CASE-ING CHRISSIE

I think I had a slight brain cramp this week! I didn't focus on the fact that there are actually 5 weeks in July, so I thought I was finished with my Guest Design slot with Just Us Girls. But here I am a bit late for a 5th one! This one is #643 Wild Card Week - "Case a Designer", in which we are instructed to Case a card from one of our favorite designers.

I chose Chrissie Stokes (https://simply-one-of-a-kind.blogspot.com/) because I LOVE her spare CAS style. She has so many beautiful cards that it was hard to make a choice! This is my take on her design from May 3, 2022:

This is her original design:

While I pretty much followed the same layout, my paper and dies are hardly as elegant as the ones she used - her work always humbles me! Mine is done with standard white 110 lb cardstock. I used a Penny Black #51-423 "Airy" die instead of a fern frond, and a Lawn Fawn sentiment die. I didn't have any delicate butterfly dies, so opted for stamping, coloring, and fussy cutting one from my stash. And finally, I added tiny clear gemstones. I do hope Chrissie can forgive me for my clumsier copy of her very elegant card!

So, if you too want to be humbled, try a run at copying one of your favorite designer's works and share it with us here! 

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls Challenge #643 - Wild Card Week

HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

So, how did I not know about Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge? Especially since Halloween cards are my very favorite holiday for cards! As soon as I found it, I knew I had to start hanging out there. The July challenge is "Anything Halloween". I chose the candy corn quadrant from their mood board.

I had this ancient paper in my stash with this guy and "I (heart) Candy" on the front and the hearts on the back that I used for lining the envelope. I started with a top-folded black square card that I attached the orange, yellow, and black panels to after stamping and white heat embossing splotches from Tim Holtz. I fussy cut the little guy and glued him to the face of the card, adding a couple of plastic googley eyes. I made up the sentiment and printed it with my computer and then die cut it into a tag that I threaded with yellow baker's twine. The final addition was 5 little candy corns that I fussy cut from the backside of the paper and glued to the card. I tried to add some glossy accents on the candy corns, but it wasn't really successful.

Well, that's my first Halloween card for 2022 - the first of many!   

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: JULY Anything Halloween

Added August 1, 2022

SANDY FEET

When I saw the current offering at Fusion Card Challenge - Beach Tiers I knew that I wanted to play along. Last week my husband and I spent a couple of days with sandy feet at the Northern California shore. It was hotter than hell here in Medford, so it was a very nice respite. We dined on blackened snapper po' boys in Crescent City and oysters and sauvignon blanc in Eureka - a perfect getaway for "foodies". 

It's been a while since I participated with the Fusion Challenge. It's an easy-going Sunday morning and the simplicity of the design was a perfect inspiration. I knew I wanted to do a CAS card with subtle colors.

For the background rectangular layer, I used Hero Arts #CM317 "Color Layering Sea & Sky" with PTI's "Soft Stone" and "Ocean Tides". The final color layer and sentiment were stamped with Tim Holtz "Story Sky" Distress Ink. I stamped the sea, sentiment, and additional small images in a single layer on a stitched rectangular die, cut from white cardstock. Then I die-cut the smaller stitched rectangle, punched a hole for the twine, and mounted all of this on a card base, raising the lower rectangle with dimensional foam. Two tiny gemstones finished it off. I photographed this on my kitchen quartz countertop, which seemed the perfect background with the small sandy pattern. I'm really happy with this card.

  

Here's the link to the challenge: Fusion Card Challenge: FUSION - Beach Tiers

Added August 4, 2022:

 

HELLO, PHOTO WEEK

It's my final week with Just Us Girls as Guest Designer, and it's been an honor! This week is #640 "Photo Week", and the photo is below - a green wallpaper garland that is lovely.  

For my take on the photo, I chose to stamp a couple of Indigo Blu "Laurel Leaves" A6 IND0219 upside down on a square of patterned paper from my stash. I bought this rubber stamp set several years ago to use on my husband's nephew's wedding invitations (you can see them on the first page of my Gallery). After stamping the garlands in Memento "Bamboo Leaves", I heat-embossed the sentiment (Hampton Art) and edges with gold embossing powder, double-matted it with more of the green and white cardstock and mounted it to a square card base. The final step was to add gold dots with a Pen-Touch and attach three gold sequins. 

 "Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls #642 (justusgirlschallenge.blogspot.com)

As I've already said, this has been a real honor for me to play along with this very talented group of JUGS Team Designers! I hope to be invited back again sometime. You can play along also to see how this photo inspires you. Have fun!

WEDDING SEASON

We've had a couple of weddings this month, which keeps me busy making more ornate cards, which I love. They're always a work of love. For this particular one for my grandniece, I used the color combination of peach and gray for inspiration from Color Hues #45.

I started this card using an old floral background stamp from my stash and heat embossing it in white onto a piece of watercolor paper. I colored in the roses and leaves with Copic markers in a couple of tones of peach and warm gray. Once I was happy with the result, I punched two rectangles to thread the satin ribbon through and trimmed it and matted it with three layers - silver vellum, torn edge watercolor paper, and silver vellum. Clear gems in two sizes were added to the centers of all of the roses and on the die-cut heart. I added the sentiment from Impression Obsession and Hero Arts with silver embossing and peach dye ink. After die-cutting a heart tag from TPI, I threaded it and tied off the card. The envelope is matching watercolor paper lined with more silver vellum. Once I finish up the inside with a small envelope and gift card, the envelope will also be tied with satin ribbon.

  This photo shows the metallic on the sentiment better.

This is going over to Color Hues, where I'm very pleased to tell you I'll be Guest Designing on August 1st!

Color Hues: Color Hues #45- Peach and Grey (colorhuesthecolorchallenge.blogspot.com)

  

BIRTHDAY WISHES IN CORAL, LIGHT GRAY, AND GOLD

This is the third card in my month-long participation as Guest Designer at Just Us Girls Challenge blog. This week is a challenge to create a card with 3 colors - coral, light gray, and gold. The gray background is lighter than it looks in the photos. These are not three colors that I would necessarily put together, but I think they came out fairly well and I'm mailing this off to one of my best friends for her 77th birthday.

 

To give the card a bit more dimension I selected watercolor paper, and using a Sizzix deckle-edge rectangular die, I doubled up on the mat. I gold heat-embossed splatters from one of Tim Holtz's Halloween stamps onto pale gray cardstock and die cut it with a smaller deckle-edge rectangle. I die cut Alexandra Renke leaf and blossom stems from a couple of printed cardstock scraps and a darker gray solid. I stamped and heat-embossed a sentiment by using a PTI "Embellished Elegance" Birthday, adding "wishes" that I cut from a Christmas stamp set (I'm in the habit of cutting up my stamps when I need a single word. It works fine as long as I don't lose the pieces!). The final steps before mounting the rectangle to the face of a folded card was to punch a hole in the corner and wrap gold twine through and add a small coral heart to balance the colors. The coral dotted envelope liner was some paper that I had created a couple of years ago by printing onto 10 lb. ink jet paper with my copier. 

Do join me in this challenge - and look in at the Design Team members to see their beautiful cards.

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls Challenge #641 - Color Week

I'm also adding this card to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge #170, using the left down column - CAS/Birthday/Die Cut(s).

TTTC170 - Featured Designer Vicky - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

Added July 16, 2022:

Added July 24, 2022:

Update on the continuing cat dramas: I know I already mentioned that we had a very hungry female cat show up in our back patio a couple of months ago. We fed her for several days and she brought her litter of 5 kittens in appreciation. She is very friendly, and we think she was a stray, but her babies were completely feral. We've been feeding them, but still unable to handle them, so we can't send them to the shelter or re-home them until they can be handled. They're about 3 months old now (we think they were about 6 weeks when the mama brought them to us). They're getting a bit friendlier, and I sit with them for their evening meal of soft food, which they love. They now come running when I show up with their food and they will play at our feet when we're sitting on the patio. It's a slow process but I'm seeing improvement in their trust. 

We named the mama Chloe after a wine that we enjoy drinking in our patio during the evenings. Once she weaned her litter, we took her to be spayed and get all of her shots and she was already pregnant with 6 little embryos that the vet said looked to be about 1-2 weeks old. She's now living permanently inside with our other 2 adult cats. Being a stray made her very food conscious and she eats every meal like it's her last one! She's gained almost 3 pounds since we took her in. 

I'll leave you with photos of one of the females - we've named her Cleocatra because of her heavy eye makeup!

Is she not the most beautiful little cat you've seen? Here she is again with her brother Tiger making themselves quite at home on the couch in our patio. 

Added July 31st: Cleo went to a loving home this morning where she'll be companion to 3 other cats - 2 adult cats and 1 year-old female. Now to work on socializing her remaining 4 siblings. They were pretty skitsey this morning and may not forgive me for a while for taking away their sweet playmate! 

 

These kitties were obviously fathered by a big brute Himalayan who wanders the neighborhood. In addition to these two, there's one more male (long-haired and looks just like his father) and a female that looks similar to Tiger. Then there's a little male tuxedo scamp who clearly has a different father.
 

ROCKER CARD

This is the second week (Trend Week) of my guest design tenure at Just Us Girls Challenge for the month of July and the trend this week is "Rocker Card". I had to go to Pinterest to find out what a rocker card is, and I chose to challenge myself with a predominantly white Christmas card.

I used a plastic template from my drafting days to make the rocker base on the card, since I don't have any circle dies large enough to make a 5-1/2 x 5-1/2 card. I hand-cut it and the smaller circle used for the snow line, which I then die cut with a stitched curved line. I do have large enough circle dies for both the white base and light gray sky. The sentiment was heat-embossed with silver embossing powder before attaching the circle and snow line to the rocker base. The trees are from Sizzix/Tim Holtz #660978, and I layered several of them together, tucking them behind the curved snow line. The final step was to add small silver sequins and make a custom square card with silver lining.

Rocker cards are a bit outside of my comfort zone of mostly CAS cards, but I actually enjoyed this one. I'm hoping some of you will be challenged to try your hand at it. I think the ones I saw online that were more juvenile birthday or new baby cards were the most successful - let's see what you come up with!

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls Challenge #640 - Trend Week

   

Z IS FOR ZOMBIES

I'm taking off a bit of time from my Independence Day preparations to enter The Sisterhood of Snarky Sisters' challenge #213 "Z is for Zombies". Shortly after Halloween last year I gifted myself with a zombie sentiments stamp set from Impression Obsession - #CS1082 "Zombie Sayings" that I couldn't resist. It's my plan to use it for this year's Halloween card, but how perfect is it for this challenge?

This card took me all of about 1/2 hour to make. I downloaded the image from the internet (I would like to credit the artist, but I don't know who it is), printed and matted it, and heat-embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder. The dribbles are from an old Halloween set, as is the centipede on the envelope.

This was a fun challenge and I'm hoping more people participate in it before the deadline hits - pun intended!

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: SoSS Challenge #213 - Z is for Zombies 

Added July 13, 2022:

HAPPY FOURTH!

Hello, all! It's a long 4th of July weekend here in the US and I really had to scramble to get my July 4th cards out this year. And as it was, I didn't get them out to all of my mailing list - mostly family members. A couple of the challenge blogs popped up this week with challenges that were appropriate for me to enter with this year's card - Tic Tac Toe Challenge #168 and Color Hues #44 - "Playing Cards with a Friend". 

For this year's card I started with a rectangle die-cut from white 110 lb. cardstock that I stamped and heat-embossed with navy embossing powder - the fireworks image is from PTI's "Red, White & Blue" and the sentiment was found on their "Birthday Bash Sentiments". After these were stamped and embossed, I die-cut the wine glass from Sizzix Tim Holtz #664435 "Happy Hour". I fitted the die for the wine onto a patterned paper to make it look like the American flag and added die-cut umbrella and cherry. I matted the rectangle with navy cardstock, mounted it to a side-folded card, and lined the envelope with the same paper.

For the Tic Tac Toe Challenge, I chose the bottom horizontal line - Any Shape Die/Fireworks/Sentiment.

 TTTC168 - Featured Designer Felicita - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

Added July 9, 2022:

Color Hue's #44 "Playing Cards with Friends" challenged us to use the colors red and blue and add stars and/or stripes:

Color Hues: Color Hues #44- Playing Cards with Friends (colorhuesthecolorchallenge.blogspot.com)

(I couldn't manage to capture the little red and blue blinkie)

Added July 16, 2022:

I 'HERD' IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY!

What better way to re-introduce myself back into the cardmaking universe than to Guest Design for the month of July at one of my favorite challenge blogs? The Design Team at Just Us Girls extended the invitation, and the first challenge of the month is Word Week #639 - "Mammals".

I took the entire month of June off for a variety of home projects (more on those at the end of this post) and I'm very glad to be back, now that my home environment has settled down to a dull roar! 

I don't have a lot of animal stamp sets, so I invested in a new (to me) Avery Elle #ST-19-08 "Peek-A-Boo Pets". I took the plural of the prompt word seriously and decided to duplicate the image multiple times by masking and over-stamping. I colored the cows and background with Copic markers and mounted them with a plaid-printed circle cutout to a square top-folded card. I die-cut another circle from a slightly smaller square and mounted it to the face of the card over the circle of cows. Then I stamped a fifth cow, colored and fussy cut her, and slipped her between the layers with her feet hanging over. The final step was to add the sentiment and tie the card off with a couple of strings of twine, offset for balance.

Well, all, it's now time for you to take your try at "Mammals" - put away all of your fish, bugs, and frog stamps and have fun with the new challenge!

  "Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls Challenge #639- Word Week

How I spent the month of June!

We had been waiting since the end of November last year on a waiting list for a new roof on our home. Our old roof was at 27-years-old, and we wanted to replace it in anticipation of a new solar electrical system. The roofer was finally available the first week of June and they started the tear-off. On the first day one of the roofers stepped through a board and into our bedroom ceiling leaving a rather large hole - what a mess of insulation and drywall debris! It was a difficult tear-off, lasting longer than expected, and in the middle of the process our heat pump failed, and both the condenser and the air handler had to be replaced - OUCH!

So mid-June they started the solar panel install on the new roof while at the same time the HVAC guys were in the attic and the back yard installing the new heat pump system. It all finally wrapped up last week and then the drywall guy was sent to repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling, and we had to move out of our bedroom for 3 nights.

This week we finally have the house back to ourselves, except for building inspectors checking on the heat pump and solar system installations and we are waiting for the electric company to arrive to change out the meter before our new solar system is up and running.

Oh, and did I mention that one evening in late May we were having dinner on our patio when a very pretty little calico female cat showed up hungry. We fed her for a couple of days and then she gifted us by bringing her 5 kittens to our home! They looked to be about 6 weeks old and very feral. We believe she was a stray, but her brood is definitely wild. She was still nursing them, but they started eating solid food the next week. It has been our intention to tame these little babies, but the presence of workmen in the yard and on the roof for weeks has them completely terrorized and they are now getting to the age where it's harder and harder to tame them. I'll keep you posted on our progress - this post is getting too long. I'm on my way to becoming the Crazy Cat Lady, with a total of 8 cats at the moment!