Saturday, October 29, 2022

Happy Birthday, Jon



My twin boys just celebrated their 23rd birthday. My goodness, time surely flies. I made this for Jon, and when he opened it, he said "this is so me". I loved that. He is such a wonderful guy trying to make his way in the college lacrosse coaching world. He is very tenacious, passionate, and boy, can he work a room! I am so very proud of this guy, and I like him very much too! 

Jon loves lacrosse and he loves coffee, so I combined them for his card using Bear (Ellen Hutson). I bought a digital image of crossed lacrosse sticks, edited one out of the images, resized it for bear, and colored the head red. Jon is working with the Rutgers University Lacrosse Team at present.  RU colors are red and black. Bear's coffee cup has a red band to match. The background stenciling is inked with Faded Jeans. I love the way this turned out. Love ya, kid.

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Happy Birthday, Greg!



Browsing through Pinterest the other day, I saw THIS card by Donna Okoniewski, which really cracked me up. I was looking for some inspiration for my twin son Greg's birthday card, and this was it. I took the design right from the card I CASE'd, but changed it up by using a very different color scheme, a stenciled background for the card base, and stamped, heat embossed with sparkly black EP and die cut the spider webs. I also stamped the spiders, and added some stenciled clouds. Greg is a PhD student working with lots of technology, economics and data analytics. He has a wicked sense of humor. The simplicity and humor of this card made him laugh a lot, which was the desired effect! Also, I think it is pretty cool that you can see a face when you look at this card - 2 eyes and a mouth in the spiders, eyebrows in the webs above the two top spiders... Love ya, Greg.

Impression Obsession Web Stencil, Reverse Confetti Hello Bootiful Stamps & Dies, A Colorful Life Designs - Cloud Edger Stencil.

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Seize The Birthday #250 - Anything Goes

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Enjoy Thanksgiving

 


A new challenge starts today at Can You Handle The Pressure? where the theme is always Anything Goes with an Embossing Folder and an optional twist. Heat embossing is welcome, but not required. An Embossing Folder must be used. For this challenge, the twist is "Pumpkins".

My background is embossed with a Cuttlebug EF, colored with various Distress Oxide Inks and mounted on Kraft card stock. I stamped my sentiment from Hero Arts on cream colored card stock with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink and die cut it with one of the Altenew Nesting Slim Labels. I added a scrap piece of ribbon and mounted the kraft panel onto a Tangerine Tango card base and my card was complete.

Please head over to the Can You Handle The Pressure Challenge? blog to check out the Design Team inspiration projects. You are sure to be impressed (pun intended)! Then dive into your embossing folder collection and join us with or without the twist! Just be sure to use an embossing folder on your creation!

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An Ocean Apart


Less Is More #476 starts today and ends on November 3rd. We are challenged to create a Clean & Simple
card using a stencil.


I used the mid sized Tropical Angelfish stencil from Picket Fence Studios and lightly inked around it with Salty Ocean DO ink. I applied Blueprint Sketch DO ink with a small dauber to the inner portions of the fish. I created a mask for the fish, then stamped some images from Picket Fence Studios Things On The Sea Floor stamp set. I added a sentiment from MFT's Fish You Were Here stamp set. I popped up the stamped/stenciled panel onto a white card base, and my card was complete.

Please head over to the Less Is More Blog and see what the Design Team has created for your inspiration. I hope you'll play along with us to share your creations. Remember to keep your design Clean And Simple which we define as designs that include large areas of CLEAR AND CLEAN space with NO PATTERN, NO INK and NO TEXTURE See challenge guidelines on the Less Is More Blog.


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Thursday, October 20, 2022

Thankful For A Friend Like You


Time Out Challenge #225 begins today. This time we are challenged to be Thankful.


We are generously sponsored by Lawn Fawn. Winner will receive a $25.00 Gift Voucher to use at the Lawn Fawn Store.


We welcome Deepti Aggarwal of Handmade by Deepti as our Guest Designer. You can see Deepti's wonderful design for our challenge on the Time Our Challenges Blog and HERE.

The I Love the Fall stamps & dies from Photoplay are the stars of this card. I LOVE these images and dies, and I love the Fall!!!. I stamped and colored them with Copics, die cut and placed them on a dome die cut that I embossed with SSS's Fall Foliage EF.

Please head on over to the Time Out Challenge Blog to see the wonderful creations that the Design Team came up with to inspire you. Come play with us!

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Die cut, layers, autumn colors

Sunday, October 9, 2022

Autumn Is A Second Spring


I found this gorgeous embossed and blended background with gold splatters in my background box, so I made this with the inspiration of a few challenges out there with Autumn themes and/or colors:

I was inspired to make a mixed media card using all those gorgeous colors of all of those gorgeous leaves. My die cut leaf with the sentiment mimics the lighter colors among the darker ones in the photo.



Saturday, October 8, 2022

You, Me and the Sea


Less Is More #475 starts today and ends on October 21st. We are challenged to create a Clean & Simple card with a hand drawn frame.



So truth be told, I really do not like this card at all. The fact of the matter is, I don't always score a win with my creations. I am sure that is not uncommon. We all have bloopers, yes? Well most of us, anyway. I can think of some who probably don't ever. This one drove me crazy. Drawing my own frame was a very unattractive task to me. I actually cheated I think, because I ended up tracing the inner and outer circle of a Pinkfresh Studio die. My hand is not steady and my hand drawn frame attempts were just sad. I needed an anniversary card for DH, and this had to be it. Time was running out. We are beach people, hence the ocean theme. As I kept trying to make it wonderful within the parameters of the challenge, I searched more and more for the old mojo. Clearly, I did not find it. In the end DH loved it, or said he did, so mission accomplished.

Please head over to the Less Is More Blog and see what the Design Team has created for your inspiration. I hope you'll play along with us to share your creations. Remember to keep your design Clean And Simple which we define as designs that include large areas of CLEAR AND CLEAN space with NO PATTERN, NO INK and NO TEXTURE See challenge guidelines on the Less Is More Blog.

Trick Or Treat?



A new challenge starts today at Can You Handle The Pressure? where the theme is always Anything Goes with an Embossing Folder and an optional twist. Heat embossing is welcome, but not required. An Embossing Folder must be used. For this challenge, the twist is "orange/black". The challenge goes from October 8th - 19th.

My background is embossed with the SSS Cute Ghosts EF on black card stock. I die cut the rick rack with an unnamed die set from my stash, and added the stamped and die cut circle from a long ago retired set from Waltzingmouse Stamps called Midnight Feast.

Please head over to the Can You Handle The Pressure Challenge? blog to check out the Design Team inspiration projects. You are sure to be impressed (pun intended)! Then dive into your embossing folder collection and join us with or without the twist! Just be sure to use an embossing folder on your creation!

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First colomn - Halloween, Orange, Embossing

Make THe Cards Challenge - Halloween



Thursday, October 6, 2022

Always

 

Time Out Challenge #224 begins today. This time we have a Theme Challenge of cancer awareness. I can't think of a person whose life hasn't been touched by some kind of cancer in some way,  whether we ourselves have fought or are fighting the fight, or whether is has impacted our loved ones, colleagues, etc. 


We are generously sponsored by CAS-ual Fridays. Owner Michelle Gross has sponsored this challenge at Time Out for several years. The cause is near and dear to her heart as it is to so many of us. Even though her store is officially closed, she prepared a prize especially for our challenge before she sold out her inventory. Thank you Michelle! We wish you every good thing.

In addition, we dedicate this one to Shery Russ, owner of STAMPlorations who has been so generous to us through the years. Shery is fighting her own battle right now. We send her love, hugs, support, strength and prayers as she continues on her journey. Her story is quite remarkable. You can read about her journey HERE.

With that said, someone very dear to me is on a journey through a very serious form of cancer. She is a survivor of breast cancer as am I, but this is something unrelated. It is so hard to wrap my head around the fact that she is going through this. So I made my card with her in mind. I so love this image from impression Obsession, and the sentiment from CASual Fridays goes perfectly, and together they speak volumes.

Please head on over to the Time Out Challenge Blog to see the wonderful creations that the Design Team came up with to inspire you. Come play with us!

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