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

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

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

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

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

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

Wishing You Luck and Love

 Happy Hump Day Peeps,

It's been a little bit since I've posted to my blog. I've been doing more sewing than card making for the past few weeks. I finished, for the most part, my quilting project and I had some time yesterday afternoon to do some stamping. 

Looking around the blogs, I decided to make a St. Patrick's Day card following the challenges at both the Paper Players and Just Us Girls. Joanne is hostess for this week's Paper Players Color challenge and she has chosen "Colors of the Rainbow."  Sue is hosting the Just Us Girls Die Week with a theme of Luck or Green for the works. These two challenges seemed easy enough to combine, so here's my card.

I used images from two different Gina K Designs stamp sets to make this St. Pat's Day themed card. I stamped the paint swoosh using some GKD ink cubes in rainbow colors across the top of a white panel, which is cut out with the stitched die from the Master Layouts 2 die set. All of the other images were stamped and cut out with their respective set dies and arranged around the swoosh. 

The inside of the card uses a sentiment from SSS. Apparently it's the only Happy St. Patrick's Day sentiment stamp that I have, and it took me longer to track it down that to make the card, LOL.

I hope you have an enjoyable day. I've got a few chores to do. First, I need to pack as I'm driving to my mom's house tomorrow in Northern Calif. Saturday is her 90th birthday! Second, I'm actually emptying out my craft room and putting everything in our garage because I want to get the tile floors professionally cleaned while I'm gone. 

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Always Thinking of You and Love and Luck sets by Gina K Designs. Wooly Luckly set by Simon Says Stamp

Paper: Gina K Designs card stocks

Ink: Gina K Designs and Copic markers

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 2 dies set and Sentiment Strip dies, Brutus Monroe white embossing powder, Gold Sequins from stash