Happy Birthday To You!

 TGIF Peeps,

I've been lazy this morning, scrolling through IG posts of my favorite crafts. It's dangerous because it makes me spend $$$, LOL, but SO MANY great ideas.

Yesterday afternoon, I played around with shapes for this card inspired by Bonnie's Yellow and Green challenge for Color Hues. This card is CASE'D from Spellbinders Modern Botanicals Collection and Bonnie Carollee. I don't have any of the Spellbinders supplies, but I managed to combine from mine to make this card. I kind of love it!

I used three sizes of circle masks and various stencils from Gina K., MFT, Paper Smooches and Honey Bee. The ink colors I used are Gina K. Wild Dandelion and Lucky Clover. 

To make the branch, I first foiled a piece of Gina K. Polyglaze with Lucky Clover foil, let it cool well (that's the secret) and pulled off the top clear layer. I then cut out the branch, which is the SSS Tattered Leaves die. I cut two more from scrap card stock and glued the three layers together for dimension. 

The greeting is pre-printed Polyglaze from Gina K. I foiled it with Wild Dandelion foil and cut it out with its corresponding die. Finally, I added the three harlequin diamonds from the MFT stencil next to the top and bottom circles, then some green and yellow sequins for added sparkle.

Here's the inside of this card, which uses images from the Gina K. set called Gentle Silhouettes. I really like the sentiment and I've used it many times.

I hope you enjoy the weekend.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Gina K Designs Gentle Silhouettes set

Paper: Gina K Designs White Layering and Wild Dandelion card stock and black Polyglaze sheets

Ink: Gina K Designs Wild Dandelion and Lucky Clover

Other: Gina K Designs Deco foils in Wild Dandelion and Lucky Clover, Master Layouts 12 dies, Graceful Greetings Polyglaze sentiments and corresponding die, Fuze Foiling Machine. Circle masks, Stencils from My Favorite Things, Honey Bee, Gina K Designs, and Paper Smooches, Simon Says Stamp Tattered Leaves die, SSS sequins

Sending Happy Thoughts

Hello all,

Ann has a pretty pallet for this week's color challenge for the Paper Players. I made three cards, all with flowers, as that was what these colors seemed to inspire. I picked my favorite to post for the challenge.

I cut a FreshFreesia panel with a stitched rectangle die, then cut the window from the Pretty Peacock. The flowers are cut from white and I ink blended them with the three colors using light and dark inking. The sentiment is heat embossed with white ep. While it's a little hard to tell in the photo, I ran some vellum through a SSS 3D floral embossing folder, glued the window to it and trimmed off the excess before gluing the window to the panel. IRL, the velum is much more visible.

The inside is simply stamped with some sentiments from both SSS and Honey Bee.

I hope your week has been going well. We went to dinner last evening to celebrate my birthday, a BIG one, LOL. It was low key, just us and our good friends plus my nephew who is in San Diego for a conference. 

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: XL Greetings and Beautiful Butterflies sets by Simon Says Stamp. Inside Birthday Sentiments set by Honey Bee

Paper: SU card stocks in Lemon Lolly, Fresh Freesia, Pretty Peacock, Basic White, and vellum

Ink: SU Lemon Lolly, Fresh Freesia, & Pretty Peacock, Gina K Designs craft white

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts die sets 1, 12, and 20. Simon Says Stamp Rustic Layering Flower dies, Simon Says Stamp Crimped Floral 3D embossing folder, Nuvo glitter pen, Brutus Monroe white embossing powder, SU Dimensionals, Connect glue

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

I'm So Grilled

Hello,

It's Thursday already. This week seems to be flying by. Maybe because I was away from home startingThursday last week through Monday this week to attend a memorial service for my cousin that was held in Northern California.

After flying to Sacramento, my bestie lent me her car for the weekend to drive from Sacramento to my mom's so that I didn't have to spend $$$$ for a rental car. I wanted to make a fun thank you card for her, and upon my return home, I had received a recent order from Lawn Fawn. I decided to use the freebie set that was included in my order, because who can resist these foodie puns.

I'm using Elizabeth's One Layer Card sketch challenge from this week's Paper Players to make it.

To make the front of this card, I masked off the center and used a diagonal line stencil from SSS to make the plaid background. This took a while but it turned out pretty well. I wanted a red plaid to go with the summer food images.

I removed the mask and stamped the three images, the speech bubbles and the puns then colored the images with Copics. After stamping the sentiment under the white area I added the enamel ant and heart, both from a Doodlebug set of embellishments.

On the inside I used  a thank you stamp from GKD.

Thanks for checking in!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: BBQ Friends and All the Speech Bubbles sets by Lawn Fawn and Grateful Greetings set by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs Heavy Weight White card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs and Copic Markers

Other: Masking Magic, blending brushes, Simon Says Stamp Diagonal Lines stencil,  Doodlebugs embellishments

 

A Patchwork of Happiness

 Hello,

When I saw the IG peeks for Waffle Flower's June release, I knew that I'd be buying several. Especially the sewing/quilting related stencils, stamps and dies. I may have grabbed some of the beach related ones as well, LOL. Those will show up at some point here on my blog.

I spent a whole afternoon earlier this week playing with the quilt stencils, and boy, were they fun. I used the current Color Hues challenge colors of Peach and Cobalt blue for this card, using the Patchwork Cat Stencil pack and greetings from the Quilted Hug Sentiments stamp set.

After the stenciling was completed I used a Concord & 9th stitched card front die to add the "quilting." The embossed sentiment is popped up over a spool of thread that goes with the sewing machine from the Sew Fun dies.

For the inside of this card I used another of the Quilted Hug birthday sentiments and a small pin cushion stamp.

I've actually been doing some quilting lately so these stencils, dies and stamps really caught my eye. So fun!

Enjoy your Thursday!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Quilted Hug Sentiments by Waffle Flower

Paper: Gina K Designs Layering Weight White and Spellbinders blue card stock

Ink: Gina K designs and Simon Says Stamp

Other: Waffle Flower Patchwork Cat Stencils and Sew Fun Dies, Concord & 9th Stitched Card Front, Brutus Monroe Alabaster embossing powder

Chill

Hello Peeps,

Claire is hostess for this week's Paper Players with the monthly CAS challenge. Her theme this time is Fruit.

I have lots of options in my collection and actually made four cards, although one isn't even close to CAS. The other three are, and I ended up choosing this cute watermelon man from Spellbinders for the challenge card. Using some old SU DSP called Tutti Frutti to make a swimming pool, he is indeed "chilling."

The swimming pool is a Lawn Fawn die and I thought the watermelon blue paper would make a good pool and the green scalloped paper looked like watermelon rind, so perfect for the vibe of the card. The little floaty is from Spellbinders.

The inside is simple with just a birthday greeting and more SU papers.

Our neighbor has a birthday in a couple of weeks, and she's getting this one. She likes silly cards.

I'm off to Northern Cal tomorrow, just for a long weekend. Unfortunately, I'm attending the memorial for my cousin who passed a few months ago at the young age 60 from breast cancer. 

Here are the other Fruity cards that I made. All of the stamps and dies for these are from Concord & 9th. The strawberry and flowers on the left card are cut from felt.

Thanks for looking in,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Paradise Resort stamp set by Spellbinders

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock and SU Tutti Frutti DSP

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Summertime Slice and Summertime Wade Pool Dies by Spellbinders, Stitched Pond and Frame Dies by Lawn Fawn, Connect liquid glue, SU Dimensionals

High Tides and Good Vibes

 Happy Monday Peeps,

More Sunday late night stamping for me last night and I made my card for the soon ending Freshly Made Sketches challenge. I had some ink blending fun and made another silhouette stamped card. 

There is lots of masking off areas and I worked from the top down to create this summer sunset scene. The images, inks and paper are from Gina K Designs.

While the front sentiment is kind of generic, I turned this one into another birthday card with the inside greeting. I can always use more summer themed birthday cards and bonus, this can be used for boys or girls.

Enjoy your day, or what's left of it.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Window On the Water and Ocean Silhouettes stamp sets by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs White and Black card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Wild Wisteria, Bubblegum, Wild Dandelion, Turquoise Sea, Black Onyx, Soft Stone

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 2 dies, Beautiful Backdrops Stencil, Masking Magic strips and sheets, Blending Brushes

Happy Birthday

Hi and Happy Thursday,

I have a few girl friends with birthdays in June. I've been making their cards this past week. They need to get mailed, as one lives in New England and the other in the Pacific Northwest. 

The card in today's post is one I made using Stef's color theme for this week's Paper Players challenge. 

The stamp set is from SSS called Butterfly Blossoms. There are four flower bouquets on stems in the set, but I used them a little differently than intended on the front of my card. I masked off the center of a white panel with a circle of Masking Magic then inked the top blooms and stamped around the outside of the circle to get the background. There are coordinating coloring stencils that I used to shade the flowers with GKD Peach Bellini ink. The butterflies are stamped on SU Soft Sky card stock and shaded using the stencils with Soft Sky ink. I used a BG Copic for the shading on the wings as well as some Nuvo glitter. The center circle is SU Sea Foam card stock and I also stamped the greeting on the Sea Foam and cut it out with the corresponding set die.

I did use one of the four flower bouquets on the inside. The sentiment here is from Gina K.

Thanks for checking in,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Butterfly Blossoms set by Simon Says Stamp and Sweet Sentiments set by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Peach Bellini, Black Onyx and Layering Weight White card stock, SU Soft Sky and Sea Foam card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx, Powder Blue, Light Spruce, and Peach Bellini.  SU Soft Sky, BG Copic Marker

Other: Butterfly Blossoms coloring stencils and dies, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 2 dies, Nuvo glitter pen, foam tape, Gina K Designs Pastel Pearl mix, Masking Magic, blending brushes.