“Spots or Dots”—that’s the challenge this week at Just Us Girls.

It’s been awhile since I’ve joined in at JUGS, and in my continued effort to use stamps that I haven’t played with, I came upon The Stamp Market’s “Dotted Background” stamp. I had already started playing around with The Stamp Market’s “Party Pieces,” and ended up with a birthday card for Tracy’s cousin.

It’s a mini-slimline card which is becoming one of my favorite designs, and worked well with this little stamped and die cut birthday cake. The chocolate cake with blue decorative icing is sitting on a silver cake stand. I used some dimensional tape on the white frosting as well as on the die cut sentiment.

I added some glitter to the candles, and “painted” the flames with a gold paint pen. The sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio’s “Happy Birthday Sentiments.” I love the font and the die works perfectly every time. After cutting down the dotted background, I added it to a layer of Blueberry Sky paper from Papertrey Ink which matches the blue stamped images. 

I’m also adding this to the June NBUS Challenge which already has some great cards in the gallery. Darnell, who hosts the site, is correct that it’s a great place to scroll through the gallery for design ideas. 

I was in need of a masculine birthday card and was inspired this morning by two challenges: The Card Concept: Anchors Aweigh! and The Paper Players Tic Tac Toe Challenge.

It’s easy to see the photo inspiration in my card, and not hard to find the diagonal blue, red, white on the tic tac toe board.

I already had this W+9, “Dockside” stamp set laying on my desk with another project in mind, and I had just received The Greetery’s “Crimped Circles,” part of an order that was placed with a generous birthday gift certificate. And that was really all I needed.

It’s easy to see the crimped edge on the circles, but not so easy to see that the navy cardstock has a raised dotted pattern to it that adds a bit of texture.

I love the rope-like font of the “Happy” that mimics the red stamped circle, and the little bar with the anchor and stars seemed like the perfect stamped embellishment. As always, The Card Concept asks you to identify the style of your card, and as usual, this one fits the Clean and Simple category.

This card was designed with three challenges in mind. First, Fusion with the interesting title of “Laugh Decor,” which I didn’t understand until I saw the inspiration photo:

The title for the challenge clearly comes from the quote on the wall. I decided to combine both the photo inspiration and the sketch this time around.

The second challenge, The Great Coverup, is a new one to me. Papertrey Ink has started a new series where the emphasis is on technique or using a particular product. The current challenge is to use only white cardstock in creating your card. All the color on this card was created with ink blending.

The last challenge is the Less Is More Challenge which asks you to use a favorite technique. That was easy—die cutting is very definitely one of my favorite techniques, and this card clearly relies on die cutting.

Now that we have the inspirational challenges out of the way, here’s the card:

I used the inspiration photo for the color scheme of the florals, looking at the vase of flowers on the desk as well as the pink chair, and pink pot with a green plant.

Rather than use a strip of patterned paper or cardstock for the right-hand strip in the Fusion sketch, I opted to score a series of lines, making this a much more CAS design. The beautiful die cut flowers were ink blended with a trio of Pinkfresh Studio inks. Many card makers swear by Distress Oxide Inks for blending, and although I own a few pinks I wasn’t happy with the shading or the hues I could achieve, so I moved to the Pinkfresh trio and was much happier. The dies are from the new Papertrey Ink Blooms II dies which arrived last week. The leaves were ink blending with two Distress Oxide inks. 

The sentiment came from a Pinkfresh Studio stamp set called “Folk Hummingbird” and was stamped in green to match the leaves in the floral arrangement.

Although it took me a lot longer than I anticipated to get the flowers inked, I’m quite happy with the outcome, and will likely recreate this design with other colors in the future. 

I’m also popping this in the NBUS Challenge gallery since the dies are definitely products that have never been used before. I am proud of myself, however, to pulling them out relatively quickly after receiving them. (We all know I have a large basket of unused stamps that I’ve owned for way too long!)

Once again two challenges showed up just as I needed to make a card to welcome new neighbors to our street. We live on a dead-end street and there are only 28 homes on the street. Most were build in the early 1930’s and are a very diverse group architecturally as well as in size. Years ago, a freeway was scheduled to be built near one end of the street, and in anticipation five homes were destroyed. Then the freeway went in another direction, so shortly before we moved on the street two very large homes were built in that space at the top of the hill. I would have been furious if I had been one of the homeowners who had to give up their property, and then discovered it was unnecessary. One of the joys of living on this street is the location (near so many places) and yet feeling somewhat remote from the city. 

The first challenge is a sketch challenge from Freshly Made Sketches. It’s not how I typically start a card, but this sketch was right up my alley.

The second challenge is Just Add Ink where they’re looking for a slimline card. Two challenges made to work together!

I also had the perfect stamp set that was part of a Simon Says Card Kit awhile ago, “Home Sweet Home.”

Knowing I was going to color the images with Copic markers, I started with a piece of X-Press Blending cardstock, Before stamping the street scene, I stenciled some clouds in using My Favorite Things Cloud stencil. I added the sun from the Simon Says set and colored the scene. 

I die cut the focal panel with Lawn Fawn’s “Slimline with Flaps” die and then added a narrow border of Blueberry Sky and True Black before adding it all to a white slimline card base. And here’s the inside sentiment:

Our new neighbors have two young children, and I hope they enjoy raising their family here as much as we did.

I’m also throwing this in the gallery at the Wednesday Simon Says Challenge: Anything Goes.

Not often, but occasionally, card challenges align with real life events. That was certainly true this week. The Inspired By: Hello Baby Flowers could be interpreted two ways—a baby card or baby flowers. I have both!

We have a new grand-niece born in Oregon. Her grandparents flew out there this week, and I sent this mini-slimline card with them.

It gave me a chance to used several never-used products: The Greetery’s “Bold Alphabet,” The Ton’s “Ditsy Bits,” and Trinity Stamps “Slimline Mini Envelope Builder” (the scalloped and stitched rectangle.) I have my friend, Michelle, to thank for the tiny flower stamps and the die cut set, both of which she shared when we stamped together. I tried them at her house, and later ordered them for myself. 

I love the detail on the alphabet and tucking the tiny flowers in among the letters of the baby’s name seemed a perfect embellishment, along with three tiny pale pink pearls.

The sentiment from Papertrey Ink’s “Boutique Borders: Baby” set was stamped and then die cut with one of The Greetery’s “Pretext Banner” dies–quickly becoming a favorite!

Sadly, given the distance between us and the new baby, it’s likely going to be awhile before we get to hold the new bundle of joy. We’ve seen lots of photos, though, and she was a cutie from Day 1!

Given all the new products used on this card, I’ll be adding it to the very large gallery at NBUS.

There are several challenges open now, and two of the themed challenges were the inspiration for these cards. The first is Seize the Birthday where the challenge is “Make it a Bouquet.”

When I saw The Greetery’s April Release, my resolve to refrain from buying new stamps and dies dissolved, and it was these tulip dies and the “Market Basket” that did me in. This is a pretty close, but simpler, CASE of one of the cards Betsy Veldman made for the release. I know my mother-in-law will love this, and her birthday is in early July.

I die cut the tulips and leaves from Bristol Smooth paper and used a variety of Distress Inks to color them, and then assembled them. When I arranged the bouquet I also added some of The Greetery’s Botanic-cut Wildflowers that I had previously made. I added the bouquet to a slimline die by Pinkfresh Studio, and then to a white slimline card base. 

The Market Basket was die cut from gold paper and lined with a piece of vellum. I love the little handles and label. The stamp set for the labels covers a multitude of occasions, so I expect I’ll fill the basket with flowers frequently. There are also two smaller baskets in the die set.

The second floral challenge was The Flower Challenge’s Favorite Flower challenge. 

When we arrived on Kiawah Island in April, I purchased a lovely little bouquet for the table from a local farmstand. The purple anemones were just gorgeous, and I ordered some for our garden. They’re just beginning to come up, but we think we may have lost a couple to the squirrels. Tracy covered them with netting yesterday, so I’m hopeful. This Honey Bee set called “Winter Anemones” called to me when I saw this challenge. 

I pulled out my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors after embossing the image in gold ink on Altenew’s watercolor paper. After watercoloring the image, I die cut it with Hero Arts Rounded Rectangles. The Amethyst Allure cardstock from Papertrey Ink was a good match for the purple flowers.

I was too anxious about ruining the focal image to emboss the sentiment directly on the white card, so opted to emboss one of The Greetery’s “Sentiment Suite: Birthday” greetings  on a small banner, which worked well.

I’m entering both cards into the AAA Birthday Challenge where they’re celebrating their 2nd birthday as well as AAA Cards Challenge which is celebrating it’s 7th birthday.

Hope your week is off to a good start. We’re enjoying another wonderful sunny day, although quite a bit cooler than it’s been recently. It might be close to perfect. 

I’ve known all month exactly what I wanted to do for the current My Favorite Things Outside the Box: Florals Challenge. I’ve been spending most of my free time in my own garden, but finished all the planting on Tuesday. Yesterday I finally made time to create the card—and just in time, as the challenge ends at noon today!

I’ve had the very cute “Sunflower Sweetie” set from MFT for quite awhile, and it’s another of my NBUS! After coloring the cutie with Copic markers and fussy cutting her out, I started creating the garden flowers with the MFT “Box Card Bouquet” dies. These flowers will get a lot of use, I think, beyond the Outside the Box cards.

I used Ellen Hutson’s “Landscape” dies to create the grass, and Honey Bee’s “Slimline Borders” for the fence which I die cut from woodgrain paper. Once I had all the elements, I assembled the box with the “Outside the Box Level Up” dies, and added the sweet little girl, the fence, and all the flowers.

The patterned paper is also from MFT — “Tiny Checks” — as is the sentiment from “Bitty Birthday Wishes.” One thing I love about these cards is that they fold and can be mailed in an A2 envelope. It’s really a genius design.

In addition to the Outside the Box Challenge, I’m adding this as a second card to The Card Concept Challenge: Garden Pleasures inspired by the Black-eyed Susans in the photograph. Trying to determine a style for this card is a bit more complicated than my usual CAS–I’ve settled on Freestyle Collage as the closest candidate. And a third challenge, that opened up yesterday–Simon Says: Use Dies or Punches. Almost totally dies in this case! And, of course, an entry to NBUS!

The AAA Birthday Card Challenge is celebrating their second birthday. I needed a birthday card for a friend this week, and thought I’d contribute to the celebration.

I still have a small stash of already colored images made during the #100DayProject last year. I pulled the envelope out and found this brightly colored floral from Simon Says “Even More Spring Flowers” which seemed so appropriate right now. We couldn’t be happier with the beautiful spring weather we’re having and flowers are blooming earlier than usual.

I’d never realized before how well Pinkfresh Studio’s “Braided Circles” goes with Reverse Confetti’s “Lacey Scalloped Circles,” but they play together quite nicely–one die cut from Raspberry Fizz cardstock and one in white. 

I added them to a pale grey card base with a white embossed sentiment from Altenew’s “Sentiment Strips.”

Wishing all the folks on the DT at AAA Birthday Challenge a Happy Birthday!