The new Color Hues Challenge is up and running, and it’s colors are:

Christmas is just nine days away, but I still have a card (or two) to share even though nearly all of them are in the mail now.

This isn’t the card I first imagined nor is it the first card I made for this challenge. From the moment I finished the first card, I knew I was going to do another one. The first one was just too “busy” for my tastes. This one is almost a one layer card and definitely in the CAS camp! The idea for this card came as I was looking through my Christmas stamps for something entirely different. When I came across W+9’s “Woodland Wreath,” I knew just what I wanted to do. 

The stamp set comes with four different wreaths that can be layered (or not) to create a variety of wreaths. This one used two of the stamps in two different green inks which gives is a depth you wouldn’t get with just one stamp or just one ink. Once it was stamped on the blue card base, I wanted to add some ornaments or berries, and was excited to find these beautiful blue pearls in my stash. The next challenge was to decide on how to stamp the sentiment from Altenew’s “Holiday Tag Sentiments.” Another lucky find in the stash was this glittery blue embossing powder from Simon Says–“Ultra-fine Mermaid Embossing Powder.” 

The final touch was the ribbon bow–a third stash find! I can’t remember the last time I used real ribbon on a card, but I love this blue and green ribbon and think it’s just perfect.

Hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what our Guest Designer, Steph, and the rest of the Design Team has come up with . . .

 Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

and join in the fun!

My brother celebrated a big birthday this week. His card features seven candles, and although I forgot to photograph the inside, it reads “Times 10!”

I used another of my NBUS dies, and I can’t understand why it’s taken me so long. There are actually eight candles in the My Favorite Things “Happy Birthday Candles,” and you can die cut them on the front of the card and back them with color. Since I only needed seven, I die cut them and colored them with Distress Inks. Then I arranged them on the front of the card, using the negative die cut as a guide to keep them straight and well-spaced. 

The sentiment from Papertrey Ink was die cut with gold mirror cardstock, and the flames from a gold glitter paper. (Not a stamp to be seen on this card!)

I used my Hero Arts “Rounded Rectangles” to die cut the main panel, and rounded the bottom corners of the card for a bit of interest.

The current challenge at AAA Birthday is “Twinkle” and I think the candles definitely qualify. I’m also linking up with Darnell’s NBUS challenge for December. 

There is no end to the number of card challenges on the internet, and I’ve discovered a new one to me. The usual route to finding a new challenge is by reading blogs of other card makers. All of a sudden an interesting challenge site pops up. I usually scroll through a few of the challenges to see what I think, and then I add it to my list. I love the name of this one:  Just Add Ink! And this round that’s one of three elements you can use: Stamps, Ink, and Paper. No die cuts (that’s a hard one for me,) no embellishments (not so hard.) 

This card was created with one of the beautiful silhouette stamps in a Gina K kit I purchased this summer. Her kits are loaded with product and are an excellent value. The quality is top-notch, too. This is the only kit of hers I have at the moment, but her most recent one is on its way to me. Once it gets here, you’ll be seeing lots of it!

I ink blended the background on a piece of white Bristol cardstock, using the Taylored Expression “Rectangle Mask.” Then I stamped the silhouette from “Natural Silhouettes” in black ink. My new favorite for silhouettes and sentiments is Altenew’s Obsidian pigment ink. It gives a great impression with the first stamping. 

The sentiment is also from “Natural Silhouettes,” and I overlapped it a bit on the bottom of the ink blending. A narrow black cardstock frame on a Stamp Market Fuschia card base finished it up.

It’s time for the fifth Color Hues Challenge, and the colors this week are:

This was a fun card to create. I knew what I wanted to do from the outset, and it turned out pretty much as I hoped.

I started by dry embossing pieces of Harvest Gold and Classic Kraft cardstock with the Taylored Expression’s embossing folder, “Dotted Lattice.” Then I die cut the “Arboscello Tree” by Memory Box from Bristol paper and ink blended it with the coordinating inks from Papertrey Ink.

After piecing the two embossed panels together and adhering the tree in the center, I added the sentiment from The Greetery’s “Sentiment Suite: Thanks.” I added dimensional tape to both the banner (“Sentiment Suite) and the embossed panel. The cream card base is 5X7. I don’t often make that size card, but the die cut tree determined the final size of the card.

I hope you’ll hop over to the Color Hues Challenge and join in the fun, checking out the cards made by our wonderful Guest Designer, JoAnn, and my awesome Design Team members.

It’s Color Week at Just Us Girls Challenge:

The colors–purple, black, and orange–seemed custom-made for a Halloween card. This time, the design I envisioned ended up looking exactly as I imagined it. 

I started by stamping and coloring with Copic markers the three sets of witches’ feet in purple, black, and orange. The stamps and coordinating die are from a Hero Arts set “Witch Feet.” After diecutting the feet, I die cut three circles with Simon Says “Stitched Circle” dies in a piece of orange patterned paper from an old American Crafts 6X6 paper pad. I adhered that to a piece of purple cardstock and trimmed both to leave a narrow border on the black card base.

I arranged all three sets of witches’ shoes in front of the die cut circles. 

The sentiment is from a Make-It-Market kit from Papertrey Ink, “Halloween Pin-ups,” and couldn’t be more perfect! I die cut that with a Pinkfresh Studio, “Worthy Frames.”

I haven’t decided yet how many Halloween cards I’ll be making this year. My three granddaughters seem perfectly happy to share a card, but Caleb and Hannah definitely want cards of their own. Here’s the first one, and I have a second one in mind for a challenge that popped up on my radar a couple days ago. We’ll see how time and inspiration work out this year! 

It’s the second week of my Guest Designer gig for the Just Us Girls Challenge which I am really enjoying! This week is Trend Week and the theme is OMBRE.

This gave me an opportunity to use a new stencil that arrived not long ago from Simon Says, called “Simple Patterns: Trio” designed by Cathy Zielske. I chose the simple stripes pattern, and used the Pinkfresh Studio ink cube pack called “Over the Hills” along with Concord & 9th’s Evergreen to create an ombre background.

Pinkfresh Studio’s “Botanical Branch” was die cut from Pinefeather cardstock (PTI) and layered over the stenciled background. 

Then I die cut the focal panel and the narrow Pinefeather border with Gina K’s “Master Layout #1” dies and layered them onto a top-folded cardbase. The sentiment from The Greetery’s Sentiment Suite: Birthday was embossed in white on a skinny Pinefeather banner from Papertrey Ink. 

The final touch was to add Nuvo Crystal Glaze to each of the berries on the delicate branch for a bit of dimension.

Please hop on over to the JUGS blog to see what the Design Team has to share!

Here’s another card using an image I colored for the #100DayProject. I love this “Folk Hummingbird” stamp by Pinkfresh Studio, and it’s been in my collection for a long time. I don’t know if I was intimidated by it or what, but once I got it out and colored it, I was very glad to have it in my collection.

The “Braided Circle” die from Pinkfresh is also a favorite of mine. After die cutting it I backed it with some subtly ink blended paper and then adhered ti to a card base with dimensional tape. 

Fortunately, I purchased the dies for these images so I didn’t have to fussy cut them! 

A simple sentiment strip seemed to work best. Not sure which stamp set I used for it. I keep a supply of already embossed greeting in a little basket, and found this one there.

In addition to the Just Us Girls Challenge, this is another card for Darnell’s NBUS Challenge. So glad to be adding it to the collection of used stamps, and I’m sure you’ll see it again!

There are two new challenges, both for Clean and Simple cards, that inspired me to pull out a never-before-used stamp set from Simon Says “Your Light.” The first is CAS on Friday where the challenge is SUMMER. The second is CAS Mix Up and the challenge there is Watercolor/Beach.

This lighthouse image reminds me of two lighthouses on Nantucket. One, the Brant Point Lighthouse, sits on the beach as you approach the island, so the setting is similar to the stamp. The other is the Sankaty Lighthouse which has a very similar shape, and I watercolored it in red and white to resemble the Sankaty Lighthouse. This is the first summer my daughter-in-law has missed a summer vacation in Nantucket since she was a little girl. Thanks to her and her family, we’ve enjoyed several vacations there over the last few years. It represents summer for sure, and spending time on its multiple beaches is one of the great pleasures of a vacation there. 

After watercoloring the image with Daniel Smith watercolors, I die cut it with an Essentials by Ellen circle. I die cut another piece of watercolor paper with the smaller Gina K Master Layout die, and a piece of Dark Indigo paper with the larger of those dies.

I adhered both layers to a cream colored card base, after stamping the sentiment in Dark Indigo ink. The focal image was adhered with dimensional tape. It’s odd that in the flat layout, the focal image looks inlaid rather than bumped up!

I decided to leave it all very CAS–no embellishments, no additional images. I’m adding this to the NBUS blog as well–glad to have this set out of the Never Been Used Stuff category.

Today is Father’s Day in the United States and I’m happy to honor three absolutely fabulous dads. I had a lot of fun making these three cards. Tracy’s card was inspired by one I saw on the Minted website. It wasn’t possible to link to the specific card, but it was a lot less colorful than the one Tracy gets today. It did incorporate the retro feel and an arrow that I knew was part of an older Papertrey Ink set. In the end, I didn’t use the arrow at all, but used both Retro sets: “Retro Style: Graduation,” and “Retro Style: Birthday.”

In fact, I ended up using more than my usual number of products: The background was created with My Favorite Things “Radiating Rays” stencil, and the cityscape from MFT’s “You’re Super.”

The sentiment came from the”Retro Style: Birthday” set as well as W+9’s “Super Star” set. After trimming down the focal image panel, I adhered it to a Hawaiian Shore card base, and die cut a narrow black frame with Simon Says “A2 Thin Frames.”

Both Matt and Adam’s cards are very similar and use the same products.

I used Distress Oxide inks to ink blend a background, and then added some water drops to simulate stars and objects in the sky. I also applied a heavy coat of glitter with the Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen. I tried several angles, but couldn’t get a good photo of the glittery effects. After die cutting circles from the top panel, I adhered a slightly larger circle cut from the ink blended paper behind it. The top layer of letters is also die cut from that paper  with Papertrey Ink’s Block Alphabet dies, and layered on two more die cuts from dark blue paper. 

The images, colored with Copic markers and fussy cut, and the sentiment are from My Favorite Things “Out of This World” stamp set. 

I hope these three guys have a great day—they all devote a LOT of time and give a LOT of love to their families!