The Wednesday Challenge at Simon Says this week is Midsummer Blues. It's a bit past mid-summer here, and I'm beginning to feel the blues! I'm definitely not looking forward to the cold weather and having to isolate inside again. I'm trying to make the most of every warm, sunny day—getting out for walks or bike rides, eating our meals on the patio, seeing some friends for patio and porch visits. 

But I do have a pretty card for the Midsummer Blues challenge created almost entirely with products from The Greetery.

After ink blending a panel, I die cut it with one of the Nordic Frames and adhered it to a card base made with woodgrain paper from Simon Says. Then I stamped a group of images from Signed and Sealed with a Kiss. Betsy Veldman's layering stamps are among the easiest to use. It's a technique I've yet to master.

I die cut the images and arranged them on the frame, adding a banner with a sentiment from The Greetery's Sentiment Suite: Birthday. The banner die is also from the Sentiment Suite series.

The final touch was to add a few Papertrey Ink clear rainstones.

I'm back with the last two assignments from the My Favorite Things Summer School: Day 3: Symmetry and Day 5: White Space. The first card for the Symmetry lesson turned out to be difficult to photograph—far too much shiny metallic, but I'm guessing it will go over well with my granddaughter when she turns nine next month.

I knew I wanted a star as the focal point so started with two nested heart dies and cut a frame from some gold metallic 12×12 paper that's been in my stash for a long time. Then I found the metallic gold patterned paper in an old Christmas paper pack by My Mind's Eye and die cut the larger star from the center of the patterned paper after die cutting it with the smaller Gina K Master Layout die. I laid the frame inside and taped it securely from the back before adding a piece of acetate for the shaker portion of the card.

I filled the shaker with a variety of sequins and tiny stars from at least three different collections. After backing the shaker, I die cut the larger of the frames from the Gina K set in gold and layered the two together.

Finally I die cut a banner and silver embossed the greeting from Papertrey Ink's "Ways to Say: Birthday." That proved to be a challenge. The heat from the heat gun melted the gold paper at the same time it melted the embossing powder. The next try worked just fine—need to be very quick.

My card for the White Space lesson is a riff on the piece created for the lesson. I recently purchased the "You Have My Heart" stamp from My Favorite Things on a sale day. The little girl reminds me of Hannah, and she's a dog lover so that made it even better. I'm on a wait list for another set with the same little girl image which can be colored to work with any one of my four granddaughers.

I colored the image with Copic markers and fussy cut it out. Then I die cut the window with the "Rectangle Peek-a-Boo" die—one of my favorites! I backed it with a piece of patterned paper from an older paper pack of MFT's "Watercolor Wash: Brights" and added two die cut clouds from Papertrey Ink.

The pattern in the little girl's dress was added by overlaying a small dotted stencil by Simon Says. The Copics bled through the stencil so the polka dots aren't as even as I would have liked them to be. Too late at that point to start all over! This is clearly a summery setting, but the sentiment came from MFT's "Polar Bear Pals" which seemed just perfect for the card. And this is another card for Darnell's NBUS blog. My goal is to use something new as often as possible this month. So far, I'm doing pretty well.

Making these cards was a great way to spend a quiet Sunday. And now, I can claim the Graduation Badge:

After all that sitting, however, it didn't take much for my husband to talk me into a long bike ride along the Erie Canal. 

There were five days of Summer School at My Favorite Things. I posted Day 1's lesson here, and today I have cards for Day 2: Rainbow and Day 4: Ombre.

I used a favorite die from last Christmas to create a rainbow wreath. It was fun to transform the die into a summer design.

I die cut the wreath from five colors of card stock: Pure Poppy, Orange Zest, Buttercup, New Leaf, and Blueberry Sky. All except Buttercup, which is one of the new Concord & 9th colors, are Papertrey Ink papers. Then I reassembled the wreath on a piece of Neenah card stock. 

The sentiment is also from My Favorite Things stamp set "You're Super." Then I die cut the panel with a Hero Arts "Rounded Rectangle Infinity" dies. 

Finally I found a piece of patterned paper that repeated the rainbow theme in an old paper pack by Pebbles, "Fun in the Sun." Finally I added five enamel dots to finish the card.

Day 4's subject was creating a card using ombré coloring. It took me awhile to find a product from My Favorite Things that would work, but then I remembered I had their "Big Balloons" stencil.

Getting the ombré effect with ink blending wasn't quite as easy as I expected, but I think it worked out fine in the end. I used the new Concord and 9th inks, Aqua Sky, Buttercup, and Marmalade which are so bright and colorful. The blending brushes didn't work as well as the old ink blenders which applied the ink with a much softer, smoother look.

It is a bit harder to see the yellow ombré effect on the yellow balloon because of the overlapping blue and orange balloons. I used Papertrey Ink's "Birthday Balloons" stamps for the strings. What you can see more clearly in this photo is the embossed edge of the white panel created with the Hero Arts "Rounded Rectangles." It was an accidental happening. I had the die upside down, but when I took it out of the die cutting machine, I rather liked the effect. I pulled out my corner rounder from my scrapbooking days to finish off the panel.

The sentiment is from one of the Simon Says packs of sentiment strips. So easy to cut out and use. Finally I added the panel to a Buttercup card base. I am loving the Concord and 9th inks and papers. So glad I splurged on the assorted pack (2 sheets of each color) when they were introduced. Now to decide which ones I "need" in full packs. Buttercup is definitely on the list. It's almost a perfect shade.

I'm also linking this card up with Seize the Birthday, skipping the optional challenge this time, for Anything Goes.

I found a new card challenge blog this week—as if I need another one—but the current challenge is one of my favorite techniques, so you'll probably see a couple of cards for it before the time expires. Just Us Girls is looking for cards with die cut windows.

My first share is a card made with one of the images I colored for the #100DayProject. There were several days when I needed a smaller project for coloring and this beautiful magnolia from Altenew's "Magnolias For Her," fit the bill. I watercolored it and then fussy cut it out.

The die cut heart (My Favorite Things) was backed with a piece of black and white diagonally striped paper, also from My Favorite Things. I stamped the sentiment from Papertrey Ink's "Thank You Kindly" set, and adhered it to a white card base with dimensional tape.

Finally I attached the magnolia to the bottom of the heart.  I love this clean and simple design, and the contrast between the beautiful pinks and the black and white stripes.

It's been fun designing some challenge cards this week after focusing on coloring images for so many days lately. 

The Card Concept has a new challenge up called The Dog Days of Summer.

And My Favorite Things is sponsoring a  Summer School series. The first lesson focused on using visual triangles in your design. It's something I think about almost every time I create a card. There are visual triangles in both the cards below, but one seems more apparent to me than the other.

My granddaughter occasionally pretends to be a puppy. These cute puppies from My Favorite Things "Woof Pack" had "her name on them," so as soon as a sale popped up they were in my basket. I'm a big fan of the sentiments, too, I was told after sending ONE card for both kids that it was no longer a good idea. Hannah, the 3 year old, claimed the card as her own, so this time two cards were sent.

The two puppies and the speech bubble create a visual triangle. This one seems to be a better example because both dogs are "looking at" the speech bubble. Sometimes it's the images that create a visual triangl, but often I use embellishments to form one.

I die cut the circle with a Spellbinders circle die and backed it with patterned paper from Sunny Studios, The pups were colored with Copic markers.

If it's a "Dog's Life," these cuties seem to have it pretty good.