It’s been hard to find time to get back to crafting, but I finally made one of the last two cards from the February Create and Connect event. It’s an interactive slider card, and the dies make creating it so easy. The class event used a new Washi tape suite called Fruitalicious, but I opted to use a floral Washi tape suite, In the Meadow, that I already owned. The pink flowers were inspired by the Just Us Girls Moodboard this week. I haven’t had a chance to play along since February when I was Guest Designer for a month, and I’ve missed playing along with their fun challenges. 

Here’s the card (almost) flat. It does easily fit into an A2 envelope.

When you pull the tab, a second message emerges from the top, and another set of florals is revealed behind.

Here’s the message that pulls up:

I made this card for one of my best friends, and knew she’d love the pretty florals. The sentiments are also from Pinkfresh Studio: Friendship Blooms, and Beyond Happy.

I’m also sending this off to Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes. This is another challenge I’ve missed playing along with. I keep forgetting that you always have the option to use any kind of birthday card!

I’m attending a baby shower for a friend’s daughter on Saturday, so the Card Concept Challenge: New Arrival was so timely.

The expected baby is a boy, so I took my inspiration from the theme rather than the colors. I decided against a sentiment on the front of my Clean and Simple card.

I embossed both the card front and the white layer with Spellbinder’s Star Gazer embossing folder. The images are from Waffle Flower’s Little One Baby set which I colored with Copics and then die cut. I added some dimensional tape behind the baby.

We’re having unusually warm weather with lots of sunshine. Even though it won’t last quite yet, it’s such a welcome change. I’ve managed a bit of crafting between packing and then unpacking all the items on a built-in desk in my office/craft room. The painting is done for that portion of the project, and I took the opportunity to organize and purge my book collections on photography, watercolor, sketching. There are two big bags ready to donate to our library. Like working on the inventory of my stamps and dies (still ongoing), one of the biggest bonuses to this kind of organizing is knowing (once again) what I have! 

There’s a lot going on here, including some painting in my craft room/office which is complicating my efforts to get some serious card making done. Some of it I can’t share for awhile, but two of these Easter bunnies are now on their way to Wisconsin, and the rest will be hand delivered on Sunday.

I’m trying to get away one more year with giving each of the grandchildren the same card with different colored backgrounds. Next year, there will be two in middle school, and I may have to find some more sophisticated images. Nonetheless, I love this new Bunny Kisses die cut that was part of the most recent release from The Greetery.

I die cut all the pieces from white cardstock, and then ink blended each piece with Distress Oxide inks. They were arranged on one of the Tag Team Duo tags also from The Greetery. The grass was die cut with one of  the Simon Says dies in the collection Box Card Borders. Three of the bunnies got a tiny pom-pom added for the tail. I decided against that for the two that needed to be mailed.

The patterned paper backgrounds from very old AMuse papers were die cut with The Greetery Postal Frame die.

Here’s a bunny without the pom-pom tail. The sentiment is from Sugar Peas Everyday Sentiments.

As you might expect there are quite a few challenges calling for Easter/Spring cards. One of these is headed to: 

Colorful Options: Pastels (some of these definitely qualify) or Rainbow
The Four Seasons: Anything Spring
Inkspirational with a Moodboard for Spring and Easter
NBUS – This is the first run for Bunny Kisses

We’re expecting rain and very warm temperatures today, then chilly again through the Easter weekend. I hope the long range forecast is accurate which call for temps in the 50’s and 60’s for the week after Easter. I’m so ready for some green to show up!

It’s hard to beat a prettier combination that Blue and Turquoise. There are so many way to go with this set of Color Hues chosen by Marcia.

It will be no surprise to you that I went the Clean and Simple route and chose die cuts once again.

I started by die cutting a stitched square by Simon Says from Paper Source’s Royal cardstock. I first discovered this cardstock last fall, and used it for one of my favorite Christmas cards. I then layered two more stitched squares from turquoise paper (from my scrap file) and another from the Royal cardstock. I die cut Poppy Stamps’ “Leaf Sprig” from the turquoise and adhered it to the square.

I ink blended a bit of blue ink on some of the leaves, but I’m not sure I really love that. I do like the pretty sentiment from The Greetery’s Spring Mix stamp set. 

I hope you’ll hop right over to the Color Hues Challenge and check out the great cards created the Design Team. We’d love to see the gallery filled with your pretty Blue and Turquoise creations!

Or both, I hope. I used a favorite Pinkfresh Studio floral hot foil plate, coordinating coloring stencil, and die to create a card today for the current Flower Challenge.

As much as I like coloring with Copic markers, coloring with stencils is quite a bit quicker, and there’s not much room for error.

I chose a very different color palette this time: aqua blue and shades of browns, but I quite like it. I foiled the image in gold, then colored it with stencils before using the die to cut it out. 

It’s quite easy to add a bit of dimension with the stencils by using a heavier touch with the color to the base of the leaves or the centers of the flowers. I also added three gold pearls to the centers of three flowers.The florals and sentiment which I gold embossed and die cut to create the banner were arranged on a diamond cover plate, with a thin brown border on a beautiful piece of textured aqua paper that I found in my stash. The sentiment and banner die are by The Greetery.

This is a great challenge, and I’m sure I’ll be back with some other entries before it closes.

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.