Thursday, September 30, 2021

Inspired By...All the Peels

We are back with a new challenge over @ Inspired By Card Challenges. This week we are inviting some friends to play with us, and I invited the incredibly talented Donna Mikasa to play and you HAVE to check her card out!  We hope you'll invite a friend to play along with you this week!

 This week we are playing with Fall themes, apples, baskets/containers, colors, patterns and Christmas!



I was inspired by the apples, container, and fall theme.

Just For You Card




To create the apple basket, I die cut several The Greetery shiplap boards and then ink blended Distress Oxide weathered wood to create the color for the container.  The apples were stamped using an oldie but goodie stamp set from Papertrey Ink and hen clear embossed to bring out the shiny goodness of the apples! And to create my bow, I stamped the Simon Says Stamp Mini Plaid with Distress Oxide Faded Jeans ink, then die cut it with a bow from Ink to Paper Birthday Bouquet dies.




And here is the Christmas IB189C photo.


And the fun sketch this week!


 Thank you so much for visiting and make sure to

 check what the amazing team created on THE BLOG! 


Thursday, September 23, 2021

Hello There

We are back with a new challenge over @ Inspired By Card Challenges.  This week we are playing with Fall themes, leaves, color, patterns and Christmas!



I was inspired by the colors, leaves, patterns on the leaves, pops of fall colors against white, and the fall theme.


Just Saying Hello card

The leaves are shimmery from being heat-embossed with clear powder.  They are really fun to look at against the white Shiplap background.


It's a little harder to tell in the photos, but the yellow leaf is shiny also.


To create the leaves:

*Die-cut various leaves from white card stock
*Ink blend the leaves with PTI Fresh Snow, then ink blend a fall color onto the leaves
 (I do this step to soften the shade of the ink, and give it a very smooth appearance, you CAN skip the white ink blending)
*Heat emboss the leaves with clear embossing powder.
*Using a toothpick and white acrylic paint, create designs on the leaves.
*As the leaves are drying, die-cut two wheat stems from The Greetery Botanicuts Wheat, ink blend the stems the same color as your leaves, adhere to back of leaf.  (if your leaf comes with a stem, you could cut it off if you like the look of thinner stems)



Hello There card

The sentiment on this card is stamped onto vellum before heat-embossing and adhering it to The Greetery Crimped Circle die. I blended a darker brown on the outer edge of the leaf, then a lighter brown on the inside before heat-embossing with clear powder.  I ink-blended the bow from PTI and heat-embossed it before adhering it to the leaf.


And here is the IB188C

And here is the sketch for this week!


 Thank you so much for visiting and make sure to

 check what the amazing team created on THE BLOG! 

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Hello, Beautiful!

 We are back with a new challenge over @ Inspired By Card Challenges.  This week we are playing with Fall themes, leaves, flowers, wreaths, color, and Christmas!


Hello, Beautiful card

I was inspired by the colors, flowers/leaves, and the "Hello..." sentiment



And here is the IB187C photo

And here is the sketch for this week!


 Thank you so much for visiting and make sure to

 check what the amazing team created on THE BLOG! 


Thursday, September 9, 2021

IB186 Inspired By Back to School


We are back with a new challenge over @ Inspired By Card Challenges.  This week we are playing with Back to School themes, and color.  We decided on this fun classroom design because it incorporates ART, COLOR, the classroom, books, shelving/frame, a striped rug, and a pom-pom ball trim.  So many ideas!  We thought, if you don't have a reason for a "back to school" card, you may have a reason for an Art card, book card, rainbow card, stripes/color card, etc.


For my first card, I was inspired by the theme.  I chose to make a crayon-inspired card with all those happy colors to share with a co-worker.

Happy Hello card

For my next card, I was inspired by the rainbow of bright colors and that striped rug.  I die cut a stencil and color-blended the background before masking and color-blending the scallops.

Happy Hello card

I was also inspired to create some much-needed notecards, inspired by the fun colors against the striped rug and the ball trim.







There's also the Christmas inspiration this week, and I may still find time to create with it for my much-needed Christmas stash, I just haven't YET...wink.  I know there is amazing inspiration from the team using it.


And here is the sketch this week!

 Thank you so much for visiting and make sure to

 check what the amazing team created on THE BLOG! 


Monday, September 6, 2021

Hello, Friend!


Good afternoon!  I am participating in a challenge over @ Time Out challenges.  I am looking forward to the opportunity to send this card out to a dear friend, and am grateful for the challenge to create it!  


A colored card base" is such a fun challenge because normally I like to begin with white and then blend and add colors and layers from there.  I took the challenge to mean using a colored cardstock base instead of white, so I opted not to blend to achieve the look.  (It could be that blending would've been perfectly fine, but I wasn't sure, so I challenged myself to use cardstock.  But, I did decide I could blend blocks of the frame for the scenes for the pups.)  I also used one of my favorite puppy sets from Newton's NookPuppy Friends.

Hello, Friend! card

Thank you so much for the challenge and visit!  

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Inspired By IB185 Scrappy September

   paper hugs from the heart ♥ week thirty

         We are back with a new challenge over @ Inspired By Card Challenges.  This week we are digging into our SCRAP bins.  I love to create a card that uses up scraps, I have a hard time throwing away scraps and when I challenge myself to actually start with the scrap bin before creating, I truly feel even more accomplished when I am done.  I hope that someone else can relate...I really can't wait to see what/how this challenge will inspire the amazing DT and the talented members.

I am not sure if this is true of your supplies, but I have cardstock scraps, patterned paper scraps, die-cut scraps, and embellishment stashes (like buttons, oh do I have so many buttons still to use, and they are perfect for cards that will be hand-delivered).  So this week, when seeing the photo inspiration, I challenged myself to use my scraps but also USE THOSE BUTTONS (on my Christmas card)...smile.


Here are the scraps of patterned paper and cardstock I decided to use and then decided I would tape them to a background die. After gluing them to the cardstock, I stitched the background.  



Hello Card

The diecut flowers and stems are from my diecut bins and it felt good to use them on this card!


And I am loving the Christmas photo challenges because I am actually making my Christmas cards like I SAY I'll do every year, and can't make time to do so...wink.



I chose to use these scraps from my bins: some Christmas pp, scraps of scalloped diecuts, a piece of embossed cardstock, and some buttons.


Wonderful Winter card


To create the border, I glued the stitched scalloped diecuts to a thin piece of cardstock and then adhered the frame to the embossed piece of cardstock.  I stitched a border to layer my scraps of leaf diecuts and buttons.


I cut one of the sentiment blocks from the pp to be the sentiment for this card.


And here is this week's sketch


 Thank you so much for visiting and make sure to

 check what the amazing team created on THE BLOG! 

Inspired By...YOU!

We are back with our 200th challenge over @    Inspired By    card challenges!  We are all so excited and thought it deserved a celebration....