300th Color Dare!

Hello! I am excited today to be playing in the 300th challenge at Color My Heart. I am so grateful to Marie for the shoutout, and I'm so grateful that she has kept my dream going since I had to step down due to homeschooling. I'm so grateful to the whole design team, past and present. Thank you to Marie, Becca, Caroline, Lela, Sheri, Sheila, Hansi, Tina, Linda, Gretchen, Michelle, Amie, Pam, Shirley, Peachy, Jen, Donna, Catherine, Carmen, Tracey, Suzanne, Susan, Alyson, Debi, and Melanie. I'm sorry if I forgot anyone, but you all have worked so hard to make this challenge blog a success, and I hope it continues to be and I hope I'll be able to rejoin at some point. I'm having so much fun creating this summer, and I'll try to see if I can continue into the fall, although I'll be schooling all 4 of my children, so I imagine it will take up a LOT of my time!

So, onto my card. I used the sketch from Your Next Stamp, and I think some of the colors fit as well. I did some heat emossing for the challenge at CAS-ual Fridays. I decided to make a sympathy card, and I hope I don't have to use it anytime soon. The paper I used is from an old fundamentals assortment. I'm not sure what Mink looks like since I don't have it, but it looked a little grey to me, so I used Whisper. The Whisper and the Pacifica fundamentals paper had the same pattern, so they fit nicely together. I used Baby Pink ink also, since I don't have Bashful yet. These two colors look so nice together!

I did some emboss resist with white embossing powder, and I watercolored the roses and leaves with my ink pads.

There is a giveaway at the Color Dare this week, so go play along. You could win a fabulous prize box full of Close to My Heart products!



Materials used:
Cardstock: White Daisy
Fundamentals: Pacifica, Whisper
Stamps: Love Blooms, Words of Comfort
Ink: Pacifica, Bashful, Whisper pigment ink
Other: white embossing powder (not CTMH)

Beautiful Cactus

I love that cactus photo from Fusion, and I was wondering what I could use for my card. I finally figured out that the Flower Market Cricut cartridge has cactuses on it. Sometimes using the cricut is daunting for me, but I just forced myself to grab some paper scraps and pick out cuts and just do it. It's not as bad as I imagine it to be, and it comes out beautifully. I think my issue is that each time I use the Cricut, the mat gets less sticky. I bought myself some new mats, so I don't have so much to worry about!

I'm also entering this into the Anything Goes challenge at Heart 2 Heart.

Materials used:
Cardstock: Pacifica, Lagoon, New England Ivy, Garden Green, Colonial White
B&Ts: Timberline
Stamps: Cricut Flower Market Collection - Sending Smiles
Ink: Chocolate

Small Packages

Good things come in small packages. Here is a card I made for a Square Card challenge. I decided to make it 4"x4" because somewhere I have that size envelope. It is little but very impactful. The sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches. The Colors are from Color Throwdown, and the verse is printed from Word Art Wednesday. My children memorized Psalm 23 this year, and this verse has been stuck as a song in my head for months now. I love it! There's so much hope there for those of us who have trusted Christ as our Savior and Lord.

Materials used:
Cardstock: White Daisy, Sapphire
B&Ts: Chantilly
Stamps: WAW digital verse (not CTMH)
Other: Ariana Assortment

Babies and Citrus at Christmas

So, I'm not sure if you know my daily process, so I'll explain it to you. On the bottom of my blog, I have a list of daily challenges that I like to participate in. I try to usually add at least a sketch, a color, and a theme challenge. But they're all different, so sometimes you never know what will come up on that day. I love to make one card and have it fit into all the different challenges for that day. Of course sometimes the days get combined, and that's ok.

Today, as I was looking at my Saturday challenges, there were five of them, I thought, "There's no way these will all fit together; I'll have to make more than one card." But as I went through them one by one, I thought, I can make that fit! I surprise myself by my own ingenuity sometimes, but sometimes it gets me into trouble. You see, some of these challenges are CAS only challenges. And while I LOVE the CAS style, it means different things to different people, and sometimes my idea of CAS does not match up with one of the challenge guidelines. For instance, today I used 3 images on my card. It is a larger card - 5"x7", so I think that can still fit clean and simple. But the guidelines at Addicted to CAS say "One main image." So they'll probably doc me for using more than one, and then I won't be eligible to be the winner. It's fair, I guess, but my way of doing things is the only way I can think of, so I don't usually win the challenge, even though it would be nice. Oh well. I guess I'm not to be a CAS maven, but the challenges without genre restrictions usually like my cards enough to pick them. I'll take it!

So without further ado, here are the challenges I am entering today with this Christmas card:

52CCT - Sketch and must be a Christmas card
Less is More - Colors: Olive and Tangerine; must be CAS
Addicted to CAS - Baby and must be CAS
Just us Girls - Citrus
Crazy 4 Challenges - Windows

Since the colors for Less is More were Olive and Tangerine, the citrus challenge at Just us Girls had me thinking that the tangerine color could be used for the citrus element! The Code Word Baby at Addicted to CAS made me think of this wonderful Christmas stamp set with the rocking horse, the train, and the dolly, all perfect gifts for babies for Christmas!

I hope you can come play along with me at these fun Saturday challenges!


Materials used:
Cardstock: Colonial White, Olive, Sunset
Stamps: Christmas Delights
Ink: Olive, Sunset, Archival Black
Other: Artiste Cricut Cartridge, Sunset Mini Medles

Super Hero

Today I made a card for these challenges:

Atlantic Hearts - Sketch
Heart 2 Heart - Theme (Super Hero)
Double Trouble - Recipe: 1) stamped image, 2) word sentiment, 3) colors (red, white and blue)
Simon Says - Red, White, and/or Blue

I chose to make a 6"x6" square card. I used black and white cardstock. The patterned paper is from the Superhero paper pack. I stamped the Super Powers image onto the watercolor cardstock and colored him in with inks. I used Cranberry and Moonstruck, and Taffy for the skin color. The sentiment is from the zip strip. I think this one turned out great and met all the challenges! I'm entering it into the double trouble thing 2 challenge for the Atlantic Hearts sketch challenge.



Materials used:
Cardstock: White Daisy, Black
B&Ts: Superhero
Stamps: Super Powers
Ink: Archival Black, Cranberry, Moonstruck, Taffy

Celebrate!

The Paper Players are having their 400th challenge this week, and I'm participating in their giveaway. I decided to make a card using the sketch from Sunday Stamps and the colors from As You See It. I took some liberties because I wanted to do the Retro/Vintage theme from Pile It On. It's been a while since I really distressed and embellished a card... usually I'm all CAS, so this may not be SUPER vintage, but it is compared to my growing stash of cards.

I saw this Paper Garden stamp set lying around, and I thought it looked pretty vintage, and the flower fit the sketch well, so I cut them out with my Cricut and then stamped them with Hollyhock. The centers are stamped in Creme Brulee. I remembered my Lucy paper pack used these colors, and had a vintage look to it. I only had small scraps left, but it was enough. I used a colonial white background, and stamped it with a script background stamp in Creme Brulee. Then I distressed the outside of the card and the flowers with chocolate ink. I finished it off with antiqued copper corners and black ribbon.

Materials used:
Cardstock: Colonial White
B&Ts: Lucy
Stamps: Universal Backgrounds, Paper Garden, Card Chatter - Birthday
Ink: Creme Brulee, Hollyhock, Archival Black
Other: Antiqued Copper Mini Medleys, Black Mini Medleys, Artiste Cricut cartridge

Let's Go

Today I made this card for my favorite Tuesday challenges:

Tuesday Morning for the sketch

CAS Colors and Sketches for the colors - Yellow, Purple, and Coral

CASology for the theme - Zoom

Shopping our Stash for the stash challenge - Geometric Shapes

It is coincidental that the sketch had geometric shapes -squares- already built into it! I used little squares of the challenge colors on a woodgrain background. I cut out my zoomy sentiment from the Flower Market Cricut cartridge, and stamped the cute bicycle onto the background paper.

Materials used:

Cardstock: Sorbet, Gypsy

B&Ts: Perfect Day, Dakota, Calypso

Stamps: The Long Way Home

Ink: Gypsy