Having been away for a week, April has disappeared more quickly than usual, and here we are at the last Wednesday. It's time for Woodblock Wednesday.

This month I chose to CASE a card I made in a class over 25 years ago! I replicated the card multiple times for several years, but it's been a long time and as soon as I saw the stamp I decided to create an updated version.

The layered lighthouse scene is layered much the way it was on the original card. I changed a very dark purple card base for brighter cardstock, added an embossed background, some yellow for the light in the lighthouse as well as a sentiment on a tag. The original had no sentiment on the front and a tag with a charm hung from the top left side of the card. The wooden stamp is from Paper Parachute, and the embossing folder is from Lifestyle crafts. The embossing of the stars was almost too deep, but die cutting the panel with Gina K's Master Layourt #1 flattened it just the right amount. The sentiment is from Simon Says' Your Light set.

Even with a closer look, it's hard to see that I added a bit of metallic gold to each of the circles in the border as well as the centers of the stars in the sky.  The little tag for the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Tag Creations: Modern Gift. In addition to the dimensional tape added to the layers in the scene, I added a layer of dimension behind the embossed panel. This was a really fun project!

I'm just in time to add this to the Can You Handle the Pressure Challenge where using an embossing folder is a requirement. The card is also going to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.

It's the last Wednesday in March so it's also Woodblock Wednesday, kindly hosted each month by Amy Tsurtua. 

It's still going to be awhile before butterflies appear here. Today's another mild day, but the temps go down again tomorrow. I'm hoping that a month from now we'll be in full bloom with Spring flowers and a few butterflies. This woodblock butterfly is from Lockhart Stamps. I gave away or sold a huge portion of my wooden stamp collection, so it's interesting to me how many Lockhart stamps I saved. The copyright date on it is 2009.

It had been awhile since I used my colored pencils, so I pulled out a sheet of Stonehenge White paper which works well with colored pencils. I also pulled out three cards from my Color Box 2. I knew I wanted to use purple, and the cards helped me choose the additional colors. I'm enjoying the Color Box. It gives me color choices I might not have chosen on my own.

Of course, I didn't use all the colors, but it's easy to find the ones I did use. After coloring the butterflies, I fussy cut them. I die cut two rectangles from The Greetery's Crimped Frames, and added dimensional foam behind both of them before adding them to a purple card base. 

I also added a strip of dimensional tape behind the body of the butterflies, so I could bend their wings a bit for more interest. The sentiment was white embossed on black with My Favorite Thing Itty Bitty Strips, also mounted with a bit of dimensional tape. Despite all the dimension, the card still fits in an envelope easily. 

In addition to Woodblock Wednesday, I'm posting this with two other challenges. When I enter The Triple B Challenge (Birds, Blooms and Butterflies) it's almost always blooms. This time it's a butterfly, and I could have entered a bird as well if I had only thought about it! I'm also sending this to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge where it's Anything Goes.

It's the last Wednesday in February (and our son's birthday!), so it's also Woodblock Wednesday hosted by Amy Tsuruta.

I'm in need of thank you cards, so I decided to pull out a favorite woodblock stamp by Paper Parachute and, for inspiration, five cards from the Color Cube which I've owned for several months but never used. As you can see, each card features a photograph (and inspiration for photography) as well as five colors drawn from the photo. I chose three of the colors from each card to color the floral design with Copic markers. I was a bit apprehensive trying to color such a small image with Copics but it actually went pretty well. I ended up with five thank you notes.

All five cards use the same products, so I'll just share them one by one. Some of the different color schemes produce cards with a different vibe which is nice when deciding which one to use for a note.

I'll be back later tonight with a birthday post for Matt. I'm hoping the girls will be receptive to a photo with their dad. Either way, I'll be back to share his birthday card.