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

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

Happy Spring

 TGIF Peeps!

Hope your week has been a good one. I've mostly been working on a new quilt, actually it is an old WIP that I ran across while looking for something else, so I decided I'd pull it out to finish. I need some additional fabric, so later I'm headed to the fabric store.

Yesterday late afternoon, I finished what I could on the quilt and decided to do some stamping. Since it's the last week of the month, it's time for the February edition of Woodblock Wednesday. I pulled out some spring themed stamps and papers and used this week's Paper Players sketch by Jan to make this card.

These pretty papers are from The Stamps of Life Company and the pack is called Happy Florals collection. The front floral stamp is from Magenta. I stamped it twice, cutting one image with a stitched die from GKD. The other image I colored with Prismacolor colored pencils then cut out the floral boxes and popped them up. The sentiment strip image is from Hero Arts and again, it's cut out with a GKD die.

On the inside I wanted to stay with wood mounted stamps and I found this cute kitty dressed as the Easter Bunny, from Magenta, in my stash. I paired her/him with a simple Happy Easter greeting, also by Hero.

Here are the wood mounted stamps used for today's card.

Enjoy your Friday and the weekend. I'll be sewing.

Thanks for checking in,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Sentiment stamps by Hero Arts and Image stamps by Magenta

Paper: SU card stock and The Stamps of Life Co. patterned papers

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx and Bubblegum Pink

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 5 and 13, Prismacolor Colored Pencils, Gamsol, Gina K Designs Pastel enamel pearls, foam tape

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