random reflections

Color Hues #77

As we did last year, we're having just one challenge for Color Hues in December so the challenge is open until December 28th at 9:00 am.  Nancy is our hostess and chose the beautiful combination of Pink and Silver.

My first thoughts were that I'd use a snowflake or two with a pink card. But in looking through my desk two days ago, I found a commercially made card I'm quite sure I purchased for the design and then totally forgot about it. I have to say, it might be one of my favorite cards ever! I love the way it's layered with the dimension coming between the second and third layers. I ended up with two pieces of shimmer cardstock--one pink from Broadway Paper in Milwaukee and the silver from Papertrey Ink. 

After adhering the first layer of pink shimmer I wrapped a piece of silver ribbon around the front piece of the card, hiding the ends behind the next two layers. The first layer was added with dimensional tape, and the second after I attached the silver glitter snowflake and embossed the sentiment in silver. The snowflake is Kate Snowflake from Simon Says, and the sentiment is from Reverse Confetti's Christmas Card Greetings which I purchased during their going-out-of-business sale. This is the first time I've used it, but I love the simple, small font so I know you'll see it again, perhaps with a different sentiment. 

This angle gives you a better sense of the shimmer and glitter, but it's best, of course, in real life!

I hope you'll join the festivities at Color Hues this month. If you're a cardmaker you may be in the same predicament I'm in--too little time and not enough Christmas cards. Here's a great opportunity to add one or more to your stash, and our gallery! Hop off to see the inspiration from our guest, Amanda, and the Design Team on the Color Hues blog.

I'm sending my card on to the Time Out Challenge: Winter/Holiday.

 

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!

 

Color Hues #74

It's mid-October already and Hannelie has gifted us with a new color combination for the Color Hues Challenge:

When I sat down to create a card for this challenge, a new leaf die from Pinkfresh Studio was sitting on my desk. The Fall Leaf felt like a good place to start. I have to admit that the rest of the elements took a lot longer to create than I anticipated, but when they all came together, I was quite happy with the card. I tried some ink smooshing for the first time in a long time, adding three different yellows to the mix, and letting the watercolor paper dry between the layers. 

From the start, I wanted to incorporate The Greetery's Woven Cane Background.  I ended up smooshing a piece of Classic Kraft in a mixture of Classic Kraft and Honey Nut inks. Being standard cardstock, it didn't take as well to the well ink smooshing, but worked out fine when die cut with the Woven Cane Bakcground and used behind a Pierced Oval Frame from Papertrey Ink cut with Classic Kraft.

I tied the leaves together with a piece of gold metallic thread from Altenew and added a tiny gold pearl to the bow. 

The sentiment is gold foiled from The Stamp Market's Foiled Card Phrases. 

I know you'll find lots of inspiration from the Design Team, so click through and check out the amazing variety of cards. Hope to see yours in our gallery!

I'm adding my card to the mix at the Four Seasons Challenge where the challenge is Anything Goes for Fall. The challenge always posts an Inspiration Board to get you started, but it's not required that you take anything specific from it. Other than two of the colors in the bottom right photo my inspiration really came from the color challenge and the fall leaf die on my desk!

Color Hues #73

Cindy is the hostess this month and has chose Coral and Blue for the next Color Hues Challenge. My mind went first to florals, but I had the new Greetery All Aglow that had been siting on my desk for far too long, and decided to play with it instead.

In August there was a challenge to create a shaped card. I was away and never got to it, so I decide to pull our Ellen Hutson's Essential Arches to create my card.

The coral background ended up looking darker than it is---I'm having ongoing photography issues which I'm working to resolve. The closest match I had for cardstock was Papertrey Ink's Berry Sorbet and I used it for the background and for the envelope I made (see below) with Ellen Hutson's A2 Envelope die. I used two Pinkfresh Studio coral inks and two blues when I stenciled the candles. 

 

The light's a bit better in this photograph. I'm hoping to get some consistency soon! I splattered gold paint on the background of the card and also on the envelope liner with one of the Gansai Tambi Starry Colors.  I didn't purchase the stamp set for All Aglow, but found a stamp in Papertrey Ink's Hello, Sunshine set that worked for the "glow" behind the wicks of the candles once they were embossed in gold.  I used the dies from All Aglow to cut them out. 

The die cut sentiment is My Favorite Things Hand-lettered Happy Birthday cut with my favorite gold paper from Michaels. Three gold pearls finished the card.

As always, there's loads of inspiration from the Design Team at Color Hues and our three special guest designers:  Jolanda, Trina P, and Fran, so pop over, take a look, and then create a Coral and Blue card for our gallery! 

Color Hues #72

Today, I'm honored to announce a very special Challenge at Color Hues!  

In conjunction with our normal Color Challenge, The Color Hues Design Team and a few guests, from our sister challenge Seize the Birthday, are participating in a Blog Hop! 

Collectively as a team and with other crafters, we are hopping in memory of our dear friend, fellow cardmaker, and Design Team member, Lindsey Martin-Penny, who sadly passed away last year from a rare and aggressive form of Ovarian Cancer. 

 

The purpose of this hop will be to honor Lindsey, celebrate her life and all that she loved, as well as spread the word to raise funds for Clear Cell Ovarian Cancer Research.  

How can you Help? You can find all the fabulous details and the start of the hop at Emily's Blog HERE!

In honor of Lindsey, the Design Team has created a variety of cards using her favorite color combo of Purple and Red.

In honor of Lindsey, I chose a CAS design with hearts of red and purple. I'm not quite sure where I first saw the technique of using recessed die cuts, but I think it was one of Laura Basson's cards. It worked perfectly for this card.

I first die cut a square of 110# Neenah cardstock with one of the Simon Says Stitched Rectangles and popped it up with dimensional tape on a square cardbase. Using Simon Says TicTacToe dies, I cut hearts in two hues of red and two hues of purple, and adhered them to the card base.

The sentiment was a preprinted one from The Stamp Market's Foiled Card Phrases. The final touch was to add a gold pearl to six of the hearts.

I hope you'll join the Color Hues Design Team and our Special Guests, Barbara and Glena from Seize the Birthday Challenge, and create a card in red and purple in honor of Lindsey. Please hop along and support the cause in any way you can!

Color Hues #70

The new Color Hues colors chosen by Steph are just perfect for summer. There are so many directions these colors could take you. My choice turned out to be quite different than I originally thought when I first saw the new colors. 

Earlier this summer, I saw some wonderful cards by Uniko. I just love the graphic design and think it will work especially well for both masculine and feminine cards as well as for a variety of occasions. Using them continues my streak of using new or unused stamps for my Color Hues cards. This is the fifth month in a row. :-)

I do have to say that coloring the center card using Uniko's Background Blocks Arts Decoratifs turned out to be a challenge. The red Copic marker bled every time I tried to use it, even when I embossed the stamp so I switched to Tombow markers and that red marker bled out of the lines once, too. I finally managed to get a clean coloring, and I do think it was worth the effort. 

My original idea for the card, however, was to use some of the smaller designs from the Bauhaus Blocks set. There are four different designs, and I tried using three of them on a card but couldn't find an arrangement I liked, so I went Clean and Simple---always a good decision. The layers on all three cards were cut with Ellen Hutson's Essential Rectangles. Her Essential Shape dies are some of my most used dies. 

 

All three sentiments are from Sugar Peas Everyday Sentiments. 

Be sure to check out the great designs by our Guest Designer, Annette, and my fabulous team members at the Color Hues blog, and join us with your Red and Yellow cards!

 

Color Hues #69

Organizing and cataloging my supplies is an ongoing process. Earlier this summer, I moved all my stencils to a three-ring binder which makes it much easier to flip through them to find what I want. As I was going through them, I discovered the Waffle Flower, Layered Triangle Stencil which I had purchased earlier, but never used. I'm quite sure I bought it because I thought it would be good for a Color Hues challenge and indeed, it is. 

Sheri has chosen a great combination for us this time: Teal and Orange.

I'm always a fan of geometric patterns, and I think they make particularly good cards for guys, although I wouldn't mind getting this card myself.

I used two Concord & 9th inks for this: Oceanside and Marmalade. The stencil takes up nearly all of an A4 card, but I trimmed it down just enough to have a narrow black border from the card base.

The gold foiled sentiment is from the Spellbinders' Everyday Sentiments 2. Since the card base is black, I decided to add a white panel to the inside and stenciled two of the triangles on it as well. I didn't think any embellishments were needed. 

The inside sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Inside and Out Birthday.

I hope you'll join us during the next two weeks and be sure to check out the Color Hues blog to see the amazing cards created by our Guest Designer, Deborah, and the Design Team. You're sure to be inspired.

I'm also adding this to the current Inkspirational Challenge: Use Stencils, and to the August NBUS since it's a first time use of the stencils.

 

Color Hues #68

Our newest Color Hues challenge is up, and it's another great combination: Olive and Berry.

At first I wasn't sure a lighter berry color would work, but truly, Color Hues is named that way so that different hues of the basic color can be used. In the end I chose three Altenew inks that were designed to go together with the darkest one named Cosmic Berry. Finding olive inks was easy as Concord and 9th has a great combo.

Keeping with my determination to use new stamps, I broke out one of my newest purchases, Pinkfresh Studio's Pretty Blossoms.  It's a full card rubber stamp with coloring stencils and a very interesting die that cuts out all the spaces between the flowers. It's easier to see with a closer view.

I love the layering stencils and the variation in color you can create in a relatively brief time. 

The sentiment is also from the Pinkfresh, from the Floral Vase set. "Beet" cardstock by Paper Source was a great match for the darkest color in the floral so I embossed the sentiment in white and die cut it with the Itty Bitty Banner die from My Favorite Things. Luckily I had some beautiful berry pearls in my stash which finished the card.

There's a wonderful variety of cards (as usual) from the Color Hues Design Team and our special Guest Designer, Bonnie. After checking out the inspiration there, I hope you'll come and join us! 

 

Color Hues #67

Marcia is our hostess at Color Hues this week, and she's chose a rich color combination:

When planning this card I had two objectives: use a new-to-me but never used product (I have far too many of these) and create a masculine birthday card.

The closest paper I had is a bit deeper merlot than in the challenge logo and is from Paper Source. The navy cardstock is Concord & 9th's Midnight paper. I was rather disappointed the last time I ordered it to discover it's now a brighter navy than the previously released Midnight which was the darkest navy I owned. The wonderful Concord & 4th Triangle Background was the starting place. I die cut the small triangles from the merlot and navy cardstock as well as some silver shimmer paper from Paper Source.

This angle shows the shimmer a bit better. I embossed the sentiment from The Greetery and die cut it with one of Simon Says Stitched Banners, and stacked it up with three additional banners die cut from navy. That piece had been die cut with the smaller rectangle from Gina K's Master Layout #1, and I layered it on a larger rectangle from the silver before adding it to the navy card base. I debated about using the silver pearls, but think they are just fine even for a masculine card. 

I'm sure you'll find lots of inspiration from the Design Team and our Guest Designer at the Color Hues blog, and I hope you'll add your take on these colors to our gallery during the next two weeks. 

I'll be sending this off to the new July NBUS since I'm happy to have another Never Before Used Stuff off that list!

Color Hues #66

I'm the hostess this round for Color Hues, and I've chosen two colors specifically so I could play with a wonderful Spellbinders die set that a friend loaned me. These colors definitely say SUMMER to me, and we're finally seeing the warm temperatures and sunshine.

This die set of lemons and pretty white flowers makes such a happy card. I chose a sentiment that can be used for a variety of occasions, so it could easily be sent as a birthday card or a encouragement card.

Papertrey Ink's Lemon Tart was the perfect color (and name!) for the lemons. For the leaves I chose Gina K's Asparagus and The Stamp Market's Leafy. One of the things I particularly like about these dies is all the detail that they add. I did do a bit of ink blending to add more dimension to the lemons and added tiny yellow pearls to the flowers.

I backed the pretty stitched scalloped frame with some black and white striped paper from My Favorite Things. The sentiment from Waffle Flower was stamped on a Stitched Circle from Simon Says.

Please hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what our Design Team and our fabulous Guest Designer, Michele Ferguson, have 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!

I'm throwing my card into the ring at the Double D Challenge: Lemon-Ade and the Yellow Challenge.