Today is Adam's birthday. Since we were just there, I was able to leave his card and gift with Sarah. I used a new-to-me (NBUS!) stamp from My Favorite Things called "Trendy Triangles." It's somewhat reminiscent of an older Altenew stamp I have, but there are more triangle options with this set, plus I splurged on the dies. I've been waiting for an excuse to get it out. 

I chose one of my favorite color combinations: red, white, and black, but added a nice gray as well. 

I just love all the different designs for the triangles: stripes of several sizes, polka dots, graphs, open and closed. It makes for a really dynamic design—and great for a masculine card.

The sentiment is from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday. I added three enamel dots to mimic the dots in the triangle on the top of the card. The focal layer and the thin black layer were cut with my favorite "Master Layout" dies by Gina K. They were layered on a Pure Poppy card base. 

I'm entering this in two birthday challenges: Simon Says Wednesday Challenge–their 12th birthday, and Seize the Birthday. There's always an optional topping. Interestingly, this time it's squares and I've used triangles, so I'll enter this without the topping! And, of course, the NBUS Challenge. *Edited to add that I missed the cut-off for the Seize the Birthday challenge which ended this morning!

I had a chance to play around with a new-to-me stamp, stencil, and die cut from Pinkfresh Studio, "Floral Notes." It's designed to fit a slimline card which is what I've done this time, but once I saw some card makers cut the design in two pieces to use on A2 sized cards, I knew it would be a versatile set to own. I'm pretty new to using the coloring stencils, but I've had good success both times. For me, they are much easier to use than layering stamps.

I used a variety of Pinkfresh inks with blending brushes to color the flowers and leaves before die cutting the floral arrangement. Then I used the smaller of the two dies in the Pinkfresh "Slimline Diagonal Stitched Rectangle" die set and stenciled just one part of a two-part stencil from Pinkfresh "Slimline Argyle" as a background.

I die cut the larger stitched piece from a piece of Lovely Lady cardstock by Papertrey Ink—one of my favorite pinks. The sentiment is from Pink and Main's "Special Day." This card is already in an envelope waiting to be mailed to a friend whose birthday is next week.

I'm linking this up to three challenges: The Flower Challenge: Pretty Pastels, The Paper Players where the challenge is Spring Flowers, and Time Out with a quote about April and getting out in the garden. April's a little early in the northeast for these flowers, but the daffodils are up, and we've planted pansies in our front yard which has given me hope for an early spring!

I'm a huge fan of women's college basketball, and have spend a lot more time in front of the television this past week watching the NCAA tournament games. I've been following UConn for nearly 20 years, but enjoy watching many of the other teams as well. If the game's not too exciting, I can craft at the same time, and yesterday I managed to finish a card for two challenges. The first is a photo inspiration from Just Us Girls with pretty red tulips. The other is the Librarian's Challenge with the book cover from Teach Yourself Dutch. 

One of the prettiest tulips stamps I own is from an old Papertrey Ink favorite: "Friendship Jar Fillers: Spring." I stamped it partially off the side and colored it with Copic markers.

When I started I didn't have any particular occasion in mind, but in looking at some pre-embossed sentiments, I found a Happy Mother's Day from Pink and Main's "Special Day" sentiment set. I try to make each of the mothers in our family a card so it's good to have one in the stash.

I didn't think it needed any other embellishment, but did trim the stamped image down so that there was a border of black from the card base. Then I decided it needed a thin strip of red cardstock as a finishing touch. 

We're busy organizing for an Easter trip to Sarah and Adam's this week. It's the first time we've been out of town since last September. We'll be driving straight through on the way. Both Sarah and Adam have just their first vaccinations, so we still need to be very careful. We're totally vaccinated now, with only the variants to worry about. That will keep us out of restaurants until it's warm enough to eat outside, but we hope it's safe to make a road trip.

This card was in my stash, but never blogged, and just recently sent to a good blogging friend in the past few days. Today is a great day to post it as we are just beginning a day-long weather alert with rain and very high winds. No tornadoes predicted, thankfully, as the southern part of the country is being hit hard by them. A friend's daughter lives in Alabama, but so far they've escaped any damage. It's going to be much cooler following this, and we'll need to watch the nighttime temperatures as lots of the plants we planted last fall have started to emerge and/or bud. This is SO early for Rochester, and I'm grateful for the early spring. We have what we need to cover all the plants so hopefully they'll survive this next (but probably not last) cold spell.

This card scream spring to me. The Simon Says "So Beautiful" stamp is one of their red rubber cling stamps, and they stamp so cleanly and crisply. I stamped it off to one side since the stamp covers more than an A2 card front.

I colored it with Copic markers and die cut it with Ellen Hutson "Essential Rectangles."  

I added it to a Memory Box card. I love these cards because the inside is a bright white that makes writing or stamping a message so much easier. The sentiment, white embossed on black cardstock, is from Reverse Confetti's "So Many Sentiments."

I'm throwing this into two challenges: Inspired By: Spring into Color, and Simon Says Wednesday Challenge with a Spring Mood Board. 

Sadly, the mood board image won't load in either Typepad or Photoshop Elements, so click through to the challenge to see it.

Years ago, "inchies" were a thing, and I still have a pack of them in a drawer. I'm hopping in at the last minute with a black and white inchie for AAA Cards.

Rather than use a pre-made inchie, I die cut my own using Ellen Hutson's Essential Rectangles die. It cuts an opening as well as a frame which worked perfectly for this card. I popped up the card front with dimensional tape, and then adhered the inchie in the center of the opening. The pot of flowers was also popped up with dimensional tape.

Of course, I pulled out another NBUS stamp and die set. This one's from Pinkfresh Studios, Itty Bitty Elements, and I've had it for well over a year. I've had lots of ideas for using the images (all very small and quite diverse) but never managed to execute any of them. 

The Tiny Words stamp set from Simon Says provided the perfectly sized sentiment for an inchie. Adding it to a black card and allowing the framing from the inchie die finished off this very CAS card. I'm thinking I'll make a few more with some of the other images, but I need to link this up quickly as the challenge ends tomorrow. And sending yet again another card to NBUS!