Playdate with Michele

After two years I finally scheduled a Playdate with Michele.  In case you didn't know, I moved to Ohio in 2020 to live with my daughter in the winter.  Summers are spent at Higgins Lake, Michigan which is much closer to where Michele lives so it made the date possible. Marcia was supposed to meet with us one day but she had a family emergency that kept her away and I missed seeing her.  It's always such fun to sit face to face with friends and have a great time crafting, laughing, eating and sharing.  

We decided to each make a card to post today.

The flowers, oval and sentiment are from a new set of Michele's from Concord and 9th.  They're actually black-eyed Susans but this daisy lover had to make her fav.  I even borrowed the textile embossing folder from SU.  

I know what Michele made and you're going to love it.  Head on over to I Card Everyone to check it out. 

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Inspired By #166

When I see a quilt on a prompt, I just HAVE to make a card.  Especially when the photo is as cute as the one at Inspired By.

I cut up little squares from age old paper packs to make my card.

I glued them onto copy paper and ran it through my Big Shot with a quilt embossing folder.  The images are from MFT and were stamped for me by a friend.  Thanks, Angie.  Unfortunately I had to fussy cut them and I'm not very good at that but a black pen around the edges helps.  I colored them with PolyChromos pencils, gave the sentiment from the set a little aging with Antique Linen DI to match the Rustic White cs from PTI and done.

Thanks for dropping by.  I appreciate it when you do.

Time Out #127

It's Inspired By Words at Time Out and there are so many ways to go with the quote.  I ended up going with friends.

I stamped and loosely colored the flowers from Altenew with Distress Inks.  I had planned to use the Verve sentiment "If friends were flowers, I'd pick you" but someone else used it and since it wouldn't fit on the oval anyway I chose another one from Penny Black. I'm not a sequin kind of girl but a little smudge made it necessary on this card.

The flowers are a bright spot on this cold and blustery day,  and all of you are friends that make me happy when you drop by and leave a comment.

CASology #274 and 25 Days of Christmas Tags - 4

I think things computer related are all in working order now so I pulled out one of my favorite tiny stamps to make a CAS card for CASology - code word "Tiny".

I've been adding some of my Christmas tags to the end of my blog posts.  I hope that's okay with Tracey and the DT.  I'd hate to miss out of any of those fabulous prizes because I didn't follow the rules.  Today's tag was inspired by this one on day four by Audrey.

The challenge was sponsored by Reverse Confetti but I don't have any of their stamps so I used a new one from Sunny Studio.

I colored the church with Zigs and added a little tree from ME.

I have a lot of tags to go look at since I'm way behind on Tracey's 25 Days of Christmas Tags and Loll also has a mixed media tag challenge.  You'll see more tags from me popping up here in the next few days.

Addicted to CAS #118

A new code word is up on the Addicted to CAS challenge blog chosen by Susan.  It took me a while to decide what to do but since I wanted to use my NBUS stamps from PTI, I came up with this.

I stamped and die cut the berries, mounting them on a SSS stitched circle that hangs over the top of the card.  The PB sentiment was curved to follow the edge or the circle.

Our sponsor this week is Happy Little Stampers who is awarding a $15 gift certificate to the winner of the challenge.  We'd love to see you make a card - remember to keep it CAS - and enter it in the gallery.

Time Out's Third Birthday

When someone has a party it's rude not to RSVP and so below is my card to celebrate the third birthday of the Time Out challenge.  Boy has that three years gone by fast.  Congratulations to the team who keeps it going. The theme for the party is 'Love and/or Friendship' with the optional twist of spotlight stamping.  I'm all for options. 😉  And I did a twist on the twist.  Uh oh, now I'll be singing "Let's Twist Again" all night. 😀

Can you see my twist?  I spotlighted the outside of the circle and left the inside uncolored and then popped it up on black foam.  Since the flowers from PB were fairly thin lines, I was able to stamp my PTI sentiment right over them without losing it into the background.  The other flowers are colored with Zigs.

Congratulations again, Time Out.  I always enjoy playing cards with you. (Sorry to steal your line, Michele).

Muse #19

I've been doing some soul searching.  Well, that's a little overly dramatic.  I guess you could say I've been doing some creative searching - not for creative things but for where my creativity lies.  I started in the card making world with a Cricut, making cards with lots of cuts and layers and inking and challenges geared to these types of cards.  Then I saw the Clean and Simple challenges and thought, "hmm I like these, let's try it."   and have been doing them for a while.  I have seen some fabulous creations by other bloggers but most of them are stampers.  That I am not.

I told myself when I got into this hobby that  (1) I wouldn't buy more Cricut cartridges than I would use, (2) that I would only buy sentiment stamps so I wouldn't always have to computer generate them and (3) only make cards that I would actual send and would go through the mail  This means no bows and very little embellishment which to my mind made them CAS.  Somewhere in all this, I lost my "style" and the hobby became a competition, which took all the fun and creativity out of it.  Now I'm going back to my roots.  I do better with mixing patterned papers and using cut images.  I have purchased a few stamps and they will also find their way into my cards - a couple of quilt designs especially as in the card below, made for the Muse challenge.  This is the inspiration by Michelle Williams.

And here is what I was inspired to do.

At first I didn't think I would do this challenge because I didn't have many floral stamps and I didn't want to make a lot of Cricut cuts. Then I thought "Wait a minute!  This is inspiration, not copying." See this old dog can learn new tricks.  lol.  I used my quilt stamp from WPlus9 , stamped the outline in black and then used my small stash of Hero Arts inks to fill in the color.  I love these inks (no I'm not dissing my Distress Inks, they have their place, too) and plan to buy a few more colors.  Wait, what?  I'm not buying stamps but I'm buying ink?  Of course.  A girl needs the right color to stamp a sentiment on her card.  Plus I plan to make a few more quilt cards and who knows, maybe there will be another quilt stamp coming along.

What is is with me and quilts?  I have made numerous and have collected others.  I love the variety of colors and patterns.  Yup, there it is.  Now why is the Righteous Brothers song "You're My Soul and Inspiration" running through my head.

If you've made it this far through my ramblings, I give you an extra thank you for stopping by.  I hope you have a wonderfully creative day.

FMS #83

I've been trying to reorganize my craft room a little but had to take time to make a quick card for Freshly Made Sketches.  This sketch was simple so I could do it "fresh".

I ran across this colored digital print from pcCrafter while cleaning and it was perfect for this sketch but to use it I had to turn the card sideways.

The gray is a wood grain from DCWV's texture stack.  The green in embossed with the Floral Screen folder and the stamp is from Hero Arts.  Aren't they just the cutest baby robins?  

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day.

Friend Card

I'm finally back at it again.  Personal matters have kept me from cardmaking and posting but things have settled down some and I can get back to doing the things I love.  I will be busy next week cleaning out and repairing my parents house with 3 of my brothers and my sister, so I won't be able to do any crafting which means I need to get my card making done ahead.  Since 3 of my children have August birthdays, I had to do that anyway, plus I want to continue to enter FCCB challenges and today's card is one for there.

The challenge this week is to make a friend card.  I love the saying "If friends were flowers, I'd pick you" and based my card on that.

This is what I call a Monarch card since the size is 7" by 3 1/2".  I have my computer set to print sentiments on different size papers, and so I printed the inside sentiment on a 7 x 7 piece of white cardstock.  The green polka dot from PTI's Bitty Dot stack is cut 7" x 3 1/2".  The white middle portion was printed on the computer and then border punched.  The flowers are from Kate's ABC - all layers cut except for the center dot which is cut with a hole punch  The large flower is is cut at 3" and the other two at 2 1/2".  The paper is from a strip stack of Coredinations ColorCore, except the green which was a scrap.  I did not make the green layer for the bottom flower since I did not need the extra stem.  I like simple and this is typical of the cards I like to do.