a more geometric or patterned feel, but you can see I ended up with a floral from Simon Says Best Friend Ever stamp set. I pulled out some coral and sage cardstock and matched the Copic markers to that before coloring, using two markers on the leaves and two on the petals. 

For the background, I chose Pinkfresh Studio's  Deco Tiles coverplate which I love--especially when it's tone on tone. And it helped satisfy my desire for some geometric design in the card. In the photo below you can see the pretty gold foiling from the Spellbinder's hot foil plate Everyday Sentiments.

Making the card wasn't a struggle, but photographing was a whole other story. Trying to get the light right for the foiled sentiment did change the light on the rest of the card as well. I finally had to just settle for what you see. 

I hope you'll join our two Guest Designers and the Design Team at Color Hues during the next two weeks. 

 

 

Seize the Birthday

You'd think I'd be entering a card in every one of Seize the Birthday's challenges, and I should since in addition to The Topper, you can submit any birthday card. It's getting it on the list that seems to be the problem. This time I'm submitting a birthday card that was specifically created for The Topper: Winged Things.

I keep a box of purchased, but unused, products, and one of them was the Jumbo Curiosity Dragonfly by The Greetery. I knew at once that this was my opportunity, and I'm quite sure I won't have any difficulty finding a recipient for the card.

Luckily I found some alcohol ink panels I created a long time ago and thought that this pink, blue, and aqua one would be perfect for the dragonfly. You can barely see the background on the focal point panel in the above photo, but it's more clearer at the bottom of the panel in the next photo. I initially tried embossing it in clear, but it wasn't very nice, so instead I stamped the Simon Says  Bold Leaves background stamp in black on black. I wasn't sure that would work, but it's lovely IRL.

I added some foam behind the dragonfly panel and behind its wings for some dimension. The sentiment and the die cut banner are from The Greetery as well. The final touch was to add some gems which luckily matched the dragonfly's wings perfectly.

I'll also be adding this at NBUS since this is the dragonfly's inaugural appearance!

We've had one day of sunshine in the last week, but the forecast for now shows no more sun until February 1st. I certainly hope the meteorologists are wrong!

Edited:  I received a lovely invitation in the comments to submit this card to another challenge: Color Options where the prompt is BLACK! It's a new challenge for me, but I'm happy to oblige. They have a fabulous mood board:

 

 

Color Hues #56

Sheri has chosen two colors that are perfect for Valentine's Day for this Color Hues Challenge. Although I gave thought to other occasions for which this color combination would work (and there are plenty!), I went with the obvious. 

I ended up with two cards created with one die—one totally minimalist card and one CAS card. I die cut one of the heart designs from Simon Says Geometric Builders: Hearts four times: once in red, twice in different shades of pink, and once from a cute piece of patterned paper I found in my stash. I also die cut some whole hearts to use as a base if needed.

My husband wasn't terribly fond of the minimalist card, but I'm perfectly happy with it. 

The sentiment is from Waffle Flower's Classic Sentiments. I layered the heart onto a small square cut with an Ellen Hutson's Essential Squares die and added it to the card base with some dimensional tape.

The second card using pieces left over from the first design, and a square format worked best for this card.

 

I layered the Stitched Square by Simon Says onto a pretty pink card base. This sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Just Sentiments: Valentine set.

Whether it's a valentine or a card for another occasion, I hope you'll join our Guest Designer and the Design Team at the Color Hues blog and fill up the gallery with wonderful cards!

It turns out that other challenges have valentines on their mind as well. So I'll be joining in with the TicTacToe Challenge where the middle row down is Hearts, Free, Shade of Red. And Just Us Girls where HEART is the word for word week there.

Woodblock Wednesday

Obviously, I'm a little late to the party, but fortunately Amy has left the link open until Monday. I missed adding the date to my calendar, but really want to participate each month so I can put some of my favorite wooden stamps to use again. This month Amy has collaborated with Ann of Impress Stamps. Many, many years ago on my first trip to Seattle, I happened upon Impress Stamps in a high end mall near our hotel. I made several visits there in the four days we were in Seattle, just overwhelmed with the number of stamps and the fabulous samples displayed in the store.

My last trip to Impress was in September of 2019 when we were in Washington and Oregon for my nephew's wedding. We flew in and out of Seattle, and the very first stop, after picking up our rental car, was Impress Stamps. By that time, the store in the mall had closed, but the same wonderful vibe existed in the new-to-me store. Over the intervening years, I've ordered from their online store, and am always impressed (yes, I did that on purpose) with the quality of their products and their customer service. All of the stores have now closed, but fortunately, the online store is still in business.

This month's card uses a larger wooden stamp from Rubbermoon as well as my all-time favorite sentiment sets from Impress. I have five different inside sentiments to finish the "wishing you . . ." 

Although I didn't photograph it, the inside reads "a birthday full of delightful surprises." After stamping the image on a piece of light gray cardstock, I pulled out my Polychromo pencils to color it. (I certainly didn't have any Copic markers in the early days!) I filled in the stars with a Signo silver pen and added a dot of Gelly Roll Clear Star to the center of each star.

I used one of the Ellen Hutson Essential Rectangles to die cut the main image and then used the same die again on silver mirror cardstock to create the frame around it. I think this is a pretty gender neutral card and I'm happy to have it in my stash.

Color Throwdown Guest Designer

I’m delighted to be the Guest Designer for the new Color Throwdown Challenge. I was the lucky winner there earlier in December, and was invited to create a card for the current Color Throwdown Challenge. 

I love this color combination and had several Ideas for creating my card. In the end, I went my usual Clean and Simple route, and am pleased with the results. I think this design has potential for many different occasions.

Choosing the Etched Berry Branch by Simon Says was the starting point. After die cutting the branch in a very light gray, I die cut it again using a magenta cardstock and used just the berries which I fussy cut and added to the gray branch. 

The branch was added to a light gray layer die cut with Hero Arts Infinity Rounded Rectangles and then to a slightly larger black panel. They were then added to the white card base. The sentiment, from Ellen Hutson Cake, was stamped in black, and as a final touch I added some Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the berries. 

I hope you’ll hop over to the Color Throwdown Challenge, and check out the wonderful inspiration by the Design Team, and then join in the fun!

Color Hues 55

Happy New Year! And what could be a better way to start than with a new Color Hues Challenge? Nancy has chosen the colors for this round of the Color Hues Challenge. It's an elegant combination, and I decided I wanted to gold emboss a floral design and do some watercoloring. I don't think I used watercolors for any of my Christmas cards this year. Here are her colors:

In just a few months I will need a wedding card for a dear friend so I chose the Pinkfresh Studio Charming Floral Border to watercolor.

I used the Altenew 36 pan watercolors (one hue of pink watered down for the lighter color) and two colors of gold from the Gansai Tambi Starry Colors metallic watercolor set.

It's easy to see the pretty metallic sheen in these photos. It's the first time I've ever tried partial die cutting, but it worked perfectly.  The sentiment was die cut from gold metallic paper with one of Papertrey Ink's Scripted dies. The inside sentiment reads "on your wedding day." (The watercolor paper by Altenew and the Ivory (Simon Says) card base appear to match much better in real life than in the photograph.)

You'll be able to find much more inspiration on the Color Hues blog by the Design Team and our Guest Designer. Although we were sad to say good-bye to Kristie Goulet in December, we're excited to have Jules Peddicord, Marci Hill, and Stef Perry join our Design Team. You'll be thrilled by all their creations!