TRUCK LOAD FULL O' SHAMROCKS

I had this idea that I wanted to use a Whimsy pickup truck die for St. Patty's Day that I have hardly used (I bought it last year for my grandson's 16th birthday card here). 

Digging into my stash of green paper scraps I found this old green printed paper with tire tracks and it seemed like a great place to start. I remembered an old Irish proverb that I computer generated and printed it on the tire track paper. Also in my stash was a last remnant of printed map cardstock. I glued it and the tire track paper onto a square of black cardstock and matted it with a mat of the map paper. I glued everything to the face of a top-folded square white card base. I constructed the truck with scraps of green metallic cardstock and fussy cut a pile of shamrocks to fill the truck bed.

I continued the rest of the Irish saying on the interior of the card, with a stamped sentiment and more fussy-cut shamrocks. 

The current challenge at Inkspirational Challenge is a visual prompt that would suggest a St. Patrick's Day card:

Inkspirational: Inkspirational Challenge #363 - Visual Prompt

GO GREEN!

Today I gave myself permission to play a bit, and play I did! This is my second card of the day. It's always fun when more than one challenge can be entered with a single card. I was inspired by Karren's sketch at Freshly Made Sketches to begin my card. Some years ago I made a similar card, but this one is more CAS and cleaned up than the old one.

I started this card with a 5-1/2" square card base I made of watercolor paper. I cut a second square slightly smaller and mounted each of the 3 units to it. The white pieces were die-cut along one edge with a stitch die. The vertical piece is patterned paper that I over-printed and gold heat-embossed with a very old shamrock stamp that I stamped in a vertical row. 

I die cut a tag and gold heat-embossed it with an old St. Patrick's Day sentiment. Using a wrap of white twine, I tied on the tag and a gold shamrock charm to finish off.

Freshly Made Sketches: Sketch #726 A Sketch by Karren 

Color Hues: Color Hues #128-Green and Gold

Added March 16, 2026:

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls #813 - Die Week

LUCKY

I was Inspired this morning to combine several of my favorite challenges - AAA Cards Challenge #285, Color Hues #105, and Simply Clean & Simple: March. I love it near holidays or seasonal changes when more than one of the challenges incorporates similar themes or colors!

You can see what is on my mind today - we have a beautiful clear day (for a change), and when I'm finished with this I am on my way out to work in the garden. I had this idea to frame a bunch of clover and found a scrap of white paper onto which I had previously stamped and colored this image. When I actually could not find the rubber stamp it came from, I decided to just use it, fussy cut it with scissors and Xacto knife, and slipped it partially behind a die cut frame opening.

I started with a bright shamrock green card base. I stamped the sentiment from Impression Obsession #CL627 "Lucky" with Memento "Cottage Ivy" ink onto a white die cut rectangular piece of cardstock. I attached this to the face of the card base, added a pale green background behind the ornate die cut frame. I mounted the frame, background, and clover/shamrocks to the card, and finished with a custom white envelope lined with pale green printed shamrock paper. 

AAA Cards: AAA Card Challenge #285: Anything goes

Color Hues: Color Hues #105 - Green and White

Added March 16, 2025:

Simply Clean & Simple: March 2025 - Shades of Green

Added April 3, 2025:

 

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Today is my "little" brother's 77th birthday! I'm throwing in a photo of the birthday card I sent off to him earlier in the week.

Fortunately my brother is a good sport, so he puts up with the rude cards I send him on his birthday! This card makes use of a brand new rubber stamp set from Unity Stamp Company ("Purr-ty Cats"). And, given that his last name is Poe, I frequently use this Whimsy Stamps sentiment on the outside of his envelopes: 

 

GO GREEN!

It's coming up on St. Patrick's Day, so it's time to get my green on! The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is offering up the perfect opportunity with their Challenge #260 - "G is for Green". 

I started my card with a sentiment left over from my personal St. Patrick's Day cards a couple of years ago - #RWD-995 from Funny Bones by Riley & Company. I top-folded a white card base and attached a full panel of green plaid printed paper that I die-cut with a stitched rectangular die. I die cut a deckled rectangular panel from avocado card stock, stamped splats of spilled beer and party debris with VersaMark watermark ink, and overprinted the sentiment in black. I matted the green panel with a bit of white cardstock and attached both layers to the plaid card face. The beer glasses were die cut (Tim Holtz #664435 "Happy Hour") in vellum for transparency and filled with beer - oh, whoops! spilled one of the glasses!

I'm not suggesting that I'm a sloppy drunk, but I talk with my hands, and have knocked over many a beer or wine glass! 

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: Soss #260 - G is for Green

Added April 12, 2025:

ST. PATTY'S DAY

As I write this on Monday morning, it's been snowing off and on since Friday night/Sunday morning - just as it was starting to seem like spring was around the corner. I pretty much stayed in all weekend and worked in my craft room. One of the results is this card that hits a couple of challenges -  Shopping Our Stash #SOS516 - "It's Not Easy Being Green" and NBUS #60 (Never-Before-Used-Schtuff). This is the very beginning of thinking about St. Patrick's Day cards. I'm not sure I'll put in the effort this year - we'll see. At the very least, I'll make cards for the immediate family.

I picked up this little dragon a couple of years ago and this is the first time I've used him. He's from Whimsy Stamps ("Bart on St. Paddy's Day" #C1106). I stamped him with black onto white cardstock, colored him with Copic markers, and fussy cut him. I colored an additional shamrock and glued it over the top of the others for dimension. I know I wanted to use this ancient sentiment in my 3/17 stash and I white heat embossed it onto a scrap of green cardstock. Then I just played with both images for a while until I hit on the idea that Bart and the sentiment would work best in this case on a square card. So I prepared a 5-1/2" square card base and added two additional square panels. Rifling through my dies, I came across a filigree-edged rectangle that I've never used (I have used a smaller version of this rectangle, but not this particular one). I trimmed the sentiment and attached it to the die cut rectangle as a frame and attached them to the card front. I attached Bart with some dimensional foam, overlapping the sentiment. That's it! I found the bright green square envelope in with my St. Patty's Day papers.  

Shopping Our Stash Weekly Challenge Blog: SOS516 - It's Not Easy Being Green

NBUS: NBUS Challenge #60 (mynbus.blogspot.com)

SKETCH CHALLENGE #PP629

It's Sunday morning and Jaydee's got a Sketch Challenge for us this week at The Paper Players. I've been playing around with an idea for my St. Patrick's cards this past week when the time presented itself and decided to apply Jaydee's sketch to my idea. I don't think I'll use this square card for my general mailout because of the costs of postage, but it has all of the elements I want to include - I just need to work with it a bit more and see how to convert it to a size A2 card. 

I started with a 5-1/2" square top-folded card base. The center element is a die-cut circle that I cut into the card after matting it with green plaid printed paper. Most of you will recognize the Tim Hotz "Snarky Cat" that I stamped in black ink, colored with Copic markers, and fussy cut to attach him to the face of the card. The confetti behind him is a combination of stamps and his beer mug is from a very old St. Patrick's Day stamp that I printed, colored, and fussy cut. I stamped his balloon on white stock, fussy cut it, and stamped the Go Green and colored the balloon before attaching it over the circle.

The inside is the main focus of the card, with the silly sentiment from Funny Bones by Riley & Company (#RWD-995) that I bought some months ago with the express purpose of using it on my St. Patrick's Day cards. "Don't Judge me." is from the same Tim Holtz set of Snarky Cats. 

We have lots of inspiration this time of year for cards, with the highly anticipated arrival of spring. The other ladies have come up with some great ideas for you! Come and join all of us!

The Paper Players: PP629 - A Sketch Challenge from Jaydee

 

SHAMROCKS

 Hello, all. 

I've been thinking about my mom today and her propensity for finding 4-leaf clovers. I don't know how she did it, but I came across one of them recently and put it into a tiny frame as a special gift for my son to remember her by.

It's a lovely almost spring day and here I am sequestered in my office instead of being outside tending to some garden cleanup. But it rained all night so it's still very wet - I'm telling myself! I'm taking advantage of a quiet spell to play a bit with my stamps and paper. I partially cleaned up the office this morning and then started in on the current CASology challenge and now it looks worse than when I started cleaning up. It amazes me that I can make such a mess to turn out a single CAS card.

The team at CASology is using the code word "Luck". I've been working all week on my personal St. Patrick's Day cards (this isn't the card I'm sending out in bulk) so I have shamrocks on the brain. I used some older stamps that I've used quite a few times over the years, but mixed them up a bit.

I started by stamping this shamrock image from Prickley Pear with PTI's "Pinefeather" dye ink and coloring it with a Copic marker and white jell pen. Then I gold embossed the Impression Obsession sentiment on a scrap of vellum with little metallic flakes in it and used a straight edge to tear the edges. I punched a couple of small holes through both layers and threaded a green/gold metallic ribbon through it and mounted it all to a Strathmore water color card. 

CASology: Week 385: LUCK

FIRST CHALLENGE!

This is my first "official" challenge post on the new blog - and a bit of an experiment to see if I can manage to figure out all of the intricacies of uploading and downloading, etc.!

 

I'm entering Addicted to CAS challenge "Green". Below is this year's friends and family St. Patrick's Day card.

 

http://addictedtocas.blogspot.com/2019/03/addicted-to-cas-challenge-155-green.html

  

 

 

 

 

 

Stamps: Funny Bones by Riley & Company

Sentiment: RWD-695

Illustration: FBP-019

Versamark ink and white embossing powder, Memento "Tuxedo Black"

Shamrock die: Cricut Cuttlebug "Holiday Sampler"

 

To line the envelope I found a map of Ireland on line and printed it.