A quick post to join in the CAS on Friday challenge: Animals. It gives me a chance to share a cute shaker card I sent off to Hannah earlier to thank her for her “letter” including some art work, and signed with her own printing.

I started by dry embossing the white cardstock with one of my all time favorite embossing folders by Sunny Studios, “Quilted Hearts.” Then I die cut the open heart with My Favorite Things “Stitched Hearts,” backed it with acetate, popped it up with two layers of dimensional tape, and filled it with all kinds of sequins and glitter from my stash. 

The cute bunny with a balloon is from My Favorite Things, “Party Pals,” was colored with Copic markers, and die cut with the coordinating die. The sentiment is from The Greetery, “Sentiment Suite: Thanks” and stamped onto one of the coordinating tags that match up with some of the different sentiments in the set. Finally, I added it to a bright blue card base. 

Hope you’re having a great day! The snow has finally stopped falling (we have well over a foot of it), and this morning we actually saw some blue sky. It’s amazing what a little bit of sunshine can do for your state of mind. 

After nearly a week of dealing with surgery on my right thumb and a nasty and exceedingly itchy rash on my back (caused ironically by a new anti-itch lotion), I’m more or less back to normal. At least back in the craft room. I have a couple of cards to share for some current challenges. First up, one for the Inspired By Challenge. It’s another weekly challenge, so often comes and goes before I get my act together. Earlier this month, I made two cards to send to blogging friends that meet this week’s theme: Tweet Messages. Since I think both friends have received the cards, I can post them now. 

This is a new stamp set (for me) from My Favorite Things (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite stamp companies), called “Winter Songbird.”

These were fun to watercolor, and the sentiment came from the same set. Pretty quick, and definitely CAS.

I used my favorite Hero Arts Rounded Rectangle Infinity dies to cut the first two layers, and then added them to an Asparagus (Gina K) card base. 

The next card is a soft floral birthday card. It’s for the new Fusion Card Challenge: Flowers.

The pretty, soft floral arrangement is my inspiration.

This beautiful floral arrangement is from Altenew’s “Bergenia Builder. I stamped it in a soft gray ink, and quickly colored it with Copic markers, adding some detail to the floral centers with a Staedtler Fineliner.

I simply trimmed this panel down with my paper cutter and added it to a gray card base.

The sentiment is from an all-time favorite from Papertrey Ink – “Signature Greetings.”

Off to catch up on my homework for Liz Steel’s Sketchbook Design class. It’s been absolutely wonderful; worth twice what I paid for it. 

I woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday and while trying to put myself back to sleep, I came up with a card idea for this week’s Just Us Girls Challenge: three shades of blue.

I’d like to tell you that I executed that card design with no difficulty, but if you could see my original idea there’d be little resemblance to the final card. 

This is a pretty odd angle for taking a photograph, but getting a clear photo of the six scored lines turned out to be almost as difficult as constructing the card. I started with a much older Papertrey Ink stamp “Ombre Builders.” It includes seven stamps with different patterns. I started out with the triangles, obviously not what I ended up with. You will eventually see two other cards I also created with the triangles. When that attempt failed, I turned to the tiny squares. I masked off thirds and stamped the squares with three shades of blue, then trimmed around the panel and mounted it on a strip of Enchanted Evening cardstock. It definitely needed the scored lines on both sides. Finally I stamped the sentiment from Altenew’s “Bergenia Builder” which was laying on my desk for another project.

The final step was to trim the whole panel down and add it to a card base of Enchanted Evening. My goal in yesterday’s crafting time was to create some cards appropriate for males. I think this one would work for either men or women. One of the other cards I made yesterday went in the mail this morning to my BIL, and now I have two more in the stash.

The stamped images for this card have been lying on my desk since before Christmas. I realized sometime in December that I owned no snowmen stamps and ordered a couple sets from My Favorite Things during a sale. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these cute snowmen and MFT provided not one, but two, challenges that fit this card. First, the MFT Birthday Challenge which is Winter Wonderland, and the MFT Outside the Box Challenge: Winter Scenes. Everything I used for this card also goes to the NBUS Challenge.

I’ve been immersed in a Sketchbook Design course with Liz Steel. Her courses are always loaded with content, and this has been no exception. But I’ve started a new sketchbook, and have a few pages started. I’ve found all my fountain pens, and although I thought I had them all working again, I’ve discovered that most of them are going to require a thorough cleaning before I can count on them. All that to say, stamping and card making has taken a backseat in my schedule.

It’s not often that a card comes out just the way I imagined it, but this one comes pretty close.

I constructed the box with Spring Rain cardstock. I don’t own the Outside the Box snow drift dies, but created my own with the Ellen Hutson “Landscapes” die. When I purchased those, I thought they might work for a variety of cards and so far, they’ve been great. I used some Distress Oxide ink to create a bit of blue sky on the back side of the box.

All the stamped images were colored with Copic markers and then die cut. Before adding them to the snow drifts, I added the stitched panel with the sentiment (also from the “Toasty Greetings” set). 

Here you can see that the card folds so that it fits into an A2 envelope. You can also see the stitched side panels. I’m off to link up with these challenges:

I had every intention of joining Just Us Girls last week where the challenge was “Hello,” but the weekly challenges frequently get away from me. This week’s challenge is to Use a Stencil.

It definitely is a trending technique, and I’m glad to be joining in this week with a card that also uses a large HELLO sentiment.

I love Altenew’s “Flowing Drops” stencil and used Distress Oxides inks to create the blue/green background. I trimmed the sides enough so the Hawaiian Shores card base would create a narrow border. 

The sentiment is from The Stamp Market’s “Paper Hugs” set. I die cut it with white and layered it on the shadow die cut with Hawaiian Shores, and popped it up with some dimensional tape.

I’m also entering this in the Happy Little Stampers Stencil Challenge. I just recently happened up the Happy Little Stampers who seem to have monthly challenges for a variety of techniques/products. I’m much more likely to be on time with monthly challenges! 

Time Out has more than one meaning this afternoon after the assault on the Capitol yesterday. The horrific event will be haunting us for months (and years), and there are many, many questions that need to be answered. Although I do try to stay away from discussing political events on this blog, but this can’t be ignored. I’m not one that watches television during the day, so I actually discovered what was happening in Washington when an international blogging friend emailed me to be sure we were safe—knowing that we were miles away. As it turns out there were demonstrations in other cities, but fortunately, not here.

But the Time Out I’m referring to is a card challenge:

Last night after the Congress was able to resume and as I was listening to their discussions of the objections to the Electoral College votes, I decided I needed to find something to do at the same time. This My Favorite Things “City Block Background” had already been stamped, and I decided to do some spotlight coloring. Needing a masculine birthday card, I thought this might be a fun, albeit a bit unusual, one.

I picked just a few of the buildings in the center of the panel to color with Copic markers.  After finishing the coloring, I used one of Simon Says “Stitched Rectangles” to die cut the panel, and added it to a very thin border of Honey Nut cardstock. The brown card base is one I’ve had in my stash for years.

Trying to decide on a sentiment was the next problem. I have a box of pre-stamped and die cut sentiments, and found that this one, “Penned Elegance” by Papertrey Ink, worked quite well.

I backed the sentiment with thin strips of dimensional tape to lift it up and give it some space from the black and white background. I ended up making a second version (nearly identical) this morning. I think the card’s charming, and I hope my buddies do too. 

Just a note: some photos haven’t been showing recently. According to Typepad, it’s an error on their end and should repair itself with time. If not, I’ll be sending them a message and they will retrieve it. So annoying.

I’ll bet I’m not alone when I say that watching my friend heat emboss a sentiment on a card over 25 years ago was the impetus to hop in the car and go to the local stamp store to buy some supplies. I still have a couple of the wooden stamps I bought that day, and just replaced my heat gun in May when a friend gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday. It’s been a favorite technique ever since so The Flower Challenge had me looking through the cards I hadn’t posted. This card which has already been received by my friend (so can now be shared) has both heat embossing in gold, and dry embossing along the bottom portion of the card.

The beautiful magnolias are from Altenew’s “Magnolias for You” set. I embossed them in gold on Bristol and watercolored them with the Altenew 36 pan watercolor set. 

I had to fussy cut the flowers and leaves since I don’t own the dies, and then arranged them at the top of the white panel. The sentiment, also gold embossed, is from The Greetery’s “Sentiment Suite: Birthday” set which gets a lot of use. I decided the card was just too CAS (is that possible?), so added three lines of dry embossing with my stylus on the bottom portion. That was added that to a top folded card in Lovely Lady (PTI.)

I’m in the midst of trying to keep up with two online classes, so crafting time has been at a premium. Today’s personal challenge is to get two masculine birthday cards created.