Cherry Ave Birthday

My friend works at Cherry Avenue School. She likes to give birthday cards to her co-workers.  This is for her stash.  

I stamped the cherry pair on watercolor paper.  The sentiment was embossed on black paper.  A slit was made along the cherry stem & leaf line, to tuck the sentiment strip under. Splatters of paint were added, and accidentally smudged before they dried - oops!

I used the sketch from Cas(E) this sketch 

The Male Room 

Just Add Ink

The stamps are from Unity. 

As always, thanks for taking a look. Have a sweet day.

Birthday in Flames

This card is for my hubby's birthday -- He LOVES anything related to cars. In fact when people used to carry pictures in their wallet, his first picture was of his favorite car.  Wife and kids came second. 

I thought this flame stencil would work great for a birthday card. 

I'm putting this into the following challenges:

Just Add Ink The challenge is for a masculine card (challenge # 520)

And The Male Room is celebrating their 7th birthday!

Fab Friday - Color Challenge

Here's a peek at the inside:

supplies:

• Stamps - Art Impressions (front sentiment & inside image)
• Stamp - inside sentiment - Technique Tuesday
• Flame stencil & frame die - HoneyBee
• Distress inks

Thanks so much for stopping by to take a look.  I hope you enjoy. 

Sunflowers over the Fence

 Actually it's sunflowers over my neighbor's fence 😀

When I look across the street every morning, this is the sunny view with which I am greeted.  It is my inspiration for this card.  

My neighbor started these sunflower plants from seeds.  She said she'll help me next year.  I'm afraid my green thumb may only work on paper. 

I started by stamping the Penny Black flowers on watercolor paper.  I  used distress inks to watercolor them.  Then fussy-cut them out, and  popped them up.

To create the fence I used a wood plank background stamp by My Favorite Things.   I stamped and clear embossed it with Morning Mist by Versafine Clair.  Then I "smooshed" it with Weathered Wood and Tea Dye distress inks. I cut it into thin strips for the fence boards, then cut in 1/2, then cut the tips on each board. I inked the edges in Weatherd Wood. 

The flower was popped up, and I placed the fence boards over the flower.  A die cut sentiment from PhotoPlay and done.  

I'm putting this in the following challenges:

• Penny Black. *Say it with Flowers*

• Double D Challenge - The Theme is Sunflowers
  
  
  
• Double Trouble This card will go to my neighbor.  I think it will brighten her day.  So I'm putting it in the 
  Thing 1:  Trouble Maker  says, "You make me happy when skies are grey.  Thing 3: Twisted Sister says, "Let's start with using any shade of grey and then brighten the day with your choice of TWO additional colors. And Thing 2:  Double Dare says, "If you have taken on Twisted Sister's color palette above, it also matches the Color My Heart Color Dare Challenge #407.  
  
• Color My Heart Use Gray and 2 other colors of your choice. The fence is shades of grey and the other 2 colors are green and yellow.  The white is a freebie. 

  

As always, thank you for stopping by and taking a look.

Stay safe and stay well.

Trying out Vintage

This card is for my friend who is a scrapbooker, and loves vintage, layered, embellished layouts.  

And I made a second, similar, card for my stash. 

There was so much put into this project. I used distress inks (and sprays) for all the coloring - mostly vintage photo and the new speckled egg.  The "sewing" is from a stamp set that another friend gave me.  The sentiment is from Taylored Expressions. The flower is stamped and embossed, and colored. The green leaves are from a Tim Holtz die cut set.  I "distressed" the edges of the watercolor cardstock. The tags were cut from pattern paper. Ribbon from Stampin Up was "worn" with some distress ink. There is a deco edge of paper created with a Martha Stewart punch. Phew! 😀

I had a blast doing this -- I'd work on it, and leave it.  Then work on it and leave it - and so on.  Then I saw these two challenges -- to use a tag on your project.  And the whole thing finally came together.

• A Vintage Journey Tag You're It - It's not a stand alone tag.  So I'm not sure that it qualifies for this challenge.  But I wanted to share. 
  
• Just Add Ink -  Just Add T  - Tag starts with T. 
  

I don't usually craft in this style.  But I saw this card by Stacy at Tattered Nest Designs and fell in love with it.  And felt a need to try something like this.  

Will I do another one like this?  I don't know.  So many ideas and projects. . .  so little time. 

Thanks for stopping by to take a look. Until next time, stay safe.

Flower Power

I'm procrastinating from doing things that really need to be done around the house :)

So I looked at some challenge blogs to see what I could "play" with.

And found one of my new favorite challenge blogs: Double Trouble. The current challenge is Challenge #61 - TicTacToe Puzzle with Cupcake Inspirations "Flowers, Pearls/Sequins"

I think I've met the criteria of all three: The Trouble Maker, the Twister Sister, and the Double Dare:

I used an insect, flower, and wood grain.

 There are pearls on the sympathy card, and bling on the hello card. 

So this is also going into: CupCake Inspirations

I stamped the image (Simon Says Stamp) onto wood pattern paper, and colored with color pencils. I die cut an oval, and the sentiment (Simon Says Stamp). The bee (from HoneyBee) was colored, and die cut.

That's all for now.  Thanks for looking. Stay well.

Until next time . . .

NYC Wedding Day

This is for the son and his new bride of a good friend.  He and his bride had been engaged for a while.  They recently got married at city hall in Manhattan because they researched their "lucky day", and quickly got married. 
It was a small ceremony.  They plan to have a big party when her parents can attend.

I had actually made the background a while ago -- just playing around and having fun.  So I don't really remember exactly how I made it.  But I think I used distress inks and a sun stencil.  I think I may have spritzed water through the stencil -- I know it's on water color paper.  And you can see a bunch of water splats.  Whatever -- after that, I used a skyline stencil from The Crafter's Workshop (Urban Landscape) - which has 2 options -- the solid buildings and the lined buildings.

So after that was done, I set is aside for quite a while.  Never sure what I should do with it.  Until now.  So I stenciled in some hearts, and black embossed the Congratulations.  And done -- a different but very personal wedding card. 

I'm putting this into Cardz for Galz - the theme is  WEDDINGS

It is certainly not the usual wedding card.  But it worked for them!

Thanks for taking a look.  Hope you are all well and safe.

Make a Wish

My daughter-in-law has a fascination for and collection of snails.  So to make her birthday card I started looking at my snail stamps and found it lacking.

I've become fascinated by Lavinia Stamps and their videos.  The finished pieces are so pretty and beautiful. So, I had to get my hands on some, and give it a try.   I was able to get this fairy riding a snail and a few others.  The text stamp has the word "Celestial" in it; and our last name is Celeste!  Perfect!

I followed some of the techniques (alcohol ink on Yupo, and then alcohol ink lift) on this video by Lavinia Stamps.  I don't do their work justice - check out their YouTube videos.  But I had fun playing and I'm pretty sure my daughter-in-law will like her card. 

I'm putting this into Lavinia World Challenge #30 - Anything Goes

And into

The Fairy and the Unicorn Challenge - 

ANYTHING GOES AS LONG AS IT IS A FANTASY CREATION

Here is the inside of the card.  I used one of "lifted" pieces for the inside. 

Supplies:  front side stamps(Lavinia), alcohol inks, alcohol ink lift, yupo paper, Make a Wish die (Impression Obsession), glitter paper

I'll leave you a photo of a sunset from my front door a few weeks ago.  Now that is beautiful!! 

Thanks for visiting.  Stay safe and stay well.  

Until next time. . .