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More Yellow Poppies

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I have another set of yellow poppies to share that went up on the Memory Box Blog today. These poppies were created with the Playful Poppies Embossing Folder. It creates a very deep impression, causing me to make some adjustments to the “sandwich” I used on my die cutting machine. I also discovered that using Letterpress paper, lightly sprayed, gave the best result.

I had hoped to create red poppies, but I couldn’t find the right combination of inks, so went back to yellow and orange, using the accompanying stencil to color them. I used five shades of yellow and orange inks from Pinkfresh Studio for the flowers, and two green inks for the leaves.


I added the stamens with a Micron 02 pen and the anthers with a black Glaze Pen. A Thinking of You Gold embossed Black Greeting Tab was added for the sentiment.

A blogger friend from England mentioned seeing signs of spring already. There’s nothing but white outside my window, and the wind chill is bitterly cold.

It’s been awhile since I played along with Simon Says Wednesday Challenge, but they’re looking for stencils this week.

Color Hues #125

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Carol has a fresh and clean color combination for the next Color Hues Challenge — perfect for winter crafting.

Both of my cards came about rather serendipitously. I had an embossed image from my brand new Greetery Shortbread Shapes: Snowflake and several die cut snowflakes from Simon Says laying on my desk along with some Enchanted Evening cardstock, and this color combination came to mind. 

I decided on a square format for the beautiful embossed snowflake panel. I couldn’t bring myself to add a sentiment which would have covered up some of that wonderful detail. I added some blue jewels from Pinkfresh studio, and it was done. It’s likely to be a birthday card for a friend’s January birthday.

It had been a long time since I made a mini-slimline card. I embossed just the front panel with Spellbinders Nordic Noel embossing folder. The snowflake, one of my favorites, was part of a kit from Simon Says a few years ago, the Eliza Snowflake. 

The sentiment is from a Papertrey Ink set I purchased last year, and have never used before: Just Sentiments: Warmth. 

We have the talented Bobby as our Guest Designer. Please check out her wonderful card as well as those of the Color Hues Design Team. The challenge will be open until 9:00 am on January 29th.

It’s been awhile since I played along with the Colorful Options Challenge, but January’s is blues and white so off goes these cards.

Encouragement

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I’m right under the wire for the Just Us Girls current challenge: Encouragement. The card was finished a few days ago, but getting it photographed in a gray, dreary climate turned out to be a challenge. 

This card is going to a friend of ours who was detained by ICE late last month. He’s now in a detention center. Like many who have been detained, he has no criminal record, and testimonies abound to his outstanding character and the many ways he is a blessing to his neighborhood, our city, and his family and friends. We’ve been protesting (literally) and through letters the actions of ICE long before they got to Minneapolis, but when it’s personalized it’s even more devastating.

Most likely, our friend is working in the kitchen at the detention center, helping to keep it clean, and helping to keep other detainees spirits up. I hope this card gives him encouragement, although he knows we are praying for his release and doing all we can to gather evidence for his lawyer to present to the judge.

On to the card:


I had already foiled this Pinkfresh Studio Quadrant Background, so all I had to do was color it with the accompanying stencils. The sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio’s Perfect Sentiments  was also prefoiled so the card came together quickly. I die cut some gold hearts with Simon Says Holiday Shapes die, and it was ready to go in the mail.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tulip Bouquet

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It’s been a long week already. Both Tracy and I have been fighting some kind of upper respiratory infection since late last week. We both tested negative for Covid, so that’s good, but whatever it is it’s lingering far too long. This card was made for the Memory Box blog, but I’m sharing it here because it was inspired by the Festive Friday Challenge which closes early tomorrow morning.

The challenge is to pick three items from the list to incorporate in your card. I chose red, yellow, tulips, and a fourth, Happy Birthday.

The new Memory Box release, Spring Blooms, has a fun die set called Flower Basket Bouquet. What’s great about it is you can use just one or more elements from it. I chose just the tulips, die cutting them from white cardsstock and coloring them with finger daubers and a variety of Pinkfresh inks.


I trimmed a piece of ivory cardstock to 5 1/4” X 4” and then die cut one of the Eyelet Circle Frame from the center of the panel. and then cut a plain circle from the Eyeleet frame. Once that was done I layed the resulting frame back into the panel and attached it with narrow tape on the back.


I arranged the tulips and leaves inside the circle, adding dimensional tape to some of the tulips and leaves. Then the decorated panel was attached to a card base of ivory cardstock, and a Happy Birthday Black Tab Greeting was added to the card. 

Playful Poppies

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These Playful Poppies from the new Spring Blooms release by Memory Box are so beautiful. Since poppies come in a wide variety of colors, I’m sure I’ll be pulling these out for lots of occasions. For its first run, I decided to get out my Zig Clean Color Brushes and do some watercoloring. I stamped the image on watercolor paper and embossed it with clear embossing powder. I used the Yellow and Bright Yellow (really an orange yellow) pens for the poppies and Smoky Yellow and Deep Green pens for the leaves. 

Once the poppies were dry, I die cut them with the accompanying dies. I love these intricate dies that cut between the leaves and the flowers. This is a large image, so I die cut the largest of the new Oval Eyelet Rectangle Frames and created a 4 1/2 X 6 inch card base from bright yellow/green cardstock. After arranging the poppies on the panel, I stamped and die cut the sentiment, also from the Playful Poppies  stamp set. I added it to the card with some dimensional tape and decided the card needed no additional embellishment.

I’m sending this off to Simon Says Challenge: Something New and NBUS for my first entry in January.

Color Hues #124

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Bonnie chose one of my favorite color combos for this first Color Hues Challenge of 2026:

The challenge gave me the perfect opportunity to use some newly acquired Greetery products, some of which I had passed up when they were released. When The Greetery had their annual sale, I snapped them up. No regrets, and I have lots of ideas for these and others in my newly acquired stash.

When I passed on the Capsule Basics suite of products, I knew I’d eventually purchase them, but when the coordinating Rosemal product suite was released, I thought those products was too elaborate so passed on them as well. But after I admired project after project created with them, I changed my mind. I finally settled on a select few dies (skipping the stamps) and this stunning embossing folder. 

Limiting myself to hues of red and gray with some silver metallic turned out to be a bit more challenging than I expected. The first few die cuts of the leaves and vines went into the trash. I’m happy with the end result, and although this is a bit more elaborate than my usual CAS style, I’m looking forward to playing with these dies and embossing folders again.

This card uses the Rosemal Reflection Jumbo die, the Capsule Basics die, the Capsule Filagree Borders and that stunning embossing folder. It turned out to be quite easy to cut the red and dark gray ovals and then fit them into the embossing folder. Betsy Veldman is a “designer extraordinaire.”

I didn’t purchase the banner die and sentiment set released with this suite, so had to find a sentiment that fit with the design. Pinkfresh Studio came to the rescue with a sentiment and die from their Best Wishes suite of products. 

As always, there’s lots of inspiration on the Color Hues blog from the DT and our talented guests, Lisa Elton and Barb F.