Freshly Made Sketches 20

For my Freshly Made Sketches card this week I decided to go through the giant stash of designer paper I have that never seems to get any smaller.  The Thoroughly Modern paper caught my eye mainly because the combination of Rose Red and Bermuda Bay is fabulous together.

Lesley's sketch this week is long and narrow and has loads of room for interpretation!  My card measures 3 x 6 (inches).  I started with a base of Sahara Sand and then layered some Bermuda Bay with the stripey paper.  I stamped the Curly Cute sentiment directly on the Soft Suede designer paper then went over it with clear embossing powder to make it show up a little better.  I stamped the flowers in Rose Red, cut them out and layered them with dimensionals.  An antique brad finishes off the center.

This week at Freshly Made Sketches we welcome our Guest Designers Kim S. and Tracey Vidal who will be with us during the month of February.  They both are frequent players with our challenge, so it will be fun to create with them this month.  Welcome ladies!


I hope you can join us this week at Freshly Made Sketches.  We love to see what you create!


Our oh-so talented design team:


Lesley Croghan

Linda Callahan

Cindy Hall

Tui Nathan

Jennifer Timko

Rita Wright

Kim S.

Tracey Vidal 

ColourQ 122

Hello everyone!  I have some very exciting news to share.  Today is my debut as part of the ColourQ Royal Court Design Team!  I can't tell you how excited I am to be part of this talented bunch of designers!  What I can tell you is when Arielle extended the invitation to me I nearly fell off my chair!

I've been a long-time stalker participant of the ColourQ challenge, but I never imagined that one day I would be part of this group.  And to make this all the more sweet, this week's challenge was sure to get my creative juices flowing because it included one of my all-time favorite accent colors:  Basic Black!

Of course, based on this wonderful image my first thought was to do a Valentine's Day card, but once I got going my card morphed into something else entirely.  And I can't forget to say that my layout is courtesy of the awesome sketch over at Create With Connie and Mary.

I used some Real Red designer paper from the Christmas Cocoa collection (hopefully one day soon I'll use all that paper up) which is layered on some Basic Black.  The bottom of that layer is embossed with the Stripes embossing folder which is a wonderful way to add some interesting texture.  The flourish and the flower are from Creative Elements and the simple sentiment is from Everyday Flexible Phrases.

I sure hope you'll join give these colors a try and join us at the ColourQ this week!

Less is More 52 and Stampin' Royalty 108

I don't usually do inspiration challenges.  In fact, the card that I've made here may just be the first card I've made for an inspiration challenge!

The challenge is courtesy of Stampin' Royalty.  Despite my trepidation I wanted to participate so I decided to really look at the challenge picture and break it down into elements.  

For me, that's not as easy as it sounds.  I'm a number cruncher by day so I'm not used to dealing with subjective elements like what you find in an inspiration challenge.  Give me a sketch and I can follow.  Give me some colors and I'm ready to get inky.  But give me a nice colorful picture of some flowers and a birdcage and some fruit and I'm well on my way to information overload.

But I think I pulled it off.  I combined the elements of flowers with some of the colors in the picture.  I used Lucky Limeade for the leaves, Pacific Point for the flower and a Daffodil Delight button for the center of the flower.

I used the Less is More sketch because I think I need the simplicity of a good CAS sketch to keep me grounded.

It took me FOREVER to make this card because I waffled a hundred times (or so) about which flower to use for this card.  I had high hopes that I was going to be much more productive in my stamp room today but there's always tomorrow!

Thanks for stopping by!

Color Throwdown 176 and Viva la Verve

I started making a Valentine's Day card for the Color Throwdown challenge, but I wasn't happy with how it turned out, so I turned it into a birthday card with a flower.  Shocking, I know.

I love this flower from Array of Sunshine.  It's perfect for fussy-cutting and layering.  I stamped it twice in Rose Red then cut out different sizes and layered them together.  The leaf from the same set is stamped in Crumb Cake and then rock-n-rolled on the edges with a bit of Chocolate Chip.  The colors are a little bit non-traditional for a leaf, but I think it looks pretty good (and I don't have to step outside the precept of the color challenge).  My layout is courtesy of one of the January Verve sketch challenges.

Thanks for stopping by!

ColourQ 121 and Cards & Things 105

Sometimes I see a sketch challenge and it's a no-brainer for me that I want to participate.  And sometimes I see a color challenge and I'm itching to get inky.  This week these two worlds collided for me with the ColourQ and Cards & Things challenges.

This is two days in a row that I've made a card with this flower stamp from Verve.  It's one of my favorite flower stamps.  This one is stamped in Riding Hood Red and finished off in the center with a More Mustard button.  I tied a little bow through the button with some bakers twine and I wish someone would explain to me why one side of the twine curls and twists every time I try and tie a bow with it.  (You can see it in the lower loop on this bow).  I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it, but it's very aggravating!

Thanks for stopping by!

Freshly Made Sketches 19

Wednesday is, of course, Freshly Made Sketches challenge day and this week we've brought you a sketch from me!

I love making square cards and my favorite are ones that are 4 1/4-inches square.  The size is adorable and as a bonus fit in an A2 envelope.  If you live in the US, this lets you avoid the surcharge that comes from mailing a square envelope.

My card base is Chocolate Chip (a color that I feel like I've been neglecting a lot lately) and I added a layer of So Saffron and some designer paper from the Sweet Pea designer series paper pack.  The flower  and sentiment are stamped in Rose Red and the leaves are Old Olive.  I found some So Saffron brads so I added those in the lower left corner.

Our Freshly Made Sketches design team have all cooked up some amazing inspiration for you so be sure to stop by and show them some love.  Then head on back to the FMS blog and link up your creation!

Lesley Croghan

Linda Callahan

Cindy Hall

Tui Nathan

Jennifer Timko

Rita Wright

Nina Forsythe

Jen Sannes 

Less is More 51

The other day I made a tent card that I was originally going to link up to this week's Less is More challenge to make a card with a hole it it.  But the card was a whole lot "more" than "less" so I decided to go back to the drawing board.

Then I thought I'd incorporate the colors from the ColourQ challenge while I was at it but I ended up wasting so much time trying to figure out what to do for my card that I missed the ColourQ deadline.  Rats!  I also discovered that it is clearly beyond my photographic capabilities to get a decent picture of a card with a hole in it.  I wanted to photograph the card open showing that the sentiment was stamped on the inside of the card and visible through the hole, but each photo I took was worse than the last.  The hole was creating a terrible shadow that I didn't know how to fix.  I ended up putting a bit of dotto on the inside of the card to hold it closed and took the photo you see here.

And the colors look way off too.  The sentiment is stamped in Rich Razzleberry and the edge of the hole is lined with Bravo Burgundy.  The other two circles are Wisteria Wonder and Island Indigo.  I alwalys have trouble photographing cards that are predominately white, but this one was a doozy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Color Throwdown 175 and Just add Ink 101

The other day my blogging buddy and fellow Massachusetts cardmaker Kim made this adorable tent card.  I just had to give that technique a try.

At first I was thinking of making a card for this week's Less is More challenge to "cut it out" as in make a card with a hole in it.  Perfect for the tent card.  But I don't this qualifies as the type of clean card they're looking for so instead I used the Just Add Ink sketch and the latest Color Throwdown colors of ivory, kraft, olive, and red.

I think I over-dosed on the red shimmer paper, though.  It was incredibly hard to get a decent photo of the card because the glimmer paper kept creating glare and it was just about impossible to show that there's a big hole in the middle of this card.

But see, there really is!

It's snowing here today and I feel like having some comfort food so I'm off to make a pot roast.  Then hopefully I'll make it back into my stamp room so that I can get ahead on some of the cards I'd like to make for a few of my favorite challenges.  Thanks for stopping by!