Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so grateful for all my cardmaking friends around the globe.  You truly are a blessing to me.  Here are a couple Thanksgiving cards made from diecuts I brought home from my Indy retreat in 2019.  I borrowed the Lawn Fawn pumpkin dies & cut them from a beautiful Fall paper on clearance at a store where we shopped.  

The leaves may also be LF.  I inked the stems, leaves & tendrils & added gold Stickles.  The pumpkin without any black was mounted to a brown cardstock square embossed with TH inked woodgrain folder.   Just love how the darker brown on the folder brought the panel to life.   The pumpkin with some black in the top layer was attached to a Spellbinders large scalloped circle black diecut.

The sentiment is from SSS October kit & the card bases are PTI Rustic Cream.  A feeling of accomplishment to have turned these diecuts into cards, finally!

Next is my card for Poppystamps Fabulous Fall challenge using 4 Poppystamps dies.  I love the look of hydrangeas in the Fall when they have shades of purple, rust & gold.  I used direct to paper with VersaMagic Dewdrop ink pads in Eggplant, Purple Hydrangea, Gingerbread & Pumpkin Spice to color Layered Lovely Flowers & it worked great to get the look I wanted.  I used a sponge dauber to blend any sharp color edges.  

Garden Lantern was embossed in Liquid Platinum & Copper ep.  I also used the copper ep on a round embellishment to make it match.  Scribble Hello was stacked & inked with the 2 purple shades.  I inlaid heavy weight vellum for the glass.  

Lattice Small Curve was die cut from the same brown cardstock & inked with Versamark Dazzle for a subtle background.  I added a tiny brown pearl to the flower center.  

I'll close with my Pinkfresh Studio felt Layered Wreath Christmas card.  Hard to believe I wasn't really into felt on cards when I first saw it used in a stamping magazine many years ago.  It certainly grew on me & I ended up buying quite a few colors from several companies.  

I attached the lighter green MFT felt to copy paper.  Then I die cut the wreath.  I happened to have the perfect darker green from TE, so die cut a bunch of the little leaves to layer on top.  I had a couple of the red glitter dots in the package & they looked perfect for the berries, so I diecut a few more from the same glitter tape.  PFS Nested Diamond background makes a beautifully subtle background stamped in Delicata Golden Glitz.  Wish the pictures showed it better.  I didn't want a bold sentiment, so I stacked PFS Classic Holiday Words 4 high & covered the top layer with Shimmer Pico Embellisher. 

The vellum shadow was just what I needed & using rolled glue dots behind the letters worked great to attach the sentiment to the wreath & card!  That's a trick I learned from my talented friend, Rosemary.  I'm entering Color Hues, Just Us Girls & PFS Add Texture.

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by.  If your blog address is in your profile or comment, I will visit you.

Catching Up

As usual, I'm way behind posting cards on my blog.  Here are a few starting with my entry for PTI Melissa's Fab Friday.  It's always fun to use Melissa's inspiration for a card in my style.  For my pink, green & gold I used PTI Pale Peony, Simply Chartreuse, Ripe Avocado, Prairie Grass & Delicata Golden Glitz.  

I stamped with Pale Peony multiple times to get the dark petals & love the result.  The images are PTI Joyful Florals, the border is Border Bling: Skinny Diagonals Frame & the sentiment is from Splits: 'Tis the Season.  Hard to see, but I also added Frosted Lace Stickles to the flower centers & berries. 

The PTI dotted paper is from a friend.  I absolutely love Lucy's Clear Iridescent jewels mix which adds beautiful subtle sparkle that is especially great with pink projects.  I tend to put my focal point in a corner or off center, so it was fun to copy Melissa's design of a center focal point.  I'm also entering Die Cut Divas.

Next is my entry for Stay Crafty with Hero.  I stamped the envelope inspired by a JUGs challenge I didn't enter.  

I've always liked this design & recently this card on IG inspired me to make a similar card.  I used an old PB stamp set in my stash called Delicate Silhouettes along with dots from PRS Fall Colors & a 2003 wood mounted Hero Arts sentiment.  The inks are Altenew Fresh Leaf & Hydrangea along with Versafine Clair Morning Mist.  Took me forever to actually draw the dark gray lines with a Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pen as I was afraid of ruining the card.  But then I realized I could always add a cardstock strip over the goof, but I didn't have to!  

Hard to see the white sequins which I chose because they don't compete with the stamped images.  This one went to a special blog friend.

Here's a Christmas card for Color Hues, SSS Flickr November & Snippets Playground.  I planned to make a wreath with SSS Etched Laurel Leaves die, but I really liked just layering them for a center piece. 

The branches were die cut from a scrap of white cardstock I smooshed with 4 different green Distress Oxide inks & splattered with Brushed Pewter Distress Stain.  Adding the SSS Village building was inspired by this card on IG.  I embossed a white scrap with WOW White Twinkle powder & then die cut the building.  

I backed the windows with a gray scrap which I also used for the HoneyBee black embossed sentiment strip which I matted with another white scrap embossed in the same powder.  I embossed a panel of beautiful red cardstock with my favorite SSS 3D embossing folder called Refracted.  Just couldn't get the red quite right in the pictures, but it's a great Christmas red--no orange at all.  Tried a bunch of embellishments & settled on clear sparkling sequins.

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by.  If your blog address is in your profile or comment, I will visit you.

Goodbye October

Here we are again at the end of a month.  I'm behind on sharing cards, so here are 3 of my latest makes.

First is one of my favorites & no surprise, it's a Christmas card!  I had diecut a variety of foliage from green scraps awhile ago with the idea of making a wreath.  However, picking them up to move to my table gave me this design idea instead.  

The HA Paper Layering Poinsettia was cut from a watercolor paper scrap.  The color was done with Crimson Color Burst & Magenta Lindy's Magicals powders, one at a time.  Each powder was spread by spritzing with water.  The final result is really beautiful in person.  I had an extra middle layer diecut which I cut apart to place those petals in the back where I wanted them.  The foliage dies are Impression Obsession & Poppystamps.  

I silver embossed one of my favorite background stamps, SSS Poinsettia Background, along with the flower center.  The sentiment from GKD was separated from the panel with a strip of black, shiny Washi tape.  I'm just making it before the deadline at Christmas Kickstart.  I also entered Stay Crafty with Hero & SSS Wednesday via IG.

My first thought when the calendar says November is my brother, as that's his birthday month.  This is the 2nd year he's been gone on his birthday & we all miss him so much.  I like to send a card to my sister-in-law around that time.  She was glad to be done with all the firsts, but not sure how much easier the 2nd anniversaries are.  Can't say that it's better for me.  Anyway, I went back to one of my favorite designs which is masking an area for ink blending.  I went with a Fall color scheme using Distress Oxides fossilized amber, spiced marmalade & crackling campfire.  

I die cut Pinkfresh Studio Dainty Blossoms images from a scrap I inked up with Distress Oxide vintage photo.  Then I brushed them with copper shimmer mist--so pretty in person.  I stamped the sentiment from PFS Sweet Friend Floral in Versafine Clair Acorn & clear embossed.  

In case you haven't tried them, I highly recommend SSS Micro Adhesive Dot sheets which I used to adhere the die cuts.  I'm adding this to PFS October Challenge, The Snippets Playground & SSS Wednesday.

My last card uses one of the card fronts offered by Stamplorations.  I thought the colors of this one were nice for a Fall card.  

All I did was black emboss the TE sentiment, color the flower bases with a black glaze pen (made a HUGE difference), add a bit of gold foil to the leaf veins using a Quickie Glue pen & tie on black twine.  

Most of the time I like to use my inks, stamps & die cuts, but it sure is handy to have products like this for a quick card.

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by.  If your blog address is in your profile or comment, I will visit you.

A Couple Cards

I have a 4th entry for PFS WCMD using one of my favorite PFS sets, Delicate Wreath.  Years ago it was popular to use the same image for the background as for the focal point.  I decided to do a slight variation from white on white.  Really love the look of the wreath embossed with SSS Cream ep onto a white panel.  

I was going to do the reverse for the focal point, but I had Memento Nautical Blue ink pad on my table & decided to go for a blue & green color combo on the SSS Cream cardstock.  The other Memento inks are Northern Pine & Cottage Ivy.

I stamped the sentiment from the set in Nautical Blue & Versamark so I could clear emboss it.  The wreath was mounted with foam tape & trimmed even with the panel edges.  The card is SSS Cream cardstock.

I've seen a lot of cards lately incorporating colored cardstock strips, so decided to try it for Stay Crafty with Hero.  I keep my scraps divided by colors in plastic boxes, so pulled out 3 reds & 3 greens.  Then I temporarily attached them to copy paper & lined them up on PFS Color Block Stripes die.

I used my MISTI to stamp HA Christmas Rose Bundle on a white panel & on the smaller rectangle with the colored strips using Versafine Clair Nocturne.  The lines are a nice dark black in real life.  I spritzed the rectangle with shimmer mist & colored the stamens with a black glaze pen.  It was really easy to line up the images, even though I added a couple cardstock layers for dimension.  Finished off with clear gems in the flower centers.  A fun look for something different.  I'm also entering The Snippets Playground.

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by.  If your blog address is in your profile or comment, I will visit you.

Halloween, Christmas, Friendship

As I said in my last post, I don't make many Halloween cards.  But I wanted to enter SSS Flickr October Halloween challenge.  Had something else in mind, but then I saw SSS Birch Tree Window die & here's what I did.  

Memory Box Parker Lowercase Alphabet dies are from a friend & were just what I needed.  Gotta say, WOW! Embossing Powders with sparkle are incredible!  Here I used Bee True & Persian Indigo.  You can see the sparkle in THIS short video on IG.  The blended Harvest Moon night sky was done with Distress Oxides spiced marmalade & fossilized amber.  I used a black Glaze pen for the bats.  You knew they were bats, right?😉

I used a couple cardstock layers to give the focal point a bit of dimension.  The mat is PTI Dark Indigo.  I'm also entering Memory Box October challenge & SSS Wednesday.

I really enjoyed making this Christmas tag for the Poppystamps October challenge using Poppystamps Tunnel Tags, Holly Outline & Merry Christmas Poe Script.  The holly outlines were stacked 4 high & I inserted only 1 layer of the leaves & berries colored with Copics YG03 & R20.  The stained glass look is done by filling the open areas with Nuvo Crystal Glaze.  Just couldn't get a decent close up picture. 

When it dried, I added the silver metallic outline diecut.  The words are covered with shimmer & I found a piece of twine in my stash with the same shade of blue as the old printed paper I used.  Now I want to use this color combo for a card!

So generous for PFS to give us a chance at 5 randomly drawn gift certificates by entering PFS WCMD challenge.  Here's my 3rd entry & this time I finally used Modern Layered Florals.  

Have to admit, I found using the layering stamps kinda tricky.  But my 2nd attempt was much better, so I just used the first one behind to make a thicker die cut.  The inks are PTI Sweet Blush & Melon Berry with Altenew Frayed Leaf & Forest Glades.  I die cut PFS Braided Tag from vellum & white embossed Lush Vines on the card front.  It was pretty with an all white background, but I decided to add the green ink in the center of the card.  I do love emboss resist!

I popped up a goil foiled PFS sentiment my friend, Vikki, gave me & finished off with a white crochet bow & PFS jewels.  This one is headed to a blog friend recovering from a serious illness.  Hope it makes her smile.  I'm also entering The Flower Challenge.

Thanks so much for taking time to stop by.  If your blog address is in your profile or comment, I will visit you.