February birthday card

One of my co-workers LOVES everything Japanese (especially Geishas). Using the Kanji symbols from the Cricut cartridge, Pagoda seemed like a no-brainer for this February birthday card.

The red and black card stocks are Bazzill; the gold beneath the Kanji symbol is some old stash from the 90's. The pink floral paper was sent as part of a set of lovely Japanese papers. My daughter (who gifted me the paper at Christmas) knows the name of the paper, but it escapes me now. I used my favorite Pioneer double-sided mounting tape to adhere the various layers together. The flowers are primas with a gold brad (maybe Making Memories?) to hold it together.

I'm going to Japan later in the year and I think I should be able to make more good use of the Cricut Pagoda cartridge.

Thanks for looking.

Happy Birthday cards, complete

I finally finished the last of the three needed birthday cards and got better photos of all the cards together. My DSLR was being wonky with the pop-up flash and the photos of the previous cards were taken with my point and shoot. Not so good.

The third card is another variation using the same ole Pebbles in my Pocket card stock from decades ago. :)

It also has some die cuts from the Cricut, Old West cartridge. The marks on the die cuts were highlighted with a Marvy Uchida pen and the edges on the cacti were darkened to make them stand out. The same Hero Arts Happy Birthday greeting was stamped with the same Sepia Archival ink. Same adhesives. Same, but different!

I'm looking forward to playing with this Cricut cartridge more in the future. Living in Arizona will hopefully make it a useful purchase.

Thanks as always for taking the time to visit at my blog.

Happy Birthday parade continues

Card Patterns Sketch 56 caught my fancy when I was blurfing and I thought that I'd like to use this sketch for one of the March coworker birthday cards.

I didn't use the square design (because I wanted to keep all 3 cards that I'm making the same size for all 3 coworkers), but I think the design translated well enough to the 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 format.

Pretty much the same materials as last night's posting: old Pebbles in my Pocket cardstock, Hero Arts stamp with Ranger Sepia ink. Same Nestabilities dies (just bigger circles); same Cricut Old West coyote but this time with a cactus. Once again I used Marvy Uchida pens to accent the die cuts to give them a little contrast from the background paper.

It's been awhile since I'd posted any card, so I forgot last night to mention the adhesives used. My favorite Pioneer double-sided tape and some pop-dots.

2 cards down, now just 1 to go. Thanks as always for taking the time to visit.

birthday cards on parade

After a rather long hiatus from this blog (and I'm sorry to say mostly from crafting as well), I'm in need of birthday cards and so old habits are being awakened.

March has 4 birthdays at work (including my own) and all 3 of the other March birthdays are big southwestern fans. So today's card was made with the design inspiration from Our Creative Corner's current sketch challenge.

I was intrigued with the designs that Provo Craft included on their new Cricut cartridge, Old West, so I chose that cartridge for the die cuts. A Marvy Uchida pen was used to highlight the marks cut into the die cuts as well as to highlight the edges. The greeting is from Hero Arts, CL139, stamped with Ranger's Sepia archival ink. The circles were die cut with Nestabilities circles. All the card stock is from my stash; it's an ancient collection that I purchased sometime in the late 90's?? Maybe?? From the Pebbles in my Pocket store that was in Las Vegas.

One down; 2 to go. Plus in the next couple of days I'll upload the birthday card that was made for February. Thanks for looking.

TSSC86 -- unfinished OR Mom, I need a sentiment!

Mary Jo has posted another sketch challenge; you can find it here.  I feel like this card is unfinished -- it needs a sentiment, but I haven't figured out what to use.  So for now, I'm posting it as is.

I masked the flower image before I over-stamped the grass.  But the mask (cut from card stock) was too thick and so I didn't get as good coverage with the grass as I had hoped for.  I'm also not totally happy with the ink coverage on the stamps.  My first time playing with new stamp pads; we'll see if performance improves with experience.

Materials:  ink (dusty durango, soft suede); cardstock (crushed curry, dusty durango, soft suede, whisper white); stamp (Inspired by Nature) -- all Stampin' Up; adhesives/pop-dots -- non-Stampin' Up.

Thanks for looking.

O Holy Night - TSSC 85

I love MaryJo's sketch challenge and participate almost every week (except for those weeks when she posts aprons??? and other things that are too hard for this simple stamper!!!)

Since I'm on this Christmas/using items from my stash personal challenge, I considered what I wanted to do with this design.  This card came together for me very quickly last night; then I got too tired to post it.

Materials: card stock (white - Bazzill; silver - stash); designer paper (Basic Grey); stamp (Inkadinkadoo); ink (Colorbox); embossing powder (Stamp 'n' Stuff); embossing folder (Swiss Dots - Cuttlebug); brads (Making Memories); sheer ribbon (stash); adhesive (Pioneer mounting tape).

Thanks for looking.

Amazing blog candy

Happened upon this blog by chance.  She's giving away AMAZING blog candy. 

She'll be picking a winner from her comments at 3 pm EST Monday, August 31.  Run; don't Walk!!!  :)