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Make A Wish

I have a new card up on the Memory Box blog this morning, and wanted to share it here,

I love Sebastian Mouse on a swing. Not long ago, I saw a tutorial for a Faux Tunnel card and thought it would be great for Sebastian Mouse.

I die cut the mouse from white and gray cardstock and his cute outfit from papers in the Sunrise Cardstock Pack. Although the die includes texture for the wooden swing, I cut it from a scrap of woodgrain cardstock. I added a bit of ink blending to the individual pieces before assembling the mouse and the swing.

To create the Faux Tunnel, I chose three pieces of cardstock from the Lagoon Cardstock Pack and cut a circle from each using the Basic Circle Dies, making sure I layered the pieces so they created an even tunnel effect. I used the 4th largest circle, and then the 8th and 6th largest. For the last layer, I created a white card base, hand cut two “cloud” stencils and used a blue ink to create a sky.

I popped each layer up with dimensional tape. Before adding the top layer I attached Sebastian Mouse to the backside, adding two layers of foam tape to the back of the mouse. For the sentiment, I added a tiny brad to the White Greeting Tag and attached it with a bit of dimensional foam. 

The card came together easily, and if you’re a card maker, it makes for a more unique card design. Despite the two layers of dimensional tape, it went into an envelope pretty easily.

There’s a lot of die cutting here, so I thought I send this over to A Cut Above where it’s always Anything Goes. I haven’t played along with them in quite awhile.

It’s still snowing here. Everyone has had enough. We haven’t seen the pavement on our driveway since I got back from my trip south two weeks ago. At least the sub-zero temperatures have eased up a bit.

Stay warm!

Blue Skies Ahead

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A quick post (two days in a row!) I was up on the Memory Box blog yesterday, and wanted to post the card here as well. I thought Memory Box’s pretty Daisy Umbrellas would make a fun encouragement card, and created a square card with three pretty umbrellas, and a wish for “blue skies ahead.” 

I used a circle die and the Raindrop Plate to create the background and added the daisies die cut from  cardstock in the Sunrise Cardstock pack. The sentiment is from the Playful Poppies Clear Stamp set.

May there be many blue skies in your forecast!

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.

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.

A Birthday Happy Dance

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One of my favorite images from the Joyful Season release is the Happy Dance Bird. I’ve seen a variety of wonderful cards on the internet using it for holiday cards, but I thought she could do a happy dance for a birthday as well. 

I die cut the bird from white cardstock and colored it using finger dauber with a variety of inks. I wanted a focal point for her, so die cut two circles from the Circle Basics dies, one from bright yellow cardstock from the Sunrise paper pack, and one from bright pink from my stash to coordinate with the bird’s scarf.

I thought it would be fun to create an easel card for the Happy Dance. I chose a pretty pink cardstock, created a top folding card and scored the front at the halfway point. I ink blended an ombre pattern on some scrap cardstock and die cut the sentiment from Warm Wishes Stylish Script to use as a stopper for the easel card, adding it to the yellow shadow die. I stacked several more shadows to create a thicker stop so the easel will stand up. easily. Next I arranged the Happy Dance Bird, some gifts from Plentiful Presents, and a birthday greeting from the Happy Birthday Greeting Tabs to the circle, The final step was to carefully add the circle to the bottom half of the card front.

I think the Happy Dance Bird is sure to bring a smile to any birthday celebration!

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.

Lighting the Way

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One of my favorite dies from the Memory Box Joyful Season release is the Antique Lantern die. This is the last of the cards I created for the Memory Box blog but am posting on Instagram while we wait for the Memory Box Blog to go live.

I found some bronze metallic cardstock in my “scraps box” and used it to create the lantern as well as the frame I die cut with the Heritage Rectangle Frames. I ink blended on white cardstock the interior of the lantern as well as the candle, and added the frame and the lantern to a light gray card base with dimensional tape.

With the dimensional tape, I was able to arrange some evergreen boughs from the Pine Needles and Cones die and a poinsettia from Blooming Poinsettias around the lantern. The sentiment was die cut from Warm Wishes Stylish Script. I added some red ink blending to the bottoms of the letters for an ombre look which you see IRL, but sadly doesn’t show in real life. 

I hope your weekend is going well. Thanks for stopping by.

Two Cards for Memory Box

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At the beginning of August, I was invited to be on the Design Team for the Memory Box Company. It was quite an honor, and I accepted. But by mid-August Typepad had announced it was closing its doors and both Memory Box and I had to find new homes for our blog. 

I found the experience very stressful, but moving my blog to a new platform was nothing compared to a company that hosted three blogs on Typepad. Since all their posts involved photos and links to products, you can imagine that the transfer of the data was much more complicated. 

Before it closed down, I had published one card on their blog, but by the time I was comfortable blogging on WordPress I had forgotten all about the Memory Box card. I had two more posts scheduled for Memory Box, but those cards will go up once their new blog is live. In the meantime, here are two cards I’ve created for them. The first is the one that was published on their blog in early September, and the second is one I posted on Instagram yesterday. I would have had several cards posted by now so I’m posting a couple of them on Instagram while we wait for the new Memory Box blog. 

The first card is a shaker card, and I used the Tall Evergreen Trees die from the new Joyful Season release, a basic set of beautiful frames, Heritage Rectangle Frames, Basic Circle Dies, and the Snow Flurries Stencil.

I applied Moonstone Nuvo Glitter paste through the stencil to create a snowy background on dark blue cardstock, and added a silver moon created with one of the Basic Circle Dies. Then I die cut three trees using the Greenery Paper Pack by Memory Box, adding two of them directly on the background, and the middle tree with dimensional tape. 

The frame was die cut from silver metallic cardstock using the two largest Heritage Rectangle dies. I added a piece of acetate to the back and then two layers of dimensional tape to create the shaker window. From my stash, I added some pretty white snowflake and clear sequins to create the snowy shaker. 

The second card is a very CAS card, so much simpler to assemble. The ornament is from the Decorative Ornaments dies. There is one basic die and three lovely decorative dies to overlay on it. I opted to leave it plain this time, and cut it from red metallic cardstock. I add the ornament hanger in gold and the sentiment from the Peace, Love and Joy Stylish Sentiments, die cut from green metallic paper. 

The ornament was added to two of the beautiful Fan Stitched Scalloped Frames die cut from cream cardstock that I layered with dimensional tape. I added some pine branches from Pineneedles and Cones and some berries from the Berry Splash dies. For a bit of sparkle, I added some Rock Candy Glitter to the pine branches.

I have another card to post this week on Instagram, so will be back here again soon.