This week's challenge at Mark's Finest Papers is ivory and lace. I needed a wedding card to take to a reception yesterday afternoon and this was the perfect inspiration. The flowers in Lorraine's birthday package were just perfect for it. I'm sure I'll use this card design again. It was quick to make, and is quite elegant, I think.
Cardstock: Vintage Cream (PTI) and a green scrap; die: Branch with Leaves (Sizzix); flower (Prima); lace from stash; stamp: Delightful Dahlias (PTI)
It's a happy color at Project 64 this week. My favorite mechanical pencils just happen to be yellow orange.
This wall at Tohono Chul is also the perfect color.
Here's my favorite image of the pots.
Have a happy day!
I'm back with a second post today as promised. First off, a card for the Simon Says Stamps challenge. I placed my first order with them last week and was amazed at the fast service. I've never looked at their blog before this week, and there's lots of inspiration there. This week's challenge is for Stars and Stripes. I had several new products I was anxious to use and was able to use some favorites as well. As I created the card, it occured to me that it would be a perfect birthday card for my MIL. She doesn't read my blog, so it's safe to post it here. Her birthday isn't until July 5th, but it's nice to be ahead!
One of the products on my list when we were traveling was the Tim Holtz mini-rosette die. I never found it so it was one of the goodies in the Simon Says package. I love how easy it is to create these fun rosettes and they are much flatter than the ones I've tried on my own. I stamped the stars for the centers with a Teresa Collins stamp, Free Style. The sentiment frame is also from that set, and the sentiment is from the new Papertrey set Tag-its #4. The Tag-it stamps are just $5 and I get a lot of used from the sentiments as well as the tag frames. The striped pieces are from a new stamp set, "Daily Junque," by Pink Paislee. I saw Danielle use it on three fabulous cards last week, and when I saw that Simon Says carried it, that pushed me to click on the purchase button!
Here's a closer look at the rosettes which I cut from some cute October Afternoon papers from the Campfire line.
There are some great stamps in the Daily Junque set, so I decided to stamp an envelope as well. All the stamps except "July" are from that set.
And now to Amy's photographic challenge. She asked us to photograph five things we think will be gone from our homes in five years. It turned out to be pretty easy.
First off, my cook top from the 1950's. It is probably the only live pilot cooktop in our town. But it will definitely be gone as we purchased a new stove on Friday. These green counters will also be gone.
My relatively recent refrigerator will also be gone from the kitchen, but probably moved to the basement. We're waiting for the final estimates, but expect to have a new kitchen by the end of the year. I've never had room for a full-size refrigerator, and I am absolutely thrilled with the one we bought this weekend (on close-out at a great price, to boot)!
So, in fact, my whole kitchen will be gone. These cupboards will be replaced as well. It's not a terrible kitchen, but the cupboards are over 50 years old and hard to keep clean. I stripped and refinished them 20 years ago, but it's time for a new look. The best part is we'll have a new arrangement, and it should be much more efficient, and I hope to have lots more counter space, even though we're not expanding the size of the kitchen.
Matt's room, now the guest room, will also have a new look. Hopefully, that won't take five years. I'm on the lookout for new bed linens and when Tracy has worked his way upstairs with his painting project this room will no longer have dark green woodwork, which I notice now doesn't appear in the photograph.
And, finally, my laptop. It's already several years old and is used enough that some of the letters are wearing off the keys. I'm not anticipating replacing it in the next year or so, but I doubt it will last five more years.
This was fun, Amy! Thanks for throwing down the challenge.
It’s Memorial Day in the U.S. today—a time to honor those who have died in the far too many wars we’ve engaged in. It’s also known as Poppy Day in the U.K. and we, too, honor the veterans by buying paper poppies to support Veteran Assistance Programs. I learned more about Poppy Day this week when I volunteered in a classroom and the students were reading about how the paper poppies originated. You can find some information here and here about the traditions associated with the poppies as a symbol of remembrance. Today was my post for Scrap-Mart. When I put my donation in the jar on Saturday, the veteran handed me several poppies, and I thought they’d look great on a card, and be an appropriate post for the holiday.
I used a piece of patterned paper from the Sassafrass Lass "Ellie's Tale," stitched and adhered to a piece of textured cardstock. I cut and embossed a Classic Rectangle Nestability and added the new Nestablings that fit perfectly within the embossed edge.
I love the smaller gem in each corner. The sentiment is from WPlus9.
I hope you're having a good holiday weekend. We had a fun trip to Ithaca on Saturday and then dinner and a wonderful performance of The Music Man with good friends. Yesterday I finished two big projects and we got about 2/3 of our vegetable garden planted. We've had so much rain, it's been hard to get into the garden. It wasn't bad yesterday, but we came home with muddy sneakers. We hope to get the planting finished at the community garden and get going on ours here today. I'm also hoping to be back later with five photos for Amy's challenge.
It's not often that I combine challenges, but this week's Make-It Monday at Papertrey Ink was to create a sympathy card, and the color/text challenge at Embellish seemed like a good color combination. I wouldn't have interpreted the one color as Ocean Tides, but one of the designers listed it as one of the colors and it's clearly used on the designer cards at Embellish.
It's been awhile since I inked up Take Three: Summer. I love these simple, but elegant, floral designs and they seemed appropriate for a sympathy card.
Except for the sentiment (Savvy Stamps) and the scrap of gray card stock, everything is by Papertrey Ink. I stamped one strip of Background Basics: Text Style in black and the three floral designs in Ocean Tides. The gray die cut panel is attached with dimensional tape. Then I adhered it to a mat of Ocean Tides before adhering it to the card base.
This is my second post today. For the Papertrey Ink Blog Hop, scroll down one post.
This week's color at Project 64 was asparagus. Of course I had to photograph the vegetable since roasted asparagus is probably my favorite vegetable.
And then I have two photos from the Denver Botanic Gardens. All three plants have asparagus green leaves.
Heleborus
Peony
You can find a lot of photographic inspiration on the Project 64 blog.
For the second month in a row, I came close to missing the Papertrey Blog Hop–one of my favorite events each month. Fortunately, last night I realized and had enough time to complete a card set for this month's challenge to create with flower images. On Monday, my May PTI order arrived, so I was happy to break open the Year of the Flower Collection set. I love these smaller versions and know I'll be using this set often.
All three cards are just the same except for the focal image and the color of the doily mat. It was interesting to me to see how different the focal images looked as I changed the color of the mat. The Morning Glories looked best with Ripe Avocado, the Sweet Peas with a Bazzill scrap from my file, and the Lily of the Valley with a Simply Chartreuse mat. The cards are pre-made, I think from Paper Source and the narrow green ribbon is also from Paper Source. The focal images were stamped on Vintage Cream and colored with Prismacolor pencils. The dies are both Papertrey: Limitless Layers and Doily Details. I'm in need of several note cards for thank you notes so I'll probably use these myself.
If you're looking for card-making inspiration, this blog hop is always a good place to look!
I'm in need of quite a few cards for June birthdays. One of the recipients is a singer, so when I saw the featured card on the CASE Study blog, I knew I wanted to play along. Here is the card by Sarah Martina Parker:
Sarah excels at these shabby vintage cards, but it's not a natural for me. I am, however, pretty pleased with the card I came up with, and I think my friend will like it, too.
I've been admiring the double bows Melissa Philips and Debbie Olsen make, so I thought I'd try my hand at one, and I knew I wanted to use this pretty Prima flower I picked up in Phoenix, thanks to Deb's recommendation of a scrapbook store. All the rest of the products are Papertrey Ink: Hibiscus Burst cardstock and ribbon; Background Basics: Sheet Music, and Tiny Tags stamps and die; Vintage Cream and True Black cardstock.
I'm still doing catch-up after our long trip. I'll soon be around to all your blogs which I read (even though I didn't comment) while I was on the road, but haven't managed to get to this week. The next few days look a little less hectic. It's all been good, but it's been busy!!
Time is definitely getting away from me this week. There's been so much to do and so many appointments/obligations on the calendar since we got back. Last week's color for Project 64 was Cerulean Blue. I found two good examples on our trip.
This beautiful blue jar was at the Denver Botanical Gardens.
Sarah bought this gorgeous dish in a Guatamalan shop in Boston the year she went to B.U. It's prominently displayed on their shelves. I'll be back tomorrow or Monday with the next color: asparagus green.
A very quick post since this challenge ends in just a few hours. I love red and yellow, but I could certainly tell I've been away from my crafting table for a few weeks. This is at least the fourth version of this card! Here's the color inspiration from CR84FN:
And my card:
Cardstock: Pure Poppy (PTI); Patterned Paper: Circa 1934 (Cosmo Cricket); Star & Banner dies: PTI; Stamps: Just the Ticket (PTI); Twine: Jeweler's Natural (Michaels); Chamomile Tea Ink for distressing (PTI)
There's lots to share from our three week trip, so I'll be back again soon with photos of the cool places we got to visit!
One last challenge before I leave for vacation. I've always loved the hand-drawn frames Nicole Heady does on so many of her cards, but I've never been very successful at it. After watching her video, I found it's easier than I thought.
This tulip image from the Friendship Jar Spring Fillers set was the image that pushed me over the edge and put the stamp set in my cart. But this is the first time I've used it. I love the way it looks on its own without the jar. I don't make one layer cards that often, but I think that might change. The tulips were colored with Copic markers, and the sentiment is from Signature Greetings. You can find the other entries for this challenge here.
I've been lurking on the CR84FN Color Challenge site for a few weeks, but finally got around to creating a card. I love this combination of red, aqua, and white.
The first thing I did was take a look at the most recent Studio Calico kit, and found two perfect papers, one by Studio Calico and one from Emma's Shoppe by Crate Paper. The strawberry paper then dictated which stamps I used. I was surprised to discover that the only strawberry stamp I own is part of Papertrey Ink's Vintage Picnic set. It's one of my favorites, and it's been awhile since it's seen some love. I also cased Heather's design which you can see on the CR84FN site as well.
I colored the strawberries with a combination of Copic markers and Faber-Castell Artist pens. The strawberries are so tiny, the artist pens were much easier to use on the leaves than the Copics. I also used the artist pens to enhance the picnic basket and added two brads to the handles. I cut out five sets of strawberries and layered them into the basket after adhering it to the Lacey Circle I cut from the B side of the Studio Calico paper. The ribbon and button are from Papertrey as is the Tiny Tag. I just love the Tiny Tag set. It's the perfect size for tying to a bow.
I wasn't too hopeful about finding much Pacific Blue this week, but actually there was a lot more than I expected and I never had to leave the house.
They were all right here in my studio. Who knew? Just another reason why I like this challenge—it encourages me to look more carefully everywhere.
For the next couple of weeks, I'll be on the road, and I'm hoping to continue to participate. I've never tried to post from an iPad and the photos will definitely be SOOC. If need be, I'll do a catch-up post when I get home. Tracy and Matt rolled out of here a day late due to major car repairs on the way to Denver. Matt's new job starts on Monday. I'll be joining them on Thursday.
I've been trying to complete all the cards I need for the many birthdays and anniversaries of friends and family that occur in May. The last two I needed to do were for anniversaries, and both cards meet the challenge at Mark's Finest Paper where the challenge is to create an anniversary card. The first is based on the Waltzing Mouse Sketch Challenge so I'm posting it there as well.
The cardstock is Simply Chartruese (Papertrey Ink) and a pale yellow (looks cream here) by Memory Box. The bottom half is embossed with a Sizzix embossing folder (I think it's called Snow Flowers). The stamps are Very Vintage Labels 4 by Waltzing Mouse Stamps and the greeting is from Fillable Frames #4 (Papertrey Ink). The ribbon is Simply Chartreuse. the pearls are Reflections (Michaels), and the heart pin came in a Scrapbook Circle kit.
This card was based on a simply beautiful card I found here by Heather Jensen. I love the Sending You stamps and dies (Papertrey) and used the same cardstock and ribbon that was lying on my desk from the previous card. The patterned papers are DeLovely by Cosmo Cricket, and the sentiment is the same as above as well. The leaves are a Sizzix die "Branch with Leaves" which I cut into two pieces. I have all the May cards addressed and in my bag to mail at the appropriate times when we're on our trip.
Nancy and I are back again with a Team-Up Thursday diptych. This week's theme was yellow, and we both went for flowers. Neither of us took them outside in Rochester, though, as it was still snowing here this morning. We've gotten lots of rain and several days of snow showers recently. Fortunately, not enough to cover the ground, but still . . . it's April!!! Mine (on the left) was taken at the Highland Park Conservatory and Nancy was lucky enough to visit Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia on her recent trip.
I'm playing along with Kim Klassen's texture link-up again this week. Playing with textures always seems to end up low on the list of thing to do, so this is a good incentive.
I actually used the recipe Kim listed on her blog last week for this: Silence/Soft Light at 100% opacity, SweeTreat/Soft Light at 100% opacity, and a very slight adjustment to the midtones in Levels. Here's the original. The texture seems to do more to the saturation of the image than anything else. Just a softer look.
