Seize the Birthday has a new challenge up: Use an Embossing Folder. It’s a favorite technique of mine when I need some interest for the background of a card. 

I used part of a lovely birthday gift certificate to Altenew to order the “Build-a-Flower: Coneflower” and the matching dies. I stamped multiple images of the two outline images, some on watercolor paper. This is the first of three cards I made with them.

After embossing some cream colored cardstock with one of Tim Holtz’s Alteration embossing folders, I decided it was best to cut it down which added just the right amount of texture and contrast with the brown textured card base.  

I watercolored the flowers with my Daniel Smith watercolors. The watercolors weren’t moving as well as usual, and I couldn’t figure out why until I remembered I was using a piece of Simon Says watercolor paper that had come with one of the card kits. I’m not a fan. Although the final outcome was acceptable, it was much more difficult than it should have been. 

The sentiment,”Easy Expressions: Birthday,” is also a new acquisition, and I love it! It’s from The Ton, and has 10 sentiments. I stamped and embossed all ten at once, and then added the black sentiments. When that was done, all 10 are die cut at once. The Ton has a variety of stamp and die sets that are grouped with guides that make it so easy to line every thing up perfectly. For someone who has difficulty with layering stamps and dies, this is one fabulous set. 

Since all the stamps and dies are new and have never been used, I’ll be linking this up at NBUS as well.

One of my stamping goals each month is to enter My Favorite Things Outside the Box Challenge if I have the appropriate stamps. This month the theme was balloons, and yes, I have the right stamps. I started the card over a week ago, and then got busy, so here I am posting my entry at the last minute again. This card is for my granddaughter, Maddy, who will be six years old in July.

I started by stamping and coloring four sets of the “Balloon Bundle” by MFT as well as the cute little girl holding the cupcake and a couple of gifts from the “Sweet Birthday Wishes” set.  I have the dies for the balloon bundle, but fussy cut the little girl and the gifts. Next, I die cut the pieces to create the “Outside the Box Level Up,” die cutting the decorative stitched insets for the outside of the box from a piece of patterned paper from the “Birthday Brights” paper pad (also by MFT.)

Deciding where to attach all the pieces takes me longer, and this time I used some clear acetate to stabilize the balloon bundles as well as the little girl since I wanted her shoes to show. The sentiment is also a die cut from the “Box Card Greetings” die. In the next photo, you can see that the card folds flat so it can be mailed. Typically it would fit in a standard envelope, but in fact, the way I attached the balloons, the ones in the back extend above the top of the box just enough that it will require a slightly larger envelope. This one isn’t going through the mail in any case.

I do enjoy putting these together, and hopefully Maddy will enjoy it as well!

There are three current challenges all looking for flowers. Two of them are also CAS challenges, and I’ve got a card for them: The Flower Challenge, AAA Birthday, and CAS on Friday.

This fabulous die cut is from Altenew–Spring Rose. The roses here are just gorgeous right now. Although we have many different flowers in our yard, we do not have any roses. As soon as Tracy finishes staining our fence, we plant to put in one or more climbing roses. To create this rose, I watercolored a panel in pinks and greens. I lightly penciled in where the rose and leaves would be and it came out pretty well. 

Then I die cut the rose again in the center of my white panel as well as the watercolored piece and inlaid them onto the white panel. After stamping the sentiment form Pretty Pink Posh’s “Everyday Greetings,” I added some dimensional foam to the back and adhered it to a white card.

Hope your weekend is off to a good start. We’re having friends here for dinner tomorrow night. Entertaining was one of the things I missed the most during the pandemic. Hopefully, it will be nice enough to spend some time on the patio.

It’s been well over a week since I’ve blogged. Last week was the busiest week I’ve had since the pandemic lockdown ended, and I’ve been fully vaccinated. Then at the end of the week, I started having intense pain from my shoulder to my elbow on my right arm. It turns out I have an impinged nerve in my neck, and it totally took me out of commission for two full days. Following surgery about 10 years ago, I had my first experience with nerve pain and (fortunately) had forgotten how debilitating it is. Luckily, I saw a doctor before the weekend, and the medication has begun to do its work. The last couple of days the pain has been intermittent, so I’m back in the craft room, and out and about.

Just Us Girls has an interesting challenge this week: No Stamping. My three granddaughters all made me special hand-painted plates, and I wanted to send each of them their own thank you note. I had previously die cut a huge selection of letters in bright colors with Papertrey Ink’s Block Alphabet, and managed to find the right letters for three separate cards.

To add some interest, I scored a series of lines across the middle of the cards, and then adhered the letters. 

They needed just a “little something” and the tiny heart stickers did the trick!

“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!)