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Happy Birthday!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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“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.

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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. 

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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.”

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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!

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas! It’s been a lovely two days. Yesterday we celebrated with Matt, Betsy, and the three girls. After dinner we went to the 7:00 Christmas Eve service. I’d been asked to be one of the liturgists, and I’m so glad I said yes. The music was beautiful (as always), the church was filled with red poinsettias and carnations, and the Lessons and Carols service has long been a favorite of mine. Had I not been asked to read, we would have stayed home despite the masks and social distancing observed at our church. 

Today we had a quiet morning at home. This afternoon Tracy’s family arrived for Christmas. There were just nine of us, the smallest number ever. Given all the concerns, none of the adult children with families were traveling this season. 

I thought I’d share the cards I made for the three girls and Caleb and Hannah. I’ll be throwing two of them in the mix at the Happy Little Stampers Christmas Challenge and the Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes with Dies. 

For the girls. All three cards feature the cutest Santas ever from My Favorite Things, and a sentiment from Papertrey Ink.

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And for Caleb and Hannah. Their cards were made with the November Hero Arts Card Kit. There’s also a cute elf and a reindeer for another year.

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For Caleb who’s not much of a believer any more:

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And for Hannah:

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I hope you’ve had a happy and healthy holiday!

Pink Poinsettia

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I have a lovely pink poinsettia on my desk, and it’s inspired me to make a variety of Christmas cards with pink poinsettias. Life here has been much busier than usual. We no longer eat in restaurants, but we are seeing friends here and in their homes since we’re all vaccinated and boosted. It’s so much better than last year, even with the Omicron variant hanging over our heads. And it’s making the holiday much more fun that it was a year ago. Nonetheless, Instagram and blogging have fallen by the wayside for the last week. But now that I know this card has safely arrived in my friend’s hands, I can share it here on the blog. 

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This card was made specifically for a blogging friend who loves all things pink. It was another one of the cards I put together with dies that had been cut last year, but not used. The poinsettia is from Papertrey Ink’s “Modern Gift Card” set which I layered onto a lighter pink circle die cut with Simon Says’ “Stitched Circle” die and a gold circle frame from the Ellen Hutson “Essentials: Circles” dies. 

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The sentiment is from a new Christmas set by Penny Black, ” Happy & Bright,” and it’s my favorite new sentiment set. I’ve used it over and over, both on the fronts of cards as well as the inside sentiments.

I’m entering this in two challenges: The Flower Challenge (a fave that I’ve neglected for far too long,) and Addicted to Stamping and More, a newer challenge for me.

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Happy Birthday!

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

Two Poinsettias

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I’m a fan of women’s collegiate basketball, and have been following the Connecticut Huskies for over 25 years now. There was a televised game Friday night, and I decided I’d like to make a card while I listened and occasionally watched the game. It wasn’t a nail biter, so it was easy to craft and just listen.

I keep a list of current challenges on my Notes app, and looked through to see if I could find a couple of challenges that might work well together. I started with the Color Throwdown Challenge: silver, pink, and white. Then I saw Cécile’s sketch on Freshly Made Sketches and knew I could use some of my previously die cut poinsettias for the card. This morning I discovered that the new Flower Challenge: Christmas certainly fits the bill as well.

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Just recently, I took a pile of poinsettias I had die cut last year from Papertrey Ink’s “Modern Gift Card” dies and colored and assembled them. The starting point for the card were the white and pink poinsettias, and for the Color Throwdown Challenge, choosing a card base was easy—it had to be silver. 

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To match the sketch, I pulled out an already die cut circle, and added two silver glittery holly leaves cut from a new Simon Says die set, ” Christmas Foliage.”

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I used some silver gems from Paper Studio for the centers of the flowers. The sentiment was embossed in silver on a narrow strip of black cardstock with a sentiment from Avery Elle’s 
“Seasonal Simple Sentiments.”

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I love when everything comes together so nicely. It doesn’t often happen, but I’m quite fond of the sketch and happy with the card!

Condolences

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Losing someone at holiday time always seems harder since so many family traditions and gatherings happen during the late fall and early winter. Sadly, we have lost several more friends in the last several weeks, and in fact, I have another three sympathy cards to make this weekend. Two of them are for the children of one of our dearest friends who died very suddenly last week. She was 87, so had lived a long life. But as far as anyone knew, she was in good health, and was certainly as sharp as ever. We were just devastated when we heard the news.

But here are three sympathy cards that have been sent in the past two weeks. For all of them, I’ve relied on the Altenew’s “Leaf Mix” dies, and a sentiment from Papertrey Ink’s “Warm Regards” set. This one has a different design which is my favorite. I’m throwing it into the challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion. I imagine a sympathy card is not quite what they’re expecting during this busy Christmas crafting time!

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These two are very similar in design, but different in color.

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Color Hues #31

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There’s just one challenge this month leading up to the holiday season. And not surprisingly, Cindy has chosen the traditional colors of Christmas: Red and Green.

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I’ve had two of Papertrey’s Bold Borders: Yuledtide in my stash that I die cut during a crafty session before the pandemic, but never used. They worked perfectly for this challenge. They’d been die cut with PTI’s Pinefeather paper which I layered on cards made from Concord & 9th’s Cranberry cardstock.

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The sentiment is a combination of a die cut and a stamp. The Savvy “Joy” die cut has been in my stash for years, and has appeared on many of my Christmas cards. I never tire of it. I added a stamped sentiment from PTI’s “Big Hugs” stamp set.

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I debated for a time about whether to add any embellishments but decided the tiny red pearls from A Muse would work well here. The pearls are another item that I’ve had in my stash for many years. Years ago, A Muse decided to become an online company, and I was afraid I’d run out of the red pearls. I purchased multiple packs of them, and still have plenty, but no unopened packages are left. I have some other colors as well, but the red ones are my favorite.

 

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Thank goodness classic items don’t go out of style! I’d label this a pretty classic Christmas card, and would love to have had enough borders to make a whole set. I hope this color combo inspires you to create a few holiday cards, and I hope you’ll share them with us in the gallery at Color Hues. Please check out all the inspiration from my Design Team members and our fabulous Guest Designer, Michele Ferguson.

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

   Tracey

 

 

 

A CAS Christmas Card

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Over the weekend I sat down with a pile of designs I had die cut last year and some ephemera from my scrapbooking days to see how many Christmas cards I could make. I ended up with ten, some of which I’ll share soon. Today I want to share one of my favorites that was such a challenge to photograph. It’s a beautiful gold snowflake that came in a package of ephemera with a kit, perhaps one of the Christmas Journal kits. I used several of the pieces from that kit on my cards, but this one won me over with its simplicity. 

So I’m entering it in the Time Out Challenge where the inspiration quote focuses on simplicity as well as the CAS on Friday Challenge where the theme is “Winter.” 

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Here’s the card. I have no idea who manufactured the snowflake. The beautiful sentiment from Penny Black’s “Happy & Bright” was gold embossed on a cream card.

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The challenge was to photograph the card so that you could see the shine to the snowflake. After multiple tries, I finally leaned it on an angle. It’s actually much brighter in the photograph than in real life but there didn’t see to be any middle ground.

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It turned out that the challenge in posting the card was much greater than the creating the card for the challenges!

 

 

A Bit of This, A Bit of That

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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.

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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. 

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

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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.

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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.”

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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!

 

Snowflake Kisses

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There’s a great Color Throwdown Challenge now:  navy, gold, and white. I knew right away that I’d love working with that combination, and I did. Photographing that navy, however, proved to be more of a challenge than I expected. Here’s a mini slimline card that could be a Christmas card or a winter birthday card.

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I chose a Concord & 9th Midnight cardstock for the card base and layered two snowflakes, one gold and one white die cut from My Favorite Things “Stylish Snowflakes.”

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The sentiment, from Penny Black, is a new one I picked up at Ellen Hutson’s birthday sale called “When Snow Falls.” I expect to use it frequently for birthdays in January and February. Lots of fun “snow” sentiments but some lovely ones referencing winter as well.

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Along with the Color Throwdown Challenge, I’m entering this in the My Favorite Things Slimline Challenge which asks for mini slimlines this time around. They’re becoming a favorite of mine, so I may be back with some more since the challenge runs until mid-December. 

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Color Hues #30

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Carol picked an elegant combo for our next Color Hues Challenge: Silver and Gold. 

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Last year I acquired several new snowflake dies, so I knew right away what I wanted to use for this challenge. I chose a group of snowflakes from Gina K, “Snowflake Trio,” which I believe were part of a kit last year. Recentl,y I’ve ended up with more than one card for these challenges, and this is no exception. Here’s the card I set out to make:

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I die cut multiple snowflakes from silver and gold glitter paper and arranged four of them on a black die cut mat (by Pinkfresh Studio). Once I had them carefully glued down, I decided the card base would be best in a shimmer silver (Papertrey Ink). That left just the right space for a circular mat and embossed sentiment from The Greetery’s “Speed Tagging Christmas.”

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The final step was to add gold and silver gems by Trinity Stamps.

I still had quite a few snowflakes laying on my desk, and thought I could layer silver and gold snowflakes for an A2 card.

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This, of course, appealed to my CAS heart. I die cut a diagonally stitched circle from the Pinkfresh Studio “Slimline Essentials,” and layered the snowflakes on top of it and added another gold gem.

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The gold embossed sentiment here is from Papertrey Ink’s “Rustic Wreath,” a purchase made many years ago. 

Once I finished the A2 sized card, I realized that really the best size just might be a mini slimline, and luckily, I still had some snowflakes to spare. 

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All the products used here are the same as those used on the A2 card, just in a different format.

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In the end, the mini slimline is my favorite. I definitely prefer CAS cards, although I do like the multiple snowflakes on the slimline. Since it’s a larger card, it can carry the weight of four varied sized snowflakes. I’d be curious to know which one is your favorite.

The new Just Us Girls Challenge was posted on Saturday. It’s Trend Week, and the challenge is for mini slimlines. Perfect timing!

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But, most importantly, go check out the gorgeous creations made by the Design Team and our Guest Designers, Carol and Hilary, and join in the fun. 

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

  Tracey

 

 

 

Winter Whites

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I love white on white, but have to admit photographing it in an (always) dark house can be a challenge. Nonetheless, this is one of my favorite Christmas cards this year.

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The Less is More Challenge is “Winter Whites,” and I knew what I wanted to do. It’s hard to see in the photos above, but I started the design by scoring seven lines of different lengths on the left side of the card. Then I added a series of snow flakes from My Favorite Things “Stylish Snowflakes.” It’s easier to see the score lines in this photo.

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The silver embossed sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s “Beautiful Berries: Winter.” The last touch was to add a pearl to the center of each of the snowflakes. Although they appear silver in the photo above, they are white pearls.

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Along with Less is More, I’m sending this off to Happy Little Stampers Dies: Anything Goes.

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More Christmas Poinsettias

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My watercolor session with Altenew’s “Modern Poinsettia” resulted in three different cards. I posted the first one here, and the second one here. Today is the last of the cards.

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These were watercolored with the Altenew 36 pan watercolors and then splattered with white ink. I decided not to add splatter to the black background to keep a cleaner look. 

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The background panel was die cut with one of the Pinkfresh Studio “Diagonal Stitched Slimline ” dies. The sentiment from Colorado Crafts “Slimline Poinsettia” was embossed on gold. It was added to a white card base before arranging the poinsettias. The last touch was to add a group of small gold pears to the centers of the poinsettias.

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I’m linking this card to three challenges:  Addicted to Stamping and More: Christmas, Simon Says Monday: Any Holiday Occasion, and Happy Little Stampers Christmas: Anything Goes.

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Beyond Van Gogh

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

 

 

 

Color Hues #29

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October flew by for me, and here it is—November 1st! The good news is it’s time for a new Color Hues Challenge. Sheri’s choice this round is Brown and Orange, and I had quite a good time with it.

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I find it interesting how frequently I end up creating two cards for the Color Hues challenges. The first card I made was CAS on steroids, and I was was pretty happy with it. It didn’t end up being the one I posted on the Color Hues Challenge site, however. Here’s Card #1:

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There are a couple of fall anniversaries to celebrate and I thought this did the trick. I started with the Papertrey Ink “Leaf Silhouette” die and cut it from a piece of Bristol that I had watercolored in shades of orange. I die cut the white rectange and cut two rectangles, one from a scrap of orange cardstock and one from a piece of Ellen Hutson’s Woodgrain paper that I darkened with Distress ink.

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The sentiment from Pink and Main’s “Special Day” was embossed in gold and I used a very old punch to cut a heart from metallic gold paper. I glued it to three additional hearts cut from cardstock to give it some dimension. I also added dimension to the white rectangle with dimensional tape.

And then I was lucky enough to spend a crafty afternoon with two friends, one of whom had the Papertrey Ink “Bold Borders: Foliage.” I die cut a couple of them from white cardstock. Once I was home, I wondered what would happen if I tried to ink blend the entire frame. It worked quite well, and here is Card #2:

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I used the Distress Oxide inks Spiced Marmalade and  Carved Pumpkin for the leaves with a bit of Catherine Pooler’s Orange Twist toward the bottom. The branches and the frame were ink blended with Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink. 

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After carefully gluing the frame to a piece of Papertrey’s Rustic White cardstock, I gold embossed one of the sentiments from The Greetery’s “Everyday Labels.” The open space in the frame was just the perfect size.

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It took some time to get the frame and leaves ink blended, but I think it was time well-spent, and I’d do it again. The only embellishment are three gold gems from Paper Studio.

I hope you’ll hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our Guest Designer, Åsa, have come up with . . . and join in the fun!

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

Tracey