Just A Note to Say

 Hi stampers,

The Color Hues blog has a pretty color challenge for the new year of Navy and light blue and I thought of one of my Concord & 9th sets to use for it. This is a sweet little set called Hello Wishes and it's perfect for a card for some friends that live in Chicago.

For the layout I used the current Global Designs Project sketch challenge.

All of the die cuts and the sentiments, including the inside below,  are from the same C & 9th set.

I used a shadow stamping technique to highlight the large inside greeting.

Enjoy your weekend, and thanks for stopping by.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Hello Wishes stamp set with dies by Concord & 9th

Paper: Concord & 9th card stocks white, Harbor and Midnight

Inks: Concord & 9th Harbor and Midnight, Hero Unicorn white craft

Other: Misti, Gemini 2, Gina K Designs white EP, heat tool, white ribbon, small blue and clear rhinestones, Connect glue, SU mini dimensionals

Happy New Year

 Greetings and Happy New Year,

For my first post of 2024  I have a card for the new Freshly Made Sketches challenge. It's a relatively clean and simple card using a fun Concord & 9th set.  The colors come from the last Sunday Stamps challenge, called Winter Warmth. Appropriate for the theme and the weather this week.

On the inside I used a larger cup with another greeting from the stamp set.

I've been visiting my mom and sister in Northern California for the past few weeks. I drove up a few days before Christmas, then we all drove to Bend, OR to visit my niece and her family. In addition to Christmas, my niece had a birthday on 12/26 and her daughter (my great niece) turned one on Christmas day, and my youngest nephew was 25 on 12/28.  Lots to celebrate that week. 

One thing not to celebrate, my mom, my sister and I all came down with Covid the weekend after Christmas. No one else that we were with over the holiday tested positive, so I think we must have picked it up just before we left to go to Bend. All three of us are up to date with the vaccine, and we've had very mild to no symptoms other than a light cough for my mom and my sister has some fatigue. I've had no symptoms and have felt normal. I even cleaned and reorganized mom's garage this past week. It's just we are kind of limited to going out and if we have to, wearing masks, of course. This is the first Covid infection for any of us, so kind of a bummer that we finally got caught. Also, I will wait until I test negative for the recommended times before I head home so I bring it there.

Luckily, my sister and I have a nice craft space here to help keep me busy. 

Enjoy your weekend, and Happy 2024 to all!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Cup Of Kindness set with dies from Concord & 9th

Paper: Gina K Designs Layering Weight white and SU Basic White thick and Navy

Ink: Concord & 9th and Hero Arts

Other: Altenew embossing folder, Misti, Gina K Designs white embossing powder, heat tool, Gemini Jr, enamel dots, Connect Glue, SU foam strips

Thank You

Hello peeps,

We arrived home Monday evening from our three weeks on the east coast. We had a super fun time, but as always, it's also great to be back home. It will be a short time for me however, as I'm headed to my mom's house on Wednesday. 

After catching up on chores on Tuesday, I finally had some time in my craft room yesterday afternoon. I made a Thank You card to send to our hosts using two of my routine weekly card challenges. This week's Paper Players Challenge is a color challenge and I combined it with the new Freshly Made Sketches challenge.

The stamps, dies and embossing folder are all from Spellbinders. The mushrooms and leaf dies are from the Enchanted Stitched Mushroom die set, which is the 09/2023 Stitching Die of the Month. The embossing folder is the Spellbinders 3D EF of the month for 09/2023. The card stock and inks are from Stampin' Up.

I cut several thin strips of Melon Mambo card stock and glued them on the diagonal on a piece of white card stock for the lower panel. The upper panel I ink blended with the Tahitian Tide, light at the top and darker towards the bottom of the panel. The black card base is embossed with the EF and then I used some craft white ink to rub over the raised areas. The sentiment is heat embossed with white powder and cut out using an older SU oval punch.

No picture of the inside since it's just a white panel to write a personal message.

Thanks for checking in and have a great Friday and weekend.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Fill My Heart Sentiments set from Spellbinders

Paper: SU Basic Black, Basic White, Real Red, Melon Mambo, Tahitian Tide card stock

Ink: SU Craft White, Tahitian Tide, Real Red

Other: Spellbinders Stitching Die set Enchanted Stitched Mushrooms, Spellbinders 3D embossing folder  Mushroom Harvest, Gina K Designs white embossing powder, heat tool, Misti, Big Shot, black embroidery thread, SU small oval punch, red pearls, blending brushes, Connect liquid glue, SU Dimensionals

For You

 Happy Hump Evening to all,

It's been a nice autumn day here in SoCal with a little rain and wind, but still fairly warm at 63 degrees. Yesterday it got up to 75! We've been preping for our trip to NY on Friday, getting laundry done, scheduling our ride to the airport, etc. Tomorrow will be packing day.

It's color week at The Paper Players and Joanne has a holiday color palette this month of red, gold, green and another color of our choice. I choose blue, well I guess really it's aqua, as my fourth color to make these all die cut cards. All of the dies are from Spellbinders, as are the card stocks and glimmer paper. 

I started this card by embossing the top of the card base. Then I very  lightly rubbed the top with gold craft ink so it just highlighted the raised portions from the embossing folder. The large bow is a die set called All Occasion Bow, and is super fun to put together. I've made several in many different colors, but when I saw that gold was one of Joanne's colors, I thought it would look pretty with this glimmer paper from Spellbinders. The flowers, leaves and sentiment dies are from another Spellbinders holiday die set which is called Petite Blooms.

For the inside, I used sentiments that I hot foiled using a Spellbinders Glimmer holiday sentiment set.

On the second card, I went with a green background starting with the same steps as with the first. Dry embossing the card base and using gold craft ink to highlight the raised portions. The Christmas tree has a base but I just used the inside florals here. The leaves are cut from gold card stock and the flowers are cut from white and colored using blending brushes. Unfortunately, in my photos they look pink-ish, but I did use red inks, Gina K Red Velvet and Lipstick. I took the pictures both inside and outside, but no difference in the colors on the flowers. The dark red pearls match the darker ink blending almost perfectly IRL.

Here's the inside of this card. I heat embossed this with gold EP. This sentiment is from Gina K Designs.

This may be my last post for several weeks. We leave on Friday early am, so I'm not sure I'll be doing much crafting tomorrow. We are back home on Dec. 12. Happy Thanksgiving next week to all those celebrating in the U.S. I hope you get to spend it with family and friends.

Colleen

Supplies

Spellbinders die sets: All Occasion Bow, Petite Blooms and Layered Poinsettia Tree 

Paper: Spellbinders card stocks

Ink: Color Box gold craft, Gina K Designs Embossing craft ink, Gina K Designs Red Velvet, Lipstick, Turquoise Sea, Sea Glass

Other: Spellbinders embossing folders Holly & Foliage and Stylized Trellis, GKD gold embossing powder, heat tool, Big Shot, Connect glue, foam squares, Red Pearls

Merry Christmas

 Happy Monday Morning Peeps,

Hoping everyone had a wonderful weekend full of crafting. I'm sure there are lots of Holiday cards being made. That's what I've been doing because I need to get all of mine finished and addressed prior to this Friday. We are headed to the East coast on Friday and we will be gone until Dec. 11. We'll be home for three days before friends from Chicago come for a five day visit and two days after that, I will drive to my mom's house in NorCal for the Christmas Holiday. Needless to say, a very busy time for me and after this week, I don't see much crafting going on.

Last night I played around with Jen's sketch for the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge. As the card was coming together, I wasn't sure I was liking it, but once completed, it actually turned out pretty cute. 

All of the supplies are from Gina K Designs and I used ALL THE TOOLS, stamping, embossing folders, stencils, die cutting and coloring. 

The background and the horizontal element are embossed using the GKD Snowflake embossing folder. The background is teal card stock with white craft ink rubbed over the raised snowflakes. The horizontal piece is opposite, white card stock with teal ink rubbed over the raised snowflakes. For the second panel, I laid out several sentiments from several holiday sets in two directions and stamped them to make a background. I used three different shades of teal inks from very light to medium. I also threw in some small snowflake images to fill in some spaces. The top angled panel is the GKD Falling Snow stencil over white using Sea Glass ink. I used a curved hill die to cut it towards the bottom to make a hill for the snow folks. They are colored with Copics and on the light string I glued clear and red pearls for some shine.

On the inside, I used two sentiment images and matted the panel with dark teal card stock.

I'm really looking forward to our trip on Friday. We are first heading to an area of NY that I've not been to. Our friends have a house in Greenport at the northern tip of Long Island. We'll be there until Nov. 29 then we are taking the ferry over to New London, CT and our friends that live in Mass. will pick us up and we will be spending the rest of our vacation with them. We have tickets for a couple tours of the Newport, RI mansions, which we've done before, but they will be decorated for the holidays and should be spectacular. 

Have a great week all, and thanks for checking in,

Colleen

Supplies- all Gina K Designs

Stamps: Snowmen from Feeling Frosty set, background greetings from multiple GKD sets

Paper: Tranquil Teal and Layering Weight White card stock

Ink: Black Onyx, Tranquil Teal, Craft White, Sea Glass, Turquoise Sea, Blue Lagoon, Ocean Mist, Red Velvet and Copics

Other: Snowflake embossing folder, Falling Snow stencil, Master Layouts 6, Frozen rhinestones and colored pearl mix, blending brushes, Misti, Big Shot, foam squares, Connect glue

So Very Thankful

 

TGIF Peeps,

Here's a very quick post with my card for this week's Paper Players Challenge. I made this a few days ago but didn't get around to taking the pictures. Anne Marie has a timely theme challenge for us and I created a a Happy Thanksgiving card, which is the simple inside sentiment on this horizontal "Z-Fold" style card.

I pulled the colors from the current Sunday Stamps Challenge.

All of the supplies to make this are from Gina K Designs. The stamp and die set are one of the newer fall bundles. The side panels are made with stencils from her latest release.

Here is the card standing up. The side panels and the circle background are cut using two of Gina's Master Layouts die sets. I didn't take a picture of the inside greeting, which is just a simply stamped Happy Thanksgiving.

Have a great day. My friend is coming over to work on her quilt that I'm helping her with. Today we should finish all of the block construction.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Breath Of Sunshine set with dies

Paper: Gina K Designs Kraft, Layering Weight White, Black Onyx

Ink: Gina K Designs Kraft, Prickly Pear, Sea Glass, Tranquil Teal, Coral Reef, Sweet Mango, Black Onyx

Other: GKD Master Layouts 9 and 13, Fancy Florals Layering Stencils, Blue Pearls, Misti, Big Shot, Foam Squares, Connect glue

When Life Gets Nutty

Hello,

I'm combining two challenges for my card today. The sketch comes from the current  Freshly Made Sketches challenge and the parameters are from Claire's Tic-Tac-Toe challenge on the Paper Players blog. I pulled out a super cute set from Lawn Fawn that I've not used in forever called Let's Go Nuts!

I used the diagonal plaid, die-cut and embossing options on the Tic-Tac-Toe and kept very close to Jen's sketch. 

For the embossing elements, the card base front and the plaid background are both dry embossed using the Concord & 9th Stitched Fall Leaves card front die and I heat embossed the three sentiments using clear EP over Charcoal Brown ink. The sentiment strips and the squirrels are all die cut.

On the inside, I matched the embossed plaid from the outside and added one more squirrel. No sentiment, just a place to write a personal message.

Enjoy your Thursday evening, and thanks for checking in,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Lets go Nuts by Lawn Fawn with co-ordinating dies

Paper: Gina K Designs Sandy Beach and Charcoal Brown card stock, SU Very Vanilla card stock, Lawn Fawn brown plaid patterned paper

Ink: Gina K Designs Charcoal Brown & embossing ink, and Copic markers

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1 dies, Concord & 9th Stitched Fall Leaves card front die, Simon Says Stamp Sentiment Strip dies, SU clear embossing powder, heat tool, Big Shot, SU Mini-Dimensionals, Misti, Connect glue