The February Simon Says Card kit arrived on Thursday. Thanks to the fourth cancellation of a volunteer commitment in one week, I had time to play again. By bedtime, I had created three cards. I’m waiting until today to post the first of them, in hopes it has reached its recipient. Since it’s for a sketch challenge I need to get it posted.

When I first saw this design at CASe This Sketch it appeared too challenging, but once I laid eyes on the design team’s creations I decided I give it a try.

Initially I thought I’d use some patterned paper for the background, but once I die cut and stamped the seven pieces, I realized it would be far too busy. I am a fan of white on white and with the bright colors I think it works. I did move the sentiment to the left-hand corner where it fit perfectly.

I added a few matte enamel dots as a finishing touch. It’s a fun stamp set, and perfect for sending off to some crafty friends of mine. Here’s a closer look.

This is such an unusual design, and the DT for this challenge came up with some brilliant ideas. You can check them out right here.

I’m back with a card for another challenge—this time The Card Concept: Rustic Blooms.

These beautiful pink flowers reminded me of the Simon Says “Floral Bliss” bouquet I used not long ago. This time I watercolored the whole image in pinks and reds.

When I finished, I decided to add a few dark pink splatters. I’ve been known to ruin an entire card trying this technique, but this time I pulled it off. I die cut the Tim Holtz watercolor panel with Simon Says “Stitched Rectangle,” and adhered it to a Raspberry Fizz card (PTI).

The sentiment is from Papertrey’s “It’s the Thought.” Finally, a few white pearls finished it off.

One of the challenges in entering a card at The Card Concept is deciding which category the card falls in. Nine out of ten times my cards usually land in the “Clean and Simple” category. Not so much this time. I’m guessing the best bet is “Classy and Elegant.” If you have time to check them out, I’d love to know how you’d categorize this one. 

The current challenge at Time Out uses this quote:

It’s one of my favorite quotes, and the perfect inspiration for a birthday card I needed to make for one of my favorite young ladies who will soon be 16. I’ve used the “Celebrate It” for my inspiration.

I’ve had this stunning image from Concord and 9th (“Happy Day”) for a long time, but this is the first time I’ve used it. I stamped it in black on Tim Holtz watercolor card and got out my Daniel Smith watercolors. 

I have an iridescent silver which I mixed with the bright pink which gives it a pretty glimmer. I added some Glitter Glue to the frosting as well.

I die cut the image with one of the Simon Says “Stitched Rectangles” and mounted it on a piece of sparkly textured cardstock I found in my stash. (I have no idea where it came from!) The final touch was to add a few sequins. We’re going to be out of town for the birthday party, but I’m leaving the card with her mom. I hope she likes it.

You’ll find other celebratory cards right here at the Time Out Challenges blog.

Very unusual, but this is the second post of the day because today is the monthly blog hop hosted by Papertrey Ink. I wasn’t sure I’d find the time to participate, but then a meeting I had yesterday had to be rescheduled, and the afternoon opened up. I have two cards to share. Only one can be posted for the blog hop, but the other I’ll post for the Make It Monday challenge which was to create a shadow sentiment. Both cards started, however, with the gorgeous inspiration piece posted for the blog hop.

For the first card, I focused on the pink floral arrangements on the table. I was also influenced by the design Lizzie Jones used on her card for Make It Monday.

I chose “Gran’s Garden” for the card. It’s a stamp set I don’t use often enough. The frame for the sentiment is an old favorite, “Fillable Frames 10,” and the sentiment is from another favorite and well-used set “Birthday Bash Sentiments.:

Here you can see the shadow sentiment. I tried a variety of things before I settled on second generation stamping to create the shadow. If you’re unfamiliar with that term it means I stamped the original sentiment, then moved the stamp just a bit, and stamped it again without cleaning off the stamp. You can also see the embossed background created with the Papertrey Ink “Rustic Burlap” Impression Plate.

I thought this would be the only card I created, and that I would post it on both challenges, but still having some time to play, I pulled out a stamp set I purchased on a whim. It’s a $5 set meant to work with a larger set of paper doll kinds of stamps called “Dress Up Dolls: Birthday.” I thought the images would go well with a variety of animal stamp sets I use when creating cards for my grandchildren. The new technique for me was to create a background of randomly stamped images. I’ve seen a variety of these recently, most often on Yana Smakula’s blog.

She suggested that solid images would work best for this technique, but I’m pretty happy with the way the outline images worked here. It makes for a bit cleaner look, which I always like. Rather than a large center-stage sentiment, I opted to die cut the balloons from the set for the focal image.

I did take Yana’s suggestion to assign each stamp a given color which I took from the inspiration photo, as well as the birthday party theme shown in the inspiration piece. Since there were so many tiny images I laid out the stamps on the ink pads I used. I took the photo after dark with my iPhone, but thought I’d share it.

I chose four Copic markers to color the balloons, but decided they needed a coating of Glitter Glue as well. Glitter Glue always darkens the colors so the darker pink ended up looking more red that I would have liked. I mounted the balloons with dimensional adhesive, and finally decided to add a sentiment to the focal image. It came from the “Initial Sentiments: Birthday” set.

It’s a bit easier to see the glitter here as well as the glitter added to the sentiment banner with a Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen. 

So I’ll post the top card to the Make It Monday challenge, and this one to today’s blog hop. It was a lot of fun to try a couple new techniques, and I was delighted to have an afternoon to play! 

The Flower Challenge is new to me, and so is the current challenge: spotlight stamping where you selectively color just part of an image. I needed an encouragement card, and thought this would be a good time to try it out.

I chose one of my favorite stamp sets from the Simon Says Card Kits. “Floral Bliss” from the June 2017 kit has such a gorgeous floral bouquet. I stamped it with India Ink Black on Tim Holtz watercolor paper and got out my Inktense watercolor pencils.

The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s “It’s the Thought.” I chose to color the three main flowers and the two sprays above in pinks with orange accents. I thought a bit more orange was in order so I color just the centers of the daisies.  The final touch was to add three black pearls by Amuse.

I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have give this technique any thought without the challenge, but I’m quite happy with it in the end. Check out how others approached the challenge right here.