Just under the wire for the Embellish the Cure Color Challenge.
Here's my take on it. I was anxious to use one of the beautiful images on Papertrey's Giga Guidelines.
I got inspired today after finishing my card for the Raspberry Suite Challenge and finished three quick and simple cards for the Hero Arts Simple Holiday challenge.
I love this new embossing folder from Cuttlebug.
I really enjoy the color challenges. Often they are colors I would never think of putting together, but I ususally end up with an interesting card. This one is no exception. Here are Dawn's colors:
Since Papertrey's Vintage Cream was one of the colors, I printed the Raspberry Suite patterned paper samples on a piece of Vintage Cream cardstock and punched them with a 1.5 inch punch. The rest of the card is pretty straight forward. I used my new favorite, Smooch, to color in the leaves of the wreath.
For the last ten years or so we've been going to Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario with good friends to see a play or two at The Shaw Festival. This weekend we saw Sunday in the Park with George, a Steven Sondheim musical which was extremely well-done, but a bit odd. As one of our friends said, you don't come out of it humming any tunes. The artistry of the play and the sets were wonderful. In addition to the play, we try to tour a few new wineries and always visit a few of our favorites.
One favorite is Vineland, where we always purchase a few of their red wines to bring home. It's housed in a beautiful old church and their displays are always lovely. This year they were promoting a new vodka/wine blend. It didn't interest me at all but the display was beautiful.
One of the new wineries we visited was Foreign Affair. It's also in a beautifully restored building. They are the only winery in North America to make wine by the Amarone method, where the grapes are laid out to dry for several months prior to pressing them. Most of their wines are quite expensive, but the Reisling is the best Reisling I have ever tasted. In addition to wonderful wines, their decor is lovely.
The painting over the door was commissioned for them and is used as part of the label on each bottle. Superimposed on the landscape are animals of Canada–blending the Italian wine-making tradition with the grapes of Ontario. This display was on the table in the hall:
Every year we stay at a wonderful B&B each year called The Cape House. The new owners, Peter and Louise, are delightful and breakfast is fabulous. Louise introduced us last year to a watercolor artist, Irene MacKenzie, whose work we love. We bought a print last year, and this year we commissioned Irene to do a watercolor of our house. Last year I fell in love with a print of a poinsettia. Lucky for me, Irene had one of them matted and framed, so I added another of her watercolors to my collection. I got a photo of our friends at Irene's on Sunday morning. Her beautiful home is her gallery.
I've been thinking about the Moxie Fab ruffle challenge for quite some time, but just today came up with a way to use this beautiful new ribbon I purchased in Rhinebeck two weeks ago when we were visiting my brother as well as my new Smooch Accent Inks. Once again I used this as an opportunity to get another Christmas card added to the stash.
Here's a close-up; the Smooch inks are so beautiful.
I liked the idea of a simple collage card posted as the challenge on the Cards Blog last week. In an effort to continue to add to my stash of Christmas cards, here's my take on the challenge:
Our good friends are celebrating an anniversary this week. I love the Autumn Abundance stamps and messages. The pitcher with leaves is so perfect for this time of year.
All elements by Papertrey Ink.
I took advantage of a sale at Ellen Huston during World Card Making Day to pick up two Lockhart stamps that I'd been admiring. This is one of them. It's a simple card, but I love the yellows and greens with the black Bitty Box paper from Papertrey.
I've been busy making Christmas cards to send off for a good cause. You can read about it here. I've always felt incredibly blessed that both of my kids were healthy and had no illnesses that could not be treated. Whenever I read about a child who has not been so lucky, my heart goes out to them and their parents. I'm hoping to have a dozen cards in the mail by the middle of the week. I'm thinking some will be duplicates of these.
Stamp: Rubber Moon; cardstock: Kraft and Pure Black by Papertrey, Patterned paper: 7 Gypsies, Prisma colored pencils. I found this cute stamp last weekend at Stampassion in Latham, NY. It had been several years since I'd been there, and I picked up a couple of stamps and a few embellishments.
Another version: Pure Poppy cardstock by Papertrey and patterned paper by Graphic 45, ribbon from Paper Source.
Embossing folder by Quickutz, ribbon by Papertrey, tree "decorations" Smooch, cardstock Papertrey
This was also done for a Hero Arts challenge. Quickutz embossing folder, Smoky Shadow cardstock by Papertrey, Hero Arts stamps, tree toppers Accents, Too by Mrs. Grossman, silver twine from Paper Source.
My first attempt at stamping on sticky back canvas. That went fine, but the distressing is a bit overdone. Stamps: Winter Swirl and Signature Christmas by Papertrey; patterned paper Eskimo Kisses by Basic Grey; twill Papertrey; Stickyback Canvas Claudine Hellmuth.
Stamp: 2008 Christmas Tag Collection by Papertrey, embossing folder by Cuttlebug, gold ribbon from stash.
I love how all the Papertrey stamp sets seem to work together. This card uses stamps from three different sets: 2008 Holiday Tags, Winter Swirls, and Signature Christmas. Ribbon and cardstock are unknown and from my stash, the gem is from Michaels and the tag is embellished with some Silver Fox Smooch.
Embellish's most recent challenge was to make a circle card with blues and greens. I made the card a while ago, but am just getting it posted under the wire! I don't often made shaped cards, but I enjoyed making this one.
This is the last of the World Card Making Day challenges. It's for the color challenge at Ellen Huston's The Classroom. Here's the challenge:
I've never participated in the Mojo Monday Sketch challenge, but when I saw it this morning I thought it would work well with the World Card Making Day challenge at The Classroom that specifies using sparkle and glitz. Here's what I came up with:
I may get another card or two done after dinner for Ellen's challenges, but I've finished two. The first one was an inchie challenge. I haven't used my inchies in a long time, and I loved this technique. I colored two of the inchies with Papertrey tea dies: Chai and Chamomile. Then I stamped the Magnenta branch with Dark Chocolate Ink, mounted the inchies on Dark Chocolate cardstock on a cream colored card from my stash. The ribbon is from May Arts. I will definitely use this technique again.
I made this card yesterday, but wasn't really happy with it so I took it apart today and put it back together. I'm much more satisfied. One of Nicole's challenges was to use outlines of white dots around an image. I pulled out two old stamps I haven't used in years for this challenge. I think it will make a good birthday card for a guy.
The third stop on the Papertrey tour is India. I recently found a box of charms I had collected years ago. It's been sitting on the floor of my study because I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I'm certainly glad I didn't throw them out! These elephant charms really spoke to me of India as did the beautiful paper from my stash.
The next stop on the Papertrey "tour" is Mexico. When I think of Mexico, I think of bright colors, sunshine, and beach resorts–where "life is good"–at least for the tourists.
