Hippo Birdie to You

 Hello,

Well, we had some wild weather overnight. Heavy thunderstorms that included several inches of hail. At around 4:15 am, I thought the hail was going to break the windows it was blowing so hard into them. All's sunny this morning, but we have more rain coming here in SoCal this week.

This week's Paper Players Challenge is the CAS challenge where Stef is looking for birthday cards with balloons. Such a fun theme and I'm sure there will be some super cute cards in the gallery. I decided to play with an older Lawn Fawn set with a punny greeting. I've always liked this set and thought it would be good for a CAS card. It's a mini set and I've used every image here on the front of my card.

I decided to use a Lawn Fawn cover die to add a little interest and I've cut it down with an A2 rounded corner die. The hippo and the birdie are fussy cut and glued down, the balloons, party hats and sentiment are stamped directly on the panel. The coloring is done with Copics.

I pulled out an older Honey Bee "inside birthday greeting" stamp set for the inside of my card and added a bird and balloon.

Enjoy your day!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamsp: Year Four set by Lawn Fawn and Inside Birthday Sentiment set by Honey Bee

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx and Copic Markers

Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Ripple Background cover plate die, Hero Arts A2 Rounded Corner dies, 

Hi Peeps and Happy Saturday!

Also, Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm playing along with a few challenges with today's card. I'm using Verena's sketch for Freshly Made Sketches along with Carol's "Word Week" theme for Just Us Girls. In addition, the February Monthly Mix challenge on the Gina K Designs FB Group is to use hearts, and as all of the supplies for my card are from GKD, I'll post it over there too.

I went with an unexpected and punny themed card for this Valentine, shopping my GKD stamp sets and stencils for the idea that I had in my mind.

I started by stenciling the hearts on the bottom half of the front panel and then ink blending some gold in on the top half along with some splatter. I stamped,  colored and die cut all of the images and used the charcuterie board and the sushi for the middle element in the sketch. 

For the inside of the card I used more images and another sentiment from the sushi set along with more ink blending and more splatter.

Wishing everyone a happy Valentine's Day and a great weekend!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: I Like the Way You Roll, Count It All Joy, and Friendship Hearts sets by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs card stocks

Ink: Gina K Designs and Copic markers

Other: Gina K Designs Heartfelt stencil, blending brushes, Master Layouts 3 dies, red paper hearts

Happy Birthday

 Hi all,

I've mailed my Valentine's Day cards so I'm back to making some birthday cards. Today's card is made using the colors for this week's Paper Players challenge. Ann is hostess with a palette suitable for some pretty stenciled flowers.

The card base is stenciled with the GKD Cobblestone stencil to create a stone background for the window image. After finishing the stenciling, I ran the card base and the stencil through my die cutting machine with the rubber pad, which raised up the stones similar to an embossing folder. 

The window from the GKD Master Layouts 20 die set is cut from SU Lost Lagoon card stock. Behind the window is a panel of Petal Pink card stock then two layers of vellum which are sandwiched between two additional window die cuts to add dimension.

I die cut the flower stock first then used the coordinating layering stencils to add the colors, using all four of Ann's challenge colors. This is popped up with some foam tape over the window image. Finally, I added some enamel dots for embellishments, and a pre-printed sentiment strip for the front greeting.

The inside has one of the stenciled flowers and another birthday sentiment.

Have you been enjoying the Olympics? I've been watching. I love the skiing, snowboarding and the figure skating. It's amazing what some of these athletes can do!

Have a good day,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Cheers To Another Year set by Gina K Designs (inside sentiment)

Paper: SU Lost Lagoon & Peta Pink card stock. Gina K Designs white and black card stock, SU Vellum

Ink: SU Lost Lagoon, Petal Pink, Calypso Coral and Mossy Green. Altenew black, Gina K Soft Stone

Other: Gina K Designs Cobblestone stencil, Fancy Florals Layering stencils and dies, Pre-printed birthday sentiment strip, Sentiment Strip dies, Master Layouts 1 and 20 die sets, pastel enamel dots, Connect glue, foam tape 

Love You

 Happy Monday,

My last Valentine's Day card for 2026, inspired by the current Color Hues challenge of Red and Pink.

I'm using various shades of Concord & 9th reds and pinks card stock with the Concord & 9th Wavy Card Front die. This took several passes of this die to get all of the in-laid pieces and the white frame. After getting all of the pieces  in place I then removed them to run through a Spellbinders heart embossing folder for a little added dimension.

The large die cut sentiment is also from Concord & 9th.

Here's the inside of this card.

Enjoy your week!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: You Are the Best Sentiments set by Concord & 9th

Paper: Concord & 9th card stock

Ink: Concord & 9th

Other: Concord & 9th Wavy Card Front die, All the Love set dies, Spellbinders Tiny Heart Scalloped 3D embossing folder

XOXO

 Hello Peeps,

I'm playing with this week's Just Us Girls challenge. This is Die Week with an added theme of hearts. I pulled out various shades of red card stock and an appropriate Valentine's Day cover plate to created this very bright card.

I inlaid some of the mosaic pieces in the center heart but left other cutouts with the under layer showing through. The sentiment dies are cut from red glimmer paper with the shadow layers cut from white glimmer paper.

For the inside, I cut a second heart and used a stamped Valentine's Day sentiment over it.

It's Super Bowl Sunday. Any plans to watch the game? I'm not much of a FB fan, but we're going to friends to watch. It will be a small group and I think most of us are more excited for the pre-game and halftime shows than the game. And, of course, the snacks and wine, LOL.

Enjoy your day,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: You Are the Best set by Kristina Werner/Concord & 9th

Paper: Concord & 9th card stock and SU glimmer papers

Ink: Concord & 9th

Other: Enchanted Heart dies set and Short and Sweet Sentiment dies from Concord & 9th

Happy New Year

 TGIF Peeps,

Yesterday I received a text from a good friend asking if I could make two Lunar New Year's cards for her two teen boys. Of course, I said yes, but then I had to figure out how as I really have nothing stamp wise that would work for the year of the Fire Horse. After looking up images for Fire Horse, I decided my best option was to try finding cut images in the Cricut store. I found two images that I liked, cut them out and then figured out how to use them. In the end, both cards turned out pretty well.

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge for one of the cards. The lantern with the horse is the cut file. After gluing it in place, I used a gold metallic pen and colored in the top and bottom areas in the shade. The small stamped sentiment is from Gina K and the year die cuts are from Taylored Expressions.

The second card uses Spellbinders Betterpress Numbers, hot foiled with dark red foil, a gold foiled sentiment, and a Spellbinders embossing folder for the background. The Cricut horse was cut three times, once from white card stock and twice from red. I ink blended the white image and then layered it over the red images with just a little showing as a shadow. After embossing the black background piece, I rubbed gold craft ink over the raised areas.

I used the same images for the inside of both cards. The fireworks images are from Gina K and the sentiment is Spellbinders.

I think these will work for my friend to give to her boys.

Enjoy the weekend. Lot's of sports on TV with the Olympics starting today and then the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Party Time mini set by Gina K Designs and Nature's Dance by Spellbinders

Paper: Gina K Designs and Concord & 9th card stock, misc asian patterned papers

Ink: Gina K Designs, Concord & 9th, Lisa Horton Cloud 9 gold

Other: Cricut Machine cut files, Spellbinders Mono Line embossing folder, Taylored expressions number dies, Spellbinders Betterpress numbers with dies, Spellbinders hot foils, blending brushes, gold metallic pen

Hello Friend

 Hello and Happy Monday Peeps,

Another Valentine's Day card to share today and I'm playing along with two challenges. This week's challenge at Just Us Girls is CASE the DT and I decided to case Elizabeth's very colorful rows of rainbows card. As it's "love month," I used hearts instead of rainbows, which makes this card work well for Claire's "Love Is In the Air" theme challenge for Paper Players.

The hearts come from an older SU Cut & Embossing folder called Adorable Hearts. I don't think I've used it before. The greeting, the papers, and the inks are from Concord & 9th. The background embossing folder is from Spellbinders.

I kept the inside very simple with just a greeting.

Wishing you all a creative and relaxing week.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: You Are the Best set by Kristina Werner/Concord & 9th

Paper: Concord & 9th card stock and patterned papers in Watermelon, Creamsickle, Wild Berry and white

Ink: Gina K Designs white craft, Connord & 9th Watermelon and Wild Berry

Other: Stampin' Up Adorning Hearts Cut & Embossing Folder, Spellbinders Petite Tuft 3D embossing folder, Brutus Monroe white embossing powder