Sheri's pick for this Color Hues Challenge came at a great time for me. Red and Green called out Christmas, and my stash of Christmas cards is very small. 

In keeping with my goal of using NBUS, I pulled out Pinkfresh Studio's hot foil plate, stencil, and die cut for the Winter Berries Frame purchased months ago and went to town. The first card is my fave and the one I posted on the Color Hues Challenge site, but there are four more cards as well. I challenged myself to try a different design for each of the cards. 

This is the only card where I didn't use the die. I've always love the Savvy Joy die cut and use it almost every Christmas. I used the stencil and two shades of green and red to color the berries. I stenciled enough panels for all the cards first, and actually have quite a few left over.

The closer view shows the beautiful hot foil and the pretty gold sentiment.

For the rest of the cards, I'll just list the additional products used for the card.

black & gold mirror cardstock, Pinkfresh Studio Diagonal Stitched Circles, Spellbinders Betterpress Fancy Sentiment Strip & die (foiled in gold), PFS gold pearls

a premade embossed square card, PFS Perfect Sentiments: Holiday (foiled in gold), PFS Gold Glitter dots

Gina K embossing folder Tapestry, Ellen Hutson Essential Arches die, PFS Perfect Sentiments: Holiday, PFS scarlet clear drops

PFS Basic Banners: Christmas, The Paper Studio gold pearls 

It's not just Christmas on the Color Hues Challenge board although I'm not the only one to add to their stash of holiday cards. Please hop over and take a look at the great designs of our Guest Designer, Rosemary, and our Design Team. 

Some of these cards are off to two additional challenges: Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas, the Christmas Kickstart Challenge: Festive Frames (which I'd better continue to play with!) and NBUS for the berry frame.

It will already be July when this post goes live, and I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. We spent a week going to Wisconsin, flying with our 12 year old grandson to Washington, D.C. for a few days, driving home, and then a week of commuting between home and a cottage on Conesus Lake Tracy's family had rented. I was glad to be home for a week before we leave again for Chautuaqua Institute. We've been there before but never just the two of us. It's sure to be relaxing, inspiring, and informative. This week's theme is Artificial Intelligence. 

Nancy, our fabulous leader at Color Hues, has chose a wonderful color combination: 

I knew almost at once what I wanted to try. Some time ago I purchased Matte White foil from Spellbinders and wanted to try it out on aqua cardstock. Concord & 9th's cardstock foils beautifully, and their Aqua Sky cardstock was the perfect color. It's not often a card ends up looking exactly as I imagined it, but this one did.

I chose an old favorite from Pinkfresh Studio, Quadrant Backdrop and ink blended it with the coordinating stencils with Simon Says Sea Foam ink. I chose Concord & 9th's Oceanside for the cardbase and sentiment. I love Waffle Flower's "Hey There" sentiments, and this one fit perfectly.

I added a piece of dimensional foam behind the main panel, and stacked three of the sentiments together for a bit more dimension. Adding some white enamel dots was the final touch.

Edited to add: In my attempt to work through my NBUS box, I created a second Aqua and White card with a new-to-me stencil, Frosty Lace. By the name, I'm thinking it was meant to be a winter-themed stencil but it looks like it could be a sea foam stencil as well.

Like my first card, I used Concord and 9th cardstocks and Simon Says inks to ink blend, primarily Seafoam again, adding some Surf ink to add some dimension. I decided to cut the piece down to a square card. 

This time I used a gold foiled sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio's Favorite Things Betterpress plate, and added some gold pearls to finish it off.

As always, you'll find lots of inspiration from our guest, Nance, and the Design Team on the Color Hues Blog. Please join us in the gallery!

I'm sending the second card off to Just Us Girls: Anything Goes Stencils and to Darnell's new July NBUS gallery.

Marcia has chosen a very lovely color combo for the Color Hues Challlenge this time, Sage and Pink.

This is, once again, the second card I created for this challenge but it has a slightly different story than previously. I created a card I was pretty happy with, photographed it, but hadn't gotten around to posting it. Then a day or two later I created this card:

This card was intended for a Pinkfresh Studio Challenge, but when it was completed, I realized I had used (once again) a sage and pink colorway. Clearly this color combo speaks to me. I like the card even better than the first one, so saved it for this challenge. It represents a lot of firsts for me: 1) I had never dry embossed using a stencil, 2) I had never foiled using a Betterpress plate, and all of the elements on the card are ones that I have never used before. 

The Betterpress Plate, coloring stencil, and die are Pinkfresh Studio's Amazing Things, and the stencil is Pinkfresh Studio's Diamond Plaid.  I used a new die from My Favorite Things, Elegant Rectangles, to cut the background for the floral. The sentiment was also foiled with a Betterpress plate from Spellbinders, Always and Forever Sentiment Strips.

The closer view shows how beautifully the Betterpress plate foils. All the inks I used were from Pinkfresh Studio:  Sage, Ballet Slippers, and Sparkling Rose. 

As always, you'll find lots of inspiration from our Guest Designer, Amy, and the Design Team on the Color Hues Blog.

I'm sending this off to the Time Out Challenge where the quote speaks of flowers, to Triple B for Blooms,  and to NBUS for all the new products and techniques I used.

 

 

Julie has a wonderful Spring color combination for our next Color Hues Challenge:

We live just two blocks from Rochester's Highland Park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, and planted with over 700 varieties of lilacs. The annual Lilac Festival begins on May 10th and lasts until May 19th, so this combination was very timely. The Greetery just released fabulous lilac dies, but I don't own them, so I chose a lovely floral stencil instead. The Curved Floral Banner was part of a Gina K Kit a year or so ago. When I had finished stenciling it, I die cut it with the accompanying die. It also comes with a detailed die cut that creates an border around the whole image, but I decided I much preferred the soft, clean look of just the stencil.

 

I've always known purples were hard to photograph, and this card certainly gave me a run for the money. I spent way more time trying to get accurate colors in the photos than I did making the card. They're still not perfect. If you have a sheet of Concord & 9th's Lilac paper, you'll get the real picture! 

The scalloped oval is from a pack from Dick Blick's, and I stamped it with a sentiment from the Gina K's Sweet Sentiments with Pinkfresh Studio's "Soft Lilac" ink. I added a few beautiful lilac gems to the oval as the finishing touch.

Please check out all the lovely cards from the Design Team and our Guest Designer on the Color Hues blog. Then come join us in the gallery!

 

 

 

 

It's mid-April and time for a new Color Hues Challenge. Hannelie has chosen Yellow and Pink for this challenge. 

I was determined to create something a bit out of my comfort zone. The first card I created was just OK. I'll send the card, but I wanted to try something else for the challenge. As I was looking through my dies I came upon a Memory Box die set (dated 2015) that I've had for many years, but never used. The images in Rain or Shine, are small so it took me awhile to figure out how to use them. The old familiar saying "April showers bring May flowers" was going through my head as I looked at the dies. The rain and the umbrellas were right there, but I needed to find the sentiment as well as some flowers. 

By lining up the "rain" image and repeating it I got a square of rain drops. The two cute umbrellas paper-pieced with old AMuse papers fit right on there. Luckily I had two of the (also very old) Papertrey Ink sets from the Monthly Moments sets that gave me most of my sentiment.

I layered the umbrellas with two pieces of heavy cardstock and the handles with two of the handle die cuts for a bit of dimension.

Finding the word "bring" turned out to be the most time-consuming part of the card. I could have used the computer, but I wanted the message to be on one layer. My collection of Christmas stamps turned out to be the best option. I found a couple different ones, but this one from Waffle Flowers Oversized Joy fit perfectly. I found the little flowers in The Greetery's BotaniCut Strawberries set, and I popped them up with teeny pieces of dimensional foam.

We're hoping for lots of May flowers here, but the bulk of them won't be planted until Memorial Day so there's still lots of time for April showers. Personally, I'm hoping for lots of April sunshine!!! When this post goes live, we'll be in South Carolina so we're more likely to be enjoying sunshine than we would be in Rochester.

I hope this color combo inspires you to create a card for our gallery at Color Hues. Be sure to check out the Design Teams clever and beautiful cards!

This is going to the NBUS blog. This might be one of the oldest unused die sets in my collection! It's also going to Juat Us Girls where the Word Week Challenge is Rain. How lucky am I as this challenge closes at 9:00 tonight!

 

 

 

Peach and Green are the new colors for the April 1st Challenge at Color Hues. Cindy has chosen the duo, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Rather impulsively I ordered the February Clear Stamp and Die of the Month from Spellbinders. I have no regrets. It was just perfect for this challenge, and I'm a big fan of lilies!

The feature that sold me on the set was the die cut which cuts the arched frame and all the inside areas at once. After coloring the image with Copic markers, I backed the arch with black cardstock, and the lilies just popped! Concord and 9th recently introduced a new set of colors. I usually invest in a sampler pack, and it arrived just as I was trying to find a piece of peach cardstock. Their Creamsicle paper was just what I needed. 

The stamp set included several lovely sentiments as well as the dies to cut them out. I added some dimensional foam behind the arched lilies, and then stacked several sentiments to provide more dimension. 

April usually hold some promise of consistent Spring weather in western New York, so hopefully we'll soon see lilies beginning to peek through in the garden. In the meantime, hop over to the Color Hues blog to see the what the Design Team and our Guest Designer have created. We hope you'll join us!

Thanks to this new stamp and die set, I'm likely to be one of the first in the gallery at Darnell's April NBUS post.  I'm also posting this in the Seize the Birthday Challenge: Spring Florals, and The Four Seasons Challenge: Anything Goes. 

Carol has chosen Cream and Blue for the next Color Hues Challenge. I started out with one idea in mind and ink blended a group of white diecut flowers from My Favorite Things, Bold Blossoms, using two sets of Pinkfresh inks. The next morning, I totally revised my plan, but the ink blended flowers are still the centerpiece of the card. I decided to stuff an envelope with pretty blue flowers. The envelope die I own wasn't nearly large enough, but I had exactly one small cream envelope in my stash, and it worked out perfectly.

The sentiment stamp and die are new–part of the Greetery's Love Letters release in January–Sent with Love Sentiments. To add some dimension to the greeting I stacked three of the diecuts under the stamped sentiment. Altenew's Window Slats 3-D Embossing folder worked well as a background.

Instead of the die cut centers for the flowers I added a Pinkfresh Studio jewel to each. They add just the right amount of sparkle.

This turned out to be a fun challenge, and I hope you'll think so, too, and join us in the gallery at Color Hues. You're sure to find lots of inspiration from the Design Team members and our Guest Designer, Steph.

Since this is the debut of the new sentiment set, I'm sending this over to Darnell's March NBUS Challenge. It also fits with her Dies/Die Cuts weekly "challenge" as this is the last day of Week 2. I'm also entering this in The Card Concept Challenge: Spring Has Sprung where a basket of flowers is a focal point of their inspiration photo.