In preparing for my Guest Designer jig on the CAS Mixed Media Challenge, I watercolored this Honey Bee "Winter Anemone" as well as the one I finally submitted. This was done with loose watercoloring. I got each petal and leaf wet with clear water, and dropped color in and let it do what it wanted. Because I had gold embossed the image first, it stayed within the lines, and didn't look all that "loose" in the end. I did do some loose watercoloring as a background which I'm frequently reluctant to do for fear I'll ruin the whole card. This time it worked.

This weekend I pulled it out and decided on a sentiment from the Gina K set "Wreath Builder. It fit in the open space perfectly, so I gold embossed it to match the florals.

After matting it in black, I added it to a card base created with Gina K's "Fuchsia" cardstock. I decided there was some room for a few gems, so that was the final touch.

I'm throwing this in the mix at the Happy Little Stampers Watercolor Challenge which is Anything Goes.

It's 17° now and headed downward. By tomorrow morning, we'll be at 6° with a wind chill of -9°. Good thing I have lots to keep me busy inside, and no reason to venture out!

We got home just in time for me to get a card posted for The Paper Players Challenge: Sparkle.

In November I won the prize of all prizes: the complete release of the new products at Pinkfresh Studios. Since I was in the midst of card making and preparation for Christmas, I barely had time to even look through the collection of stamps, stencils, dies, and foiling plates. (Luckily, Santa brought me a Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil machine, so that's high on the list of things to do in January.) I did have time to play with one of my favorite stamps in the collection, "Charming Floral Border." I also used just one of the several layering stencils to add a touch of shadow to the image. I got the card in the mail to my friend, but had no time to get a blog post written. 

I embossed the floral border in silver and then added the detail with a medium shade of gray ink with one of the stencils. It's hard to see the sparkle in the photo above, but here's a clearer look.

You can also see here where I added a few quick strokes of a dark gray Copic marker to add some detail to some of the stenciled areas.

The sentiment from Simon Says "Sketched Flowers" was also embossed in silver. I trimmed the stamped piece down just enough to show a narrow border from the card base.

We had an easy drive home, thanks to Tracy's foresight. There was a band of lake effect snow predicted for the area west of Buffalo extending to Batavia (about 40 minutes west of Rochester.) Instead of taking a chance with the weather, we headed south  and east on Rte. 86 just after Erie, Pennsylvania and then north on Rte. 390 to Rochester. There were only snow flurries on our route for about 20 minutes, and then we had partly sunny skies a good part of the way. When we watched the news last night, we discovered the Buffalo airport recorded the highest snowfall in one day—17.8 inches!!! Our usual route takes us right by the airport. The change in route took about an hour longer if done in good weather, but most likely saved us time—and certainly saved me a lot of anxiety. 

I made far too many Christmas cards of a single design this year. My goal for 2022 is to make a set of Christmas cards each month, so there's not a big rush at the end. I post a few as I go along if I create one for a challenge, but typically wait to post until I know they've been received. So today, I thought I'd do a Christmas card roundup of some of the cards I particularly liked. And, in fact, there's still one challenge looking for Christmas cards.

First of all, two cards created with one of my favorite 3-D embossing folders: the poinsettia from Altenew.

This was was embossed with red paper and lightly swiped with a white pigment ink. I tried a couple of variations with this technique, but this was the only one I liked enough to make into a card.

I made two or three variations of this card with the same embossing folder and a red frame from The Greetery.

This card went to one of my best friends, a single man. It got posted on Instagram, but not here. I dry-embossed the frame and added the gold embossed deer and sentiment to a Nordic Circle die from The Greetery that a friend had die cut for me. 

I used this oversized Joy stamp from Waffleflower on several cards–all a slight variation of this one.

Another card made with a 3-D embossing folder and a sentiment from The Stamp Market. I should have made a few more of these.

This was one of the cards I made early on, and I made a set of them. It's a set I've owned from Altenew for awhile, but never found a design I was happy with. Stamped on white and then die cut with a pierced frame.

This was the biggest set of cards I made–25 in all. There were four different snowflakes so I could die cut them in sets so it went pretty quickly. I did the die cutting at home, and stamped and assembled them in November when we were visiting Sarah.

And one variation on the card above, I only made one or two of these because they required embossing of the sentiment which takes more time. I already know the first set of cards I'm making for next year and they do require embossing, but if I'm working well ahead of time, it shouldn't be a problem.

All the following cards were made in one session with a group of pre-made tags and die cuts from 2020. Several of them use a new tag die from The Greetery that die cuts two tags at a time. I have more ideas for those tags for 2022.

And my favorite of the bunch:

There's still one of my favorite challenges open for Christmas cards, so I'll be posting to AAA Cards, and then calling this season of card making done.

 

My card here won a challenge at the CAS Mix-up Challenge in October, and I was asked if I'd like to be a Guest Designer for the first post of 2022. Of course, there was no hesitation before saying yes! I was thrilled to be asked.

Each challenge at CAS Mix-up involves some kind of mixed media and/or a technique. The challenge this round is "Loose Watercoloring." If you know me well, "loose" isn't something you'd typically associate with my card making. Luckily, however, the hosts of CAS Mix-up always include links to a variety of ways you might complete the challenge.

I definitely took advantage and watched all the videos for this technique. I tried three different takes on loose watercoloring, and ended up with this which I like quite a bit. It's a much quicker method of watercoloring, and yet allows you to stay CAS – another requirement for the challenge.

I embossed one of the images from Honey Bee's "Winter Anemone" in gold on Altenew's Watercolor paper. I added a heavy wash of clean water over the entire image, and then dropped in some pink and green watercolors from the Altenew 36 Pan Watercolor set and set it aside to dry.

I went back in with some more watercolor to brighten them, and then die cut the image. You can see that there's no need to worry about staying inside the lines with this technique.

I layered the floral on an oval die cut with Ellen Hustson's "Essential Ovals" die, and dry embossed five lines on the card before adhering the floral with some dimensional tape. The sentiment from Pink and Main's "Special Day" was embossed on black and trimmed out.

Please go take a look at what the designers at CAS Mix-Up have to show you It's sure to be a lovely gallery with lots of wonderful takes on this technique.