Ready for Spring

OK, enough cold. I'm ready for spring. Luckily, several challenges this week let me indulge that urge. First off, Kim introduced pink along with Christmas red and green for this week's Off the Wall Craftiness challenge (OTWC 38) -- see inspiration photo below. And Etsy Inspired Challenge (EIC 119) this week looks at the beautiful pendants made by artist Ling Glass, which feature glass and delicate metalwork. I liked this one called "love stained glass pendant." Finally, this week's Teapot Tuesday challenge was to do something artistic or painterly, so I made a still life.

Stamp is an old one, purchased from the company now known as Sparkle and Sprinkle. Sentiment is by Impression-Obsession. It's colored with pencil and OMA. The Ling Glass pendant gave me the inspiration to use the heart-shaped clip, to which I added a little gingham ribbon. (Someone else liked that pendant too. It moved from "for sale" to "Sold" between the time I picked it out as an inspiration and the time I'm posting this card.)

Merry Christmas everyone.

Merry merry

It's time to get serious about making Christmas cards (and doing everything else Christmas -- I am so behind this year....).

I used the current Card Positioning System sketch (CPS196) for this card, which also qualifies for this month's SmArt-Word Challenge, "merry."

The flourish is from Autumn Leaves, stamped in Versmark and covered with Winter Wonderland (sparkly-white) EP. There are little green gel dots at the ends of some of the swirls. The ornament is by Stampabilities, done in StaZon and watercolored. I used a glitter pen to add some glitz to the ornament and ornament holder. The sentiment is taken off another stamp -- I used a marker on the part I wanted to stamp and hoped I got the placement right when I added it to the image.

Striped paper is from a Christmas stack from Hobby Lobby -- several people have told me they liked the appearance of crimped paper it gives.

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness challenge (OTWC 36) is a monochromatic challenge -- using shades of brown. (The inspiration photo is to the lower right) Actually, I like monochromatic brown, which is kind of a peaceful calming combination.

My monochromatic brown card will probably be a birthday card for my Dad. I've probably given him a shirt or tie in every shade of brown in the card -- he's a real traditionalist when it comes to clothes, so brown is right down his alley.

There's only a little stamping on this. The sentiment is from SmArt Works, stamped in Chestnut Roan (Colorbox fluid chalk ink). I've had that marbled paper for ages, and haven't wanted to cut it before, but it worked perfectly for this challenge. (And marbled paper is a pretty tradional design, too, along with the polka dots.)