The Blues!

Impression Obsessions bimonthly challenge is (Not So) Moody Blues! I love working with blue, so I was quite happy for this challenge.  Brown is a great color to pair with blue, especially when making a card for a male recipient, as was the case with this card.  I used the Cover-a-Card Ornate Floral and the thank you from the Greetings: Top Edgers die set. Lately I've realized I have a lot of ink pads that are dried out, some of them deteriorated to the point that they will no longer wick the ink to the surface of the pad.  Not sure what the problem was with the craft ink I stamped on the blue cardstock with, but it did not do full coverage. So, before ironing off, I sponged reds and blues to distract from the imperfect image.  Happily, it actually looks better than it appears here, though I still would like to redo this card ... when I get some fresh craft ink!

Challenge: Redo!

This final challenge for Papertrey's current contest is to redo a card we were dissatisfied with earlier in the contest.  This is the entry and post for that day:

This is a card for Papertrey's "Make it Monday," Kraft and Colored Pencils. I ended up getting derailed in making this today due an unexpected situation that came up, and ran out of time to finish working on it, so it is not, in fact, a finished card, but temporarily glued until I get it to the place I want, which will likely include another frame layer, and solid paisleys, rather than the detail cuts.  Actually, I suspect when I am finished there will be a number of differences.  The paisley dies and the scripture are all stamped on kraft cardstock and colored in with Prismacolors.

I spent some time on reworking this card, but am still not satisfied, so it's still not actually assembled!  One thing I wanted to do was edge the card with paisley, and this is where I am not satisfied:

So, I have eliminated the paisley "edger" for now, and redesigned the card this way:

I think a need a day or two let it just sit, and hopefully when I come back to it I'll have decided what to do!

Favorite Florals

Papertrey's day three challenge is to make a card with one's favorite floral set.  While  Papertrey does not demand all images & dies be from their company, it does seem tacky not to use their stuff if at all possible.  Problem: I just don't have floral sets.  I decided I'd just not enter this challenge, until I remembered that their Paisley stamps, which I have on loan from a friend, contain floral images, hurrah!  I also used the coordinating Paisley dies, and the Big Basics: Thanks die. (I may actually catch up on all my thank you cards this month!!!) I trimmed the panel with the intention of framing it with another panel with a solid color coordinating with the images, but I decided that the white on white lent a certain elegance that disappeared with a color behind it.

Happy Hexagons!

Today's Papertrey challenge is to make a card utilizing multiples of a single shape, either stamped or die-cut. Well, when I play with quilt dies, I always have lots of cut outs left over for later use.  This card was made with  Papertrey's Hexagon Cover Plate.  I love this die, and made well over a dozen Christmas themed quilts with them.  The large hexagon is from Spellbinders; I do not recall the source for the sentiment.

Photo card

This card is for the Papertrey Challenge of creating something using a photo.  I thought I would have to pass on this one, because while I have really enjoyed making photocards in the past, our current printer is really cheap, and cannot make a decent print.  But it occurred to me I could use an already printed photo.  Usually, when I create a photo card, it is a nature print, either taken by my father or my youngest daughter, Susie, and I have printed it out on linen cardstock.  Here's an example of one of my favorites, taken by my Dad in our hometown of Lake Luzerne, where the Hudson River is just a stream.

Alas, I did not have  any nature prints, on photopaper or linen cardstock.  But as I looked through a mixed up pile of photos, I spotted this one, of Susie when she was somewhere around ten years old (she's now 25).  Her middle name is Joy, and she looks so completely happy in this photo, I thought of my Joy die from Papertrey's One Liners set, and voila, a card for her dad to place on his desk at work!  I'm really pleased with this idea, and now I want to do this with photos of all my children and my granddaughter!

More snowflakes!

I like to make duplicate panels for quick cards later on, and this one is a duplicate from another Papertrey challenge.  Lexi Daly, author of this challenge, made me laugh: we are to make a card with a matching envelope, AND ACTUALLY MAIL THE CARD!!!!   I thought I was the only cardmaker in the world who struggled with actually sending cards out, but the fact that she made it part of the challenge clearly indicates that I am not alone!!!  Anyway, the snowflakes are from the Quilted:Winter stamp set, and I also used the wonderful Big Basics: Thanks die.

Roses! Again!

Once again, I am using the rose background for an Impression Obsession challenge, which this week is, happily for me, Fun with Flowers.  For this card, I embossed the image with clear embossing powder, then sponged black onto the leaves, and gray onto the flowers.  I was really nervous that the black ink would stain the clear embossing, so I was so relieved that it did not!  Because the background is white, I carefully outlined the flowers and leaves to make sure they were well defined.  I then ironed off the clear powder. The text is from the Greetings: Top Edgers die set.

To my chagrin, the roses, which I had not realized until I went to photograph the card, are not oriented in every direction, but there is clearly a right-side-up to this stamp, so I'm going to have to try to redo this card, sigh. I'm not sure it will survive the surgery!

A "Sarah Ugly" Card

When I was a child decorating Easter Eggs, I was fascinated by what happened with an egg dipped again and again (drying out in between).  The end result was pretty horrible, in a fascinating, lovely way!  My family dubbed it "The Sally Ugly Egg."  (Sally was my nickname growing up).  This card was made for the "Make it Monday: Nail Polish Marbling" challenge.  And wow, was it ever a challenge!  I don't use nail polish, but occasionally have had reason to purchase some.  All I had were white, light skin tone of some sort, and lavender. But, valiently I forged ahead!  The technique involves filling a shallow basin with water, then adding the nail  polishes, swirling them around, and dipping in the cardstock to gather the color.  Well, of the three polishes, one sank to the bottom, one diffused into the water, and only one (the purple which you cannot discern in the photo) stayed on top.  And as fast as I worked, the nailpolish hardened before I could get it onto the card.  This one panel (cut down from a larger) is all that I could remotely call a successful, and as you see, limited success at that.  Still, I was not about to go to the store and get more nailpolish, so I made this card. Insult to injury: I didn't center the die cut! In frustration, I added the purple dot and put the brad in ... just because!!

So, will it ever be sent to anyone?  Not likely, but that's okay ... It's only temporarily glued together while I make my decision to continue working on it or pitch it, so most of it won't go to waste!!!  I love Papertrey's Joy die, and perhaps the sentiment will distract from judging the poor panel to harshly, lol!  And hopefully someone reading this post will get a good laugh at my, um, artistry! ;-) But really, I think there are others out there who, like me, don't always manage to  pull off a technique that "everyone else" does well, or who just plain get stuck with a card, so I guess you could call this a sympathy card for those who found this challenge did not work for them either!

Tag Time!

As Papertrey continues its anniversary fun, one of their design team members (what an amazing group of  women!) presented on packaging, and the challenge is to create a tag or other packaging-related item.  Her colors were cheery yellow, pinks, golds and peach, so I was inspired to make this card, using the Paisley stamps and dies.

Wow, another contest run!

Papertrey is so much fun with their continual contests.  I'm really trying to watch my spending, so the opportunities for gift certificates, combined with my external-motivation tendencies (that is, my need for a push to make the cards I need to be making for people), have made these contests so helpful to me!  This contest focuses on Design Team Tips by Melissa Philips, and taking inspiration from the samples she provided for the post.  The samples came from a die set called Stitched Coasters, and the quilt theme was prominent in the samples, so I went with my decorated refrigerator for my post!

My house has an impossible kitchen; it's somewhere around 125 square feet only, with FIVE door ways!  There is only one logical spot for my fridge, and it is the first thing one sees when entering my home.  Yuck!  So about 18 months ago I began (after over decade passed since I had first thought of the idea!!!), to decorate my fridge by season.  I had only managed fall, summer, and Christmas (Christmas gets its own special recognition as a season in my life!).  I had thought snowflakes would be appropriate for a winter them last year, but did not own any snowflake dies, so it never happened. Then I discovered Papertrey's Quilted: Winter die, and I immediately knew I had my winter theme!
For the text, I'd wanted to find a scripture referencing snow that wasn't closely tied with sin; and when I asked my husband, he teasingly suggested line from Frozen:  "The snow never bothered me any way," and I immediately switched gears to the lighthearted fun of this quote! I tried yesterday and today to get a good picture, but the position of the frig and the windows made for significant lighting issues, so I finally had to settle for these pics.

 The Fridge:

And a close up:

Give Thanks to the Lord!

This is a card for Papertrey's "Make it Monday," Kraft and Colored Pencils. I ended up getting derailed in making this today due an unexpected situation that came up, and ran out of time to finish working on it, so it is not, in fact, a finished card, but temporarily glued until I get it to the place I want, which will likely include another frame layer, and solid paisleys, rather than the detail cuts.  Actually, I suspect when I am finished there will be a number of differences.  The paisley dies and the scripture are all stamped on kraft cardstock and colored in with Prismacolors.