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Challenges

Lots of Hearts

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Last year, I used Concord & 9th’s Mix and Match Heart die and stamp to make valentines for my three Rochester granddaughters. I die cut lots of hearts and several backgrounds so I had plenty to create a card for Hannah this year. I chose a background of Party Pink (The Stamp Market) and hearts cut from four pastel colored cardstocks.


All I needed to do was inlay the hearts, gold emboss one with a sentiment from the stamp set  and add it to the card with some dimensional tape. The banner sentiment was gold embossed as well with a stamp from Simon Says Love You Greetings, and die cut with My Favorite Things Itty Bitty Strips.

This valentine is headed to Just Us Girls where the challenge is Die Cuts or Stencils plus Hearts, and to Addicted to Stamps and More where the challenge is Die Cuts or Stencils.

XOXO

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As soon as I saw the challenge at Inkspirational: XOXO, I knew I had the perfect die. Once I got it out, I realized that it would make a great valentine for my grandson. Not girly, not cutesy—but heartfelt.

I die cut the  Simon Says die, XO Border, in three colors and lined them up on an A2 white card base. I had a little gold heart left over from a previous project and added it to the middle XOXO pattern with some dimensional tape. 

The sentiment is from Simon Says Love You Greetings, gold embossed on black and die cut with My Favorite Things Itty Bitty Strips.

In addition to Inkspirational, I’m also sending this to The Paper Players where the theme challenge is Love Is In the Air. 


I’ll be back shortly with more valentines. Have a great day!

Classic Car

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The month of January flew by. Tracy and I both had an upper respiratory infection that lasted 10 days. Shortly after I recovered, I left with a wonderful group from my church for the Southern Lights Conference on St. Simons Island in Georgia. As it was last year, the conference was fabulous—uplifting and inspiring messages about faith during these very difficult times in our country.

The three day trip ended up taking six days—the first cancellation for Sunday afternoon’s flight arrived on Friday night in anticipation of the huge winter storm that created havoc in much of the south, midwest and eastern seaboard. The subsequent cancellations were also a result of that storm, but frequently were because American Airlines didn’t have the crews to fly the planes and/or the planes weren’t where they needed to be. On Tuesday we finally drove from St. Simons to Charlotte, NC (no flights our way were leaving Jacksonville, FL), got there in time for our flight to Rochester, only to have it cancelled. In the end, half of us flew to Buffalo and the rest of us to Syracuse on Wednesday. 

All that to say, this is a card for the man who drove us wherever we needed to go during our six day adventure. When he volunteered to be a driver, he had no idea he’d be hustling up the highway to Charlotte most of the day on Tuesday.


The retro car die is one I’ve had in my stash for years and years, Classic Car, by Savvy Stamps. I die cut it from watercolor paper, masked off portions of it so I could have a red car with a black roof. I saw a car much like this when we were in Paris last spring, and have been seeing them regularly here. If it’s still an option when I next need a car—this will be it!


I added the car to a Stitched Rectangle die by Simon Says, and added a sentiment from the Greenery’s Sentiment Suite: Thank You.

This week’s challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More is Die Cuts or Stencils, so this retro car is headed to their gallery.

Hope it’s warmer where you are than it is here! 

Color Hues 126

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When Julie picked Red and Pink for our new Color Hues Challenge, I couldn’t resist making a valentine.

I was given a gift certificate for The Stamp Market for my birthday in May, and I finally put it to use in November. One of the products I ordered was the Checkered Cover die. It doesn’t have a cut line around the edge, so I ended up doing a dry embossed panel in white so it would be easier lay out the red and pink squares in a pleasing pattern. It worked surprisingly well. 

After I adhered all the squares to the embossed panel, I added white hearts cut from Simon Says Tic Tac Toe Hearts die to five of the squares. I wanted a bit of sparkle and added the smallest of the Iridescent Dew Drops from Pinkfresh Studio to the center of the hearts. 

The sentiment is also from Simon Says: Love. When I pulled out the die I was delighted to find both the white word and the black shadow already die cut. Finally, I added the whole panel to a top-folding white card base.

It goes without saying that you’ll find plenty of inspiration on the Color Hues Challenge blog from my talented Design Team members as well as our Guest Designer, JoAnn. The challenge is open until January 14th.

I’m sending this valentine off to the Festive Friday Challenge, choosing pink, hearts, a love sentiment, and hearts from the list. And also to Claire’s “Love is in the Air” Challenge at The Paper Players,

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.

Santa’s Sleigh

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I’m back with my last holiday card from the Memory Box “Joyful Season” release.

I started with a red card base and die cut the largest Fan Stitch Scalloped Frames from cream cardstock, adding it to the card base. I assembled the sleigh using the Festive Sleigh dies with papers from the Memory Box Blush paper pad, the Delicate Pastel Glitter pad, and gold metallic paper from my stash. Next, using scraps, I die cut and assembled a variety of presents and bows from the Plentiful Presents dies. I die cut many more presents than I needed, and you’ll be seeing them pop up in the future.

I arranged the gifts in and behind the sleigh on my desk. Once I had an arrangement I liked, I used I used a piece of Press ‘N Seal to pick up the arrangement. I turned it over and used some tape to hold all the pieces together before gluing and adding the gifts to the card panel. The sentiment was die cut from gold metallic cardstock with the Merry Christmas Marker Script dies. I cut the shadow from red cardstock and carefully added the letters. I wanted some gold pearl accents, so I used two paper punches and created tiny gold circles. I added Nuvo Crystal Glaze to the tops creating 3D “gems.”

This is a second entry to the Christmas Kickstart Challenge, I still have some Christmas cards I haven’t shared since I wanted to be sure they were received before I posted them, so maybe I’ll get them up before the New Year.

Brilliant Poinsettias

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The holidays are upon us, and the new Memory Box blog hasn’t gone up yet, so I’m posting here and on Instagram. The Spring Release is already here, so I have one more holiday card, and then I’ll move to the new products.

These Memory Box dies couldn’t be more perfectly named. I diecut them from red cardstock in the Memory Box Blush paper pack, adding leaves from the Greenery pack and gold metallic centers. I added some ink blending to the centers of the flowers and to the base of the leaves for some dimension.

On a black background I adhered two circles die cut from Basic Circles – one from cream cardstock and the next largest from metallic gold, and then added them to a cream card base. Once the poinsettias were assembled, I added them to the edge of the circles, along with one of my fave Memory Box Black Tab Greetings from the Holiday Wishes set.

I’m sending this off to The Flower Challenge where they’re looking for Christmas flowers. Sadly, this is the last of their challenges, and I’m hoping to be back with another card before they close their doors. The challenge will definitely be missed!

It’s also headed to the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown where the challenge is to pick a previous thems challenge (September’s was Poinsettias) and to Christmas Kickstart: Any Christmas Card.

It’s getting down to the wire. Most of the essentials are taken care of, but I still hope to get some gift card holders made, but I’ll be back soon with another holiday card for Memory Box.

Gifting

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The current Paper Players Challenge is “Gifting.” I took a very literal interpretation because I had three gifts I intended to decorate with some of my new Greetery products. 

The gifts are small Kraft boxes filled with note paper. I think I bought them in 2019 at Impress in Seattle. They’ve sat in my box of paper goodies for all those years until I rediscovered them hunting for something else.

I was correct that the Capsule Basic products would work perfectly for these. I die cut the background from paper in the Honey Bee Merry Moments paper pad. Then I die cut the matching oval from the Capsule Filagree Borders from gold metallic paper.

The poinsettia from Bigger Holiday Botanicals is so easy to put together, I used a bright red for the flower and a pretty green for the leaves. The leaves ended up being very close to the green in the background, so I added a gold metallic bow. That was die cut from the Christmas gift from The Greetery. The bow has long tails, but I trimmed them off.  Here’s a look inside the boxes. 

I’m still waiting for some wish lists to appear from some of my grandchildren, and the baking will begin on Saturday when the three girls come to make and decorate sugar cookies. It’s a tradition that they still are unanimously eager to participate in. I’m grateful the high school freshman hasn’t wanted to opt out. 

Color Hues #123

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Tracey has chosen a very versatile color duo for this month’s Color Hues Challenge:

I have two wildly different cards to share that showcase these colors versatility. Both cards were created with the new Pinkfresh Studio products released in October. Not many companies offer a prize of the whole release, but PFS does every month. I was the lucky recipient of October’s amazing prize. 

The first card is the more traditional one and the one I posted on the challenge site. The new products I used are two that I had put on my wish list before I knew I’d won a prize. I love the elegant and beautiful Freesia Flourish. The product suite included a stamp, a die, a stencil, and press plate. I used the press plate to foil the image and the sentiment in gold and colored  the freesia with PFS inks using the stencil. 

Next I die cut the Diamond Lattice Coverplate in white and created the oval with an older PFS Nested Elongated Ovals die. I used the Nested Elongated Ovals Blanket Stitch to create a frame. I mounted it on a pale gray card base and added the floral and the sentiment with dimensional tape. Three pale pink Essential Jewels from PFS finished the card.

Here’s another close-up that shows the pretty foiling.

The next card is super bright and fun. I die cut the new Octagon Grid Coverplate three times: once each in black, green and pink. Then I added the green layer to a black card base and paper pieced the pink and the narrow black frame back into the die. I also added the four diamond shapes in black.

The sentiment is from an earlier PFS release, You Are My Rainbow. I die cut a stitched rectangle with Simon Says Stitched Rectangles and trimmed the sentiment piece to fit. I added four black jewels to this card.

You’ll find lots more inspiration on the Color Hues blog. There’s just one challenge for the month of December so you have lots of time to play along!

I’m planning to add the second card to the December Pinkfresh Studio Challenge which is always Anything Goes. That’s good because they’re looking for Christmas cards this month!

Cozy Wishes

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It’s not very often I start with a sketch, but when I saw the sketch at The Paper Players this week as well as the options for Festive Friday: Christmas Jumper Day, I knew I could put my newly purchased (on sale!) embossing folder to good use. I loved the texture and the design of Spellbinders Sweater Weather embossing folder.

Here’s the Sketch:

And the Challenge Board from Festive Friday:

You must use three of the items. Mine are: embossing folder, texture, knitting. Since the folder is a close-up of the knitted pattern, I didn’t think sweater would apply.

Sketches like these are very deceiving. It looks like a simple”cut and arrange.” Cut is easy, but arranging takes a bit or precision to be sure it all lines up nicely. I cut a piece of snowflake patterned paper from a very old paper pad by American Crafts as a background for my three sweater pieces. Once that was attached to a white card base I stamped and white embossed the sentiment from My Favorite Things, Itty Bitty Holiday, and die cut it with the MFT Itty Bitty Strips.  Even though MFT has sadly gone out of business, this stamp set was in my Christmas NBUS box, and of course the embossing folder is also NBUS. I could have used the “warm wishes” sentiment, but I had “cozy” in mind, and forgot that “warm wishes” was one of the elements for Festive Friday. 

Much to my surprise I do not own any very small snowflake dies, but I did have these pretty Glitter Snowflakes by Jolee’s Boutique in my stash. I added three Clear Drops Ice by Pinkfresh Studio as well.

This is off to The Paper Players, Festive Friday, and the November NBUS gallery.