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.

Simple Cards

The theme for this month's SmArt-Word Challenge is "Simplicity." I had this idea for a CAS card for the holidays, and this was a perfect chance to make it. It couldn't be simpler, really. It's a one-layer card. The angel's dress is paper pieced with vellum, and there's a little piercing around the edges. I used glitter pen on the angel wings. That's it for embellishments.

Stamp credits -- sentiment is from Serendipity, angel is unknown to me.

In honor of fall

It's finally starting to feel like fall, my favorite season of the year. A couple of different challenges inspired me to make a fall-type card.

This week's inspiration colors for Off the Wall Craftiness (OTWC28) were goldish yellow, white and brown. (See the inspiration photo at right below.) And this month's SmArt Word challenge is "brown" so those colors immediately made me think of doing fall leaves.

I used this week's CPS sketch (CPS188) for the layout, which made me want to use a quote in the center. I chose this one from SmArt Works -- it's actually part of a birthday set, but "revel in the gift of time" seems so appropriate to fall to me. The sentiment is stamped in chestnut roan chalk ink

I stamped the oak leaf (SU) in cadmium yellow chalk ink repeatedly on white paper, then cut the curves. I decided to distress the edges, both to add texture and because hand-cut curves look, well, uneven.

I stamped another oak leaf in the chestnut ink, colored it with pencils and added gold microbeads to the acorn. It's cut out and popped up (see detail photo).

A little fairy dust

This month's SmART Words Challenge is the word "juvenile," which SmArt Works owner Susan said could refer either to a card featuring a child or a card intended for a child.

What little girl doesn't love fairies, so this card is designed with a little girl in mind. Lots of delicate pastels, and glittery fairy wings should appeal to girls.

Stamps are from Faerie Song. I colored the flower fairy with pencils and OMS, and used a spica pen to add glitter to her wings. All the papers are from Cosmos Cricket. Stacked a couple of Prima flowers and attached them with a mini brad -- you have to imagine the fairy dust yourself.

The hummingbirds have arrived

Combining several challenges here into one card. The color scheme comes from Off the Wall Challenge 19 OTWC19 (see inspiration photo at right). The color combo was pale pink, pale yellow and a limeish green (I had to substitute SU Kiwi Kiss for lime).

I combined that with this month's SmArt Word Challenge, which is "bird." I chose to do a hummingbird in celebration that we have a ruby-throated hummingbird coming to our hummingbird feeder. This is the first year we've had one actually come to our feeder (probably because I actually got it out at the right time of year for once.)

Finally, the RESQ challenge for this week was "tape it up." The lacy strip running is actually a fancy adhesive strip.

The details -- stamps by Impression-Obsession; Inks are SU Kiwi Kiss and Stampcraft Baby Pink; accessories are nesties, lacy strip, Swiss Dot embossing folder, and black half pearls in two sizes.

Bright for me, anyway

The SmArt-Word Challenge for July asks us to use "bright". Hmmm, bright colors are a little out of my comfort zone, so I've been pondering this challenge all month. As luck would have it, Kim's colors for this week's Off the Wall Craftiness Challenge (OTWC17) are bright pink, turquoise and purple (as you can see in the inspiration photo below).

Well, since I was prodded from two directions, I decided to have a go at it, but I counterbalanced the brights with a good bit of white to get more in my comfort zone. I CASEd a card at SCS by MariLynn (this week's Queen for the Day) and made it much more of a CAS than hers, in working on this card.

The fabulous pink butterfly came from a prize pack from Kim for winning a previous OTWC. (Thank you Kim!) It's from the Gilded Bee, an Etsy store. Once I decided to use the butterfly, it was fairly easy to add the other colors as accents/frames for my simple card. What do you think?

go ahead, make my day.

This week's challenge for Kim's Off the Wall Craftiness blog OTWC12 is to use mint green, black, white and possibly red. I combined her challenge with the Queen for Day CASE at SCS to create this card. (It's cased from one by zgirlsgranny, but I changed colors, theme, layout, stamps and embellishments, so it is more "inspired" by Linda's card)

Love the light-green dotted paper here, and I think this was the last piece I have. Poppy image from Stampin' UP and the sentiment is from SmART Works (the owner sent a goodie out to everyone who participated last month in the SmART-Words challenge, and this was part of what she sent). And since Susan was nice enough to do that, I'm entering this in the June SmART Words challenge to use ribbon.

I took Kim's challenge to be "really daring" and add a touch of red to the combo, and the other colors really make the red pop.

Impossible Things

This is one of my rare 4-fers -- Off the Wall Craftiness, Etsy-Inspired, SmArt-Word and SCS CAS challenge.

Let's start with Off the Wall Craftiness -- the challenge this week is to do something related to Alice in Wonderland. Since I have no Alice stamps, I thought perhaps something related to a tea party combined with an Alice quote would be good, so I went looking for quotes.

Etsy-Inspired Challenge EIC91 is a shop called howbeadyful, which features absolutely wonderful vintage, fabric covered buttons. I found some adorable tea-cup buttons that gave me the color inspiration.

CAS -- was to use a quote. Since I already had the quote, but a more complex layout in mind, I just simplified the card to make "CAS".

The SmArt Word challenge this month is to use ribbon. I sort of collect ribbon, but probably don't use nearly as much as I should, based on how much I own. For the challenge, I wanted to do a slightly different treatment (than just wrapping a ribbon around the card), so I used a brad that has a "eye" and tied a ribbon through that.

Poppies

When I saw the "word" for this month's SmART-Words challenge was "flowers" I was already mentally going through my huge array of flower images. I'm going to bet I'm not alone in owning dozens of floral stamps. And I keep looking at more.

I spent part of the weekend playing with the techniques from the newest Technique Junkies Newsletter. They all looked so easy on paper, but I didn't have much success with several. I tried the one called Metallic Parchment a few times, as I've seen lots of cards done with it, and it looks stunning. I was reasonably happy with my second attempt, and decided to use it for this card. To complement it, I turned to this recently acquired poppy digistamp, which I got from Bird's Blog (she does freebies quite frequently). I colored it to match the Metallic Parchment colors (poppy doesn't grow around here, and I've only ever seen red poppies in pictures) so the colors may not be botanically correct. I picked up the gold metallic from the "parchment" with gold ribbon and cording and a very thin border from a gold pen around the main image panel. The button dropped out of the box when I was cleaning up the stamping area and it matched -- it seemed like I just had to incorporate it somehow.

Fresh and Etsy

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge EIC84 is Cose Dolci, a shop that sells items made or embellished with felt. I was inspired by the plate embellished with felt pears.

The card is also for this month's SmART Words Challenge. The word is "fresh," and "fresh fruit" is really my favorite food in the entire world.

The pear is stamped in acrylic paint -- painted with a spong brush in a very light layer on the solid stamp, then stamped on paper. I used several different colors to capture all the wonderful colors that pears turn. The chipboard pieces were sanded and sponged with ink. I didn't have any way to do felting, so I added rafia and ribbon to add some texture, even if it's not felt texture.

White Wedding

It just so happens that both the SmArt-Word Challenge and Stamping for the Weekend have a monochromatic card challenge going on right now. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to make a wedding card for my niece, who is getting married in May.

If you're doing all white, texture is the way to go, so I used the Swiss dot folder on one layer, and used the love postage stamp embossing folder as well for another layer. I silver-embossed a wedding cake (StampCraft) and used a white organza ribbon with silver edging. There's a little bit of piercing, but it didn't really show up in the photo.

I wanted the card to be fresh and white without being too frilly -- after all, there's a groom who will be getting the card as well.

Wood inspired thanks

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge takes us to a store called 3 Dots Jewelry, where the artisan sells jewelry that is made from wood. The wood tones and geometric shapes of this necklace inspired me to pull out a set of funky shapes from Purple Onion Design and every color of brown ink I own. The result is this CAS card for EIC79

The ink colors are Versacolor Sand Beige, a copper, and Colorbox Chestnut Roan.

This also qualifies for this month's SmArt Word challenge, which is to do a monochromatic card.

More glitter

I liked my first glittery card for the SmART-Word challenge this month (the word is GLITTER) so much that I made another one. What a fun, fast way to add some pizzazz. I just cover the entire image with double-sided adhesive and sprinkle on the glitter.

The images are from a little set by Impression-Obessions -- kind of their version of the Studio G dollar sets, I guess. I could't resist the hummingbird when I found him at a stamp show a few weeks ago. The dark blue piece is embossed with a script folder.

The little card that grew...

This card started out as a simple card, but it grew and grew as I piled on more and more stuff -- so not like me.

The idea was inspired by this week's Etsy Challenge EIC 74, which is a photographer called Traveling Mama. I was inspired by this photo of the Eiffel Tower.

I also wanted to do something for this month SmartWorks Smart Word challenge, which is "glitter." Paris seems pretty glittery to me -- it is, after all, the city of lights, and what's glitter but a way to reflect light.

I used this week's Card Positioning layout CPS153.

I stamped the Eiffel Tower on a white oval, covered it with double-sided adhesive paper and covered it with glitter. (The glitter is light blue in the tube, but it took on a lavender tinge once it got on the paper.) I stamped the script background (Lasting Impressions) on white and the star background (SU) on pale lavender paper, and sponged some lavender ink on white silk flowers. The "travel" and "adventure" tags are computer generated. Used black rick-rack along the edge of the background papers, mounted all on black.

Icy Trees

We spent the week of Christmas in Virginia, which was covered with snow. On the morning of Christmas Eve, we drove through the Shenandoah Valley, and passed through an area where all the trees were covered with ice. It was just beautiful, and continued for about 30 miles up the highway. We think the area had had fog that turned to ice on the trees. The trees were just stunningly beautiful, especially with the sun playing off them.

I had that in mind when I made this card. It was for the SCS inspiration challenge for yesterday, and is also for the SmartWord challenge for this month, because this month's word is Ice. You can see the inspiration piece at this link.

I started with glossy paper. Created a mask with a small punched circle, and sponged around it with various inks to create the sun (or moon) and the sky. I then stamped over the inked background and used Winter Wonderland EP to create the trees. The tree is from Posh Impressons. I used one of my favorite sentiments, from Faerie Song, which seemed to go so well with this winter wonderland scene.

CAS Christmas card

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge #65 shop is So Stinking Sweet, which sells scented soaps. My inspiration was a red soap with white snowflakes on it. The card ended up being clean and simple, and I really like it. The showflake is from Impression-Obsession, embossed with Winter Wonderland EP. The greeting is an old, no-name one from Hobby Lobby or Big Lots, but it's very useful at this time of year. I used Colorbox Chalk Ink (color "Lipstick") on it. And I got to use my new nesties for the first time!

The layout is from Card Positioning System's current sketch CPS 145.

And, for SmART-Works "smART-Word" challenge this month, it's a Christmas card.

Gratitude

The SmARTworks Smart Word challenge for this month is "gratitude." I decided to make a Thanksgiving card for the family (this will go to my in-laws), and to play with some new "toys."

I found this little leaf punch at the Target Dollar Spot, marked 50 percent off. And I got the bare tree stamp at half-priced day at a stamping consignment sale. (I'm also thankful for 50 percent off sales...)

Stamp is Posh Impressions, inked in Chestnut Roan fluid chalk ink. (Sentiment is computer generated). Main image is popped up on foam tape, and I accented it with a couple different sizes of brads.

My fave time of the year -- 4 challenges

Fall is my favorite time of the year, and I seem to have collected a large number of leaf stamps because I love colorful leaves. So, no surprise I jumped at several chances to use a leaf/fall theme in a card.

This card is for CPS 138 -- a nice, clean layout that can have endless variations.

It's also for Etsy Inspired Challenge #58, which sent us to a jewelry store called Linkel designs. This shop has page after page of beautiful jewelry, and I was inspired by a pair of fall-looking, leaf-shaped earrings.

And it's for the Smart-word challenge, which asked us to create a card based on the word "fall". How could I resist that challenge?

Finally, it's for this week's CAS challenge at SCS, which challenged us to make a sympathy card. I don't normally make those, and it's probably a good idea to have one on hand.

Main image is by SU (Botanicals), sentiment by Club Stamp. DP is from WR Memory Makers. Ink is Maroon Colorbox Fluid Chalk ink. The twine is from Martha Stewart (designed to wrap around boxes of cupcakes, but Martha doesn't really know papercrafters, does she?)