Graduation Congratulations

Hello,

It's graduation season and I have three kiddo friends who are graduating this year. Two from high school and one from the eighth grade. 

Today's card is for one of the high schoolers. She lives just down the street from us. They moved by us when she was around one years old. Both of her parents are veterinarians and that is her goal as well. She will be heading to college and my alma mater, Sacramento State University here in Ca.

Using Joanne's theme of old and new for this week's Paper Players challenge, here's her card. I'm also posting to the current Just Us Girls challenge as it's Die Week. I used many dies for my card.

My new is the background made with a previously unused Betterpress plate from Spellbinders. It's the March 2025 Betterpress Plate of the month aud has coordinating layering stencils to color it with. I used the plate in the Glimmer hot foiling system foiling with gold before using the stencils to add the blue shades.

My old is the graduation cap die and the sentiment. Both are from Taylored Expressions and I'd say they are at least 10 years old, if not older. I choose Navy and white for the caps because the school colors are those. Seemed appropriate.

The 2025 numbers and dies are also from Spellbinders. They are Betterpress plates which I again foiled in gold onto navy blue card stock and used the coordinating dies to cut them out.

The sentiment is heat embossed with white EP on navy card stock. 

The inside is simple with another sentiment from the same Taylored Expressions Graduation stamp set as the front sentiment.

I'm feeling somewhat better, but the drippy nose remains. Hopefully, only for a few more days. I need to feel well enough to get a Mother's Day card made.

Enjoy your week,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Dream Big stamp set by Taylored Expressioins

Paper: Gina K Designs

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Spellbinders Betterpress Plates Quilted Memories and Large Numbers set, stencils and dies, Taylored Expressions Graduation Cap die, Brutus Munroe Alabaster embossing powder, hear tool, Glimmer Hot Foiling System, Spellbinders gold foils, blending brushes, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 2 die set, foam tape, Connect liquid glue

Lets Celebrate You

 Good Monday Morning Peeps,

I have my card for this week's Freshly Made Sketches Challenge this morning. This blog post will be a quickie, because, #1:  I'm cutting the time very close and #2: I feel like crap! Somewhere on my drive home from my mom's house last week I picked up a nasty cold bug and it just doesn't want to leave. Some times I feel pretty good, then wham, not so much. Any-hoo, I made this quick card yesterday afternoon using Jen's sketch.

I've used all Gina K Designs supplies on this one. The background flowers and dots, and the brick border are stencils. The background stencils and the sentiment are from the Spring Fling bundle. The pretty lacy border die is from her Master Layouts 18 die set.

My plan for today is reading and heading to CVS for some cough drops and more tissues. Hope you all are feeling fine.

Thanks for stopping by,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Spring Fling stamp set

Paper: Gina K Designs White Layering Weight and Black Onyx card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Spring Fling layering stencil, Brick Wall stencil, Master Layouts 18 die set, Stitched circle die, gold dot embellishments, all from Gina K Designs

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello Peeps,

It's been almost two months since I've done any stamping and posting to challenges. My craft room is also our guest room and my mom came to spend about six weeks with us beginning the second week of March. Before going to pick her up, I dismantled my craft room to make it into a bedroom for her. 

We had a great visit and I took her home about a week and a half ago, staying and visiting with her and my sister at their house in northern California, finally returning home on Tuesday. I was able to get my crafty things put back into their spots and today I made a card. A very simple card.

Since yesterday was the final Wednesday for April, it's was Woodblock Wednesday. An opportunity to pull out those rarely used wood mounted stamps, and I used the current Paper Players Sketch for my card's layout.

These wood mounted stamps are some I've had since the late 1990's. I stamped the cookie repeatedly using embossing ink and heat embossed using chocolate embossing powder. It's even chocolate scented. I think I bought it when I bought these stamps at Stamp La Jolla. Although it's a little clumpy, surprisingly it still embossed well. After embossing, I colored the cookies with blending brushes using Honey Mustard and Warm Cocoa inks.

I used dies from various Gina K Designs Master Layouts sets for the cutouts.

For the inside, I stamped a simple sentiment.

It's great to have my room back to normal and to be stamping again. 

Thanks for looking in,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Wood mounted Chocolate Chip Cookie stamp from Limited Edition Stamps. Wood mounted sentiment stamp from Judith

Inside sentiment stamp from Gina K Desings

Paper: Gina K Designs

Ink: Gina K Designs

Dies: Gina K Designs

Other: Chocolate embossing powder, heat tool, foam tape

Lovely Day

 Hello Peeps,

I forgot, again, to take pictures and post my card for this week's Just Us Girls challenge. I made these cards on Sunday! It's stencil week, one of my fave challenges too. I made a very bright and bold card using Concord & 9th stencils and stamps.

I decided that I wanted to use really bright colors on this wavy checkered stencil pattern and originally, I was going to color the flower with Copics. But, I re-thought and decided to go with a black and white image. I did color the center with yellow Copics, but after putting the flower on the bright background, I decided to pull out a bottle of yellow Stickles and jazz up the center of the flower. It looks much happier.

The inside uses some word dies that come in the stamp and die set, and I found some small flowers from another C&9th set to add.

And while I had the stenciling supplies out, I made a couple of other birthday cards. These are made with Gina K layering stencils. I haven't done this layering technique in a long, long time, and these images seemed to work great with it.

Enjoy your day, at least what's left of it, and thanks for checking in.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Lovely Day bundle and H2Hello bundle both from Concord & 9th, and Spring Fling stamp set from Gina K Designs

Stencils: Checkered Stencil Pack from Concord & 9th and Spring Daisies Layering Stencils from Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock Layering Weight White, Black Onyx, Red Hot, Wild Dandelion, Wild Wisteria

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx, Tangerine Twist, Red Hot, Craft White, Soft Stone, Light and Medium Lilac, Light and Medium Spruce, Wild Dandelion, Butterscotch, Copic Markers

Other: GKD white & clear embossing powder, yellow Stickles, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 2 dies, Gina K Designs black and gold gems, foam tape, Connect glue

Spring Flowers for Easter

Hi-ya Peeps,

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. 

I have a couple of cards to share today. They have the same basic design, but have different sentiments and one has an extra image. The focal images are inspired by Claire's theme for this week's Paper Players Challenge, which is Spring Flowers. I know there are many flowers that bloom in early spring and then are done for the year, and the two that I think about most are daffodils and tulips. I went with Daffodils for my cards.

The main image of Daffodils is a Spellbinders Glimmer plate and I've hot foiled it with mat gold foil and colored the images with Copics. This is a very large image and I didn't want to cut it so these are both 5 x 7 inch cards.

On the card above, I've added a stitched butterfly. The stitching plate/embroidery hoop is a die from Lawn Fawn. There are several in the line, but there is also a "blank" that just cuts the circle with holes. Lawn Fawn has several patterns on their website on how to stitch many different images and I used a newer one, this butterfly. To make it easy to know where to stitch the different colors, I used colored pencils to color each square in the appropriate color, then did the stitching. So easy this way!

The sentiment on this card comes with the hot foil plate and it's foiled with the same mat gold foil.

For the second card, I used a sentiment from a Gina K Designs set, stamped it in black ink on vellum and then used clear embossing powder to emboss it. I cut it out with a die from the Gina K Designs Master Layouts 18 die set and glued it to a strip of Lemon Yellow card stock to match the card base.

The insides of both cards are the same images, but one says Happy Spring and one says Happy Easter. The daffodil image is from Gina K and the bunny and sentiments are from Concord & 9th.

I really like how both of these cards turned out. I loved coloring these up, and I love how bright and cheery they are. 

Have a great Monday evening,

Colleen

Supplies

Hot Foil set: Daffodil Spray Feb 2024 Glimmer of the month by Spellbinders

Stamps: Easter Blessings set by Gina K Designs and Some Bunny set by Concord & 9th

Paper: Gina K Designs Heavy White, Black Onyx, Ocean Mist,  and Lemon Yellow, Vellum

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx, Lemon Yellow, Soft Stone. Copic Markers

Other: Spellbinders Glimmer hot foil, Glimmer System, Lawn Fawn Embroidery Hoop dies, Embroidery thread, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 8 and 18 dies, foam tape, Connect liquid glue

Retro Bowls: No One Stacks Up To You

Hello,

It's a lazy Sunday morning here. I've been watching crocheting videos looking for a new project, and I sometimes get lost in the videos, going from one to the next, and then it's two hours wasted. 

Yesterday evening I noticed that the new Color Hues challenge was up. Carol is hostess and her color choices are green and white. Great for March, great for shamrocks, but I decided greens would be perfect for these retro bowls, a new-ish set from Concord & 9th. Also, green is my favorite color, so there's that.

I'm using all Concord & 9th card stocks, three green shades and white.

When I pulled out my pack of Lemongrass card stock, I already had this card front die cut. I glued it to a white card base and then cut the bowls and flower dies from white, Avocado and Artichoke. I stacked the flowers x2 for a little extra dimension and also used the alternate green for the centers. The sentiment is from the same set, cut with a banner die from a different C&9th set.

My aunt is turning 92 later this week and so I made this into a birthday card to mail to her. These birthday images are from C&9th too, yet another set.

I hope you have a relaxing Sunday!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamp and Die sets: Kitchen Classics, Celebrate You and On My Mind all from Concord & 9th

Paper: Concord & 9th card stock: White, Lemongrass, Avocado and Artichoke

Ink: Concord & 9th Lemongrass and Artichoke

Other: Concord & 9th Lattice Corner Die Cut, Gina K Designs white paper hearts, Connect Liquid glue, SU Dimensionals

 

A Veggie Happy Birthday

 Happy Weekend and Happy March to all!

It's a low key day around here. I did some organizing in my craft room this morning, and then a little reading {napping in my chair :)} while listening to pre-season Baseball. I decided I needed to do something to keep my brain busy and that something is to post the card I made last night using Linda's sketch for the Freshly Made Sketches challenge. 

Linda has a very interesting sketch this time and I pondered how I wanted to use it. Mostly, I kept thinking of using multiple sentiments, but while looking through my boxes of stamps, I came across these Lawn Fawn cuties and thought I could make them work for the sketch. 

The Inspired By Challenge theme is Gingham this week, so I'll post there too.

Lawn Fawn has some of the funniest, or punniest, sentiments to go with their images, and I love these on the inside of my card. Who knew  veggies would make such a great birthday card?

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and thanks for checking in.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: All from Lawn Fawn, Simply Celebrate Veggies, Veggie Happy, and Simply Celebrate Critters sets

Paper: Neenah Solar White 100 lb, Concord & 9th Parsley card stocks and Lawn Fawn Gingham patterned paper

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx and Copic Markers

Other: Connect liquid glue and SU Mini Dimensionals