Today is our 52nd anniversary–pretty hard to believe. We've already been for a nine mile bike ride along the canal, and got home before the serious heat arrived. The rest of the day is pretty relaxed, but we're going to dinner at a new-to-us restaurant for dinner. A little fancier environment that our usual–although I've come to the conclusion that it's perfectly acceptable to wear jeans almost anywhere these days. My parents would be appalled. When I was growing up I had "church clothes" and "theater clothes." I was forty before I was comfortable wearing pants to church! I'll be wearing a dress tonight. 🙂

Tracy's card this year is very CAS, but I hope he likes it as much as I do.

I started with Art Pop Watercolor paper which I love for the texture. It also has a slight creamy color as well. I played around with several designs, but finally settle on this: I die cut a panel with Gina K's Master Layout 1 and then die cut a scalloped heart from The Greetery's Nordic Hearts in the center of it. I backed the opening with gold textured paper from Michael's and then added the heart.

The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Larger Than Life: Love, sentiments, embossed in gold and die cut with My Favorite Things "Itty Bitty Strips." I've owned the sentiment stamp for so long it was in with the sentiments instead of the NBUS box, but it clearly had never been used. I forgot to take a photos of the inside which reads "And laughter, and Happily Ever After." Just perfect. 

My nephew celebrates a birthday in early January. The occasion was an opportunity to put my Simon Says/Gina K Designs Stay Cozy stamp set to good use again. Early in December, I used the set to create two cards-one for my brother-in-law and one for my brother. This version came together quickly after finding the background piece in my stash. 

After stamping the silhouettes on the background piece, I die cut it with Gina K's Master Layout #1 which has become indispensable in my craft room. Then I cut a snowbank to add to the bottom of the panel and stamped my sentiment from Papertrey Ink's Wishes Come True. 

Using the Master Layout #1 again, I die cut a narrow black mat and added the panel to a white card base. 

The AAA Birthday Challenge: Winter came along at just the right time. As did the Double D Challenge: Birthday or Anniversary. Diane and Darlene are celebrating 9 years for the Double D Challenge–Congrats to them! I'll be adding this card to both galleries. 

It's my turn to be the hostess and to choose the colors for the new Color Hues Challenge:

If you've followed me for some time, you aren't surprised by this choice. Red and Black are two of my favorite color combinations. I often choose them when making masculine cards, but I also love them for Christmas cards. Since my stash of Christmas cards is very limited (and time is running short), I chose Christmas as my theme for this challenge.

I pulled out my favorite poinsettia die: Altenew's 3D P0insettia. I die cut it from Gina K's Red Hot cardstock-one of the most vibrant reds in my collection. I found the background paper in my stash of card fronts that I created but never used. It was splattered with gold, so I used the Gansai Tambi Starry Night watercolors to splatter the poinsettia as well. I finished it with three small Pinkfresh Studio Gold Pearls. 

Then I added the panel to a cream card base. The sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio's Hot Foil Perfect Sentiments: Holiday was also in an envelope of premade sentiments. Having these premade panels and sentiments makes card making a bit faster. Since it's more time consuming to get out my hot foil machine, when I do, I make multiples and stash them away.

I hope this color combo inspires you to join us at the Color Hues Blog. Whether you choose a holiday card or another theme, we'd love to see you in our gallery. There's always lots of inspiration on the Color Hues Blog to get you started!

Julie P's Color Hues combo is so inspiring this time around. I love the Olive and Mustard combination and was able to put another NBUS stencil to work.

Altenew's Wonderful Wreath has been sitting in the NBUS box for far too long. It's a very easy stencil to use, and I used Papertrey Ink's Ripe Avocado for one layer, and after rotating the stencil a bit added a second layer of leaves with Gina K's Asparagus ink–two of my favorite greens. The mustard berries were hard to see even when I used a heavy had with Concord and 9th's Honeycomb ink so I added some Nuvo Crystal Glaze to each berry for a bit of dimension. 

The main panel was die cut with Hero Art's Rounded Rectangles (before adding the Nuvo glaze), and the sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio's Betterpress Plate, Favorite Things Sentiments, foiled in gold.

These are such pretty fall colors, and I hope you'll be inspired to join us in the Color Hues Gallery. There's lots of inspiration there so take a look!

The Double D Challenge theme is Harvest, and it was the perfect opportunity to pull out a My Favorite Things which I have owned (and never used) for so long that it is no longer available to purchase! I love these little mice so I'm not sure why they were so neglected.

I wanted to use the Waffle Flower Postage set again, so used the Postage Collage Coloring Stencil to color the background. I cut the stamps apart, and then set out to stamp, color, and die cut the cute little mice with their haul of pumpkins and apples. I placed the die cuts in four of the postage stamps, and arranged them on a woodgrain card (Simon Says.)

The sentiment from Papertrey Ink's Happy Fall is generic enough that I could use this for a fall birthday or even a fall anniversary. The little heart on the sentiment stamp is a red glittery sticker. 

This card is off to Double D as well as Darnell's NBUS challenge.

I have a crafting companion today, who worked very hard to create this card for her cousin who like crafting as much as she does. Here's Hannah with her card.

I had made a card for one of her birthday gifts that featured crafting supplies so that's what she wanted. She was pleased to see that I had a new (another NBUS) set by Gina K, Crafty Notes, and picked out the images she wanted to stamp. It took her no time to master the MISTI and she carefully colored the crafty tools with Tombow markers. She definitely wanted them to be "bumped out." 

When Hannah arrived from Wisconsin on Saturday she brought her watercolors with her and has created several wonderful paintings. After she colored the card and envelope, she noted that she was coloring the marker with one of the colors she used on the card. I think she's got this!

We're sending this off to NBUS as well. 

I pulled this stamp set out of the "Summer" box to decide whether I wanted to keep it or not. It's been years since I used it. I found a design on Pinterest for inspiration, and set about creating a card. I'm usually not a fan nor particularly adept at using layering stamps or scene building. But I'm pretty happy with this (almost) one layer card. The stamp set went back in the box. 

The scenery stamp is Summer Fence Line by Papertrey Ink. The sentiment is from The Greetery's Sentiment Suite: Birthday, always a favorite.

I die cut the panel with Simon Says Stamps Stitched Rectangles and layered it on a dark brown card base. 

I'm sending this off to the Paper Players where the challenge is: Beach Time, to Time Out: It's Always Summer Somewhere; and The Four Seasons: Anything Goes Summer.

The current call for Cute cards at AAA Birthday is the perfect time to post another puppy card! This time I created two of the same card. One will be sent, the other for the stash.

The layout is based on one I saw on Pinterest some time ago. It uses some more NBUS stamps and dies (MFT Canine Companions)  as well as some of the oldest patterned paper in my stash from AMuse Studios. The sentiment is from another newish set from MFT: Woof Pack. I used the images from that set on an earlier card. 

Once again I cut the images with my Scan N Cut and then colored them with Copic markers.  I used two favorite dies for the card design: Simon Says Stitched Rectangles, and Stitched Circles. There's dimensional tape behing the white panel to give those puppies a little breathing room. 

This is also off to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes, and to NBUS because one more product is out of the NBUS box.

It's been quite awhile since I took one of the Online Card Classes so when a new one,  Extraordinary Embossing Folders was advertised, I decided to enroll. There's so much going on at our house right now, it's hard to find the time to watch all the videos. As always, they are long and comprehensive. It's Day 3, and I have watched Day 1's videos and managed to create this card.

The topic was partial embossing which is something that seems so obvious, I'm rather chagrined that I never thought of it myself. I do like it, however, and will use it again. I was also inspired by a challenge that's relatively new to me: As You See It. Here's there image for the challenge that calls for 1) an embossing folder, 2) a die cut, 3) white, and 4) one additional color. 

The embossing folder is Tapestry from Gina K and the die cut sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio. I decided to score a line between the embossing folder and the bottom portion of the card. 

Hopefully, I'll be back before too long with some more cards from class.

A quick and CAS birthday card for one of our male friends. It was quick because the foiled background, Spellbinders' Skinny Stripes Background, was in my stash, and the gold foiled sentiment was one of Pinkfresh Studio's Foiled Sentiments 3. 

I trimmed down the foiled background and added a gold border before adding it to the black card base.

I backed the sentiment with dimensional dots and punched three stars from a very old paper punch, adding them as well with some dimension. If only every birthday card for a guy came together so easily!

I'm sending this off to both of the AAA Challenges: AAA Birthday where CAS is the challenge, and to AAA Cards Challenge where they are celebrating their 10th birthday–quite the accomplishment! It's also off to Addicted to Stamps and More where Birthday is the theme.