It’s not often I have a reason to create a baby card, but this past week our neighbors have had their first child. I can’t wait to meet her, and I had a lot of fun at Carter’s picking out a cute pink and ruffled outfit for her. (Needless to say, I came home with a bag of clothes for Caleb as well who will be here in just three days!)

I reached for some of my favorite papers and stamps for baby cards: Papertrey’s Bitty Star Basics and Bitty Dots patterned paper, and Bitty Baby Blessing stamps. The tag is the Papertrey Tag Sale #3 die which is tied with my favorite sheer Midori ribbon which I bought years ago at Impress. 

I finished it off with some paper piecing and some pearls from Michael’s. This is another card for the Simon Says Wednesday “Anything Goes” challenge this week.

Several years ago, I made myself a birthday calendar which hangs over my desk. I consult it at the beginning of every month (and usually the middle of the prior month) so I’m sure to have the cards ready for birthdays and anniversarys. I do have to hustle to get a sympathy card made. I never seem to have one of those made ahead, and usually a get well card is made at the moment I need it. But I’m very prompt with birthday cards, so it surprises me that I’ve had to make two “forgot your birthday” cards this summer. My go-to sentiment is this:

Given my fondness for cameras, and my love of photography it seems a perfect fit.

Papertrey Ink’s Shutterbug Special includes one of my favorite camera stamps, and I used it for both the background and the focal point. The inside sentiment is from this set as well.

Here’s one I made earlier with just a slight modification in the sentiment and a camera from Mama Elephant’s “We Click” set. The inside sentiment reads “So sorry I forgot your birthday!”

I’m linking these up to the Moxie Fab Birthday Card Challenge, as well as the Simon Says “Anything Goes” Challenge.

I’ll be back later with some more birthday cards–finished ahead of time!

This is my second post of the day, but it’s the first time I’ve had a chance to play around with the Summer Card Camp challenges. Here are this week’s colors and sketches:

Truthfully, these are the most difficult colors I can ever remember trying to work with. After I finished the first two cards, I realized you only needed to use four of the five colors. That certainly would have been easier! 

The first card, and my least favorite, was supposed to be Sketch #2, but it ended up looking more like Sketch #3.

Looking through my embellishment drawer, I came upon these wooden start stickers (Studio Calico?), the patterned papers are from Paper Source (purple) and the Hip Hip Hooray paper pad by American Craft. The sentiment stamp is one of my oldest wooden stamps (St. Louis Stamp Design). I managed to get the fifth color in there with some My Mind’s Eye enamel dots. I think the funky light at the bottom of the card is because the banner extends off both ends. 

I’m happier with the second card.

I haven’t used this border die cut from Memory Box yet, so I thought it would be perfect for Sketch #3. I used three patterned papers, two from Bo Bunny and one from American Craft, added some pink gems (there’s that fifth color again!), and a tiny banner I hand-cut for the sentiment from Star Prints (Papertrey Ink.) This card is getting linked to the Moxie Fab Birthday Card Challenge.

My favorite of the three cards is this last one where I tried a double-stamping technique Jennifer McGuire shared in a video. 

I used Mama Elephant’s “Trifecta” stamps to create the background. It’s a border stamp with three rows of tiny triangles. First I stamped it in purple, and then went back and slightly offset the blue triangles. This is the kind of thing that usually is a disaster for me, so I’m really please that I only had to do it once. The rosettes are an oldie but goodie and I’m not sure who made them (another find in the embellishment drawer. The die cut banner and sentiment are a set from Simon Says called “Tilted Banners.” 

I’ll be linking this last card up with the Moxie Fab “Trendy Triangles Challenge.” 

This month’s challenge for the Papertrey Blog Hop was a color challenge. There were six gorgeous color combinations to choose from based on the “Fruits of Summer.” You can see them all here. This color combo screams summer to me, so that’s where I started.

I was hoping to use the new birthday stamps I ordered this month from Papertrey, but for some (yet unknown) reason, the package arrived in Rochester, but was returned to Papertrey Ink before it ever got on a mail truck! I was so disappointed, but turned to the Wonderful Words: Birthday die cut for my card.

I die cut the word in each of the five colors, carefully cut the letters apart, and reassembled the word. “Wishes” was selectively stamped from the Think Big Favorites #16, and I die cut the stars from the Star Gazer dies. It’s a pretty simple card, but I’m happy with it. I’ll be entering it in the Moxie Fab Birthday Card Challenge as well. 

You can find lots more colorful inspiration here today.

I don’t often play along with the Tuesday Trigger at Moxie Fab World, but I love the color combination for this week’s challenge and decided to get my mother-in-law’s birthday card done a few days early.

I’ve seen Maile Belles use this design on lots of her cards recently and decided I’d give it a try. I like the overlaid sentiment panel quite a bit and think I’ll use it again.

Papertrey Ink came out with this floral set “Happiness in Bloom” a few months ago, but I held off as I surely have lots of floral stamps. I already owned the dies which were released several years ago, though, so this month I broke down. Their recent floral sets have included a variety of ways to double or triple stamp the flowers which makes them much more interesting. Everything on this card came from that stamp set.

When I first saw the challenge at Case Study, I didn’t have anything in mind, but then the CASual Friday challenge to use an arrow on the card came along, and I had an idea to combine the two challenges. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.

I don’t usually do too well stamping a pattern, but the triangles from the Mama Elephant “Trifecta” set were easy to work with. The sentiment with the arrow came from Papertrey’s “Live, Love, Life.”

ETA: I’m linking this to the Moxie Fab “Trendy Triangles Challenge.”

Both of these cards meet the challenge at Simon Says for “Anything Goes.”

Papertrey’s June blog hop challenge was to use a “touch of gold.” It really is one of the hot trends right now, and I had a variety of ideas. But, once again, time ran short, so I decided to go with a simple design and created a set of cards that I’ll be able to pull out when needed. Another piece of inspiration came from Papercraft Magazines 350 Cards & Gifts issues which features a whole section of card sets. I made three birthday cards and three thank you notes. Let’s start with the birthday cards.

I started by embossing a Nestability Classic Rectangle on the card front. I ended up using three pieces of Papertrey’s new shimmer cardstock which I love, and three pieces of regular cardstock. The blue and black are shimmer cardstock, and the purple is Royal Velvet. Then I embossed the Boutique Borders: Birthday stamps in the middle of the embossed rectangle. Simple and elegant. Here’s a closer look:

Here are the thank you notes.

I found several sentiments that fit between the beautiful boutique borders and tried three different ones. I kept the cardstock lighter and only the back card is a shimmer cardstock. The first card uses one of my all-time favorite “thank you” sentiments from Impress. I’ve had it for years. The others came from Papertrey’s Round and Round and Autumn Abundance. I’m quite sure this Boutique Borders will become a  go-to set. You can check out the loads of inspiration right here.