Altenew recently issued two large floral stamps drawn by Sarah Simon of the Mint Gardener. A few years ago, I took a drawing and watercoloring class with her online, and I love her book, Modern Watercolor Botanicals.

Despite my best intentions not to purchase any new stamps, I caved on these. Yesterday I found the time to watercolor the first set, Peony and Lilac Swag. 

This floral is just a part of the whole image. There are a variety of ways to position parts of the florals on an A2 card base, and eventually I want to try a 5X7 card. I used my Zig Watercolor Brushes this time. I tried an earlier image with the Altenew 36 pan watercolors, but they weren’t transparent enough for me. Next time, I’ll go back to my Daniel Smith watercolors which take more time.

I die cut the floral and added it to a panel I embossed with Spellbinders, Dazzling Dots embossing folder. The sentiment is from a Pinkfresh Studio set, Best Thing. After debating it for awhile, I ended up added three pearls as embellishment. 

This week’s Simon Says Wednesday Challenge is Beautiful Blooms, using Altenew stamps so this is a perfect fit! I’m also sending it to the Flower Challenge: Make a Birthday Card and AAA Birthday: Fabulous Flowers.

I have a card for the AAA Card Challenge: Fabulous Flowers.

The card is a variation of a card Lea Lawson and Heather Hoffman taught in a one time class last fall.

The flowers are from the Brighter Day set by Pinkfresh, colored with Copic markers and then die cut with the accompanying dies. The background was created with the cover plate, Harlequin by Papertrey Ink. The sentiment is also from Pinkfresh–the Farm Fresh stamp set. 

These bright and happy flowers remind me of this time of year when we have bright and beautiful flowers in the garden and in vases in the house. It’s probably my favorite time of the year.  

In addition to the AAA Card Challenge, I’m sending this off to Triple B: All about Birds, Blooms, and Butterflies.

It took awhile before my WaffleFlower Postage stencils and dies arrived, and then even longer for me to get them out of the NBUS box. I created all three a week ago, but waited to post until now since one of them needed to arrive at its destination before they showed up on the blog. Two are almost identical because I needed two birthday cards.

These are die cut with the main postal die and stenciled with the Wild Flower Collage stencil. The stamps are from the Postage Collage stamp. Both greetings are from Pink & Main’s Special Day stamps.

I hesitated before purchasing the Beach Days Postage Collage stencils, but I couldn’t resist. The images are so much fun, and I don’t own anything like them. 

I used both the Beach Days and the Postage Collage stamps sets after stenciling the backgrounds.

The sentiment came from Simon Says Stronger Together stamp set.

There are still a couple of challenges looking for summertime cards so this one is off to the Time Out Challenge: On Vacation and the Shopping Our Stash Challenge: Summer. We’ll be off to a lake vacation in August, and I’m looking forward to a week of sunshine (we hope) and water fun. 

Edited to add: Also posted at Darnell’s NBUS! (I was sweetly reminded by Darnell that I needed to get these in the gallery!

Strawberry season is one of my favorites. (Peach season comes close behind.) The strawberries didn’t last as long in Western New York this year due to a week of exceptionally high temperatures. Nonetheless, I pulled out The Greetery’s Botani-Cuts: Strawberries to make several birthday cards (all identical). 

It’s a very CAS design. I started with the strawberry die cuts in white, coloring them with a variety of Pinkfresh Studio inks and finger daubers. Betsy Veldman of The Greetery often uses finger daubers, and I’m becoming a fan. Much quicker in this case than using a blending brush. Once that was completed, I die cut a Pinkfresh Studio Rounded Braided Rectangle from white and arranged the strawberries on it.

I added very small pieces of dimensional tape to the pretty blossoms, and stamped the sentiment from The Greetery’s Print Shop: Spring Mix before adding it to a white cardbase.

The Inspired By Challenge is Strawberries, so this is headed their way as well as to the Simply Clean and Simple Challenge.

Just a quick post to share a card I made for a friend who has left her current job. I volunteered for the organization for many years, chairing a committee for seven year where she was the staff support. Over those years, we’ve become good friends, and I created this card for her with a note inside to celebrate her many accomplishments.

The card design is a CASE of several cards I found on Pinterest. I started by die cutting strips of colorful papers with The Stamp Market 1/4 inch Quick Strips, and adhering them diagonally in the center of the card. 

I die cut the glasses from Concord & 9th’s Spectacular Shades from glossy black cardstock. I added some acetate behing the lenses (hard to see in the photo, but it adds a bit of realism to the glasses.) I added the panel to a cardbase made from Concord & 9th’s Marmelade. 

This is off to the current TicTacToe Challenge where I used the right hand column: Layers, Stripes, Bright Colors. 

As soon as I saw the new challenge at Seize the Birthday: Add a Star, I knew I wanted to finally pull out The Greetery’s Rustic Star dies. I used just the large set this time, but have some good ideas for the smaller one as well. I went with a pink and blue color combo because two of my granddaughters have birthdays coming up, and frankly I could give this to either of them.

Unlike the last card I made for a challenge I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about this one. I die cut the start from bright pink and silver glitter paper and then hunted for a sentiment set that would work. Papertrey Ink’s Sparkle and Shine had just what I wanted. The next decision was finding an embossing folder for the background. Lifestyle Craft’s tiny star folder was perfect. 

Once I had embossed the sentiment for the front of the card, I pulled out another NBUS product, Spellbinder’s Sentiment Labels. Instead of using the die cut to slip through the label, I pulled out some silver cord. I used some dimensional foam behind the embossed panel, and added two narrow strips to the label so it would lay flat after the cord was inserted. Once I had the star adhered, I found a tiny rhinestone star in my stash for the center. 

Sparkle and Shine also includes two large sentiment die cuts. I chose Sparkle for the inside sentiment, embossing the sub-sentiment in silver on blue paper. I couldn’t decide whether to add some rhinestone stars to the inside, so I’ll wait to make that decision until it’s time to give the card away.

In addition to Seize the Birthday, there are some other open challenges that are perfect for this card: Double D: Reach for the Stars, Can You Handle the Pressure (must use an embossing folder), and NBUS–two more NBUS products put to use!