I don't often play along with sketch challenges (and you'll see my lack of experience soon), but when I saw the Paper Players Sketch Challenge I knew it was the perfect opportunity to use one of Gina K's Master Layout 11 dies which have been housed in my NBUS box for a very long time.

It's a "window die" with four sections so you can see why I was anxious to use it. However, I did not look at the sketch carefully enough, so the first card I made looks like this:

Not necessarily a bad card, but you can see that I totally ignored two major portions of the sketch. The second time around, I was much more careful, and I much prefer this card:

Most of the ingredients remained the same: Hawaiian Shores cardstock, white woodgrain cardstock, butterflies and leaves from Pinkfresh Studio's Fluttering Butterflies Washi tape and dies, and the beautiful patterned paper from Altenew,  Gel Printing Soft Washes. Both sentiments were foiled in gold on white. The first sentiment came from Pinkfresh Studio's  Favorite Things Sentiments, and the second from Spellbinders Betterpress Always and Forever.

I'm not likely to forget the need to commit all the parts of a sketch to my memory the next time, but it's nice to have two more cards in the stash. I'm sending the top card off to the Triple B Challenge: Birds, Blooms &/or Butterflies. Triple B always offers a gorgeous inspiration piece, but it's truly just that, and there's no requirement to follow the colors (as beautiful as they are for May)!

On Day 3 of the Extraordinary Embossing Folders, Laura Basson walked us through using an embossing folder that comes with an accompanying die. I recently purchased two of these embossing folders from Simon Says and put the Party Candles to work over the weekend.

There are lots of possibilities for using this folder, and I'm glad to have something that will work for both kids and adults. I die cut a group of the candles and ink blended them in bright colors for the Just Add Ink Challenge: Choose Two: Balloons, Bright Colors, and Birthday. The sentiment was already die cut from green glitter paper and filed with the Pinwheel Party dies from The Greetery. I backed it with vellum before adding it to the front. The die cut candles were then arranged over the embossed candles from the folder. I have to say the vellum looks much heavier and less transparent than it does in real life.

The card didn't need much embellishment but I added some of Honey Bee's Aurora Borealis gems which catch the light and really sparkle.

The challenge at Just Add Ink is ending tomorrow so I'm making this the second post of the day, so I won't forget to get it linked up in time.

It's a puzzle to me why I rarely get a card made for the Pinkfresh Studio Challenge. My collection of Pinkfresh Studio stamps and dies is one of my biggest and most favorite collections. The challenge is always on the to-do list, but rarely do I get it finished in time. Today I am down to the last few hours, but I was happy to put my newest Pinkfresh Studio purchase, Amazing Things, to work. I used just the theme for this card, and not the color palette. 

This is actually a Betterpress Plate. Once PFS realized that foiling works beautifully with a Betterpress plate, they discontinued manufacturing hot foil plates. This is the second time I've tried it and it works just as they promised. I think PFS's coloring stencils are the easiest ones to use, and I love how soft and beautiful this floral is. I used just one green ink pad, but applied it more heavily at the base of the leave for some additional dimension. The blues were also used in a light application and then a darker one. I often have a hard time ink blending with a light hand, but it certainly does work well if I slow down and pay attention.

The sentiment was gold embossed with Papertrey Ink's Banner Sentiments and die cut with Honey Bee's Sentiment Banner dies.

This is off to the Pinkfresh Challenge (you can find the graphic here; it would not load for me this morning) and a second entry to Just Us Girls for their Anything Goes with Stencils.

As soon as I saw the new challenge at Just Us Girls I knew just what I wanted to do. This week's challenge is Anything Goes with Stencils. Last week I received the Create in Quads: Poster Prints stencils from Taylored Expressions. I don't often purchase from there but I saw a set of sentiments I could use with several "arts and crafts" stamp sets that I own. When I went to the site, I saw these amazing designs and couldn't resist adding them to my cart.

Once again the light was a problem this morning, and now it's gray and raining so the photos are as good as they're going to be for now. 

I used Simon Says Stamps Pawsitively Saturated inks in Surf, Ocean, Lilac, Orchid, and Amethyst with some Hero Arts Spicy Mustard as an accent. What's not very visible is a final layer of Gold Lunar Paste. It was the first time I'd ever used it, and for this project it gets mixed reviews. I had to redo two panel because the application wasn't even enough. It's not as bright gold as I'd like. Taylored Expressions sells some gold foil layovers for these stencils and next time I order from there I'll definitely pick up a couple of packs. 

Of the four patterns, I think this one is my favorite. All the sentiment strips were stamped with Papertrey Ink's Banner Sentiments and die cut with Honey Bee's Sentiment Banners dies.

The lines on the tulips are the gold Lunar Paste.

I added a few Pinkfresh Studio gold pearls to this card and the next one.

In real life all the centers of the flowers are gold (applied with Lunar Passte). I laid gold pearls over all the centers but it was just too much, so chose to add them to just five flowers.

The whole concept of creating four cards all at once with one large stencil is unique and would have been quite a time saver if I hadn't decided to mess around with the Lunar Paste. I'm anxious to try these in a different color combination as well. These are pretty bold and I'm happy with that, but next time I'll try some softer colors.

In addition to the Just Us Girls Challenge, I'm sending this off to NBUS as this is the first outing for this stencil set.

I still have two puppy cards to share, but I'm not sure whether one of my great nephews was a dog lover or not so I pulled out an old favorite from Neat and Tangled–Later Alligator–and came up with this card:

Once again I used my Scan-N-Cut to cut the stamped images before coloring them with Copic markers. I used a new-to-me coverplate, Doubled Striped Card Front from Concord & 9th for the background and added some grass from Papertrey Ink's Into the Meadow dies.

I don't think I've ever used the cute little bird balloon, but it added just enough extra interest. The sentiment was stamped and then die cut with Honey Bee's Sentiment Banner dies.

"Animal Antics" is still live at The Paper Players Challenge so this is headed their way as well as to NBUS since the Concord & 9th coverplate finally saw some action.