Circles and More Circles

Hello and Happy Thursday Peeps,

Stef is the hostess for the current Paper Players challenge, the monthly theme challenge. Stef has decided on circles. I may have gone a little over board making circle cards, but I sure had some fun.

I ended up making three cards. The third was unplanned. More about it later.

The first two planned cards are holiday cards. The July Monthly Mix challenge on the Gina K Facebook page is "Christmas In July," and I wanted a card to enter over there. When looking through my GKD Holiday sets, I came up with two ideas, hence, the two cards. 

Card 1: This is a 5x7" card using all GKD supplies.

Front:

Inside:

 Card 2, also using all GKD Supplies. (I was going for that retro feel, bright colors and metallics.)

Front:

 Inside:

Card three's story. You see the vellum circle on the front of card two? I originally cut a larger one to use, but decided it was too big and cut the smaller one. I have a box with misc. geometric shapes (which I'm sure all of us do) and when I opened it to pitch the larger circle in, I saw these circle leaf die cuts. Hmmm, circles. Wonder what I can do with those?

Here's card 3: My bestie that lives in Sacramento had back surgery yesterday, so this will be in the mail for her later today.

Front:

Inside:

So yes, a little over board with the circles. Two more holiday cards for the stash is good though. Now to choose which one to post to Stef's challenge.

My nephew that lives in Minneapolis is coming to San Diego for a conference that starts Monday. He is flying in tomorrow evening to spend the weekend with his Auntie. We will be going to the Padre game on Sunday afternoon. Not sure what else, but it will be great to spend time with him none-the-less.

Colleen

Supplies - cards 1 and 2

Stamps: Penguin Pals, Christmas Cheer, Blizzard, and Graphic Tree Mini sets all by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs 

Ink: Gina K Designs & Copic Markers

Other: Gina K Designs Snowflakes embossing folder, Crop Circles stencil Polyglaze snowflakes background panels, Silver embossing powder, Master Layouts 2 and 3, Stitched circle dies

Supplies - card 3

Stamps: Gina K Designs Graceful Greetings and So Many Sentiments sets

Paper: Gina K Designs Card stock and Erin Lee mat black card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Simon Says Stamp circle stencil, Pink Fresh Studio Floral Circle dies, Gina K Designs Master Layoouts 3 dies

Smiles!

 Hello to all,

I hope that you've had a relaxing weekend. I've been watching lots of tennis, Wimbledon, and making cards like crazy. It's great to have these things to keep me occupied as I can't go out and about for a few more days after having some facial surgery last Tuesday. There's still swelling and bruising, and not to pleasing to look at. I had a very small melanoma removed from the side of my nose. I found it very early, so no additional worries.

Carol Mc at Just Us Girls has the die cut challenge this week with a theme of summer. I recently received some new stamp sets and dies from Lawn Fawn and I thought this Summer Friends set was perfect for the challenge.

I started by stenciling a large sun on the card base as a landing for the drink images that are popped onto postage die cuts. I used some 1/8" Masking Magic strips to block off the scalloped edges of the postage dies before blending bright yellow ink around the outer edges.

The front sentiment is continued on the inside of the card. The inside water melon and sentiment images are from the LF Summer Friends set. The die cut sun is from the GKD Master Layouts 6 die set. I cut it from both orange and yellow card stock and layered the orange rays between the yellow, then added one of the smiles from the LF set.

I get my stitches out tomorrow which should help with the swelling, etc.

I hope you al have a great week ahead!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Summer Friends stamp set by Lawn Fawn

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs and Copic markers

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1, 6 and 15, Gina K Designs Sea, Sun and Sky  stencil, Masking Magic strips, blending brushes, foam squares

Party Like A Sea Caption

 

Happy Weekend Folks,

My card today is inspired by two challenges. The colors come from the current Color Throwdown challenge no. 836. The colors are kraft, orange and fushia, and I've used this week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge no. 693 for the layout. I rotated Amy's sketch to fit my idea for this fun ocean themed card, with somewhat unexpected colors. (think a really great sunset, LOL).

Most of the dies, stamps and stencils are from Spellbinders June 2025 clubs. I love all of the fun sentiments in the June club's clear stamp set. 

On the front of the card base, I've used one of the stencils in the June stencil pack. I used the layering stencils from the pack on the inside of this card below, along with another sentiment from the June clear stamp set of the month.

I need a couple of birthday cards for later this month and this will be one of them. 

Enjoy your Saturday!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Anchors Away stamp set from Spellbinders

Paper: Gina K Designs Kraft, Ivory, Tangerine and Passionate Pink card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Kraft, Tangerine, Passionate Pink

Other: Rolling Tide Layering stencils, Sailors Designs Large Die set, Set Sail small die set, and Essential Oval Dies all from Spellbinders, clear sequin embellishments

Red and White

 Hello and TGIF,

Also, happy July 4th to those in the USA. Nothing planned here except watching Wimbledon tennis and some Padres baseball later this afternoon, then at 9 pm, going to friends to watch the fireworks at the SD County Fair. Our friend's house over looks the area where the fireworks go off, so great views of them.

Yesterday, I did a little multi-tasking while watching the tennis matches and made some red and white cards for the new Color Hues challenge. This new-ish Gina K Designs set seemed perfect for these colors. It's called Home is Where the Heart Is and it's has some pseudo cross-stitched images that I thought would look great in red and white.

I made two cards, exactly the same except for the focal stamped images and front sentiments..

The background is made using the GKD Linen background stamp. It and the shadow layer are cut out using the GKD Master Layouts 1 die set. The greetings are from the same set as the focal images. I stamped them with white craft ink and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. They are cut out with flag dies from ML2 dies.

I decided to add some more dimension and ran the centers through the GKD Swiss Dot embossing folder. 

I used more images, sentiment and flowers, from the stamp set for the inside of the cards. Also the same for both.

Enjoy your day and weekend!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Home is Where the Heart Is set and Linen Background stamp by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Red Velvet, Cherry Red and White Craft, Copic Markers to color embroidery hoop

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1 and 2 die sets, Gina K Designs Swiss Dot embossing folder, Brutus Monroe white embossing powder

4th of July

 Hello,

I hope your week has been going well. I'm recovering from some minor skin surgery to remove a melanoma from the side of my nose. The surgery was on Tuesday. Luckily, I noticed the discoloration and made an appointment before it had any chance to go deeper. Because of the area on my face, there is a rather large incision, but as it's a Mohs procedure, I don't expect much scaring. I have much swelling and bruising, but that will go away in a few days. I feel rather lucky as it could have been much more involved.

I've had no pain and today I felt like doing some crafting. I decided to make one more card to enter at the Paper Players for this week's Tic-Tac-Toe challenge. This time I used the bottom horizontal choice of Postal-Layers-Masculine and made a fun 4th of July card.

These stamps, stencils and dies are from the Waffle Flower postage line and are very fun.

Wishing you all a very Happy 4th of July!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps, Layering Stencils, Dies: Waffle Flower

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Brutus Monroe white embossing powder

Thinking Of You

 Hello and Happy Sunday,

Today's activities: card making, watching baseball and cutting binding for a quilt that just came back from my quilter. In other words, my kind of day!

With regards to card making, Jaydee is our hostess this week for the Paper Players, and as it's the fifth Sunday in June, she has the ever fun Tic-Tac-Toe board for us to play with. I used the horizontal middle row of Flowers-Die Cut-Embossing/Foiling for this simple looking card. I say simple looking as there are quite a few steps to put it together, LOL. (super fun to make!)

To begin, I stamped the Gina K Designs Linen background stamp in Bubblegum pink and Christmas Pine on white panels. Next I die cut the Rose Mini Slimline cover plate from each stamped panel. Using one of the negative images for placement, I glued the die cut pieces in place. The card base front is dry embossed with the GKD Lattice embossing folder and the Thinking Of You sentiment is foiled with gold deco foil. Other dies are the GKD Master Layouts 7 Mini Slimline layering dies.

There are so many fun combos on Jaydee's board, I just might show up again in the gallery later in the week.

Enjoy your Sunday. I know I will.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Linen Background Stamp by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Gina K Designs Rose Mini Slimline cover plate, Lattice Embossing Folder, Polyglaze sentiments, gold deco foil, Fuze foiling machine, Master Layouts 7 dies, Connect liquid glue

I Love Tea

 Happy Saturday Peeps,

Hope your day has been a relaxing one. I started by taking my daily walk in the morning followed by picking up a quilt from being quilted by a long-arm quilter I met last year. We usually meet at a fabric/quilting shop in the La Mesa area of San Diego for handoff and pickup. This is the fourth quilt that she has quilted for me and they always look amazing. Plus, she is very reasonable in her charges. In the mid-afternoon we drove to the airport to pick up a neighbor who was flying in from Oregon where she and her wife have a second home. So, a rather productive day, but also time to do a little reading and blogging.

My card today is made using inspiration from two challenges. The layout is from this week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge and since Wednesday was the last Wednesday in June, it's time for Amy's Woodblock Wednesday challenge.

The tea cup and the sentiment on the front and the tea pot on the inside are all small wood mounted stamps. They are from three different companies and the dates are from the mid and late 1980s.

I used a GKD embossing folder for the black background, then rubbed a gold ink pad over the raised areas to make them stand out more. The white and gold panel is a GKD Polyglaze panel that I foiled with gold deco foil. To continue with the shinny gold theme, I heat embossed the three tea cups and the sentiment with gold ep.

The inside is simple. I wasn't really sure what sentiment I wanted to use on the inside to go along with the "I Love Tea" on the front.

I hope your evening is grand!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Tea Cup by Great Impressions, Sentiment by Stephanie Olin Stamps and Tea Pot by Stamp Francisco

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs and Honey Bee, Copic Markers

Other: Gina K Designs Petite Flourish embossing folder and Vintage Flourish Polyglaze panel, Deco Gold Foil, Brutus Monroe gold embossing powder