Little Agenda Valentines

February fourteenth is fast approaching, and Mama Elephant’s January card challenge has a Valentine’s Day/love theme — so why not kill two birds with one stone and get my valentines made before the last minute?

I wanted to make these quickly, so I kept my supplies minimal and the designs simple. This is my favorite of the valentines I’ve made so far; I adore the clean, graphic look and the red, black, and white color scheme.

For a hint of dimension (that the photo entirely fails to represent), I popped each die-cut circle up on two smaller cardstock circles. The card is flat enough to go through the mail safely, but it has more visual interest than if I had merely glued the die-cuts to the card base on their own.

Since I’m sending this card to a stamping friend who likes kitties, I sneaked a little crafty cat inside and another cat onto the envelope.

For the past several years, I’ve been using a wood-mounted rubber Hero Arts “created by” stamp on the backs of my cards, but when I placed a My Favorite Things order around Christmas, they enclosed a mini set of sentiments for envelopes and the backs of cards. I was hyped to find the gift in my package (it still excites me every time I pull it out of my stash), and I love how well this stamp coordinates with the card design.

For my next two valentines, I went tiny. Mini cards are my go-to for speedy designs, since I can use cute little stamps without having to figure out what to do with overwhelming white space. (Sneaky bonus: mini cards don’t have a lot of space on the inside, so there’s no pressure to fill them up with a long message — just a quick note and I’m good to go.) To add some interest to the background and keep the cards from looking too simple, I used watercolor patterned paper and built my color scheme around that.

I love the versatile designs of Mama Elephant’s Little Agenda series and how there’s almost always a stamp that will coordinate for the back of the envelope.

Again, a new stamp for the back of the card! I’ll fill it in with my name and the date when I prep the cards to mail.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Little Panda Agenda,” “Little Cat Agenda,” “Little Bunny Agenda”;  The Ton “Country Rose Cluster” (“sending”);  The Stamp Market “Double Take” (“hugs”);  Lawn Fawn “Winter Alpaca” (outline mini heart), order freebie (“I Like You”);  My Favorite Things “Hand Stamped” freebie (“handmade by”; “from my ♥ to yours”)
Dies:  Hero Arts “Nesting Circles” (1 ¼” for top, ¾” for dimensional layers);  Mama Elephant “Little Panda Agenda” (coordinating)
Ink:  My Favorite Things Black Licorice dye, Hero Arts Bubble Gum, Memento Love Letter + My Favorite Things Chili Powder (layered)
Copics:  R27, R000, C00, N1, E43;  Stampin’ Up Blendabilities Melon Mambo medium
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White;  My Favorite Things Watercolor Wash 6x6 Paper Pack (light pink)
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape

Dimensions
Red card: 4.25” x 5.5”
Pink cards: 3” x 4.25”

Holly Jolly Unicorn Tag

This year, I’m participating in Ellen Hutson’s 12 Tags of Christmas 2019 Challenge for the first time. I’ve got a couple of other tag designs roughly sketched out, but this month has been so crazy that I haven’t yet had the time to sit down and make them. The design for this tag, however, leapt into being pretty easily — it was inspired by Carly’s tag for Day 10. I liked her circular base, the candy-like colors she chose, and her use of holly.

For my tag, I went for a pepperminty color scheme with cool, minty greens, a pink-toned red, and lots of white. Arranging the sentiment took way longer than I’d like to admit, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out — definitely worth all those scraps of paper I consumed while testing iterations.

I originally intended to make a pile of presents for the unicorn to be standing among, but that didn’t work with the circular card, so I ended up going with a wreath of presents and holly in a scaled-down echo of Carly’s. Rather than stamping the unicorn and presents in black ink, which would have been very stark against the white areas, I used a dark purple, which adds to the cool tones present in the rest of the design. Adding dimension to the white body with a purple marker, instead of just grey, further boosted the candy-like wintry feel. I covered all the white surfaces of the unicorn with a shimmer pen, and for once I think my camera managed to capture it decently.

The pearly shimmer pigment ink I used to stamp the sparkles and snowflakes is somewhat opaque, but it has almost no color to it, which makes it impossible to see on white paper unless the light hits it just right. I wanted the sparkles and snowflakes to fill in the space, not just hint at glimmer, so I first stamped Fairy Dust ink three times to get a light cool grey, then layered Platinum Planet on top of it, muting the grey color and leaving the shapes pale but clearly defined. Although the sparkles and snowflakes don’t show up well in the photos, they’re perfectly visible in person.

I almost forgot to stamp the back of the tag, and then I had to scramble to see if I even had any “to/from” stamps to stamp it with! Somehow, I only have these two, so they’ll be getting a workout if I can make the time to create more tags. Do you have any good “to/from” stamp sets to recommend?


Supplies
Stamps:  Lawn Fawn “A Little Sparkle” (unicorn, sparkles), “Winter Alpaca” (snowflakes), “Year Five” (present);  Hero Arts “Build a Wreath by Lia” (holly);  Papertrey Ink “City Scene Christmas Sentiments” (“merry & bright”);   Clearly Besotted Simple Silhouettes (“to,” “from”)
Dies:  Hero Arts “Nesting Circle Dies” (3 ¼”);   Lawn Fawn “A Little Sparkle”
Ink:  Memento Elderberry, Brilliance Platinum Planet;  The Ton Caribbean Turquoise;  Hero Arts Pale Tomato;  WPlus9 Fairy Dust
Copics:  R27+R22 (cheek, rear present), V20+C00 (body shadows), BG32 (hooves and ear);  Sharpie Mint (mane, tale, presents), Turquoise (mane and tail);  Stampin’ Up Blendabilities Costal Cabana medium (mane and tail)
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Zig Two-Way Glue Pen, Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen, hole punch

MFT Sketch Challenge #421

Every two weeks or so, I send a card to my grandmother, and this week I finally broke out the butterfly stamps that I got for Christmas—she adores butterflies, so I knew it would be an especially nice surprise. When I checked My Favorite Things’ sketch challenge, the simple layout of this week’s sketch appealed to me, and I immediately saw how to incorporate a butterfly.

I also jumped at the chance to use some patterned paper from my stash. I adore the nature patterns in the Affinity patterned paper pack, but since it’s a 12x12” pad, I rarely have opportunities to use it. (I should have gotten the 6x6” pad, but back in my younger and more ignorant days, I thought that the patterns were the same size and I was just getting more paper. Alas no, younger self: the patterns are scaled.)

I also used another item from Christmas: a blending brush. With one of my gift-cards, I bought a ten-pack of cheap makeup brushes from Amazon for about $10, shipped from China. Since I had never tried ink blending before, I didn’t know if I’d like it or be good at it or use it much, so I didn’t want to drop fifty bucks on the Picket Fence Studios Life-Changing blending brushes. The makeup brushes are essentially the same thing, but at a much more accessible entry price—not a big investment if I ended up deciding that I wouldn’t use the technique much. They worked well, however, and although it took me a few practice runs on scrap paper to figure out how to ink-blend, I’m pleased with the results. Getting an even blend was easy, and the ink didn’t splotch at all, even though I was using dye inks that are said to be difficult to blend (at least compared to the two Distress Ink lines). The Life-Changing brushes are reputedly a higher quality, so if these don’t hold up well I might invest in those later. Already, half of one small brush-head came unglued and fell out while I was rinsing it, but I had used rather a lot of water; the larger brushes have stayed intact.

For my very first time blending, I don’t think I did half bad, but I learned a lot, too, and look forward to improving. I originally intended the focal circle to be softer and fade out at the edges, but after laying the mask down and starting to fill in color, I kind of forgot. I was aiming for an even blend and a slight dark-to-light gradient, which I achieved, but at the expense of that soft, glowy circle. The hard edges were difficult to discern since the ink colors were so light in general, and I didn’t realize how much color I had laid down until I peeled back the mask and went, “Whoops.” Now that I have a better idea of what I’m doing, I’d like to try the same type of focal area again and aim for faint edges that blend out into the cardstock.

As is my wont, I stamped a matching envelope and wrote the address in a coordinating gel pen (I swear by the Uni-ball Signo UM-151), and I dropped the card in the mailbox this morning.

Supplies
Stamps:  The Ton “Beautiful Butterflies 1”;  Hero Arts “Many Everyday Messages” (sentiment)
Dies:  The Ton “Beautiful Butterflies 1”;  Hero Arts “Nested Circle Infinity Dies”;  My Favorite Things “Essential Slanted Sentiment Strips”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Morocco;  My Favorite Things Dye Peach Bellini;  Hero Arts Butter Bar
Copics:  R05, YR02;  Blendabilities Pumpkin Pie medium and light
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Vintage Cream, The Paper Studio Affinity patterned paper pack
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Gina K. Connect Glue, unbranded makeup brush (like “Life-Changing Blending Brushes”), Post-It Removable Labeling Tape

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

PTI’s “Create Along With Us” Challenge, September 2018, & MFT Sketch Challenge #402

This month’s Papertrey Ink release was heavily Christmas-themed, but since I’m not yet in the mode of making Christmas cards, I looked for inspiration that I could use for a more generally autumn- or winter-themed card for the Create Along With Us challenge.

What first drew me to Michelle’s card was the color scheme, but the reason I ended up choosing it as my inspiration piece was the background, since I could emulate that with the large pine branch stamp from PTI’s “Winter Woods” set. I love the Ocean Tides ink color, but I haven’t anything like it (I’m going to have to get the cube during PTI’s anniversary sale next spring). The closest I could come to the color was Hero Arts Forever Green, and that’s definitely green, not greyish blue-green. Still, it works well for pine needles. In hindsight, I think perhaps the card would have been more cohesive if I had stamped the wood of the branches in grey rather than brown and if I had chosen lighter colors for the background, but at least the color of the branches is realistic.

Although I have a fox stamp from a Stampin’ Up set, it’s horizontal, so I chose the chickadee from “Winter Woods” since it fit the vertical layout I was following from both Michelle’s card and this week’s MFT sketch challenge. Since the chickadee faces right, I flipped the sketch to accommodate it. The solid pine trees behind the chickadee are from the aforementioned SU set; I fussy-cut them and colored them with an alcohol marker to make the focal point bolder than the background.

For the banner, I smooshed a strip of cardstock against the Field Greens ink pad and let it dry overnight. It was still a bit splotchy when I went to stamp the sentiment, but at least it coordinates! The finished card is busier than I prefer; if I ever have time in the future, I’d like to tackle the design again with much lighter ink in the background. It might be fun to use the other birds from the same set—perhaps softer green pine branches for a background for the cardinal or pale grey snowflakes behind the bluejay.

Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Winter Woods”, “Vintage Picnic Sentiments”;  Stampin’ Up “Life in the Forest”
Dies:  Papertrey Ink “Winter Woods”;  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 2” (3 9/16” x 4 13/16”; 1 7/8” x 3 1/8”)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Grey Flannel, Toffee Crunch, Northern Pine;  Hero Arts Field Greens;  Simon Says Stamp Fog
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, cheap lightweight grey cardstock from my stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Bic Marking Forever Green

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Sketch Challenge #401

A couple of weeks ago, I spotted this card by Larissa Heskett and fell in love with the color scheme. My sister’s birthday is approaching, and she loves pandas, so making her a card provided the perfect excuse for CASEing Larissa’s. This week’s sketch challenge from My Favorite Things suited the layout I had in mind, and I’m also submitting the card to MFT’s Birthday Project.

I stamped the flowers multiple times, two layers for the orange, three or four for the yellow, because I wanted deep colors as well as a solid impression to capture the details of the flowers. I drew in the stems and am not happy with them—it’ll be a while before I can freehand anything satisfactorily. Whatever I draw never quite conforms to the law of gravity, and the lack of realism bugs me, but the only way to improve is to practice, so I’m continuing my attempts and trying to convince myself that the wonky results are just going to look whimsical to anyone else.

I edged the matte in the same orange ink, just smooshing the cube onto the paper. The cheaper cardstock rippled a little as it dried, but my dictionary helped mitigate that somewhat, and the focal panel disguises the remaining undulations.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Incoming Mail” (panda);  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals”;  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple Birthday III” (sentiment)
Dies:  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 1”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  My Favorite Things Dye Persimmon;  Hero Arts Butter Bar
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, cheap lightweight white cardstock from my stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Sakura Pigma Micron 01 (0.25 mm)

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Summer School: Monochromatic

Since I was running out of time last night to complete the second session of My Favorite Things Summer School, I abandoned my plans for a more elaborate take on a monochrome card, pulled out my dies, and whipped this up. The die-cut panel lets the colored cardstock base show through, and an auxiliary sentiment in matching ink finishes it off.

With that, I have graduated from the second session of Summer School.

Supplies
Stamps:  Hero Arts “Stamp and Cut: Hello” (sentiment)
Dies:  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 2” (4 x 5 ¼);  Hero Arts “Stamp and Cut: Hello” (sentiment)
Ink:  Hero Arts Butter Bar
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, Lemon Tart
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, liquid glue

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Summer School: Visual Triangle

For the visual triangle challenge of MFT Summer School, I balanced different colors and shapes in multiple triangles throughout a floral arrangement. There’s a triangle of purple, of coral four-petal flowers, and of one shape of stamped leaves. In a much looser sense, the Fab Foliage die-cuts behind the rectangle form a triangle as well, since they are concentrated in the top left corner, bottom edge, and right side.

This was my first chance to use the Fab Foliage dies, and I loved it. Even with only one use, I can tell that they’re well on their way to becoming a staple for me.

I’m also entering this card in MFT’s Birthday Project.

Supplies
Stamps:  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals”;  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple: Birthday II” (sentiment)
Dies:  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 2” (1 ⅞” x 3 ⅛”), “Fab Foliage”;  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals”
Ink:  Simon Says Stamp Dusty Sage;  Hero Arts Field Greens, Soft Cantaloupe, Pale Tomato;  Memento Lulu Lavender, Sweet Plum, Elderberry
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, liquid glue

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Summer School: Rainbow

For the rainbow challenge from MFT Summer School, I whipped up a super-simple graphic card. I love sans serif fonts for designs like these—really, I just love simple cards that rely entirely on a good font. My stamping platform enabled me to stamp in precise increments and make sure each word had adequate ink coverage; I’d never be able to do designs like this without a platform!

Employing the graphic design principle of using lighter colors for weightier fonts and darker colors for thinner fonts to achieve visual balance, I selectively inked the stamp in a jewel-tone rainbow on the left and a pastel rainbow on the right. I love ink cubes—full-size ink pads are so unwieldy!—but Memento’s dewdrop design is unequaled. The difference between the dewdrops and the cubes was starkly apparent using them together like this; the dewdrops offer so much more precision, and they’re much easier to grip and maneuver.

Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple: Thank You I”
Ink:  Memento Teal Zeal, Grape Jelly, Lulu Lavender, Love Letter, Morocco, Peanut Brittle, Olive Grove, Pistachio;  Hero Arts Cotton Candy, Soft Cantaloupe, Butter Bar;  VersaColor Celadon, Atlantic;  Brilliance Mediterranean Blue
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Sketch Challenge #393 & Color Challenge #97

For this week’s sketch challenge, I created a simple one-layer card with the sentiment and image forming the horizontal line across the center of the sketch.

Since the color palette was so pastel, black ink was too stark for the cupcake outline; the Copic-friendly Memento Toffee Crunch worked well instead and played as a darker shade of the tan included in the palette. My inks have less shade variation between them than the peach and coral in the palette do, but the hearts are a darker coral than the sentiment, although the shimmer makes the difference harder to distinguish.

Supplies
Stamps:  My Favorite Things “Hog Heaven” (cupcake);  Papertrey Ink “Just Desserts Sentiments” (sentiment);  Lawn Fawn “Winter Alpaca” (hearts)
Ink:  Memento Toffee Crunch;  Hero Arts Soft Cantaloupe (sentiment), Fresh Peach (hearts)
Copics:  R22, Y00, E30
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Spectrum Noir Sparkle clear

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

Sweet Birthday Florals

A friend of mine has a birthday this week, and this card is already on its way to her.

I took inspiration for the color scheme from her Tumblr and her artwork, and I chose these clustered blooms since they were the closest thing I had to hydrangeas, which are some of her favorite flowers. Since I don’t have the dies for this set (yet!), I had to mask the flowers. I’m not very good at arranging florals yet, and it’s particularly difficult without die-cuts, so I kept things simple. The masking left a white halo around some of the images, so I used a cotton swab cut down to a point and smushed on my ink pad to dab color into the gaps.

The pitcher is from an entirely different floral set by Clearly Besotted. I stamped it once in Simon Says Stamp Fog ink, which isn’t Copic-friendly, so the outline blurred a little when I colored in the pitcher with the lightest warm gray Copic. Once I finished coloring, I stamped over the outline twice with the Fog ink to give the pitcher a crisp edge again. (Huzzah for the invention of the stamp platform, which makes such things possible!)

I used a quilting ruler, a mechanical pencil, and a paper trimmer to measure and cut the panels on the front of the card so the floral arrangement would be perfectly centered without being too cramped and without having too much white space and so the matte would have a quarter-inch border. For a focal panel that large, a smaller matte would have looked a bit odd unless I had used two mattes, both large and small, and there just wasn’t enough room on the card base for that.

Of course, I had to make a matching envelope. I’m not entirely pleased with how the arrangement of the leaves turned out, but you can only fuss for so long before you have to commit.

Serendipitously, this week’s Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is “Anything Goes” featuring WPlus9. I had planned out this card back in May, but I only had the time to make it this past weekend — which makes it eligible to enter in the challenge.


Supplies
Stamps:  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals” (all florals);  Clearly Besotted “Simple Silhouettes” (pitcher);  Papertrey Ink “Just Desserts Sentiments” (sentiment)
Ink:  VersaColor Smoke Blue, Atlantic, Celadon;  Hero Arts Cotton Candy, Pale Tomato;  Memento Toffee Crunch;  Simon Says Stamp Fog
Copics:  W00
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Post-It Labeling Tape (for masking), cotton swab


Dimensions
base:  4 ¹/₄”  x  5 ¹/₂”
focal panel:  2 ⁹/₁₆”  x  4”
matte:  3 ¹/₈”  x  4 ¹/₂”

PTI’s Make It Monday #326: Inchies

The theme for Papertrey Ink’s Make It Monday this week excited me, since I like working with inchies. There’s so much you can do with the design element, but I like to keep it clean and simple.

Inchies make an ideal ground for the writing-related stamps from PTI’s retired “Happy Trails” set. I bought the set primarily for this sentiment — I love the design and the font combination — but I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet and couldn’t resist the opportunity.

The color scheme isn’t meant to be patriotic; dark red and dark blue merely suited the theme of writing implements. It’d be fun to do this again using sepia tones. I think that flecked paper, such as PTI’s Rustic Cream or Rustic White or WPlus9’s Oatmeal, would look even better than the plain cream, but this was all I had on hand.

One of the top items on my wish list is a set of square dies, and I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to get the inchies uniform without them, but with a paper trimmer and a great deal of precision, I managed. My transparent quilting ruler was indispensable for lining things up, though a T-square would be just as handy.


Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Happy Trails”
Ink:  Memento Nautical Blue;  Hero Arts Red Royal;  Tsukineko Brilliance Graphite Black
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Vintage Cream
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, cardstock scraps layered for dimension


Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

My Favorite Things Sketch Challenge #388 & Color Challenge #94

Over the past few days, I saw the My Favorite Things Wednesday Sketch Challenge #388 pop up on a couple of different blogs I follow, and I went, “I could do that!” The smallness of my craft supply stash is inversely proportional to the excitement I feel when I see a challenge that I could complete with supplies that I already own. In other words, I was ridiculously excited to own a banner die this week.

Since I’m submitting to the MFT sketch challenge, I went ahead and followed the MFT Color Challenge #94 too — it fits the theme of my images wonderfully. (Cherries aren’t naturally peach, but hey, it looks cute. That’s what counts, right?)

I covered the icing on the cupcakes with shimmer pen, but glitter is notoriously hard to photograph and that proved true once more.

In addition to entering the MFT challenges, I’m submitting the card to Simon Says Stamp’s Work It Wednesday: the theme this month is summer, and this color palette reminds me of beach-themed decor.


Supplies
Stamps:  My Favorite Things “Hog Heaven” (pig with cupcake, solo cupcake);  Papertrey Ink “Just Desserts Sentiments” (sentiment)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  Hero Arts Soft Cantaloupe, Fresh Peach (layered)
Copics:  R000, R20, B00, Y00;  Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Blendabilities: Costal Cabana light, Calypso Coral light
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White; cheap layering-weight ice blue from stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Papertrey Ink “Double-Ended Banners” die, Pilot Precise V5 in turquoise (sprinkles), Spectrum Noir Sparkle clear


Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

PTI’s “Create Along With Us” Challenge, May 2018

A bunch of cards in Papertrey Ink’s release blog posts this month caught my eye, and when the May Create Along With Us challenge started, I thought, “Why not?” I only managed to make translations of four of the seven cards that I’d saved as inspiration images: limited supplies and lack of time intervened. In the future, I’d like to attempt several iterations of Lizzie’s rainbow stripe star card; its clean, graphic look appealed to me the most out of the cards from this release, and I have several ideas for how to translate it into my own supplies.


I also loved the look of Lizzie’s red and yellow strawberry card, but I didn’t have any patterned paper or stamps that remotely resembled her supplies, so I condensed the elements of her card to their essence: red and white accented by yellow and green, several layers of frames, and a focal image framed in black. The framed image in PTI’s “Spring Hills” set perfectly fit the parameters, and I built the card around it. Since my Copic collection is limited, I didn’t have a suitable yellow-green, and the one lime marker available entirely washed out my yellow Copic, so I went with a more true green for contrast. Putting the focal image on a solid red base looked too flat, so I masked off a piece of cardstock in a plaid pattern and went over it with the same red Copic I had used for the roof of the house.

Stephanie’s simple, graphic strawberries card was my most direct translation, since I could very nearly match the colors and main font she used. I love the look of strawberries but don’t have any strawberry stamps yet, so I went with a flower silhouette and leaves and followed the layout of Stephanie’s card. Since I didn’t use the watercolor technique, the result isn’t as loose and organic as hers, but the graphic layout pleases me.

Stephanie’s fun mint and sprinkles card provided the perfect excuse for me to use my new sprinkle washi tape. This card was the quickest and easiest to make, though the result is much simpler than Stephanie’s since I don’t have coverplate dies or any large image that would coordinate with the theme. Instead, I focused on the color scheme and the theme.

Keeway’s cute little animal card I used primarily as a sketch, since I haven’t any elephant or cloud stamps, but I do have a bunch of adorable little animals. I cut a peach panel to A1 size and layered on a hillside border, the cutest and chubbiest critter I could find, and a sentiment from PTI. The result feels a tad too simple, and it’d look better with some clouds, but one must work with what one has. Cloud dies have jumped much higher on my wish list, though!

Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple: Thank You I” (bold script), “Spring Hills” (framed hillside), “Just Desserts Sentiments” (“everything’s better...”), “Winter Woods” (“hello”);  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals” (flower and leaves);  Hero Arts “Stamp and Cut: Thanks” (“for your kindness”);  Mama Elephant “Lunar Animals” (cow)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Espresso Truffle;  VersaFine Vintage Sepia;  Hero Arts Pale Tomato, Green Hills, Bubble Gum;  VersaColor Cyan
Copics:  R27, Y00, G14, BG000, W00, and E43 (framed hillside); E34, E30, E0000 (cow);  Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Blendabilities: Crumb Cake Light, Crumb Cake Medium (cow)
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White; cheap layering-weight yellow, mint, and peach from stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Pebbles Happy Hooray Birthday Wishes washi tape, Lawn Fawn “Stitched Hillside Borders” dies


Dimensions
All cards:  4.25” x 5.5”

Papertrey Ink April Blog Hop Challenge

Last Tuesday when Papertrey Ink posted the inspiration photo for their blog hop, my first thought was that I had no tea-related stamps — oh well! But after I moved on, I recalled that I did, in fact, have one tea image: an old Stampin’ Up wood-block stamp from the very first set I ever got, a Christmas gift about fifteen years ago. I rarely use the set anymore since the sentiments are wrapped around the images, limiting their versatility, but when I pulled out the stamp I realized it wouldn’t be hard to fussy-cut the image.

I wanted to follow the color palette of the inspiration piece as closely as possible, but once I began swatching colors I realized that the simplicity of my image required more flexibility. Magenta and aqua were just too stark when paired together, so I ended up going with one image in cream and rose and another in white and soft aqua.

When sifting through my sentiments to find ones to pair with my focal images, I almost settled on “You’re as sweet as can be” from PTI’s “Just Desserts Sentiments” set — a current favorite — but then I spotted “Find beauty in each day” from PTI’s “Spring Hills” set, and that was perfect to go with a tranquil cup of tea. Equally ideal was “His mercies are new every morning” from Stamp Simply, which I’d been wanting to use on a card for my mother.

In an attempt to match the Copic color R22 that I had used for the flowers on the cream-and-rose image, I layered several Hero Arts inks for the sentiment, starting with a double-stamped base layer of Fresh Peach, then a layer of second-generation Pale Tomato, followed by a final layer of Cotton Candy.

I gave the “mercies” card to my mother for World Juggler’s Day — I don’t know how she manages to do all that she does, but her success amazes me — and I’ll be sending the aqua card to my paternal grandmother soon.

Supplies
Stamps:  Stampin’ Up “Nice & Easy Notes” (image);  Papertrey Ink “Spring Hills” (“find beauty...”);  Stamp Simply “Farmhouse Scriptural Thoughts” (“His mercies...”)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  Hero Arts Fresh Peach, Pale Tomato, Cotton Candy;  VersaColor Celadon
Copics:  E0000, E30, R22, YG45, G12, BG000, W00, W1, and the colorless blender;  Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Blendabilities: Costal Cabana Light
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Uni-ball Signo UM-100 0.8 mm in gold, Sakura Pigma Micron 0.25 mm in black

Dimensions
Aqua card:  4.25” x 4.25”
Rosy card:  4.75” x 3.5”

Kaboom! World Penguin Day

Meet Pingy, a pyromaniac penguin.

He loves anything to do with explosions — firecrackers, fireworks, dynamite — but he can be lured away from such hazardous materials with goldfish or animal crackers.

Little rogue that he is, he’s taking a few sticks of dynamite to my friend’s house to celebrate World Penguin Day, which is April 25.

This card was super easy to pull together and a blast to design. It’s all a single layer, too, embellishments notwithstanding. The penguins in the set all wear ice skates, but a stamping platform and selective inking did away with that. I debated using tiny googly eyes but decided against it: he looks cuter without them.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Arctic Penguins”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  Hero Arts Butter Bar
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, white glue, two red bugle beads, DCWV red foiled cardstock, an orange gel pen of cheap and indeterminate make, a mechanical pencil, Spectrum Noir Sparkle clear

Dimensions
Card:  3.5” x 3.5”