Spring is in the air

The in-laws left this morning, and I immediately headed to my craft room to have some play time. (I enjoy both of them, but I think they'd freak out if  they saw the mess I can create in making just one card. I don't craft when they are visiting.).

I was inspired by the colors of this week's Play Date Cafe (#175), buttercream, lavendar and vanilla. Those lovely pastel shade just seem so springlike, and I am really ready for spring. By this time of year, the dogwoods and azaleas are usually breathtaking, but this year they haven't even started to open. The cold and wet weather seems to be moving out, tho, so let's celebrate spring.

The card is pretty self-explanatory.  The pale lavender panel is embossed, the flowers are colored with pencils, and the white panels are sponged on the edges with one of my favorite colors of ink -- VersaMagic Pentunia.  It looked like a lot of ink when I sponged it one, now it looks very subtle.

In addition to Play Date, this one is for CCEE1313, to use a stamp you haven't used in at least six months (the flowers probably haven't seen ink in two years); and 365 Cards day 86, inspired by the word "country" (gingham always seems country to me).

Flutterby in sympathy

This week's CAS on Sunday challenge (#4), is "flutterby."  Since I'm finding, sadly, that it is advisable to have at least one sympathy card on hand, I made a sympahty card. Butterflies and CAS style both seem quite appropriate for a sympathy card.

The image is from Inkadinkadoo, and I like it because it fills the space so nicely.  After that, it was a matter of adding a sentiment.  I went with a very small embellishment, just a punched butterfly with some tiny pearls on the wings. (The base card and butterfly are dark purple, although not as dark as they look in the photo).

inchies

Day 77 of the 365 Cards challenge calls for inchies.  I took a slightly different twist on this challenge. Instead of using separate one-inch squares, I cut my image into one-inch squares, like tiles. (I did learn it's not that easy to put them back together all nice and straight. At least when you're tiling the bathroom you can use those little plastic bits to make sure you're spacing correctly.)

Images are both from Stampin Up.  I added a few half pearls to the sentiment panel.
 

Sponge(d) cake

You can never have enough birthday cards around, can you? Here's CAS one I made.

To create the design on the base card, I sponged the circles using a stencil I have. Unfortunately, I noticed after I'd done the sponging that the last row of dots on the stencil is not evenly spaced. Not happy about that, but I guess it's proof it's handmade.  The colors are SU Cameo Coral and Night of Navy, and Memories Soft Leaf (a shadow ink). 

The image is from Impression Obsession, also stamped in navy. The coral strip is embossed with the Swiss dot folder.

The sketch is from Retro Sketches, #53.  The sponging counts as creating wallpaper for CAS-ual Fridays, CFC92.  And a couple challenges are for birthday cards: CAS on Sunday #3, birthday card, and 365 Cards Day 63, birthday cake.

Bird of a feather

It's been a cold and rather dreary day here today, so I've spent my time playing at Virtual Stamp Night over at Splitcoast. The theme is "birds, bees and creepy crawlies."  One challenge required using a feather as an embellishment. Since Mr. Stampingwriter is a fly fisherman, and ties his own flies, feathers are readily available, so I took the bait, er, challenge.

My card is based on Feeling Sketchy Sketch #48 although I scooted the oval to the other side of the page. I remembered I had some great paper with a funny bird print, so I decided to feature that and just use a "bird- type" saying.  The feather is maribou. I was hoping to find orange or green to go with the paper, but most of what I found was amazingly gaudy -- which, apparently, is what fish like. However, I'm not making cards for fish, so I settled for brown.