random reflections

Happy Birthday!

Each year when we're lucky enough to travel to celebrate Christmas with Sarah and her family, we're also able to celebrate with Caleb and Hannah when they celebrate their joint birthdays. And today was the day! It started early with (requested) scavenger hunts. Caleb asked for a challenging hunt, and his coded clues were definitely that. Hannah had photographic clues, and was very quick to identify the details in the photo to lead her to the next clue.

After lunch their good friend, Evie, and her parents arrived for cake and ice cream. It was a Harry Potter cake (another request). The 10 candles on the left are for Caleb, and the five on the right for Hannah.

Caleb is a huge fan of Super Heroes (and Harry Potter). The older Papertrey Ink set "Zappy Birthday" seemed like a good fit for his birthday card.

The coordinating paper pad, "Comic Strip" was the perfect background to which I added a variety of die cuts and stamped sentiments. Some of the die cuts were layered for dimensional, some adhered with dimensional tape, and I added a bit of  white glitter paper for the lightening bolt.

 The inside sentiment came from another older Papertrey Ink set. (Can't remember the name of the set; it's now retired.)

"Birthday Buds" by My Favorite Things has always been one of my favorite sets, so I pulled it out again to make a mini slimline card for Hannah.

I die cut the mini Polaroid frames by Mama Elephant, and added three of the cute animals colored with Copic markers.  The sentiments on each frame are from Papertrey Ink's "Birthday Balloons" and the patterned paper is also from Papertrey Ink. Six tiny stars were the last addition. 

The inside of her card features the hedgehog from the set with the very appropriate five candles with a greeting from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday."

It's been pretty dreary here, but luckily no significant snow as yet. Our trip home will be determined as much by the weather reports as anything else so I'm hoping there's nothing BIG on the way!

Happy Birthday!

I always need to take a break from holiday crafting to make birthday cards for my brother and brother-in-law whose birthdays are just a week apart. Today is my brother's birthday. My mom always held off any Christmas decorating or celebrating until his birthday was over. I, of course, pay no attention to that at all! As I often do, I made two identical cards, using a new Ellen Hutson stamp, "HB2U," that arrived as a freebie during one of her recent sales.

It's clearly a CAS design and definitely hits the "masculine" factor, but with different colors and a few embellishments, the design could easily be adapted for a woman. The inks and the papers are all from Concord & 9th--Dove, Stardust, and Midnight.

I used my favorite layering dies from Gina K's Master Layout #1 to cut the layers for the card. 

I'll definitely be revisiting this design by trying out some different color combinations!

Back to holiday crafting for a few more days. I have all the international cards in the mail, but the domestic ones have yet to leave the house.

A Bit of This, A Bit of That

It's been a busy weekend. In addition to Thanksgiving which we celebrated at Tracy's mom's, we also celebrated Ella's 7th birthday. Ella invited two of her friends and two of Skylar's friends to join them and the rest of the family for a petting zoo party. Ella has only attended one birthday party since the pandemic started, and her friend also had a petting zoo. She immediately knew what she wanted for her party. The two women who brought the animals to the party (celebrated in the garage), were wonderful, helping all of us hold, pet, enjoy, and learn about a nice variety of animals. Here's a collage of a few of them.

Ella petting the goat, the cutest hedgehog, Skylar with the boa
The girls checking out the armadillo, a chinchilla (the softest fur ever), Ella holding a bunny
Skylar with the fox, a prairie dog, one of two long-haired bunnies

And here's the birthday girl, all decked out for the big event! Ella is our glitter girl. Her mask was covered in sequins. 

Knowing that, I made my first infinity shaker card, filled with glitter and sequins. 

Thanksgiving was also lovely. We celebrated at Tracy's mom's for the first time. She's no longer able to negotiate stairs, and my sister-in-law's home has many steps to get into her house. There were eleven of us, and as always, the food was delicious and far too plentiful. I took zero photos---not the first time I've neglected to get my phone out at a family gathering.

I also have a couple of Christmas cards to share. I shared these on Instagram a week or so ago, but blog writing has fallen to the wayside with all the activities, Christmas card making, tutoring, and trying to organize and decorate for next holiday. Early this month, I enrolled in the Online Card Class: Holiday Cards 2021 even though I knew I'd be in Wisconsin for the first week of it. I watched all the videos, and once I got home I worked on some of the techniques. The infinity shaker card was also featured in the class. 

The lesson for these cards was taught by Jennifer McGuire who challenged us to make our own patterned paper using strips of cardstock. I opted to use strips of striped patterned paper from Sunny Studios, and I'm pleased with the way they turned out. I used a Christmas card die from Papertrey Ink and got 2 cards for each cut as you'll see below.

After die cutting the opening for the striped Christmas tree, I was left with the tree itself. I decided to use a gold metallic oval to create gold "ornaments."

I also used tips from the card class to make multiples of both of these, ending up with 12 Christmas cards for my stash. This week looks to be another busy one. I'm almost done with the Christmas cards, but nearly all of them still need inside sentiments. Hoping to get the international cards in the mail later this week. Sometimes it takes 2-3 weeks for them to arrive. It's hard to believe December is just two days away!

 

Beyond Van Gogh

We're visiting Sarah and her family in Wisconsin. On Thursday, we all went to the beautiful Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee to see the interactive and immersive Beyond Van Gogh exhibit. I thought it would be fun to share some photos. It was mesmerizing, even for the 4 and 9 year olds.

The first part of the exhibit consisted of open frames and a series of informational panels about Van Gogh's life and his work.

The next room was the Waterfall Room where the art flowed down the walls onto the floor. Here are just a few images to give you a taste of the experience,

Walking into the large exhibition hall was a breath-taking experience. The art slowly changed from one series of paintings to another. I've only captured a very few here.

Hannah enjoyed chasing the colors across the floor. Tickets were timed and the room was huge, so it was perfectly OK for her to run across the designs which flowed from the walls onto the floor.

It wasn't all in color. Sometimes the exhibits began in black and white, and for others they remained in black and white.

Finally, my first attempt insert videos onto my blog. With Typepad, it's trickier than it ought to be. I had to clear out some of the photos on an old Flicker account in order to upload the videos. I don't like the black borders, but I'll try to figure that out later. Both videos are very short, but they'll give you a sense of what the exhibit was like.

 

If you're interested in learning more, the Beyond Van Gogh site has lots of information. It turns out that Beyond Van Gogh is also showing in Buffalo, just an hour's drive for us. I was unaware of it until the week before we left, but I'm so glad we got a chance to see it with both grandchildren which certainly enhanced the experience for us.

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween, and I can't think of a better place to be than with grandchildren who are SO excited about going Trick or Treating! Sarah and her family moved to a fabulous neighborhood with lots of kids. Both Caleb and Hannah have good friends just down the street. I've shared a couple of Halloween cards here and here, but made five more for the grandchildren. We gave the three girls their cards and Halloween gifts before we left.

I made four different cards, creating two of the same for Hannah and Ella. It's thanks to my crafty friends that I had a huge pile of die cuts to choose from when it came time to create the cards.

Aside from the sentiments the cards are just the same---Royal Purple (Simon Says) cardstock splattered with silver metallic paint and layered onto a cardbase of Orange Zest (PTI). The silver glitter paper is several years old and came from a cute shop in Milwaukee. I used a clear glitter pen to add glitter to the cats which you can see better here. The cat and the moon are from PTI's "Boo Black Cat" set. 

I also wanted all the cards to have some kind of interactive feature. The cats have a wobbler behind them. Try as I might, I never got a very good photo, but when Ella opened her card at home she "wobbled" the card, and I got a better photo,

Next up is Maddy's shaker card. 

I started by ink blending the Pretty Pink Posh "Spider Web" stencil on Bristol paper. I die cut the letters with the Pinkfresh Studio "Adore" alphabet, backing it with acetate and filling it with a variety of sequins and tiny stars.

I found the cute spider sticker from "la petites" at Hobby Lobby. 

Skylar's card was a spinner card. I made this one twice trying to get the spinner to work effectively. I now know what kind of thread I need to make it work even better than it did. 

Putting a greeting inside the card proved to be tricky, too, since I didn't want it to show through the opening for the spinner piece. In the end, it worked out really well. The ghosts are die cuts from Poppy Stamps and the greeting from The Stamp Market's "Halloween" set. The patterned paper is from an old 6X6 pad by American Craft. 

Last, but not least, is Caleb's card which I thought would appeal to a nine year old boy.

The center ghoul on the card is mounted on the card with a large Wobbler like the black cat  cards above, There's a narrow strip of patterned paper from the same paper pad behind the three ghouls from Papertrey Ink's "Grins and Ghouls." 

I found the perfect sentiment in an old Papertrey Ink Make-it Market kit, "Halloween Pin-ups" which was die cut with an Essential Oval by Ellen Hutson. A slightly larger oval from My Favorite Things "Black and White Stripes" served as a mat.

Yesterday, one set of neighbors arrived to carve pumpkins on the back porch so we have a set of jack-o-lanterns to decorate the front porch tonight. It's going to be a chilly evening for Trick 0r Treating, but thankfully, it's not raining or snowing!

Hope you have a great Hallow's Eve!

 

 

A Perfect Saturday

Yesterday we made a trip to the Finger Lakes. It was clear and quite chilly when we left the house around 7:00. Our first stop was at the Mennonite market in Seneca Falls where we picked up our favorite brand of bacon, some pork chops, green beans, two blocks of cheese, and a 50# bag of bird seed. We had packed a cooler for the meats and cheese and headed to Ithaca to the Farmer's Market.

On our way we stopped at Taughannock Falls to take a few photos. I have a new phone and wanted to try the camera. Most of these photos have had no editing other than being cropped to an appropriate size to print if I ever want to do that. It's quite a bit better than my previous one which was three generations old.

It was our first trip to the Ithaca market since the pandemic began, and like many things, was a bit diminished. My biggest disappointment was the disappearance of my favorite bakery. Nonetheless, there were still gorgeous vegetables and flowers, and I did find a delicious cranberry orange scone for a mid-morning snack.

The market sits right at the end of Cayuga Lake, and the rowers were out in force on this beautiful morning. Both Cornell and Ithaca College have rowing teams as does the high school so I'm not sure who was out practicing.

In addition to the sunflowers at the market, we found these on one of the rural roads we travel on the Finger Lakes.

The primary reason for the trip was to pick up our fall allotment of wine at Boundary Breaks where we are members of the wine club. Not only do they make wonderful wine, the views are among the best on Seneca Lake.

Although some of the grapes have been picked, there are still many left on the vines waiting for just the right time to harvest.

We arrived right at lunch time and enjoyed a wine tasting while we sat overlooking the lake.

But that was not the end of the day! After arriving home around 2:00, we had just enough time to rest up before heading off to our granddaughter, Skylar's, 10th birthday dinner. Skylar asked for a pajama party, but we were all assured it was an optional requirement. Even Ella, the seven year old, decided against it.

As always there was a piñata to break open.

Then there were gifts to open and a delicious dinner ordered from Skylar's favorite Korean restaurant. (The dumplings are amazing!) And finally cake.

If you've made it this far, thanks for hanging in there. I thought I'd share her birthday card as well. One night in August the girls arrived for dinner and needed to head home earlier than usual since they had been allowed to stay up late the night before to catch fireflies in a jar. I had recently purchased a couple of fun stamps and dies from The Greetery so knew exactly what I wanted to create.

Shaker cards are usually a hit and this one was so much fun to make.

I originally had three fireflies inside the jar, but the sequins kept getting stuck on their vellum wings, so I took the card apart and redid the stamping inside, moving all but one firefly to the outside of the jar.

The sentiment is just perfect for a new fifth grader. Skylar had expressed an interest in Copic markers from watching some You Tube videos. I was pretty sure she didn't want Copics, so I did some research while we were in Wisconsin. But instead of guessing what might work, I gave her another card last night with a promise of art supplies.

Today Skylar came over to play with my art supplies for a couple of hours. She tried out the Copics, the Tomboys, some watercolor markers, and some pan watercolors. In the end we ordered a set of alcohol markers that are less fussy than Copics and less expensive so she was able to get a good selection of colors. I gave her a few stamp sets, an ink pad, and a sketch book from my stash so she'll have some things to play with when the markers arrive later this week.

It's been quite the lovely weekend! Hope yours was good as well.

 

 

 

 

Back to School

A very quick post to share a card I made for my three granddaughters who headed back to school this week after more than a year at home. They're in Kindergarten, Second, and Fifth Grades this year. Yesterday was their first day and they were all enthusiastic about their first two days when they came for pizza tonight. 

I love this (now retired) school bus stamp from Simon Says, and know at least one grandchild has seen it before. If these girls did, they didn't remember it when I gave it to them on Wednesday. 

I used a Simon Says "Diamond Pattern" die for the background and added it to a Summer Sunrise card base--the perfect school bus color!

I colored the bus with Copic markers, and fussy cut it. The sentiment is also from the same Simon Says "School Bus Messages" set. I added a small puffy heart sticker to make a trio of red on the card.

I'm entering this in the Inspired By: Back to School Challenge--with the inspiration being, of course, the back to school theme rather than the photo.

 

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day here in the States, and we're lucky to be able to celebrate the occasion with Tracy's family this year since everyone is vaccinated and well beyond the two weeks needed after the second shot. My nephew bought his first home during the pandemic and has been eagerly awaiting a time for the family to some see his new house. We gathered there late this afternoon for a celebration and a meal. It's the first time we've all been together since Christmas of 2019. I fully intended to take a lot of photos, but it was so good to see and talk to everyone, I never took my phone out of my purse!

Before we left for Marc's, Matt and his family came for a long visit. Then when we returned we had a long visit via Facebook with Sarah and her family. It was a very lovely Mother's Day for this mom.

As I always do I made cards for each of the moms in Tracy's extended family as well as for Betsy and Sarah. 

Here's the card I made for Betsy:

I posted this one earlier for a challenge. I ended up being the randomly chosen winner of that challenge which netted me a $20 gift certificate! Later, after they went home, Betsy sent me a photo. She had removed the floral piece from the card and turned it into a magnet that's now on her refrigerator!

And Sarah's card which was also posted for a challenge earlier. Neither of these women frequent my blog so the cards are "new" to them. 

Tracy's mom got the newest of all the cards. I broke my resolve about purchasing new stamps when I saw The Greetery's Spring Market release. This card uses two new products, the "Always in Bloom" layered stencils and the "Bold Alphabet" dies. After ink blending the florals in the stencil, I added some details with Polychromos pencils and a few Raindrops from The Stamp Market.

I'm linking this card to two challenges: The Card Concept: Mother's Day and Happy Little Stampers Stencils: Anything Goes. The Card Concept asks you to identify your style. This one most closely matches their definition for Clean and Simple. (No surprise there!) The inspiration was clearly the bouquet of flowers in the photograph. 

My two sisters-in-laws received these cards:

I broke out the last of my Simon Says Card Kit stamps for this card. I love the images in the "Spring Windows" set. I've had a lot of difficulty with my subscription for this kit since the December and almost didn't get this one. I used a stamp from this set on Finn's birthday card which I posted on Friday. I finally decided not to renew my subscription since almost all the stamp sets can be purchased separately. It was a good value most months, and I've been a long time subscriber, but this decision feels right for now. 

The last Mother's Day card was also part of the Stock Your Stash post:

I'm not sure I've ever reposted cards before, but I decided it would be nice to have all the Mother's Day cards in one spot.

Here's the photo inspiration from The Card Concept.

 

 

 

April in Pictures

My One Little Word this year is Explore, and I've spent more time exploring sketching than any other item on my list. That's not likely to change in the next month or two because I got way behind in the Foundations course with Liz Steel. I've done a pretty good job of keeping up with my goal of a double page sketching spread/week in my personal sketchbook. I should be able to catch up there in the next few days.

I'm blaming travel---but have no regrets! We were away as many days as we were home in April, and we had a great time. I'm so grateful to be fully vaccinated, and traveling did feel perfectly safe. To be sure, we continued to be very careful--wearing masks, washing hands, and staying out of any crowded situations. 

The first week of April we were with Sarah and her family in Wisconsin. Here's a peek at our time there:

Here's one of the main reasons for going!

We were there for the Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday. I love watching Hannah run; she has such a graceful (and fast) run!

Caleb is being homeschooled this year by Sarah's co-pastor's husband. They're using a Waldorf curriculum which calls for lots of outdoor activities and big projects. Tracy helped Caleb and Evie with building a tree house in Sarah's backyard. All the sawing and nailing was done by hand. By the time we left, a railing had been added to the tree house.

One day we went on a field trip to the Seven Bridges State Park. 

We had just five days between this trip and the next. Luckily, we had one really nice day and were able to get to Highland Park to see the magnolias most of which were in full bloom.

Then we were off to Kiawah Island, South Carolina. We spent many years here on our Spring breaks when the kids were growing up, and it became our favorite vacation spot. Our last trip to Kiawah was fourteen years ago, so when we were thinking about a way to celebrate the vaccinations, it immediately came to mind. We rented a one bedroom condo for the week and spent our time riding bikes and doing lots of walking. The weather was relatively cool most days, but sunny every day. We had one day that was really warm and went to the beach to read. The wind was so strong, it snapped our beach umbrella in two! It was really old, so we weren't upset, but decided walking on the beach was preferable to sitting there. The beach on Kiawah is wide and rarely crowded in April.

You can see a squadron of brown pelicans flying in the upper left of the photo.

We love watching the shore birds, and also saw White Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Tri-colored Herons, Anhingas, and lots of pelicans and pretty wading birds.

Our second floor condo had a lovely screened porch overlooking a lagoon where we spent a lot of time when we weren't out exploring. This alligator swam by several times a day.

One night we drove to Mingo Point to watch the sunset. This view overlooks the road that takes you to the island.

We've been home for a week now, and are just getting back into the routines of daily living. I've managed to get a couple Mother's Day cards made, but haven't had a lot of time for creative pursuits. Today, however, I'm meeting up with two friends (also fully vaccinated) to stamp. It's been nearly 16 months since we've been together, and I'm really looking forward to it. If things go as they usually do, there'll be a lot more talking than creating!

 

Happy Easter!

It's a bright, sunny Easter and lots of fun to be in Wisconsin to celebrate. With the exception of last year, when we celebrated Easter alone, we are lucky to have had one set of grandchildren to celebrate with every year. This year, it's Caleb and Hannah, although we miss seeing the three girls. Before we left Rochester, we celebrated with the three girls. They made some Easter headbands and some place cards for their dinner table (no photos!)

Yesterday, we did the same with Caleb and Hannah. We made an extra for their friend, Evie, who will be coming for dinner tonight with her mom and dad.

Hannah and I made Easter cookies Friday morning, and when Caleb got home we got busy decorating them.

All five of the grandchildren's Easter cards are very similar.  The Card Concept's new challenge is "Celebrate Easter"---perfect for these cards! Card Concepts asks you to classify your card design. I'd classify these as Clean and Layered.

A friend loaned me a wonderful bunny die by Lil' Inker called "Peek-a-Boo Bunny", and I used it for all five grandchildren.

These are the card for the three girls in Rochester. The only difference is the patterned paper---all from my stash. The funky flowers are stickers that were also in my stash. 

The sentiment is from an older Papertrey Ink set, "Bunny Basket."

Similar, but not quite the same, here are the two for Caleb and Hannah.

When I made these cards, I wasn't sure we'd be able to travel over Easter, so I opted for a bow rather than a flower in case the card needed to go in the mail. I love the plaid paper on Caleb's card and the bright green card seems more appropriate for a boy. 

If you celebrate Easter, I hope you're having a lovely day! If not, I hope the sun is shining where you are, and you have some time to get out and enjoy it!