When I first saw the cute gnomes in My Favorite Things Love You Gnome Matter What I knew I wanted to use it for some of my grandchildren's valentines. Before I even thought about the design, I stamped three different images (three times), colored them with Copic markers, and die cut them. I thought I'd use all three images on the front of the valentine, and I spent well over an hour trying to do just that. As you can see, I ended up with just one gnome—a CAS valentine—no surprise!

There were two images of gnomes standing with hearts. I used the Honey Bee Fluttering Hearts Pierced Coverplate once again as a background, and added a simple white stitched heart from My Favorite Things. The little gnomes were added with dimensional tape.

The sentiment, embossed in white, is from My Favorite Things Bitty Hugs and Kisses.

I added Nuvo Crystal Glaze to each of the hearts for additional dimension and a little shine. 

Not wanting to let the other gnomes go unused, I added a gnome to the inside of the card as well.

I love this little gnome running along throwing hearts in the air. I've had these tiny plastic hearts from Buttons Galore in my stash for several years and they worked perfectly!

The next valentine also uses supplies from my stash. Quite some time ago, I purchased Concord and 9th's Plaid Turnabout stamp. I had stamped a panel with pink, red, and black a few weeks ago, and didn't have a plan for it at the time. To the rescue came The Greetery's Heart Arrow once again. It was the only item I ordered from their last release, and I've certainly put it to good use this month. 

The sentiment is from Simon Says Love You Greetings. I won a $25 gift certificate during a recent blog hop, and this sentiment set was one of the purchases. 

As a final touch I added three black pearls to the heart. 

Colorful Options is looking for PINK this month, and I'm putting a second card in the Double D Hearts Challenge as well. I'm also linking up to Shopping Our Stash: Love is in the Air.

It's Week 2 for February and Word Week at Just Us Girls, and it's a fun one.

I have quite a list of birthdays on my February calendar, and one is a friend who does, indeed, "leave a little sparkle wherever [she] goes!"

This wonderful Snowflake Corner Frame from Poppy Stamps is a new purchase. I die cut it in multiple sparkly and glittery papers, but loved this one which was a bit more subtle, but so beautiful and matched the silver embossing powder perfectly.

That "perfect for this prompt" sentiment from Papertrey Ink was embossed in silver on the teal card base. All that was left to do was add some gorgeous Pinkfresh Studio Champagne Glitter Drops to the centers of the snowflakes.

There are so many occasions that call for a bit of sparkle, I'm sure you'll be inspired to join us at Just Us Girls this week.

There's still one valentine I want to make, but I have all I need with a few left over. Not surprisingly there are a variety of challenges looking for heart-inspired cards. First up for me is a shaker card I made for Hannah.

This valentine is off to Festive Friday where I chose "pink, hearts, and something shiny!" I love the Honey Bee Fluttering Hearts Pierced Coverplate and used it on several valentines this year. This one was run through the die cutter with white shimmer cardstock from Papertrey Ink—much prettier than I can capture in a photograph!

I glued five Stitched Heart Frames from Papertrey Ink to create the shaker and filled it with some die cut hearts left over from the Honey Bee Fluttering Hearts Coverplate (some of which I coated with a glitter pen,) some shiny confetti hearts, and some clear sequins. The sentiment is from My Favorite Things Bitty Hugs and Kisses.

The next card was inspired by the negative die cut created for this card.  When I die cut the arrow (The Greetery's Heart Arrow) from the white shimmer cardstock, the negative created a perfect square card. I die cut the arrow from bright pink cardstock, inlaid it, added a narrow pink border, and layered them on a white card base.

The sentiment, embossed in silver on black cardstock is from The Stamp Market's Tons of Type. 

Die cutting the bright pink arrow left me with another negative, and I went rather dramatic with a black background.

This one definitely needed some sparkle, so I added some black jewels from Pinkfresh Studio and used the same sentiment as the last valentine.

I'm off to link up these to Inkspirational with a great Moodboard, Festive Friday where I picked pink, heart, and shiny, and the Double D Challenge: Hearts.

The Paper Players challenge this week is "A Song in the Air."

There are many interpretations for this challenge, but as I was working on creating an inventory of my stamps last week I came upon an older Papertrey Ink set called Songbirds. As soon as I saw this challenge, I knew I'd pull out this set which has always been a favorite. 

There are several options for the "song" stamped on the banner. Always in need of birthday cards, I chose "Happy Birthday to You." The rest of the card is created with the dies from the set.

Many of the dies have stitched details, and I inlaid the flower and leaves on the red bird. I love the bright colors against the black card. The card came together quickly once I decided on the color palette. 

I'm on a blogging roll here. It's either feast of famine. Hopefully, I'll get a regular schedule going here soon. But I'm back today with another card for Seize the Birthday. This time with the topping: Candles, as well as Just Add Ink Challenge: Choose Two–candles, cake, celebration. I used candles for a birthday celebration card.

Like the earlier card for Seize the Birthday, this one came together quickly thanks to another My Favorite Things die: Happy Birthday Candles. I have used this one before and I had a little bag filled with colorful candes I'd already die cut as well as the flames that had had Glossy Accents applied to them. It was just a matter of deciding which five candles to use. I used a template I had saved from the die to place the candles in a straight row and equally spaced.

The sentiment is a hot foiled one from Spellbinders  Everyday Sentiment. I die cut it with a banner die from The Greetery that has stitched ends. 

It's good to have a few birthday cards tucked away as there are six birthdays on my birthday calendar for February and eight in March!

It is such a pleasure to be asked to Guest Design with the Just Us Girls Challenge for the month of February. I love their rotating weekly challenges, and it’s long been a favorite of mine.

The first week is a color challenge-pink, white, and kraft.

This was a perfect opportunity to make a valentine, and I had just received The Greetery’s new Heart and Arrow die which I love. It’s a large die, and luckily had this large tag from Pinkfresh Studio’s Essential Tags. After die cutting the tag, I ran it though again with Honey Bee’s Fluttering Hearts Pierced Coverplate, which is much easier to see in the second photo.

I die cut the heart from a piece of Bristol cardstock that I ink blended with the Simon Says Pawsitvely Saturated Ink trio in pink. The arrow was die cut from some white shimmer cardstock from Papertrey Ink. Then it was all layered onto a panel of Party Pink cardstock from The Stamp Market and then onto a white card base. A pretty pink ribbon and the stamped sentiment from The Greenery’s Sentiment Suite: Love finished it off.

I hope you’ll hop over to the JUGS blog and join in the fun! I’ll see you again next Saturday for the new challenge.

Joining in at Inkspirational where their Moodboard is all things valentine!

Just Us Girls is looking for Clean and Simple Birthday cards this week. I'm always in need of birthday cards, so found some time yesterday to make this card:

Edited to add, I found time to make the card, but neglected to get it posted on JUGS before the noon closing time! It's not the first time, I've written the post a day early, and then neglect to get it linked. So annoying! At least it made it to the other challenges.

I'm in the process of creating spreadsheets to inventory all my craft supplies. It's not as tedious as I expected and easy to do if I'm watching a television show at the same time. This week I went through three drawers of card stock and patterned paper, and reacquainted myself with Papertrey Ink's Bitty Big line of patterned papers. This die from My Favorite Things, Happy Birthday Balloons, creates a CAS card in one run through the die cutting machine. It's another one of those dies that I've had for a long time, and never used. The three balloons were backed with Raspberry Fizz, Green Parakeet, and Orange Zest Bitty Big papers, and one large stripe of the Green Parakeet papers backed the sentiment.

In addition to Just Us Girls, I'm adding this to Seize the Birthday (no topping), and to Darnell's NBUS Challenge.

Thanks to the honor of winning one of the December challenges at Time Out, I've been invited to be a Guest Designer for the current challenge. It's being sponsored by Gina K, and the challenge is to CASE the Designer. Here's the card we're to CASE.

I've seen a couple of definitions for CASE: 1) Copy And Share Everything or 2) Copy and Selectively Edit. I think for the majority of card makers, it's the second definition that's usually followed. I thought there were several elements that needed to be included: the rainbow ink blending, a floral on top, and a black border. I decided to change up the ink blending and used a circle stencil from Taylored Expressions to do my rainbow ink blending. I will say it took me three or four tries before I had one I liked. 

I also changed up the color of the floral, choosing a silhouette from Gina K's Friendly Silhouette set—one that I had yet to use! I also used the Gina K Master Layout 1 to die cut the focal panel and the narrow black border. The sentiment is also from the same stamp set, die cut with a banner die from The Greetery.

I'm really anxious to see what the Design Team at Time Out has created, and I'll be watching the gallery as well. I hope you'll take a look, too, and join in the fun!

I'm also sending this to Darnell's NBUS Challenge since the stamp is one that's never been used, and also to Colorful Options where rainbow cards are always welcomed.