WINGED THINGS II

Well, here I am with a "make-up" on the Happy Little Stampers September CAS Challenge - Winged Things. As I already noted, I had made the previous one before realizing it needed to be CAS. So here we are:

I cut a 5-1/2 x 11 piece of white cardstock and top-folded it for a square card. I cut a smaller black square and die-cut a circle from it. I then white heat-embossed an outside circle on the black stock and attached it to a yellow printed paper with a water colored pattern that I had stamped the sentiment from Impression Obsession's #CL336 "When Life". I trimmed the yellow paper down to make a mat and attached this to the white card. Finally, I white heat-embossed a bat from the same stamp set, fussy-cut him out, and folded his wings and attached him to the card front with a bit of black dimensional foam. Easy peasy.

Happy Little Stampers: HLS September CAS Challenge

ADDICTED TO CAS - #207 "AUTUMN"

I'm hosting this two-week challenge at Addicted to CAS #207 and I've chosen "Autumn" as the key word. Autumn is my favorite time of year and I don't think that Kylie was aware when she assigned me to this particular two-week period that it is actually my birthday as this goes live! So, happy birthday to me!

Living in an area with hot dry summers I always look forward to the Autumnal Equinox and the cooler mornings and evenings. I love the colors of fall as the trees' leaves turn orange and red. My card for this challenge celebrates all of that.

I had some heavy brown card stock from a previous Thanksgiving card edition and I cut out a stitched rectangle and gold-embossed this wreath image from Impression Obsession, Inc. (#D20737) onto it. Using my Exacto knife I hand trimmed slits on each side of the wreath to insert a pumpkin-colored sentiment strip that I had stamped from PTI's "Stylized Autumn" with Altenew's "Espresso" Crisp Dye Ink. This was all mounted to a brown top-folded card with a metallic mat. Finally I die-cut a couple of leaves from the same metallic card stock, glued them to the sentiment strip and finished it all off with three tiny gold sequins. 

Have at it, guys! I hope you enjoy this challenge as much as I have and be sure to visit all of the other members of our Design Team to see their beautiful interpretations of "Autumn".

Addicted to CAS: Challenge #207 - Autumn

 

CAS CHRISTMAS

I haven't thought much yet about Christmas cards - there's still Halloween and Thanksgiving, so my mind is more on those. However, I noticed this CAS Christmas September Challenge - Plaid so I decided to try my hand at this challenge and slipped right under the deadline. 

As much as I love plaid I'm surprised that I had to dig pretty deep into my stash to come up with some plaid printed papers for my trees. In fact, the plaids (and one polka dot) were in my St. Patrick's Day stuff. 

I started with a top-folded white card and attached a piece of white cardstock that I had embossed with a Darice snow embossing folder. To this I glued 4 die-cut trees from a holiday die set. I cut a slightly smaller stitched rectangle and centered an oval opening in that. I glued it over the face of the trees with dimensional foam and white heat-embossed a sentiment from Penny Black ("Merry Up") on a strip of red card stock and tucked it into the oval (after tediously cutting the right edge of the strip with the same stitched rectangular die). I popped it up a bit at the outside edge with a piece of dimensional foam and finally added some small clear dots. 

Why is it that sometimes the simplest cards take the longest to make? With CAS there's no room for mistakes or fingerprints or smudges. I had a bit of dotted Christmas paper I used to line a white envelope and once I loaded the photo on my blog I could see that I must have at one time run over that piece of paper with my desk chair! I was too lazy to re-shoot the photo and the deadline for submission is bearing down on me.

CAS Christmas Card Challenge: CAS Christmas September Reminder

This was fun - think I'll try it again next month.

Added 9/30/21

FIRST DAY OF FALL

It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that today is already the first day of fall! Today I'm playing with the current Just Us Girls #602 Color Week and the colors are perfect for fall - yellow, red, and orange. I decided to do a CAS design and a sentiment stamp that I haven't used before.

I started this project by cutting and folding a piece of ivory Strathmore watercolor paper, using the deckle edge for the opening side. Then on a smoother ivory recycled card stock I partially stenciled a brocade pattern with PTI "Fine Linen" ink to ground the various elements and stamped a leaf image from Impression Obsession #WP684 "Leaf Set" with Hero Arts "Butter Bar" and PTI "Summer Sunrise" and "Pure Poppy" dye inks. I fussy-cut the leaf, over-printed the sentiment (also "Leaf Set") with Altenew "Espresso" and mounted all of it onto a linen-colored mat and inserted a folded yellow ribbon. I lined the inside of the card with a bright yellow lightweight paper to accent the deckle edge and finished off by lining an ivory envelope with the same bright yellow. 

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls #602-Color Week (justusgirlschallenge.blogspot.com)

BUGS & KISSES

I doubt anyone thought I could make a Halloween card with the code word "Hugs" - but here it is! The current AAA Cards CAS Game #199 is No Layers + Optional Twist "Hugs".

I'm madly in love with the Katzelkraft #KTZ234 "Les Nounounes", as witnessed by previous cards here and there . I first stamped this little guy in Memento "Tuxedo Black" dye ink and colored him with Copic markers. I then masked him off and overprinted blood splats from an ancient stamp set and black splatters from Tim Holtz "Haunted House". Finally I black heat-embossed both sentiments. I was disappointed with the rather fuzzy "Bugs & Kisses" but I wasn't going to start over! 

AAA Cards: Game #199 - No Layers + optional twist Hugs

Added October 10, 2021:

WINGED THINGS

It was impossible to pass up an opportunity to do a card with the challenge of "Winged Things" given my last name! And of course it needed to be a Halloween card. I completed it and went back to Happy Little Stampers to enter it and then realized it was to be a CAS card - bummer! Oh well, I'm entering it anyway and will probably get kicked off the challenge - I get that. I may do a second card for this challenge to make it way more CAS.

I have an 8 x 8 Halloween paper pad from Recollections - "Mystic Moon" - that I used, adding some mauve-colored card stock left over from a Halloween card from years ago. I die-cut a stitched circle out of the gray stock and added a mauve circle for trim and white heat embossed sentiment from Simple Stories "Boo Crew". I stacked several layers together, cut out one of the bats and mounted it in front and finally added a couple of black enamel dots.

Happy Little Stampers: HLS September CAS Challenge

  

BOO!

It's time for me to go full-on into Halloween cards and Freshly Made Sketches #503 by Cecile offered up a fun challenge from which to jump off. I have so many Halloween scraps in my stash and I welcome any opportunity to use them. I've been wondering if I could squeeze out almost 30 cards from my scraps this year and not buy any more Halloween paper for a while. I think I'll challenge myself with that.

I started by die-cutting a 4-1/4 x 5-1/2 stitched rectangular from a piece of black cardstock and white heat embossed the sentiment from one of my Halloween stamp sets and mounted this to an orange top-folded card. I die-cut 4 squares from a couple of scraps and glued on part of a die-cut Sizzix Tim Holtz spider web and added them to the card and finished off with a Tim Holtz ghost (#664209) die that I added some dimensional foam to and glued 2 googly eyes to the sentiment.    

Freshly Made Sketches: Freshly Made Sketches #503 - A Sketch by Cécile

The REALLY good news this morning is that it's finally raining! Hopefully this will help with the wild fires, and after tomorrow the smoke will have cleared from our valley. It's been terrible for more than a month.

NON-TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS COLORS

Well, this was fun! The current Happy Little Stampers posed the Christmas challenge of "Anything Goes + Optional Non-Traditional". I opted to go with non-traditional colors for this Christmas card.

On a side-folded slim-line card I mounted a white card panel matted with shiny silver cardstock. I have this beautiful blue/silver Japanese rice paper I've been hoarding for years and that's where I started, by cutting it smaller than the white base. Then I layered banks of snow that I die-cut with my Lawn Fawn stitched waves and stamped sentiment (Impression Obsession #CL971 "Holiday Words" and Distress Ink "Stormy Sky"). The cute little houses and trees are from a new (to me) Alexandra Renke D-XX-AR-W0128 "Winter City" die set. I glued everything together and added a little die-cut MFT heart.

Peach, yellow, green, and blue - not traditional Christmas colors!

 Happy Little Stampers: HLS September Christmas Challenge

 

On a personal note, my new custom signature stamp arrived that I ordered from ThePrintMint on Etsy. I'll be using this to stamp and date the back of all of my cards from this day forward!

 

PASTEL BIRTHDAY

It's been quite a while since I've participated in a Seize the Birthday challenge so yesterday I set out to do just that. The current challenge is #222 - Pastel Colors. I chose blue, peach, and green, although I'm afraid my phone didn't cooperate with me in showing the pale shade of the green. In addition to deciding on making a birthday card in pastel tones, I chose to use the current Freshly Made Sketches #502 as a layout inspiration.

I used smooth white card stock for the top-folded card and a textured white for the sentiment strip. The first thing I did was die cut a stitched rectangle from pale blue linen paper and white heat emboss a splotched background from Tim Holtz "Haunted House" rubber stamp set and glued the rectangle to the right side of the card. I had gifted myself with some new Alexandra Renke D-AR-FL0104 "Myrtella" dies that I cut the leaves and flower stalks from. To make buds I cut some bits from a pale peach card stock and also die cut a couple of peach flowers from the Renke "Asterella" set. The sentiment is stamped with PTI "Sweet Blush" using PTI's "Birthday Bash Sentiments".

Seize the Birthday: Seize the Birthday #222-Pastel Colors

Freshly Made Sketches: Freshly Made Sketches #502 - A Sketch by Jen B

That's it for today - time for a nap! 

ADDICTED TO CAS - LEAF

It's hard to believe that it's far enough into the year that we're now thinking about falling leaves and pumpkins. But that's exactly where we are and our very talented Vicky has selected "Leaf" for our Challenge #206.

 

I first cut out a scrap of Strathmore watercolor paper stock and stamped it with the maple leaf from PTI's "Leaf Prints". I used Altenew's "Rocky Shore" for the base, edged with PTI's "Americano" and finally stamped the veins with Altenew's "Espresso". The watercolor paper took the dies in an interesting mottled manner, which I was hoping for, but it takes a long while for it to dry before I could use the gold embossing of the sentiment from Impression Obsession's #WP684 "Leaf Set". After die-cutting the sienna-colored cardstock with one of my new Pink Fresh "Stitched Rectangles", I ran the edges across my VersaMark watermark stamp pad and dipped it in gold embossing powder. I attached this to another slightly larger layer of the sienna cardstock and glued this to a folded Strathmore watercolor folded card. Finally I punched a couple of rectangular openings in the corner and tied some silk thread and wooden beads because, well why not? The card cried out for a bit of embellishment!

Here's a closer look at the sentiment. I'm not sure why my phone recorded a slight gray smudgy-looking shadow around the gold embossing - it's most assuredly not on the original card.

It's now your turn for your take on "Leaf"!

Addicted to CAS: Challenge #206 - Leaf

BEWARE THE ZOMBIE LLAMA!

Continuing my Halloween card mania... 

A couple of years ago I purchased this silly Happy Hallamaween stamp set for $1 at one of the craft stores - I don't know who the manufacturer was but it just struck the right kind of silly for me. This is only the 2nd time I've used the set since its purchase. I stamped my zombie llama with Memento "Tuxedo Black" ink and colored the pumpkins and saddle blanket with orange Copic markers.

After attaching a couple of scraps of printed Halloween paper to a black card base, I glued on the llama image and black embossed a strip of orange cardstock with a sentiment from Simple Stories #13820 "Boo Crew". I heat embossed one of Tim Holtz's "Stitches" with white embossing powder on both the orange strip and the black card base and matched them up. That was it!  

I actually designed this card to enter the current Freshly Made Sketches #501, a sketch by Kim. 

           Freshly Made Sketches: Freshly Made Sketches #501 - A Sketch by Kim