Time Out posted a new photo challenge yesterday, and as soon as I saw it I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Here’s the fabulous photo:

My granddaughters are coming tomorrow to bake valentine cookies, and I wish ours would be this beautiful! But it wasn’t the cookies that attracted me as much as it was the colors and the patterns. I knew that Papertrey Ink’s Bitty Big papers would be great to replicate a couple of these hearts, and I have new floral dies from The Greetery to play with as well. I also wanted to make a valentine for a dear friend, so after dinner last night I sat down, and this is what I came up with:

I die cut three different sized hearts from the Bitty Big papers in Black and Pale Peony as well as some Pure Poppy with My Favorite Things “Stitched Hearts” dies. Then I die cut some of The Greetery’s BotaniCuts: Forget-Me-Not flowers from watercolor paper and sponged them with Pure Poppy and Pale Peony inks along with a couple of leaves sponged with New Leaf. Here’s a closer look at the pretty flowers.

I die cut both a white panel and a red panel with Ellen Hutson’s Essential Rectangles which cut the rectangle as well as the narrow frame. After mounting those on a white card base, I arranged the hearts and flowers and added the sentiment from Reverse Confetti’s “Crushin'” embossed in white on a strip of black cardstock.

It’s not often I get a card for a challenge created so quickly, but I need to deliver this to my friend tomorrow morning. I’ll be back again tomorrow with some more valentines for friends and on the big day with the valentines I made for family. 

It’s Valentine Week here on the blog. I have another one to share today, and hopefully, a few more before Valentine’s Day on Sunday. I’m sending (or delivering) more valentines than usual this year due to the pandemic and the fact that I can’t see my friends, several of whom live alone. 

Although I ended up liking this card a lot, it is a far cry from my initial design idea. Some of it happened because I wasn’t happy with the first dies I used, and then I made an error die- cutting the hearts which gave me a whole new basket of ideas. The card uses only two die sets, both new to me from the latest offering at The Greetery, “Shapely Hearts” and “Let’s Have a Word: Love.”

Without thinking, I first cut the “Shapely Heart” dies without cutting them apart, which gave me three hearts–one small whole heart, and two hearts with holes in them. That prompted the beginning of the card. After separating the hearts, I die cut the largest one from a piece of patterned paper in The Stamp Market’s “Miss Modern” collection. Then I added Distress Glitter to the medium-sized heart which had the small heart cut from within it.  That allowed the patterned paper to show through again. To add some dimension, I added foam tape to the glittery heart.

Then I die cut the love sentiment three times in black cardstock, adhered them together, and layered it over the hearts. The last design element was three scored lines on the top and bottom of the card. 

Sending this one off to three challenges. I’m entering this into Just Us Girls Challenge: Valentine. It’s a favorite challenge of mine, and this is my second entry. I’ve never played along with the  Happy Little Stampers Die Challenge: Anything Goes, but this card is nothing but dies! And, of course, the NBUS Challenge, whenever I break out new products!

The impetus for creating this valentine was the CASology Challenge: Envelope. In the end, my card may not be CAS enough, although I’m going to toss it into the ring anyway. It would have been just fine without the ink-splattered background layer, but I really loved how that looked, and went with it. 

I started out with the new-to-me die from Mama Elephant, “Botanic Envelope.” Then I started digging through the envelope of already die-cut hearts to see what I could find. In the same box with the envelope of hearts, is an envelope with already created background pieces where I found the ink-splattered rectangle. I ended up die cutting a few more hearts with a new Gemini die that came with my Gemini, Jr. — another unused die until now. 

I embossed in gold the sentiment from Sugar Peas ” Everyday Sentiments” on a strip of white paper and trimmed it out. 

Although this may not meet the requirements for a totally CAS card, it seems pretty clean to me, although maybe not simple enough! I know it will be just fine to enter it in the Paper Players Challenge: Hearts and/or Stars, and of course, it’s going to Darnell’s monthly NBUS Challenge. This may be the first time I’ve used the envelope die, but it certainly will not be the last!

As you might imagine, there are a lot of valentine and heart challenges open right now. I made this one, however, for the Color Throwdown Challenge, a challenge that often passes me by, and even this time, I’m linking up at the last minute. The colors were perfect for the candy hearts in an old Papertrey Ink stamp set.

Papertrey Ink’s “Friendship Jar” has long been a favorite and I have several versions of it. Today’s card uses the original “Friendship Jar” and the “Spring Fillers.”

The candy hearts are from the “Spring Fillers” set and I colored them with Copic markers. Then I die cut and stamped two versions of the mason jar, one plain and one with a window that I backed with acetate. I used some very thin strips of cardstock to add a little dimension between the top jar and the candies. Before adding it to the patterned paper layer (backed with foam for more dimension) I tied a piece of pink and white twine around the top of the jar.

The sentiment from Avery Elle’s “Seasonal Simple Sentiments” was stamped with The Stamp Market’s Fresh Pink ink. For a long time, I didn’t have many pinks to choose from, but The Stamp Market has great pinks, and I purchased three of the ink pads a year or so ago. The final touch was to add three tiny enamel hearts from Doodlebug Designs.

I’m also entering The Library Challenge which is “Jar of Hearts” (perfect!), Just Us Girls which is “Valentine,” and Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: “Love is in the Air.”

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.