The last purchase I made before committing to a buying freeze until I used my NBUS that had literally piled up was the most recent Gina K kit. They are a great value and this one focused on flowers which I use over and over again. It took quite some time for the kit to arrive, but it came this week and I was excited to start with this lovely image of daffodils. Although they are definitely one of my favorite flowers, I didn’t have a single set with daffodils. I decided I wanted to use watercolors and stamped the daffodils twice—once with black ink and then white embossed them. I chose the white embossed ones to start with.

One of the issues I’ve always had with white embossed images on white watercolor paper is being able to see the outlines clearly. Tracy gave me a slant board for Christmas, and it worked perfectly. The work is just at just the right angle so it’s easy to see. There are clips to hold the paper and it’s magnetic so I used magnets on the bottom of the paper to hold it steady.

Recently I’ve gone back to my Daniel Smith paints in a palette I set up years ago. Of all the watercolors I own, they are the best quality and the more I use them the better I get at mixing just the colors I want. I chose my color palette from the CAS Colours and Sketches Challenge which seemed just perfect for daffodils.

The sentiment is also from the Easter Blessings set. I love the elegant font. Once the watercoloring was done, I did a bit of shading with Polychromos pencils, stamped the sentiment and die cut it with the smaller layer from Gina K’s Master Layout set. Then I used the larger layer to die cut a saffron layer and added it to a green card base.

Since we’ll be away for Easter, I’ll be sending this to my mother-in-law. I’m thinking that nearly everyone in Tracy’s family will have had both vaccinations by Easter, and may be able to gather for the first time in over a year. We’ll be in Wisconsin with my daughter and her family. 

I’m also sending this card to the Happy Little Stampers: Watercolor (Anything Goes) and NBUS.

A colleague of mine complained once she retired that she was bored, and told a mutual friend not to be in any hurry to leave her job. It’s so far from my reality that I’m amazed by it every time I think of it. Even with all the time at home because of the pandemic, I am rarely, if ever, bored. Right now, I’m running out of time to do all the things I want to do, and to learn all the things I want to learn. I spent a couple of hours today working on the introductory lessons to the Sketching Now Foundations course. I enrolled in it years ago, and was in over my head. I wish I could say I’ve made lots of progress since then, but some of the concepts are still a struggle. And then, of course, I’m also trying to work through using all my unused stamps. That is a LOT more fun! 

The card today is a beautiful floral, called Floral Focus by My Favorite Things. I don’t own the dies, but I’ve seen cards made with this stamp where they’ve separated the floral and used only a portion of it. It is one stamp, however, so that’s how I used it. I pulled out my  Daniel Smith watercolors to color it, and chose Shades of Purple again for The Flower Challenge.

I did the watercoloring on Saturday night, and on Sunday added shading with four different Polychromos pencils. 

The sentiment is from “Everyday Greetings” by Pretty Pink Posh. I gave thought to adding a few sequins, but decided it really didn’t need any, so just added the panel to a green card base. The challenge at Happy Little Stampers Watercolor is Anything Goes so I’m adding this to that challenge as well.

We had a brief, two day, taste of Spring this week, and it was wonderful. Today is sunny, but cold and windy again. Pretty typical for March. There are several challenges out there calling for Spring cards, so I pulled out of my NBUS box a stamp and die set, “Blooms and Buds” by Reverse Confetti that I’ve had for way too long. It almost got put into the “Donated” bag last week, but I’m glad I pulled out. Sometime guilt works well . . . 

I started with a sketch from CAS Colours and Sketches:

After stamping and die cutting, I arranged my flowers in the lower left-hand corner of a piece of white cardstock, but it felt too plain so decided to run it through my die cut machine with a Taylored Expression embossing folder. That’s the Trend Challenge for Just Us Girls this week:

I rounded the corners of the floral piece as well as an orange Memory Box card before putting them together. The last touch was to add a sentiment strip from Pink and Main and some tiny pearls to the center of the flowers. 

The Reverse Confetti Stock Your Stash challenge is Spring as is the challenge at CAS on Friday. Sending this card their way as well.

Not long ago, I watched Therese create a couple of cute cards using a rainbow stamp from Ellen Hutson and a collaborative stamp with Ellen Hutson and Avery Elle. I had both stamp sets so I pinned it to my Pinterest board for kids. My CASE is similar, but I chose to use a die from The Stamp Market for my rainbow in an effort to use another product that had been sitting in my stash. I had already colored one of the critters from The Peek-a-Boo Pals Camp Wanna Stamp set so I set about creating the card. 

After attaching the rainbow to white cardstock, I added it to a red cardbase. The die cut cloud is from Papertrey Ink, and both the cloud and the cute bear are adhered with dimensional tape. I created a red frame using two of Ellen Hutson’s Essential Rectangle dies and then added that to the panel.

The sentiment is a preprinted one from Simon Says. After attaching it, I added the bear’s paws so he appears to be holding the greeting.

I’m entering the card in two challenges:  Just Us Girls: Animals and Addicted to CAS where the challenge is also Animals. It’s my second entry to both challenges—so unusual!

This card’s all set for a very cute little girl who will be turning four next month. 

It’s not often that I can create a card for four challenges, but it’s the luck of the Irish in this case. St. Patrick’s Day is coming and all four challenges feature some aspect of the traditions surrounding St. Patrick’s Day. Luckily for me I have two birthdays to celebrate–one on the day itself and another on the 18th.

Here are the challenges:

The Card Concept Challenge is a photo inspiration: I’m picking up on the hat (St. Patrick’s Day) and the green for my card.
As usual, it fits their category “Clean and Simple.”

CASology’s challenge is Luck, and my card features four-leaf clovers, definitely a sign of luck!

At JUGS, the challenge is Animals, and I’ve yet another Anita Jeram cutie holding the four-leaf clover.

It’s been awhile since I’ve played with Seize the Birthday, and yes, there are three shades of green created with three green Karin watercolor markers.

So finally, the card itself. As I said it features another of the Anita Jeram illustrations from the Colorado Craft Company. Knowing I had St. Patrick’s Day cards to create, it was a must-have. 

I stamped the design on Altenew watercolor paper and colored it with Karin brush markers. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s Ways to Say: Birthday.

I wanted a narrow frame of traditional St. Patrick’s green (New Leaf from PTI) and then added it to a card base created with Green Parakeet (PTI).

I hope the luck of the Irish is with you today!

The current challenge at The Paper Players is a sketch challenge, and one that appealed to me. At Addicted to CAS the challenge is “Animals,” and I thought I could combine an image from another of my unused/new stamp sets and get a birthday card into the stash.

Earlier I shared one of the stamps from Colorado Crafts illustrated by Anita Jeram. This is another of her darling images.

Her illustrations cry out for watercolors so I got out my Daniel Smith watercolors and created a bit of a background as well as coloring the bunny and his/her balloon. 

I kept the rest simple; a narrow black frame and a white embossed sentiment from Pink and Main. Typically, a CAS card calls for white space, but I’m a believer that it can also be colored space as well! 

The sun is shining here, and I hope it’s the same for you!

I really enjoyed coming up with a one-layer card last week, and decided to try another one, both for Less Is More (my second entry) and AAA Cards where the challenge is a sketch. 

I opted to use Copic markers rather than watercolor since I wanted to use Neenah #110 cardstock to dry emboss the My Favorite Things “Peek-a-Boo” die. 

Once I embossed the rectangle, I stamped the smallest flower from Pink Fresh Studio’s new “Friendship Blooms” stamp set. I won a $25 gift certificate during their release blog hop, and decided to purchase this stamp set. It has gorgeous florals and wonderful sentiments. You’ll be seeing more of it soon.

After coloring the floral with Copic markers and adding some detail with Polychromos colored pencils, I stamped a simple greeting from Sentiment Suite: Birthday by The Greetery. Although I also use the Peek-a-Boo window die to cut an open window, I think I prefer it embossed. 

One of my intentions for March is to use as many unused or new stamps or dies as I can. I gathered them altogether and put them in a basket. Some of them are relatively new, but to my chagrin, some of them have been in my collection for well over a year! No more purchases until I’ve worked my way through the pile.