Last night when I should have been packing for our camping trip, I came across the new ColourQ challenge, and thought it would be perfect with the current CAS(E) This Sketch challenge. And I had the perfect (new) stamp set to put to use:  "Doodlie Do" by Papertrey Ink. Here are the challenges:

And here's my interpretation:

I love these bright colors! I embossed and masked the flower, then the leaves and colored them with Copics. The sentiment is from the same set. And it's another one for my encouragement card stash.

I'll pop this into the Curtain Call Anniversary challenge, "Anything Goes," as well. 

In about an hour we're off to Selkirk Shores on eastern Lake Ontario for two nights of camping with our friends, Bob and Cathy. It's supposed to be pretty decent (80's during the day), but chilly at night (50's), with a chance of showers on Sunday.  I had lunch with a friend on Tuesday who recommended driving up to Clayton, NY on the St. Lawrence River. There's an antique boat museum and a classy new hotel that just opened up as well as some "cute shops." Not sure the guys will be interested in the latter, but I think Clayton's the plan for Sunday afternoon.

Alexa once again shared her photo and digital gifts with a download this week. As soon as I saw these delightful typewriters, I knew I'd make some simple, one layer cards. Sadly, I'm in almost constant need of encouragement cards, so it's nice to have a little stash.

After printing the typewriters on Lumijet Fine Art Ink Jet paper, I stamped each with two sentiments I cut apart from Hero Arts "Everyday Sayings." Then I found color coordinated cardstock in my scrap files to match each of the typewriters, and adhered it all to top folding cards made from Papertrey's Rustic White cardstock which almost perfectly matches the Fine Art Ink Jet paper.

I just love these, and there are four other colors yet to print and use for another set of cards. Thanks, Alexa, for sharing your gifts!

I'm linking these up to the Curtain Call Anniversary challenge "Anything Goes."

A quick post to share a card that uses, yet again, a new die for the first time and links to two challenges. I ordered the Block Talk die from Papertrey Ink last month, but haven't had a chance to pull it out until today. "Celebrate" is just one of three words included with the die.  

I cut the die twice–once in gold metallic and once in silver metallic and inserted the silver strips into the gold die. The stars came from two "matching" dies from Simon Says:  "Holiday Shapes" and "Large Holiday Shapes." Those dies get lots of use! The beautiful, slightly textured purple paper is (I think) from Bazzill that I picked up during Archivers going-out-of-business sale in January. The silver metallic paper is from Paper Source, but I'm not sure where I purchased the gold paper.

This is another entry to Virginia's View Die Cut Challenge.

And it will be my first entry to the Moxie Fab "Wonderful Words Challenge," which was to include a die cut word in your project. 

My niece and her husband celebrated their second anniversary this weekend. Their wedding was one of the most fun weddings I've ever attended, and the two of them couldn't be sweeter! Here's a more elegant verson of the anniversary card I made for friends a couple of weeks ago.

You need to see it up close to get a good look at the metallic papers.

The embossed silver cardstock came from Michaels, and the gold is from Paper source. I used Simon Says woodgrain again for the Phrase Play #5 die cut from Papertrey Ink. The stamp is from the same set. I couldn't seem to get a good picture of the sequins, but there's a pretty clear sequin from Pretty Pink Posh nestled into a larger gold one from Michaels.

The inside sentiment is from Papertrey's Delightful Dahlia's Additions. The hearts on both the front and the inside are from the Hearts and Arrows die from Savvy.

The next card was inspired by the current CAS-ual Friday challenge to create a card with hearts in summer colors. 

I die cut the Tic Tac Toe Hearts into the front of the card, then colored the hearts with my Copic markers and laid them back into the original die cut. The sentiment comes from two Simon Says sets: Happy, and Color and Sunshine. 

It makes for a nice one-layer, flat card that will be winging its way in August to friends on the west coast.

I'll link both up to Virginia's Die Cut Challenge as well.

Before I go, I thought I'd share a few photos (all from my phonte) from our Fourth of July birthday celebration.

We had bruschetta chicken, and orzo salad with spinach and feta, potato salad, a green salad, and rolls for dinner. I didn't get a photo but we had chocolate mousse cake from Joey B's for dessert. My mother-in-law requested it, but didn't expect we'd be able to get it direct from the restaurant. It was delicious.

Here we all are—a couple folks are looking rather serious, but I only took one quick photo so the food wouldn't get cold.

After dinner we drove to Canandaigua Lake, boarded the Canandaigua Lady, and watched the fireworks from the lake. It was a bit chilly, but we were well-prepared, and the fireworks were wonderful. We got a beautiful sunset as well.

 

 

Happy 4th of July! I'm grateful every single day for the freedoms I have living here. It's an extra-special day for us because we're celebrating my mother-in-law's 85th birthday today. Tomorrow is the actual day, but everyone is coming here for dinner and then we're headed to Canandaigua to board the Canandaigua Lady for a tour on the lake and to watch the fireworks. It's quite cool here this morning, but clear and sunny!

I have three red, white, and blue cards to share. I'm entering all three cards in the Fusion Challenge this week:  Red, White, and Blue. The last one fits both the color and the sketch challenge.

The first is the birthday card for Ellie. Once I created the anniversary cards here, I knew this die would make an awesome shaker card. I ended up taking the first card apart and redoing it. I folded a piece of clear cardstock, sealed two sides with Washi tape, and dumped the star sequins inside. Then I sealed the top when I adhered the white background. It makes for a much flatter and neater card.

The die cut and sentiment are both Papertrey Ink, and the cardstock is Simon Says Lipstick Red and Soft Navy. I think I found the stars at Michaels, but it was awhile ago. 

I'm entering this one in the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge:  Shake It, and Virginia's Die Cut challenge.

The next two cards use the July Simon Says Card Kit. This kit is going to get a lot of use! The first one is for friends who received some tough news this week. We're hoping it will all work out, but I wanted to get a card of encouragement out to them ASAP.

Absolutely everything on this card came from the kit. I love all the patterned papers, and managed to get five of them on this card!

Even the inside message came from the kit.

The last card was inspired by the Fusion Sketch and this card by Shari Carroll. 

More yummy patterned papers from the kit, as well as a Lifestyle Crafts embossing folder (never used before) and a die cut from Papertrey's "Bubble Talk" with an embossed sentiment from PTI's "Faux Ribbon" (one of my oldest PTI sets).

If you're celebrating today, I hope it's a wonderful and safe holiday!

I'm back with a card for The Card Concept challenge site. The current challenge is "Oh, Baby!" and I needed a baby card for good friends who just had an adorable baby girl.

I had a lot of fun creating this card. I started by applying embossing paste with  Simon Says "Falling Hearts" stencil. While that was drying I die cut two tags with Papertrey Ink's Tag Sale #5, one from the Bazzil pink cardstock and one from a vellum that is also embossed with tiny hearts. The sentiment is from PTI's "Fillable Frames: Addition 2." I tied a Paper Source pink ribbon to the tag and adhered everything to the card base. The gorgeous sequins are new ones from Pretty Pink Posh. This fits the Card Concept category "Clean and Layered."

I combined sentiments from Avery Elle's "Oh, Happy Day!" and Simon Says "Favorite Flowers" for the inside greeting. I just love how they work together.

I'm also linking this to Simon Says Work It Wednesday Challenge: "Create & Share."

My dear friends celebrated their 66th anniversary yesterday. They no longer live in the same building (but are at the same facility) so this year I made an anniversary card for both of them to have in their rooms. 

I was anxious to put this new die from Papertrey Ink to work, and I'm sure it's going to get a lot of use. I love the simplicity of it, and the accompanying stamps make it very versatile. I die cut it from Simon Say's woodgrain cardstock and added the wood veneer heart, colored with a Copic marker so I could enter them in the CAS-ology Challenge this week:  Wood.

Here's a closer look.

I'm also linking up to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge:  Anything Goes.

The inspiration for Papertrey Ink's June Blog Hop was a photo, sketch, and color challenge. This was the way Nicole described it:

You can choose to work with any of the ideas above or use other components of the inspiration photo to jump start your creation.  Have fun with it and challenge yourself to work outside of your comfort zone!

I created three cards, using each of the sketches, and combined one of the sketches with one of the downloadable color combinations. In my ongoing attempt to use stamps that haven't seen enough (or any) love, each card uses at least one stamp or die that I've never used before.

Here's the first sketch and the color inspiration.

And my interpretation:

This color combination is definitely not in my comfort zone (nor is trying to combine five different colors on one card.) I began by die cutting frames from Framed Out #1 and Framed Out #12 as well as a collection of flowers from Button Stacks II. (The Button Stacks II dies are my unused item.) I took a little liberty with the sketch and stamped the sentiment from "Fillable Frame #4 inside one of the frames. The Spring Rain color was added with the enamel dot from MME. The rest of the colors were die cut from the corresponding paper in the inspiration piece.

For the second card I used a sketch, but choose my own colors from a pile of scraps laying on my desk waiting to be filed into the scrap paper folders.

I used a Nestability Small Circles die to cut the circles from Pure Poppy, Tropical Teal, and Summer Sunrise. The star is from Impress, and the sentiment is from another unused (but new) stamp set "Wet Paint II."

The last card is my personal favorite (CAS design), and a masculine one, to boot! I used this sketch:

I started by stamping a variety of the"Square Prints" designs on Fine Linen cardstock. I've owned the "Square Prints" set since it came out, and don't believe I've ever used it. Liked it when I bought it, and I still do. I cut each square on the diagonal and mounted the resulting triangles under a thin strip of True Black cardstock. The sentiment is from "Botanical Prints."

I'm linking up all three cards to the Simon Says Monday Challenge to use products we ought to use more often. True, true, true.

I was hoping to link up to the blog post this morning, but either TypePad or my internet service were being disagreeable. So now I'm off to check out the inspiration linked here.

One of my goals this year is to try to use all the stamps in my collection. Truthfully, it will probably take me more than a year, but I'm making progress. As soon as I saw the current challenge at Curtain Call, I knew I had the perfect stamp, and one that hasn't seen much use.

Papertrey Ink had a series of stamps several years ago called Year of the Flower. I only purchased two of the twelve, but one of them was "Sweet Pea."

I'm also entering the card into the Less Is More challlenge:  Watercolour. It's a relatively new challenge for me, but one I see frequently on my inspiration journeys around the internet. The cardstock base is a beautiful shimmer one from Papertrey Ink, but it's not showing up well in photographs. The sentiment is also from the Year of the Flower:  Sweet Pea, embossed in white on vellum and stitched down. 

Usually I have a receipient in mind when I make a card, but this one originated with the challenge call. It's nice to have a few cards in the file when I need one but don't have the time to create one.