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Happy Heart

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Another valentine, this time for the Addicted to CAS "Hugs and Kisses" challenge as well as the 
CAS-ology Challenge: Love. 

HappyHeart

Nothing but die cuts on this card, all from Simon Says. I love the new Heart Banner die. It makes an inlaid die cut so easy. I also like the soft gray, red, white, and Smoky Shadow color combination. I happened to find the perfect match sequins in my stash. I left the "valentine's day" sentiment for the inside.

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We have happy hearts here today. Sarah, Adam, and Caleb are here for the weekend, as are Adam's parents who flew in from Seattle last night. We all went to The Strong Museum this morning with Betsy, Matt, Skylar, and Ella. There's nothing finer than having all your family in one place for a few days!

Birthday Greetings

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A little break in the action from all the valentines. My niece's birthday is this weekend, and the Less Is More challenge to combine pink and gray appealed to me. I also wanted to put the Simon Says December card kit and stamp set to use. I have a couple different "Sparkle and Shine" sets from different companies, and I like them all. I also got to use the Simon Says "Stitched Circle" dies which I just love. The rectangles and squares are on their way to me. I finally broke down and ordered them after making this card. The die creates a stitched line on both the outside and inside of the circle.

Sparkle

The Smoke cardstock (Simon Says), Hibiscus Burst (Papertrey) and silver from the December card kit were all layered onto a white card base. The sequins are all from Pretty Pink Posh. Their sequins are the best!

Here's a look at the inside sentiment:

SparkleInside

Two more stitched circle dies and a stamp from the "Sparkle and Shine" set. I hope this isn't too "fancy" for my niece who is one of those absolutely lovely Earth girls!

Pairs: Inside and Out

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Although it was quite unexpected, I ended up with a new car today. It turned out I could move up to the nicest of the Subaru Foresters for less money/month than I was currently paying for my older Forester. It was a no brainer, and it's the nicest car I've ever had. It's also the very first car with automatic transmission. It's going to be awhile before I stop thinking I should downshift when I come to a stop!

The dealership had some Valentine's Day decorations on the windows, so it seemed like the perfect spot for the outside photo.

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I've owned a Subaru for years, now. After the first winter with All-Wheel drive, I knew I'd never go back. I've also relied on the five-speed in bad weather as well, but Matt tells me I'll have no problem. He moved to an automatic last year, since Betsy didn't drive a standard transmission. It won't be long before I'll be able to test it out. More snow is on the way tomorrow. I hope there's not too much because Sarah, Adam, and Caleb are headed here from Chicago tomorrow.

Shake It Valentine

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Once I saw the Virginia's View Challenge for shaker cards, I knew I wanted to make a shaker valentine for Skylar this year, but didn't have anything specific in mind when I started. For once, that turned out quite well.

#12 Shaker Cards

I started by tinting some transluscent embossing paste with a drop of Raspberry Fizz (PTI) reinker and using the "Falling Hearts" stencil by Simon Says. It makes an almost sparkling background.

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As I was looking through my dies for a heart I spotted this new one, "Surely Stitched Heart" which I received in my last order from Simon Says. I wasn't sure I could make a shaker heart with such a thin die, but by die cutting the heart twice, and then a third time from fun foam, it went together surprisingly well, and I love how it looks. I filled it with a bunch of sparkly hearts and sequins, perfect for a little girl who loves pink and fancy things. I decided to leave the sentiment for the inside. The heart and mat are Hibiscus Burst by Papertrey Ink.

Here's a closer look at the stenciled background.

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I'm linking up to two Simon Says Challenges as well:  Monday's "Red and Pink,"

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and Work It Wednesday "Something New." I've never used this die before.

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Some Valentine Challenges

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I'm jumping around with the Papertrey Ink Anniversary Challenges. Today I finally finished all the valentines I need, so you'll be seeing quite a few cards in the next few days. The first one I made today fits today's (#5) challenge at Papertrey Ink:  create a card with a new stamp set. "Circle Scribbles" arrived in my mailbox late last week. It had been out of stock for awhile, and when it came back in again, I decided not to wait. I actually used it for the card I made yesterday for the first anniversary challenge as well, but I think it still counts! I created a stamped background similar to one I saw in a Stampington magazine at Barnes and Noble when I was browsing through some periodicals last week.

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Here's a better look at the card:

CircleHearts

I started with a Classic Kraft card, and randomly stamped two of the circles in white. I then added some red hearts from two Simon Says stamp sets. The die cut sentiment is from "Wet Paint" (PTI), and the rest of the sentiment is from the Winnie & Walter set "The Big, the Bold, and The Happy."

This card also qualifies for the Addicted to CAS challenge:  Hugs and Kisses.

ATCAS - code word hugs and kisses
And Fusion's challenge "Heartful:"

Heartful copy

 

Papertrey Ink Anniversary Challenge #1

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The first of the Papertrey anniversary challenges required that you choose a color combination and a sketch from a wonderful selection you could download. Here are the ones I chose:

PTIChallenge

I knew pretty much what I wanted to do with this, but it did prove to be a challenge. The first attempt when in the trash, and once I got the main image watercolored, stamped, and splattered, finding a die cut word for the card proved to be pretty difficult. I have six die cut rejects in my little drawer to use for another project. 

Smile2 

I first tried stamping and then watercoloring the "Scribble Circles" by Papertrey Ink. That was a failure, so the second time I watercolored the circles first ( by smooshing some color from the ink pads on my craft mat and picking up the color with a water brush) and then stamping on top. None of my Papertrey Ink dies seemed to work for the sentiment, so I used one from Penny Black's "Hooray" collection, and once again, doubled it up so it popped up a bit. It's already getting dark here so the photo is not the best. The card itself is really aqua (more like you see at left of the card).

This project took far too long so it's all that's getting done today. Soon we're off to dinner at friends' despite another winter storm warning. I'm guessing we've gotten another two inches already, and it's suppose to snow through tomorrow. Really? I've had enough.

 

 

LOVE

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It's Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary, and every day a new challenge is posted. I thought I'd see if I could combine one of their challenges with another Valentine. This is the second challenge—to CASE a card by Maile Belle's. That's pretty easy, as her clean and simple style is a favorite of mine. This is the card I chose to CASE.

Maille

I don't own that stamp set, but I do own the Papertrey Ink "Wonderful Words: Love" die and mini-stamp set which worked out perfectly.

LovePTI

I layered the three dies in the same configuration as Maille's stamped sentiment, but doubled the die I layered on top to make it stand out a bit more. The three colors are Raspberry Fizz, Hibiscus Pink, and Harvest Gold. The enamel dots are MME, and I added one of the hearts from the die.

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While my desk is cluttered with Valentine supplies, I'm off to try to get another one done before I have to truck off to the gym.

Valentines

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Valentine's Day was my father's favorite holiday. Thinking about it now, it seems just a bit odd, since he was a very undemonstrative father. I could easily count the number of times he told me he loved me, but I was knew I was loved. He gave gifts on Valentine's Day. When I was living at home, and even in college, he usually bought me a new outfit. He was a shopper, and he had excellent taste. I can only think of one time when he purchased an outfit that was totally inappropriate for me. I called to tell him, and he laughed, and said he thought it might be. All this to say, I still love Valentine's Day. This year I'm making more cards than usual since I have several friends who could use some Valentine's Day cheer as well as all the family. 

I've been working on them for a couple days now. The family ones won't show up here until later since some of them actually do read my blog. But here's one for a friend.

Sending

I cut the heart with a My Favorite Things die after watercoloring a piece of Tim Holtz watercolor paper. The Sending die from Simon Says is one of my favorites, and I love it cut from gold paper against the ombre watercolored heart. The sentiment stamped on the vellum banner (Simon Says die) is from the accompanying "Sending and Wishing" stamp set. It's going to get a lot of use! Both the heart and the banner were layered on a Stitched Rectangle from Papertrey Ink.

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I'm quite happy with this card and am linking up to three heart related challenges:

Addicted to CAS:  Hugs and Kisses

ATCAS - code word hugs and kisses

Fusion-"Heartful" – see the photo below:

  Heartful copy

And Simon Says Monday Challenge: the Letter H (in this case, Heart)

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There will be more valentines coming . . .

Week 5 Pairs: During and After

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The initial forecast for Rochester was that the heavy snows crossing the Midwest would travel south of us, so we were rather surprised to discover Sunday evening that it was expected to move north and come right through here. Indeed, it did. It's not the heaviest snowstorm recorded here, but it closed the schools, and many businesses as well. Tracy and I stayed at home all day Monday. I only ventured out to take a few photos.

This is what it looked like during the day. This is my neighbor who was snow-blowing his driveway for the second time.

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And this was the scene early Tuesday morning after the storm.

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And I'll share one other photo, one I took Monday night after the snow had stopped, and Tracy went out to clear our driveway. The icicles were amazing.

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I'm linking up with Helena's wonderful meme: Pairs. 

A Card Set & CASe This Sketch Challenge

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A friend of mine was laid up for several months last year with a shattered wrist. She just got to the point where she could drive and get around pretty easily in November. Then early this month, she broke her heel! She's been told she can't put any weight on it for three months. She has a wonderful attitude, but when a mutual friend asked her what she needed she requested some thank you notes. In addition to sending over some meals, I thought I could contribute to the thank-you notes as well. I started with this sketch on CASe This Sketch.

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I chose to score the horizontal lines rather than use a patterned paper.

ThankYouSingle

The typewriter die is one of my favorites from Savvy, and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "Live, Love, Life."

ThankYouSet

Project Life

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There's a great quote that a friend and I keep reminding one another of:  "You can do anything, but you can't do everything." And it's so true. Nonetheless, there are SO many things I want to learn, and I keep adding projects and even new hobbies to the list. This summer I decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and try to learn how to draw. It's something I've always wanted to know how to do, but I had no art instruction growing up, and therefore, little to no experience. There'll be more about this in a later post, but sketching and online sketching classes have consumed a lot of my time since July. All this to say, that I'm very behind in creating my Project Life pages. Like 8 months behind. Fortunately, I keep a daily journal, and my photos are pretty well-organized in Lightroom, so it's not hard to recap the month. Just time consuming.

May was particularly time consuming, since I had over 100 hundred printed photos from Matt and Betsy's wedding reception held on Memorial Day weekend. I ended up cropping some of the 4X6 photos to fit in the 4X3 windows which actually improved several of them. So here's a long, photo-heavy post with the May Project Life pages.

Page1
  MayJournaling

MayPg2

ClassJournaling

The photo of our church in the page above was the HDR project, and it came out great. I should have printed it on better paper for the album, but everything else was being printed on Epson Premier Presentation Matte paper. It's so much less expensive that the pearl photo paper I love from both Ilford and Canon, and usually works out just fine for Project Life. This was a fantastic class, and I learned a lot!

MayPg3

The photos with Betsy's mom are so poignant. Sally felt good the day of the reception, and little did any of us know that within a month and a half, she'd be gone.  

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One advantage, I suppose, of falling behind is finding some new product that works out perfectly. I recently picked up a pack of Heidi Swapp overlays that I just love on this page.

MayPg4

Invition

I scanned and resized the invitation so I could include it.

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WeekendJournaling

The cute typewriter on this card was a brush from a One Little Bird digital kit. The rest of the pages are just photo pages added to the back of the May spreads.

May Pg6

MayPg7

MayPg8

That spread finished my first Project Life album. I started the project in August 2013, and the album ends with May 2014. I have no problem with that which surprises the obsessive-compulsive streak in me to be orderly.

I'm hoping to get a good start on June today. We are truly snowed in. The big blizzard that's crossing the country appeared to be going south of us, but turned north, and we've been getting steady snow for hours now. It's beautiful, but like many people, I cancelled the appointment I had for this afternoon. All the schools are closed, and I'm guessing we have at least a foot of snow already–no end in sight. Maybe scrapping spring/summer photos will cheer me up!

Pairs: Week 4-Opposites

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We finally got a sunny day over 20° today, so I headed off to the car wash. Not surprisingly, so did a lot of other people. I have a tag that allows me to "whisk" through the special line. Today—-not. so. much. The key tag line actually took longer than either other line, primarily because one person could not figure out how to merge into the other lines.

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Before I reached the car wash, I thought the before and after photos might make a good pair, so I pulled over in a parking lot and took a photo of my dirty car. Afterwards, I took another one. Good thing I did it quickly because by the time I drove from the car wash to the grocery store, the car was already getting dirty again. At least the salt has been washed off!

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These are hardly artistic photos, so I'll leave you with this one that I took as the car went through the car wash.

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I'm linking my pairs up on Helena's blog with others you may enjoy. I love seeing the variety of pairs that pop up each week.

January Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

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The inspiration for today's Papertrey Ink Blog Hop is hearts. That's a theme that's hard to resist this time of year.

BlogHop

In my ongoing attempt to use products I've never used or haven't used in a long time, I whipped out the "One Liner" Love die. I've had this for a couple years, and I'm quite sure I've never used it. (There are two other words in the set, so it's not quite as bad as it seems.) Other brand new products include the sparkly tag which I picked up at 50% off at Paper Source after Christmas, and the gorgeous gold dot vellum by Teresa Collins in her 6X6 pad, "Studio Gold." I layered the vellum on a piece of Select White cardstock.

PTIJanBlogHop

The red heart is the inside heart that pops out when you die cut one of the Stitched Heart dies (PTI), and the gold arrow is a die from Savvy. And the cardstock is my favorite, Pure Poppy.

This card also fits two other challenges: Less is More which is a sketch challenge this week.

Lim #14.1 copy

And the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Have a Heart.

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We're off to the movies to see "The Theory of Everything." I think it's close to the end of its run here. There are always multiple movies I want to see this time of year.

Pairs: Week 3

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I'm linking up with Helena's meme for 2015:  Pairs. As soon as the New Year arrives, a portion of my grocery money goes to bright flowers to grace our kitchen table. It makes the long, cold winter a bit more cheerful. 

So, today, I have a pair of primroses:

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I found this cute galvanized planter a few years ago, and it has turned out to be a great purchase. It's just the right size for the inexpensive plants at the grocery store and perfect on our small kitchen table.

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You can check out other pairs right here.

Variations on a Theme

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I need four birthday cards for guys by the end of the month, and decided to do the same design, with different papers and dies for all four. All four qualify for the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: It's a Guy Thing," as well as for the CAS-ology Challenge: NBUS. That may seem a bit odd, but it stands for "Never Been Used Schtuff." All the patterned papers on these cards are from new 6X6 paper pads that I picked up while traveling, and I've never used the "Sending" die or stamp from Simon Says. 

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Week 129 - NBUS

There have been lots of cards in blogland recently with the design I used. I pinned this one by Laurie last month. On two of the cards I popped the panels out with foam tape.

Guys1

Cardstock: Select White and Pure Poppy (PTI), patterned paper: "Stitched" Amy Tangerine for American Craft; die & stamp: "Happy" Simon Says

Guys4

 

Cardstock: Select White, True Black (PTI); patterned paper: Kelly Purkey "Second City" for Basic Grey; die: "Wet Paint" (PTI); stamp: "Happy" Simon Says

On these two cards, I decided not to pop the panels. I like both ways, but I think the foam adds an extra element of interest.

Guys2

Cardstock: Staples, Smoky Shadow (PTI), patterned paper: "Stitched" Amy Tangerine for American Craft, die & stamp: "Sending and Wishing" Simon Says

Guys3

Cardstock: Rustic Cream & Kraft (PTI), patterned paper: MME Necessities: Wood,  
die: "Wet Paint" (PTI), stamp: "Happy" Simon Says

Cards for guys almost always take me a lot more time than usual, but these went together fairly quickly. They're all different, but I think it's a great design for a masculine card.