The current challenge at Time Out uses this quote:

It’s one of my favorite quotes, and the perfect inspiration for a birthday card I needed to make for one of my favorite young ladies who will soon be 16. I’ve used the “Celebrate It” for my inspiration.

I’ve had this stunning image from Concord and 9th (“Happy Day”) for a long time, but this is the first time I’ve used it. I stamped it in black on Tim Holtz watercolor card and got out my Daniel Smith watercolors. 

I have an iridescent silver which I mixed with the bright pink which gives it a pretty glimmer. I added some Glitter Glue to the frosting as well.

I die cut the image with one of the Simon Says “Stitched Rectangles” and mounted it on a piece of sparkly textured cardstock I found in my stash. (I have no idea where it came from!) The final touch was to add a few sequins. We’re going to be out of town for the birthday party, but I’m leaving the card with her mom. I hope she likes it.

You’ll find other celebratory cards right here at the Time Out Challenges blog.

Very unusual, but this is the second post of the day because today is the monthly blog hop hosted by Papertrey Ink. I wasn’t sure I’d find the time to participate, but then a meeting I had yesterday had to be rescheduled, and the afternoon opened up. I have two cards to share. Only one can be posted for the blog hop, but the other I’ll post for the Make It Monday challenge which was to create a shadow sentiment. Both cards started, however, with the gorgeous inspiration piece posted for the blog hop.

For the first card, I focused on the pink floral arrangements on the table. I was also influenced by the design Lizzie Jones used on her card for Make It Monday.

I chose “Gran’s Garden” for the card. It’s a stamp set I don’t use often enough. The frame for the sentiment is an old favorite, “Fillable Frames 10,” and the sentiment is from another favorite and well-used set “Birthday Bash Sentiments.:

Here you can see the shadow sentiment. I tried a variety of things before I settled on second generation stamping to create the shadow. If you’re unfamiliar with that term it means I stamped the original sentiment, then moved the stamp just a bit, and stamped it again without cleaning off the stamp. You can also see the embossed background created with the Papertrey Ink “Rustic Burlap” Impression Plate.

I thought this would be the only card I created, and that I would post it on both challenges, but still having some time to play, I pulled out a stamp set I purchased on a whim. It’s a $5 set meant to work with a larger set of paper doll kinds of stamps called “Dress Up Dolls: Birthday.” I thought the images would go well with a variety of animal stamp sets I use when creating cards for my grandchildren. The new technique for me was to create a background of randomly stamped images. I’ve seen a variety of these recently, most often on Yana Smakula’s blog.

She suggested that solid images would work best for this technique, but I’m pretty happy with the way the outline images worked here. It makes for a bit cleaner look, which I always like. Rather than a large center-stage sentiment, I opted to die cut the balloons from the set for the focal image.

I did take Yana’s suggestion to assign each stamp a given color which I took from the inspiration photo, as well as the birthday party theme shown in the inspiration piece. Since there were so many tiny images I laid out the stamps on the ink pads I used. I took the photo after dark with my iPhone, but thought I’d share it.

I chose four Copic markers to color the balloons, but decided they needed a coating of Glitter Glue as well. Glitter Glue always darkens the colors so the darker pink ended up looking more red that I would have liked. I mounted the balloons with dimensional adhesive, and finally decided to add a sentiment to the focal image. It came from the “Initial Sentiments: Birthday” set.

It’s a bit easier to see the glitter here as well as the glitter added to the sentiment banner with a Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen. 

So I’ll post the top card to the Make It Monday challenge, and this one to today’s blog hop. It was a lot of fun to try a couple new techniques, and I was delighted to have an afternoon to play! 

The Flower Challenge is new to me, and so is the current challenge: spotlight stamping where you selectively color just part of an image. I needed an encouragement card, and thought this would be a good time to try it out.

I chose one of my favorite stamp sets from the Simon Says Card Kits. “Floral Bliss” from the June 2017 kit has such a gorgeous floral bouquet. I stamped it with India Ink Black on Tim Holtz watercolor paper and got out my Inktense watercolor pencils.

The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s “It’s the Thought.” I chose to color the three main flowers and the two sprays above in pinks with orange accents. I thought a bit more orange was in order so I color just the centers of the daisies.  The final touch was to add three black pearls by Amuse.

I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have give this technique any thought without the challenge, but I’m quite happy with it in the end. Check out how others approached the challenge right here. 

I’ve had more than the usual amount of time to create this weekend. The photos at the end of the post will explain it pretty well. Along with some birthday cards and Valentines which I can’t post for awhile, I have a set of thank you cards to enter at the Time Out Challenge: Thankful. It’s their 100th challenge which is quite an accomplishment.

I pulled out two oldies—Papertrey’s “Brushed Off” and Winnie and Walter’s “The Big, The Bold, and You.” Just by changing the colors of the ink I came up with three quite different feeling cards. I used Hero Art’s Ombre pads, which I do have a bit of trouble with. Some look a lot more ombre than others.

I did add a strip of washi tape down the side of one of the cards.

On Friday, our temperature reached 50°. We’d seen warmer temps on Thursday as well, and almost all the snow had melted by the end of the day on Friday.

About 8:00 Friday night, the snow began and didn’t let up until mid-day on Saturday. Tracy was down and out with some kind of bug, so Matt came over in the afternoon to snow plow our driveway and sidewalks. He took a yardstick and measured 13 1/2 inches in our front yard.

Needless to say, I was home for the day—and most of today as well. Hope it’s warmer and less snowy where you are! Off to check out the inspiration at Time Out Challenges.

I’m excited to be the guest of Michelle Leon for the first Fusion Card Challenge of 2018: Mail Call. The inspiration piece at Fusion always has two parts:  a photograph and a sketch. You can opt to use one or both. The Design Team has lots of inspiration for you right here. Each designer has invited a friend as a guest so there’s twice the inspiration this time around. Be sure to check it out!

I decided to use both the photograph and the sketch. Looking at the photo, I took three elements:  the wooden boards, the color combination of turquoise, gray, and white and the keys.

I scored the gray portion of the card to represent the gray boards in the photograph, and added two shades of turquoise to the right side of the card following the sketch. The key (Papertrey Ink “Lock and Key“) was die cut three times from silver paper and layered for another bit of dimension. I didn’t have any stamped sentiments that worked well, so went to my digital files and found this circle. It was filed without any reference to the designer. I resized it, added two words to the center to create a sentiment with the key filling in for the last “word,” and die cut it with Simon Says “Stitched Circles.” Finally I adhered the focal piece to a white card base, and then decided to add the three silver hearts that fell out of the key die.

Join in with the Fusion DT and be sure to check out the gallery in a few days.

Becca Cruger

Michelle Leon

Betty J

Carol Mayne

Jeanne Jachna

Karren Johnson

Linda Callahan

Lyndal Higgins

Michelle Lupton

Michelle Williams

To play along:

After the combo red, black, and white, gray might be one of my favorite colors. Strangely enough I don’t often pull that color for cards very often. But this week’s CASology Challenge encouraged me to change that. 

My favorite gray cardstocks are all made by Simon Says. There are three gradations of it, and this time I pulled the darkest of the three: Slate. The patterned paper came from the Pinkfresh Studio “Live More” collection, and both were part of the Simon Says Card Kit from August. (I have three boxes of papers and embellishments from old Simon Says kits, and need to pull them out more often.) The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s “Wet Paint II” die collections. I die cut three of them and layered them for some dimension. Couldn’t be a simpler card.

It’s a frigid day here in Western New York, in the teens with an even colder wind chill. A friend treated me to lunch at the Monroe Golf Club. It was decorated beautifully for Christmas, and the food was superb. Home now, snuggled in with a bit of crafting time.

As soon as I saw the Color Throw Down Challenge this week, I knew I’d want to get a card made for it. Gold, Silver, and Black—what’s not to like? 

There was still a pile of silver snowflakes laying on my desk from a previous project as well as a piece of True Black cardstock with a gold sentiment that didn’t make the cut for another project. 

All it took then was to die cut the black piece with a Stitched Rectangle die (Simon Says), adhere it to a piece of gold cardstock (Michael’s) and add the snowflakes. I also added two gold sequins and some PTI rainstones to the center of the snowflakes for a little bling.

The second challenge was inspired by left-over pieces on the desk, as well. As soon as I saw the Freshly Made Sketches design, I knew I had the start of a card.

There was a plaid oval left over from the card I posted here and I found the silver JOY in my drawer of previous die cut images. I added a second silver oval, and some Holly Jolly dies with red Amuse pearls to finish off the design.

I brushed the holly leaves with a Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen. This angle shows the glitter in the plaid paper by My Mind’s Eye (“Comfort & Joy”) as well.

Although I’ve finished the bulk of the Christmas cards that we send out each year, I’m glad to have a few extras to add to the mix.

A quick post for the Fusion: Red Christmas challenge. I’ve admired the challenges here for a long time. One of the things I particularly like is there are always three choices. You can use the photo, the sketch, or combine them. 

My card follows the sketch this time. I was also attracted to the photo, and although I have a sizeable collection of pitchers I don’t own any good stamps so I took the plaid runner for my inspiration. I think it’s the sketch, however, that is the real inspiration here.

I die cut an oval with one of my old Spellbinder sets from a piece of plaid paper from the My Mind’s Eye “Comfort and Joy” paper pad. I silver embossed the sentiment from Papertrey’s “Rustic Wreath” set, and added two snowflakes cut from a shimmery paper from my stash. The snowflakes are from My Favorite Things “Stylish Snowflakes.” I admired them last year but they were out of stock until after the holiday, but I picked them up on sale later. I’d forgotten about them until I reorganized my dies last week.

Sadly, you can’t see in any of the photos that the white line in the plaid is a glittery one. It makes the card much more festive than it appears here. To finish off the card, I added two rhinestones.

Hope your weekend is a lovely one. I’m looking forward to a little time with my oldest granddaughter tomorrow afternoon, and a day of crafting. Our tree is finally up, lit, and decorated and just in time as we have family coming for supper on Sunday, and the book group on Monday evening.  

It’s the 25th of the month, and that means it’s time for the November Blog Hop at Papertrey Ink. The inspiration piece this month was really lovely.

I took my cues from the plaid napkin, the beautiful swag on the chair, and the large gold sentiment in the middle of the table.

With the exception of the plaid paper (unknown from stash) and the large gold sentiment (Technique Tuesday), all the supplies are Papertrey Ink:  Winter Berries (transformed to fall berries with Canyon Clay and Terracotta Tile inks), Leaf Prints, and the tiny sentiment from Gathered Garden—all adhered to a Canyon Clay card base.

This card also fits a new-to-me challenge: Time Out Challenges. The current challenge is Inspired by Words: Gratitude.

For those celebrating in the U.S., I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday.