Freshly Made Sketches 482

It's time for a new challenge from your friends at Freshly Made Sketches!  This week Karren has given us a long and skinny sketch which I flipped counter-clockwise (or anti-clockwise as I suspect Karren would say)!

I loved the mood board at Challenge Up Your Life and was inspired to use the mint and bright pink on my card.  I fully intended to add a poppy or a similar flower but I think I got a little distracted by that horizontal layer with diagonal stripes.  I thought it was fun but it ended up dictating the rest of my card!  I happened upon the "thanks" letters that I had previously cut for a different project (and never used) which I thought provided a great level of contrast.  So then I tried to figure out how I could add those flowers that I wanted but nothing looked right with my bold pink and mint horizontal layer.  So I ended up stamping some circular images in the corners, to mimic the bike wheel from the inspo photo, in the same color as the sponged mint background.  I suspect they are hard to see in the picture but in real life they break up the background nicely.

Thanks for stopping by!  My fellow Freshly Made Sketches have all made fantastic cards with this sketch (but I'm sure you knew that already)!  I hope you'll join us in the gallery!

Supplies
Stamps:  Sunburst (Clearly Besotted); Hand Lettered Thanks (WPlus9)
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah); Bristol Smooth; Mint Julep, Raspberry Fizz (Papertrey Ink); Basic Black (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Cracked Pistachio (Distress Oxide); Onyx Black (Versafine)
Accessories:  Slim Diagonal Stitched Rectangle (Pink Fresh Studio); Bold Alpha Lower cut file (The Ton)

Freshly Made Sketches 469

Hey all!  It's time for a brand new challenge at Freshly Made Sketches!  We've got a great sketch for you from our hostess Kim.

There's a whole lot of snow falling in blogland so I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon.  Ironic since I hate snow in real life.  I always say, the only good snowflake is a pretty one on the front of a card!  But real snow aside, for this sketch I stamped a few grungy background lines in silver and followed it up with a couple of snowflakes layered together.  I think I even used a Christmas sentiment on the inside which puts me one more in the Christmas-card-stash plus side.  I don't think I've made so many Christmas cards so early in the year in my life!

There's snow at Addicted to CAS and snowflakes at Challenge Up Your Life.

Thanks for stopping by!  Our always-amazing Freshly Made Sketches design team has made some fabulous cards to inspire you to play along with us.  We hope you'll join us in the gallery!

Supplies
Stamps:  Mixed Media Elements (Stamplorations); December Typed Words (Papertrey Ink)
Paper:  Whisper White, Vellum (Stampin' Up!); silver glimmer (Recollections)
Ink:  Silvery Shimmer (Delicata); Onyx Black (Versafine)
Accessories:  Snowflake Trio die (a.must studio); Let It Snowflake Too die (My Favorite Things); silver cord (Stampin' Up!); clear embossing powder

CAS(E) This Sketch 401

One last Christmas card - I hope!  This one is for our latest CAS(E) This Sketch challenge which I combined with pine trees challenge at Challenge Up Your Life.

My pine trees are a little modern, but they are pine trees in spirit!  Two of them are embossed in silver and one is embossed in a sparkly blue.  By coincidence I had some sparkly blue cardstock that was a close match so I used that at the top of my card as a banner.  I then added some other layers on top of it, including a sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by!  My fellow CAS(E) This Sketch design team members have made some great cards with this sketch so be sure to check them out!

Supplies
Stamps:  Triangle Trees (Reverse Confetti); Fa La La (Simon Says Stamp)
Ink:  Versamark; Onyx Black (Versafine)
Accessories:  Vertical Greetings II die; First Place Ribbon die (My Favorite Things); silver embossing powder, tinsel embossing powder (Recollections)

Freshly Made Sketches 430

Hey all.  I hope that you are all healthy and safe.  I'm grateful that I'm able to escape into my stamp room once in a while to make something that (I hope) is pretty and gives me a chance to forget that the world has turned upside down.  To that end my friends at Freshly Made Sketches want to help inspire you to create along with us.  We've got a new challenge debuting today and Jacquie is our hostess.

I substituted that diamond for an oval and did some kind of inverse stamping technique that I'm sure has a name but I have no idea what it is!  I basically stamped the floral image onto two pieces of card stock, then cut an oval out of one of them, then layered the one with the missing oval over the other layer, and popped it up on foam tape so the other images show through.  I'm sure that makes no sense but if you click on the image I'm sure you'll get the gist!

I wanted to do a floral image because I just got this stamp set that has been on my wish list for a while plus the challenge at Challenge Up Your Life is to use flowers.  I love it when two ideas come together!

This card is going to my Mom.  Even though we talk on the phone all the time it's been weeks since I've seen her in person.  I know she loves to get a card in the mail so hopefully this will put a smile on her face.  I know she's bored silly - watching movies all day long can only go so far - so I email her the crossword from the daily newspaper every day.  What a strange world we live in now!

Stay safe everyone. We'll get through this together.

Supplies
Stamps:  Floral Art (Altenew); Tiny Words (Simon Says Stamp)
Paper:  Whisper White (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Pretty in Pink (Stampin' Up!); Coral Berry, Grapevine, Fresh Leaf, Jet Black (Altenew)
Accessories:  Oval Stax 2 die (My Favorite Things)

Freshly Made Sketches 368

I'm back after a bit of a card-making/blogging break!  I had a sick kitty in the house and between the guilt I was feeling for not calling the vet sooner and the time spent giving her warm compresses I was not in a very creative mood.  But I'm happy to say she's on the mend!

Today, of course, is the day when we reveal a new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.  Our hostess is Narelle and I love those tilty layers she's given us.  This is our last challenge for 2018 and we'll be back on January 2nd with a brand new sketch.  In the meantime....

After weeks and weeks of making Christmas cards I took a much needed break and made a thank you card.  After all, the gifts we receive at Christmas need a thank you card sent to the giver, right?  At Challenge Up Your Life they are looking for thank you themes so that was a big part of the inspiration for my card! 

I went bold with my colors using Melon Mambo as my background and added some contrast with Basic Gray and an old favorite Kiwi Kiss.  Maybe someday Stampin' Up! will make my dreams come true and bring that color (and Baja Breeze) back!  I'd buy reams of those colors if they did, lol!

Our Freshly Made Sketches challenge will stay open until December 31st so if you need a little inspiration after the Christmas craziness winds down then come on over and join us!  There's plenty of inspiration to be had with our amazing design team creations!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies
Stamps:  Best Blossoms (Stampin' Up!); Tiny Words (Simon Says Stamp)
Paper:  Solar White (Neenah); Melon Mambo, Basic Gray, Kiwi Kiss, Walk in the Park DSP (Stampin' Up!)
Ink:  Melon Mambo (Stampin' Up!); Nocturne (Versafine Clair)

Freshly Made Sketches 194

Happy Wednesday everyone!  It's time for a new sketch from your friends at Freshly Made Sketches!  This week our hostess is Linda and her sketch made me think of a shaker card.  It seems like every time I see a square on a sketch, I think of shakers!  I've been lucky enough to meet Linda in person twice - the last time was just a couple of weeks ago.  More on that later.

I paper pieced this little party girl's dress and then fussy cut her out.  It's a delicate job cutting this image out because she is so skinny - some of the parts are so small I worry that I'm going to chop off a body part!  But she looks good when it's all done.

At Challenge Up Your Life they are looking for sequins so I filled my shaker up with some colorful ones.

The Freshly Made Sketches design team has made some beauties this week so make sure you head on over there to check them out.  I hope you can join us in the gallery!

I forgot to mention last week that I made a little field trip to Albany New York a couple of Saturday's ago.  My FMS teamie Jen Timko had a layover in Albany and it just so happens that Linda lives about an hour away and I live about 3 1/2 hours away so we all got to see each other for a bit.  It was the second time that I met Linda and the first time that I met Jen.  We had a lot of laughs.  Here we are trying to figure out my new selfie stick!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Cheers (My Favorite Things)
Paper:  White (Spectrum Noir); Sea Glass (Avery Elle)
Ink:  Black Licorice (My Favorite Things); Onyx Black (Versafine); Copics
Accessories:  Birthday Bash sequins (Neat & Tangled)