Freshly Made Sketches 492

 🎵🎶🎵  We're having a heat wave...a tropical heat wave  🎵🎶🎵 It's our second one of the year and it's only technically been summer for about 9 days!  So to celebrate my 100-degree weather I decided to take Cécile's new design for Freshly Made Sketches and make a Christmas card.  Dreaming about Christmas won't help the weather outside but it makes me smile all the same!

Cécile always designs the most artful cards - and sketches - and I was excited to create a clean and simple card for this sketch.  I added a bit of texture with the embossed square in the center and decided to mount it to a layer of gold glimmer paper.  The red poinsettia gives this a beautiful pop of color.  The gold cord completes the look and allows me to enter this into the Christmas Card Throwdown challenge following the far right column.

Thanks for stopping by!  As always my Freshly Made Sketches teammates have dreamed up some beautiful cards with this sketch so be sure to check them out!

Supplies
Stamps:  Christmas Mini Cluster (The Ton)
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah); Cherry (Avery Elle); gold glimmer (Recollections)
Ink:  Onyx Black (Versafine)
Accessories:  Poinsettia die (Paper Smooches); Decorative Dots embossing folder, gold cord (Stampin' Up!)

Fusion - Summer Dreamin'

I'm dreaming of summer...and we are at Fusion too!  It seems that dreaming of summer is what I'm relegated to because the weather here in Massachusetts hasn't quite caught up to the actual season.  It goes from heat wave to 70-degrees here in a matter of days and all I want is consistent hot weather!  But at Fusion we've got a great sketch with some summer inspiration for you.

For my card I followed the sketch and incorporated the colors at Less Is More.  I had originally planned on those bottom vertical layers being done with embossing paste but made a tactical error and had to do something different at the last minute.  Stitched dies to the rescue!  This beautiful dahlia is a pain to stamp - lining up the layers is horrible - but the end result is gorgeous.  And in order to not deviate from the color challenge I added leaves die cut in vellum. 

Thanks for stopping by!  We've got some great inspiration for you at Fusion so be sure to check it out - and join us in the gallery!

Supplies

Stamps:  Delightful Dahlia Additions (Papertrey Ink)
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah); Whisper White, Vellum (Stampin' Up!)

Ink:  Iceberg, Eastern Sky, Ultramarine (Altenew)
Accessories:  Vertical Stitched Strips die, Layered Leaves die (My Favorite Things); Daffodil Delight grosgrain ribbon (Stampin' Up!)

Freshly Made Sketches 491

Hi all!  Today is the sketch reveal at Freshly Made Sketches and this week our hostess is Kim.  Her sketch has some fun vertical panels that I thought would be perfect for some wide washi that I've had in my stash for a while.

I've been dying for an excuse to use this gorgeous wide washi and this sketch was just the inspiration I needed.  I adhered it to a piece of white cardstock then cut it into strips so that I could then frame the strips with some dark colored cardstock.  I agonized over the color of the die-cut sentiment and cut many versions in many different colors before deciding on a mediocre black.  I don't love it but at least you can see it (not something I can attribute to some of the other colors I tried!).

Thanks for stopping by!  I'm sure our Freshly Made Sketches gallery will be full of great interpretations of this sketch - just like our design team cards!  Join us!

Supplies
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah); Smokey Shadow (Papertrey Ink); Basic Black (Stampin' Up!)

Accessories:  Hand Lettered Thanks die (WPlus9); Calming Bouquet washi tape (Altenew)

Freshly Made Sketches 490

It's time for a great new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.  Our hostess this week is Jen Brum and her sketch inspired me to make something a little whimsical.

Using colors from the latest Sunday Stamps Challenge I stamped a grungy image as my vertical layer then stamped these fun flowers and popped them up on foam.  The sentiment is a little on the fun and whimsical side too.

Thanks for stopping by!  My fellow Freshly Made Sketches teammates totally rocked this sketch to be sure to check them out!

Supplies
Stamps:  Rugged Edge (IndigoBlu); Funky Florals (Papertrey Ink); Easy Expressions Birthday (The Ton)
Paper:  Whisper White (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Teal Cave, Rouge, Crimson, Jet Black (Altenew)

Fusion - Seashells

Hi all!  It's time for a new challenge at Fusion.  This week the inspiration is about seashells, but as luck would have it I don't own any seashell stamps.  So I had to content myself with just the sketch! 

Summer seems to have started off with a bang here in Massachusetts, and it's not even technically summer.  A week ago it was rainy and cold and the last several days have been over 90 degrees.  Welcome to New England folks!  So all this hot weather put me in mind of summer flowers - which I have been feverishly watering in this heat.  Lucky for me the challenge at The Paper Players is about the signs of summer so all my summer thoughts went in to this floral card.

Thanks for stopping by!  Our Fusion design team has made some great cards for this challenge so be sure to check them out!

Supplies
Stamps:  Summer Silhouettes, By Definition (Stampin' Up!)
Paper:  Whisper White, Smoky Slate (Stampin' Up!); Lemon Grass (Avery Elle); Soft Stone (Papertrey Ink)
Ink:  Lemon Grass, Daisy (Avery Elle); Smoky Slate (Stampin' Up!); Nocturne (Versafine Clair)
Accessories:  Blueprints 15 (My Favorite Things); Scallop Edge punch (Stampin' Up!)

Freshly Made Sketches 489

Hi friends!  It's Wednesday so that means we've got a new sketch challenge for you at Freshly Made Sketches!  This week our hostess is Linda and her sketch has a bunch of circles on it. 🙈What to do, what to do?? In true Freshly Made Sketches fashion circles are not necessary (you can always substitute other shapes) but that's what stuck in my brain when I sat at my desk to make my card.  So circles lead to rain drops which lead to an umbrella which lead to the only stamp set I own with an umbrella in it.

The "umbrella man," as I have taken to calling him, was a perfect image for some masculine colors so I used the challenge at TGIF for my color choices.  My raindrops are 3D enamel dots.  Whoever gets this card will get it hand-delivered because I'm sure those dots won't survive the post office and their sorting machines!

Thanks for stopping by!  Our Freshly Made Sketches team has made some fabulous cards with this sketch so I hope you check them out and join us!

Supplies
Stamps:  Life's Possibilities (Tim Holtz)
Paper: Whisper White, Night of Navy (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Basic Gray, Night of Navy (Stampin' Up!)
Accessories:  Clear Droplets (Pretty Pink Posh)

Addicted to CAS - Beach

I'm super excited about my post today because I am a guest designer at Addicted to CAS this week!  They liked one of my cards a few weeks ago and invited me to play along with this challenge.  Since CAS cards and I get along really well, I jumped at the chance!  And then Kylie sent me the challenge graphic and I had a mini panic attack!  The cue word was "beach."

Don't get me wrong, I love the beach.  I grew up close enough to Cape Cod in Massachusetts that I spent many happy summers frolicking in the ocean.  The problem is that I don't own a single stamp about the beach.  So for inspiration I turned to Splitcoast Stampers and searched the gallery for the word beach.  What I found was that Stampin' Up! had a stamp set with an abstract images that, if stamped in the right colors, mimicked beach, ocean, and land and while I didn't have that stamp set I had some abstract images of my own that just might work for a similar look.

So I took that abstract image and stamped it multiple times in colors that would call to mind land, sand, and sea.  I couldn't believe how well it turned out!  I know it's an abstract design but I hope you can see the beach there!  And since I find the beach to be a place of calm - there's nothing like feeling the hot sun on my face while the sea breeze is blowing and the sounds of the ocean are around me - that I added this particular sentiment.  To me the beach is a place to just be.

This is a one-layer card, another favorite of mine, so I'm going to join in with the Less is More challenge too.  They are looking for a favorite technique.  I'm not sure a one-layer card is a "technique" but it is in my book!

Thanks for stopping by!  And thanks again to Kylie and everyone at Addicted to CAS for inviting me to be a guest for this challenge.  I loved thinking a bit outside the box with this one!

Supplies
Stamps:  Celebrate Artsy (Stamplorations); Words of Wisdom (Verve)
Paper:  Whisper White (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Frayed Leaf, Forest Glades, Sand Dunes, Rocky Shores, Sea Glass, Ocean Waves, Dusk (Altenew); Onyx Black (Versafine)

Freshly Made Sketches 488

Hi friends!  It's my time to be the hostess at Freshly Made Sketches - always a nail-biter for me!  This time around I made a no-frills sketch, but it's still got some room for your clever interpretation.

When I make a sketch I don't work backwards, meaning I don't make a card and then draw up the sketch based on the card.  I just come up with the sketch and hope for divine inspiration when it comes to actually making a card with it. 😊 This time around when I sat at my desk to make my card I was lucky enough to have some extra inspiration in the form of the dots challenge at Just Us Girls and the Tic-Tac-Toe challenge at The Paper Players (middle row across). 

Originally the ribbon and sentiment layers were a bit longer and I tried to add a few staples on the right side of them to be interesting, but my stapler wouldn't cooperate (read:  user error) and I made a big mess and had to cut down both layers to get rid of said big mess.  However, since I firmly believe in the old adage "there are no mistakes in stamping" I forged ahead with my modified version and all is right in the world.

Thanks for stopping by!  My Freshly Made Sketches teammates have made some awesome cards with my sketch so please stop on by to check them out.  I hope we'll see you in the gallery!

Supplies
Stamps:  Tons of Type (The Stamp Market)
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah); Poppy Parade, Wild Wasabi, Basic Black (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Onyx Black (Versfine)
Accessories:  Subtle embossing folder (Stampin' Up!); enamel dew drop (Freckled Fawn); seam binding ribbon