About Me

My photo
I love crafting, especially rubber stamping. Most weekends I can be found surrounded by paper, rubber stamps and ink.

Friday, May 1, 2026

Just For You

 

Happy Friday Evening Peeps,

Here's a card inspired by two challenges. This past Wednesday was the last of April, so it's time for April's  Woodblock Wednesday. I pulled out a pretty flower spray and some sentiment stamps from my wood mounted stamp stash to make a Mother's Day card. I'm using the colors for the new Color Hues challenge. This time around Stef is our hostess and wants to see blue and yellow.

This card started with an older plaid background panel that I had done in blue shades. Another piece that I pulled out of the boxes last week doing some cleaning. I thought the Pink Fresh Studio Folk Art Frame die would go nicely with the stamp and the plaid so I die cut the largest frame from some Daffodil Delight card stock and layered it over a navy card base. I cut the flower image with the smallest frame from navy and layered it over a panel of yellow.

You might wonder why I placed the sentiment where it is. The stamp has a flaw in the rubber in that corner and I needed to hide it, LOL. I first tried a round die cut with the sentiment, but I liked this flag better.








For the inside, I used just a sentiment stamp. I didn't take a picture of it but it's also wood mounted. I used the large PF Frame again for a little added interest.






Enjoy your weekend!
Colleen

Supplies
Stamps: Wood mounted Flowers from All Night Media, SU Just For You and Happy Mother's Day by Annette Watkins
Paper: SU Daffodil Delight, Spellbinders Navy, Gina K Designs white
Ink: Gina K Designs & Yellow Copics
Other: Pink Fresh Studio Folk Art Frame dies, Gina K Designs MasterLayouts 5 dies,  Concord & 9th Plaid Stencil, White embossing powder, Gina K Designs yellow dots



Wednesday, April 29, 2026

You're Every Shade of Awesome

 Happy Hump Day Peeps,

I'm headed out to get my hair cut in about 30 minutes, then after that I'm going to today's Padre baseball game. I love day games, well I love any games, but attending day games are my favorite. 

Since I had a few minutes, I wanted to get my card for this week's Paper Players challenge posted. Stef has a fun and simple sketch for us this week. I'm trying to use up my masses of patterned papers, (like that will ever happen), and they take the spotlight on this card. They are fun and summery, and I picked an appropriate Concord & 9th set to go with.





These patterned papers are from Simple Stories and they came in a SCT Sampler kit from a few years ago. 

Here is the inside of the card.






I hope everyone enjoys the day! Thanks for checking in.
Colleen

Supplies
Stamps: Spectacular Shades set and dies from Concord & 9th
Paper: Concord & 9th card stock and Simple Stories PP
Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx
Other: Spellbinders pink and yellow sequins

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Birthday and Friendship Cards

 Hello,

In my last post, I mentioned that while doing some spring cleaning in my craft room that I found boxes of background panels that i'd made but never used. There were five that I pulled out which were made after watching a Jennifer McGuire Gel Press inking technique. My last post featured a card using one of these. Today's post is three more cards using three more of the five panels.

This first one worked well for the current Color Hues challenge. The colors this time are Coral and Green. 





All of the supplies used on both the front and the inside below are from Gina K Designs.





The other two cards are Gatefold cards. The original panels were 5.5 x 8.5 " so there was enough inked paper to use for the side panels once I cut out the center line art images. Instead of leaving the inked sides plain, I decided to use a couple of large background stamps and stamped them with the same ink colors used in the original technique.

Again, most of the stamps are from Gina K. except on the red card, the background stamp is from Kristina Werner/Concord & 9th.




I used the same design for the inside both cards.

Here's the inside of the blue card.



Here's the inside of the red card.



Enjoy your day!
Colleen


Supplies
Stamps: Gina K Designs and Concord & 9th
Paper: Gina K Designs
Ink:  Gina K Designs
Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1, 12, and 13 dies, Graphic Happy Birthday dies, Embossing Folder, Pastel Pearls, Metallic Pearl and White Heart (colored with Copics) embellishments and white embossing powder, MFT Large Stitched Square die, Simon Says Stamp Nested Domed Arch dies

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Birthday Blessings

 Hello and Happy Sunday,

Recently I've been doing some random cleaning in my craft room. I managed to consolidated two book cases of stuff and moved the bookcases out. Yay! I found four boxes of "backgrounds" that I'd made over the years, mostly playing with techniques that I watched on YouTube, and let's be honest, most probably Jennifer McGuire videos.

In one of the boxes, I found a set of inking technique backgrounds that caught my eye. I searched through Jennifer's video library on her blog and found the video from 2021, a gel press/heat embossing/ink layering technique. I decided to see if I could come up with some cards to use them. There are five backgrounds in all. I made two cards, the second will be featured in a future blog post.

I love the jewel colors in this card. The inks are Gina K Designs Plum Punch, Blue Denim and In the Navy. The embossed image is very large and I didn't want to cover it up too much. I decided to use this week's Freshly Made Sketches layout by Jen T. to make a card. Also, the April Monthly Mix challenge on Gina's FB group is to make a bird card, which was also part of my inspiration.




Using the Master Layouts 13 dies, I cut part of the stamped image then layered it back using foam tape. The hummingbird image is from another GKD set and it's stamped using Royal Flush Solar Paste by Simon Hurley. I watched one of Simon's new Paste Palooza videos and this technique was included. It's really striking on dark colored card stock. The sentiment is a GKD pre-printed strip and the plum dots are from the GKD Iridescent Dots embellishments.

For the inside I stamped the second bird image from the Hummingbird set using the same Solar Paste. The birthday sentiment is from the GKD Cheers To Another Year stamp set.





I saved most all of the backgrounds in the four boxes. Will I get around to using them? Some maybe, LOL. 

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend.
Colleen

Supplies
Stamps: Delightful Blooms, Birds Of A Feather, and Cheers to Another Year sets by Gina K Designs
Paper: Gina K Designs card stock
Ink: Gina K Designs
Other: Royal Flush Solar Paste by Simon Hurley, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 13 dies, Pre-printed sentiments, white embossing powder, Iridescent Dots embellishments. Ranger foam applicator to pounce the solar past onto the stamps, Gel Press, Tim Holtz brayer, heat tool for embossing

Friday, April 24, 2026

Hey! Miss You and Cozy Up!

 TGIF Peeps,

I have two cards today that use the same layout and same stamps and dies, inspired by two different challenges. For the Paper Players it's Clean and Simple week and Christy's theme is Baby Animals. While I have many, many stamps with animals, not so many are of babies. I do have this cute suite from Waffle Flower with kitties that I thought would work. For the theme of my card, I decided to go with Postage and pulled out an older Gina K Designs Postcard set to go with.






It's Stencil week at Just Us Girls and Vicki's challenge is Anything Goes. I decided to use the same basic layout on this card, but stenciled the background with a Kristina Werner/Concord & 9th stencil pack and inks. I wasn't sure if the Postage elements would show up when stamped , but I think it worked well.




For this card I layered the kitten images onto some Waffle Flower postage dies and popped up the sentiments. 

The inside of the two cards is identical.





Enjoy your Friday and weekend!

Colleen


Supplies
Stamps: Postcard set by Gina K Designs and Simple Joy set by Waffle Flower
Paper: Concord & 9th Nectar and Wildberry Gingham card stocks, Gina K Designs Layering Weight card stock
Ink: Concord & 9th and Gina K Designs, Images colored with Copics
Other: Waffle Flower Simple Joy dies and Postage dies, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 2 dies, Kristina Werner/Concord & 9th Bitsy Blooms Stencil Pack

Monday, April 20, 2026

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Monday Peeps,

I hope everyone had a fab weekend. I continued with my organization project but found a few hours yesterday while watching baseball to make a card for the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge.

I saw a fabric quilted heart on IG last week and I thought I'd recreate it with paper, so that is where the inspiration for my focal image comes from, besides Michelle's sketch of course.





The card base and the patterned papers are long retired ones from SU. The large die cut heart is the one inspired from the quilted heart I saw on IG. For the two smaller hearts, I cut them from specific areas on the patterned papers with the bird images, and I really like how they look with this layout.

The die cut sentiments and the stamped sentiments, on the front and the inside below, are from Gina K.






Enjoy your week, and thanks for stopping by.
Colleen

Supplies
Stamps: Seeds of Joy stamp set by Gina K Designs
Paper: Stampin' Up card stock and DSP
Ink: Gina K Designs
Other: Stampin' Up Heart Dies and Bakers Twine, Gina K Designs Love You Trio die set

Monday, April 13, 2026

Cheers To You On Your Birthday

Hello Peeps,

Well, it's been a month since my last post. Life gets in the way sometimes. All is good, no worries, just stuff going on, LOL.

Since yesterday was Sunday, the new Paper Players challenge went up. This week Jan has the monthly color challenge and her chosen colors are yellow, gray and black, specifically the SU colors of Daffodil Delight, Smoky Slate and Basic Black. Most of my SU inks and card stock are at my mom's house in Northern California, so I couldn't used these specifically, so I substituted from my Gina K and Concord & 9th inks and card stock.





The cocktail image comes from Trinity Stamps. The set is called Island Cocktails. I paired it with some older SU DSP to put together this fun birthday card. 

For the front greeting and the inside images and greeting, I reached for another cocktail set in my stash. This one is from Gina K Designs and is simply called Cheers.




I actually made two cards using Jan's colors. The second one is very different from this. I'll post it later in the week. Until then, have a great one!

Colleen

Supplies
Stamps: Island Cocktail set by Trinity Stamps and Cheers set by Gina K Designs
Paper: Gina K Designs card stock in Soft Stone, Black Onyx and Layering Weight white. Stampin' Up DSP (retired)
Ink: Gina K Designs and Concord & 9th, Copic Markers
Other: Lawn Fawn small and medium scalloped border dies, Brutus Monroe black embossing powder, Gina K Designs blending brushes and black pearl embellishments