I spent a morning hot foiling some backgrounds last week, and ended up cutting one of them into pieces and creating three masculine cards. I wish I’d thought of this before!

I hot foiled the Pinkfresh Studio Geo Blocks on Concord & 9th’s Dove gray cardstock. The cardstock is so smooth, the hot foiling is perfect every time. I only used one of the three coordinating stencils to add a darker gray to the panel. I liked the overall look, but thought it might be divided as well, and I do like all three versions.

The sentiment for this card is from Papertrey Ink’s Banner Sentiments. I used a shiny silver border for the hot foiled piece and some silver nailheads as an accent.

The second card is a top-folded card and very Clean & Simple:

The sentiment was also hot foiled with Pinkfresh Studio’s Wonderful Words hot foil plate–one of my purchases with a Christmas gift card.

Just by chance, I happened to find Simon Says Hexagon Greeting and die. Who would have guessed the hexagon was an exact fit to the hot foiled design?

More metallic nailheads here as well. I think they’re a perfect embellishment for masculine cards. I need all three of these for birthdays in March so it was a very productive crafting session. I’m sending one of these off to Time Out: Anything Birthday and the CAS one to Tic Tac Toe Challenge (top row across: CAS, Metallic, and Word Die,) hoping that the die cut stamped sentiment counts for the last element.

I used the last of my generous gift certificate from Christmas to purchase the Magnolia Pattern cling stamp and stencil from Pinkfresh Studio. It’s such an interesting stamp and stencil combination because only parts of the pattern are to be colored in, although you could color all the images with Copics or colored pencils. I loved the projects I saw during the release, and am looking forward to playing with the stencil using a variety of colors. This time I stuck with the colors of the February Pinkfresh Challenge. It also calls for stripes or plaid, and I opted for stripes.

The whole stamp creates a 6X6 inch panel which you would have to cut down for an A2 sized card. Because I wanted to incorporate some subtle stripes, I fussy cut the image and then trimmed off the excess after I placed it on the card. The stenciling was done with Altenew’s Classy Stripes stencil with Ballet Slippers ink which was also used on the flowers.

I chose a gold foiled sentiment from the Wonderful Words collection from Pinkfresh. The hot foil plate was also a purchase thanks to my son and his family. When I photographed the closer look, I managed to get the foiled sentiment to show appropriately, but not the Gold Metallic Pearls from Pinkfresh which do match the foiled sentiment.

Every month I aim to enter the Pinkfresh Studio Challenge, but it’s more “missed” than “hit,” so I’m happy to have this completed well before the challenge ends. I’m also entering it The Flower Challenge: Use Your Latest Stamps or Dies. And, of course to Darnell’s NBUS!

I saved a couple of valentines to share on Valentine’s Day. First off, my valentine for Caleb. I wanted to try a technique that I’ve seen online, and it worked well. I don’t know if it has a special name. The front of the valentine is very plain.

I love the lightbulb with the heart from a very old Simon Says set Watts Up.  The punny sentiment which I thought Caleb would enjoy is also from an older Simon Says set, Light Me Up.

There’s a little heart “pull me” tag, and when you do, the colored light bulb is revealed.

The frame is from the My Favorite Things A2 Rectangle Frames set. I’ve never separated the dies in that set, so when you die cut them all, you get the wider frame and a narrower one between. For this card I put one of the narrow pieces as well as the regular frame together as neither was quite wide enough to let the slider go in and out easily.

Another purchase from my win at Simon Says was the XOXO Border die. I die cut it twice, once in red and once in pink, added them to a black border and another quick and easy valentine was created.

The tiny red heart was die cut with Hero Arts Infinity Hearts and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s Keep It Simple: Valentine.

This card is off to two different challenges: The Four Seasons Challenge where the moodboard includes a valentine, and Simon Says Wednesday Challenge where the challenge is “Fun With Dies.”

When I first saw the cute gnomes in My Favorite Things Love You Gnome Matter What I knew I wanted to use it for some of my grandchildren’s valentines. Before I even thought about the design, I stamped three different images (three times), colored them with Copic markers, and die cut them. I thought I’d use all three images on the front of the valentine, and I spent well over an hour trying to do just that. As you can see, I ended up with just one gnome—a CAS valentine—no surprise!

There were two images of gnomes standing with hearts. I used the Honey Bee Fluttering Hearts Pierced Coverplate once again as a background, and added a simple white stitched heart from My Favorite Things. The little gnomes were added with dimensional tape.

The sentiment, embossed in white, is from My Favorite Things Bitty Hugs and Kisses.

I added Nuvo Crystal Glaze to each of the hearts for additional dimension and a little shine. 

Not wanting to let the other gnomes go unused, I added a gnome to the inside of the card as well.

I love this little gnome running along throwing hearts in the air. I’ve had these tiny plastic hearts from Buttons Galore in my stash for several years and they worked perfectly!

The next valentine also uses supplies from my stash. Quite some time ago, I purchased Concord and 9th’s Plaid Turnabout stamp. I had stamped a panel with pink, red, and black a few weeks ago, and didn’t have a plan for it at the time. To the rescue came The Greetery’s Heart Arrow once again. It was the only item I ordered from their last release, and I’ve certainly put it to good use this month. 

The sentiment is from Simon Says Love You Greetings. I won a $25 gift certificate during a recent blog hop, and this sentiment set was one of the purchases. 

As a final touch I added three black pearls to the heart. 

Colorful Options is looking for PINK this month, and I’m putting a second card in the Double D Hearts Challenge as well. I’m also linking up to Shopping Our Stash: Love is in the Air.

It’s Week 2 for February and Word Week at Just Us Girls, and it’s a fun one.

I have quite a list of birthdays on my February calendar, and one is a friend who does, indeed, “leave a little sparkle wherever [she] goes!”

This wonderful Snowflake Corner Frame from Poppy Stamps is a new purchase. I die cut it in multiple sparkly and glittery papers, but loved this one which was a bit more subtle, but so beautiful and matched the silver embossing powder perfectly.

That “perfect for this prompt” sentiment from Papertrey Ink was embossed in silver on the teal card base. All that was left to do was add some gorgeous Pinkfresh Studio Champagne Glitter Drops to the centers of the snowflakes.

There are so many occasions that call for a bit of sparkle, I’m sure you’ll be inspired to join us at Just Us Girls this week.

There’s still one valentine I want to make, but I have all I need with a few left over. Not surprisingly there are a variety of challenges looking for heart-inspired cards. First up for me is a shaker card I made for Hannah.

This valentine is off to Festive Friday where I chose “pink, hearts, and something shiny!” I love the Honey Bee Fluttering Hearts Pierced Coverplate and used it on several valentines this year. This one was run through the die cutter with white shimmer cardstock from Papertrey Ink—much prettier than I can capture in a photograph!

I glued five Stitched Heart Frames from Papertrey Ink to create the shaker and filled it with some die cut hearts left over from the Honey Bee Fluttering Hearts Coverplate (some of which I coated with a glitter pen,) some shiny confetti hearts, and some clear sequins. The sentiment is from My Favorite Things Bitty Hugs and Kisses.

The next card was inspired by the negative die cut created for this card.  When I die cut the arrow (The Greetery’s Heart Arrow) from the white shimmer cardstock, the negative created a perfect square card. I die cut the arrow from bright pink cardstock, inlaid it, added a narrow pink border, and layered them on a white card base.

The sentiment, embossed in silver on black cardstock is from The Stamp Market’s Tons of Type. 

Die cutting the bright pink arrow left me with another negative, and I went rather dramatic with a black background.

This one definitely needed some sparkle, so I added some black jewels from Pinkfresh Studio and used the same sentiment as the last valentine.

I’m off to link up these to Inkspirational with a great Moodboard, Festive Friday where I picked pink, heart, and shiny, and the Double D Challenge: Hearts.

 

The Paper Players challenge this week is “A Song in the Air.”

There are many interpretations for this challenge, but as I was working on creating an inventory of my stamps last week I came upon an older Papertrey Ink set called Songbirds. As soon as I saw this challenge, I knew I’d pull out this set which has always been a favorite. 

There are several options for the “song” stamped on the banner. Always in need of birthday cards, I chose “Happy Birthday to You.” The rest of the card is created with the dies from the set.

Many of the dies have stitched details, and I inlaid the flower and leaves on the red bird. I love the bright colors against the black card. The card came together quickly once I decided on the color palette.