The Flower Challenge is looking for floral cards with embellishments. In addition to creating sets of Christmas cards throughout the year, I’ve made a few single cards. 

I originally pulled out the Memory Box “Blooming Poinsettia” die for a big project as a Guest Designer. In the end, I made another card for that project, but had a quite a few poinsettias left over. The vellum circle was cut with Papertrey Ink’s “Shape Shifter: Circle 1.” I die cut the flowers from pink and white cardstock, but added some light ink blending in pink to the center of the white poinsettia. 

I added silver pearls to the centers of the poinsettias, and an additional three to the vellum circle. The sentiment is one of Waffle Flower’s “Essential Christmas” premade die cuts.

Thanks for stopping by! 

A coverplate that had been out of stock for months arrived in-house at Papertrey Ink last week. When I put the order in, I added the Fanciful Snowflake hot foil plate as well. Yesterday I spent some time just foiling with holiday and background hot foil plates. I should have done some of it much earlier, but I now have a wonderful stash of foiled holiday sentiments which you’ll see later for sure. I love this beautiful snowflake, and although it’s large, it makes a wonderful clean and simple card. 

I used a holographic foil from Spellbinders for the first time, and it’s just stunning in real life. You do get a good sense of it in the photos, though. It’s also a bit hard to tell that the card is a dark navy blue.

It really didn’t need any embellishment, but I added one iridescent jewel from Pinkfresh Studio to the center of the snowflake.

I didn’t trust my hot foiling skills enough to try and hot foil a sentiment onto the card front. This sentiment is from Gina K’s “Blizzard” which I embossed in silver and die cut.

I’m entering this in several challenges. First, CAS on Friday where the challenge is Sparkle (and this is very sparkly in person). Next to The Paper Players who are looking for CAS Christmas cards. Then Simon Says Monday Challenge: Fun with Foil, and finally, the Merry Little Christmas challenge (my first ever entry) where Anything Goes that’s Christmas. 

Last week I die cut a series of JOY die cuts from Waffle Flower’s “Oversized Joy” set and created a series of cards all with different backgrounds that I had already created or started. This is my favorite of the bunch, and when I saw the Just Us Girls challenge for creating matching envelopes, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. 

The background for this card had already been gold embossed. Although the stamp comes with coloring stencils, I opted to color it with Copic markers this time around. For the envelope I gold embossed just the flap of the envelope that is so much prettier in real life than in the photo.

The Waffle Flower set comes with many different sub-sentiments and this one was gold embossed on black and trimmed out. The gold “joy” was die cut from my favorite gold metallic paper that I purchase at Michaels in the scrapbook department. It’s resting on a die cut shadow cut from vellum.

Here’s a look at the beautiful textured gold paper. This is off to JUGS as the challenge closes tonight. I’ve been inspired, though, so I think you’ll see more matching envelopes.

Coffee with friends is always a good idea, and I wanted to get a card into the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop. I found three stamp sets with cups and coffee sentiments, but chose to use one I purchased some time ago and never used. Along with the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop, I’m making my second entry into the Just Us Girls challenge to make a matching envelope. 

I chose a piece of woodgrain paper for the card base, thinking it would represent the table. The cute doily under each of the cups is from a very old die set from Papertrey Ink called 
Doily Details. So I have very old and very new represented on this card. All the images on the card as well as the sentiment are from the new set from Simon Says, “Cup of Love.” The tag is also very old and goes back to the days when I was on a design team for an internet scrapbook company. I acquired a lot of Spellbinder products during those days that have held up against the test of time. The image on the envelope came from another older set that was part of a Simon Says card kit, “Coffee and Tea.” I found the heart in a Papertrey Ink set, “Be Mine.”

The cups, leaf sprigs, and spoon were all stamped in black and embossed with clear after adding the latte designs with Cocoa Bean ink. (Pretty perfect ink name!) I added some Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the heart. 

I love this Coffee Lovers Blog Hop logo, and I’m sending this off to Darnell’s November NBUS since Cup of Love had never been used before.

I have one last card for the JUGS challenge, so I’ll be back again tomorrow!

After seeing the new challenge at Seize the Birthday for “Many of Something” I was looking through the stamps I keep nearby that I want (need!) to use and saw Simon Says’ “Snowflake Season,” and knew just what I wanted to do. Then Just Us Girls popped up with their new trend challenge, “Make a Matching Envelope” so I did that, too. It is a trend I see frequently, and never take the time to do. 

To make the card, I started with a piece of Surf Blue cardstock by Simon Says and embossed a variety of snowflakes in white. I embossed the greeting from Papertrey Ink’s “Winter Hills” on a slightly darker cardstock scrap I found in my scrap folder and die cut it with one of the Simon Says “Stitched Rectangles.” The sentiment square was added with dimensional tape, and then I added a tiny snowflake die cut from My Favorite Things “Stylish Snowflakes.” (It’s bent a bit in the photo, but has now been fixed. I hate that I don’t notice these things until after I’ve taken the photo!)

The final embellishment was to add a sparkling jewel to the center of each snowflake. 

I embossed three snowflakes on the front of the envelope, and a series of them on the back flap. This took so little time, and I love the coordinating envelope. I hope this inspires me to take the time to do this more frequently.

In addition to Seize the Birthday and Just Us Girls, I’m adding this to NBUS since I’ve finally put the “Snowflake Season” to use. 

When I turned the page on my birthday calendar to November I discovered a long list of birthdays and anniversaries. Several of the birthdays were for male friends and relatives, so I decided to make a set of cards that would be appropriate for guys. In the end I made four cards (two identical) and one for my sister-in-law who decorates with, and loves, leaf patterns.

The first two cards differ only with the woodgrain patterned paper. I made two of the first one because I had two pieces of that paper. The card design is a CASE of one Debby Hughes made years ago when the Simon Says “One With Nature” was released. The kraft card is a premade one by Paper Studio, and the tag has long been in my stash. I gold embossed the leaves and used three Karin watercolor markers to color them before die cutting  them and adding them to the tag. The sentiment, stamped in Dark Chocolate ink is from The Greetery.

While I was looking through my patterned papers, I came upon the one used on the next card for my sister-in-law. I just love this design and wish I had more of it. It’s also been in my stash for quite some time, and I have no idea who made it.

I added the leaves for this one on a dark brown tag, luckily found in the “tag drawer” and gold embossed the sentiment from Altenew’s “Happy Sentiments” stamp which might have been a freebie at one time. This tag got two gold pearls as a final embellishment. 

I’m sending the last card to a new-to-me challenge site The Four Seasons and to Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenge. Here’s the inspiration photo for Four Seasons and HLS’s Birthday challenge is always an Anything Goes challenge. 

I’m happy to report that (finally!!!) TypePad is back to operating as it should. What a relief!

This card went to a friend, but I never got it posted. Addicted to CAS‘s challenge right now is Sympathy, so it seems to be a good time to share it. I saw a very similar design somewhere on the internet, but didn’t pin it, so I can’t tell you who I am CASEing. But it’s a design I know I’ll use again.

It’s important to me that sympathy cards be clean and simple designs. I like this one a lot. The strips of True Black and Smoky Shadow cardstock were added to the side of a cream card base. The leaves were snipped off a Pinkfresh Studio die, “Frame Builder Botanical Circle.” I don’t often leave the insides of a leaf die intact, but here I liked it better than when I tried it with open leaves.

The sentiment from Altenew’s “Wildflower Garden” was stamped in black ink. No embellishments on most sympathy cards either.

We’re having such wonderful fall weather here. Today is cloudy, but very warm. The last few days have been sunny and warm. Every day like this in November is a gift!