Jingle Belles - Neutral Noel

Sneaking these in very, very, very last minute.  The time just got away from me.  The Jingle Belles have challenged us to use neutral colors on our cards this time.  I did start these a few days ago, but decided to go in a different direction.  Of course that was after I had spent time making the elements for a very elaborate background.  Well, those elements will be used elsewhere I'm sure.  In the meantime, what I have here are some trees created using The Greetery's Macrame Openwork Base die inspired by this post on their blog.

This tree was made from some Confetti Cream cs to which I added a gold trunk and glittered star and added to a scrap of scrapbook paper.

The background for this Very Vanilla tree is some birch wrapping paper I have in my stash.

There are two layers to each tree and I've "fluffed up" the branches to give it a 3-d effect which is not too visible in the straight on pictures. 

I have two more trees and backgrounds on my work table that I'll have to finish another time.

Sometimes the simplest ideas that I have turn out to be the ones that take the longest.  Die cuts are easy for the most part, but when they have all that detail, you have to make sure you pick out all the pieces from what you have cut and from what gets stuck in the die.  But I still find that doing multiples is more to my advantage as opposed to coming back at a later date and starting the process over. 

Right now, as these cards stand, they can be used as both Christmas cards and thank you cards.  I still might look for a suitable sentiment to add though.  

I'll be visiting the Jingle Belles later this evening and leaving some love for the other neutral beauties.  You can do the same by clicking here.

Father's Day and a Birthday in June

Yes, I know Father's Day was last weekend, but I've been busy getting the house in shape for a small family gathering this weekend and forgot to post my cards.  

The first two were for my son and son-in-law.  I used the Reflections stamp set from The Greetery and inspired by a card from The Greetery Blog.

This one was for HWNSNBP and used the stamp set and die set to make this tri-fold card with the belly band inspired by Kelly on The Greetery blog. 

Next is a birthday card that was made earlier this month.  Again, using products from The Greetery.  I just love all these baskets and flowers.  

I found a good tip in a tutorial by Betsy on The Greetery Blog on how to make coloring die cuts easier. It involves using a sticky matt that are used in Silhouette or Cricut machines.  They are pretty inexpensive and what they did with one was to cut it down in size (thereby having a couple on hand) and using that to hold die cuts in place while they are being colored.  

This is the die cut sheet stuck to the sticky matt and the shapes have been kept or put back in place.

You can then color them while they are held still and you don't have to fiddle around with trying to hold those skinny pieces in your fingers while adding color.  They easily peel off as does the rest of the negative sheet.  (Check the video in the link about for clarification.)

You can certainly cut these stem and leaf pieces out of colored cardstock but this allows you to add ink or chalk to the stems and leaves to give them a more realistic look.  I bought a set of replacement matts on Amazon that came in a pack of 3 with three degrees of stickiness for less than $10 and I can always use the extra in my Silhouette. 

ICAD 2021 - Week Two

 Another eclectic set of cards for the second week of ICAD.

Day 8 - Umbrella

I had these felt circles left over from the fairy project I did a couple of months ago.  They reminded me a little of beach umbrellas.  I slit them, wove them together, and added some embroidery floss French knots to keep them in place.

Day 9 - Ampersand

I created an "ampersandala" as coined by my blogging buddy Lauren.

Posca Paint Pens, Micron

Day 10 - Ribbon (off-prompt) - These are some Telephone Doodles

Stabilo marker and highlighters.

Day 11 - Library

Thanks to my blogging buddy Lauren who recently shared with me a stack of colorful index cards, library cards, and index tabs I had the perfect addition to this collage.  I did stitch the feather with single-ply floss, but I can see now that it needs a lot more stitches to not appear as a leaf.

Day 12 - Fairytale

We were away from home and I was lucky to find these gold rub-ons at the Dollar Tree.

Day 13 - Dice

Who knew there were such colorful names for dice combinations.

Day 14 - Word Cloud

I admit that when I saw this prompt I was thinking mostly of word bubbles that you would see in cartoons.  But after I was seeing some of the creations of others for this prompt on the ICAD FB page I realized that I needed to investigate this more.  There are programs where you can create all kinds of word clouds but I didn't choose to use any.  Instead, I gave it a little spin and made my word cloud into a small family tree.  HWNSNBP wants me to enlarge this.

So there's another week in the books.  

ICAD 2021 - Week One

Lo and behold, I'm doing another challenge - ICAD - Index Card a Day for the months of June and July.  This will be my 8th year doing this challenge.  There are prompts which are optional.  Sometimes I follow them, sometimes I go my own way when I don't have a clear enough idea of what I would do for the prompt.  The only requirement is that you must use an index card as your substrate.  It can be up to 4 x 6.  I'll be mixing mine up a little this year because I was gifted with some very cool 3 x 5 index cards by my blogging friend Lauren (also known as one of the Jingle Belles and fellow Jersey Girl).  If you have some time click on her name and check out her blog.  She is so talented and creative and such an inspiration.

My Title Card

I picked up some potted paints at the Dollar Tree for this rainbow and added to it with a Micron and Gel Pens.  The stickers were part of the gift from Lauren.

1/61 - Contraption

 Stabilo Pen and General's Watercolor Pencils

2/61 - Snapdragon

Stabilo Markers, General's Watercolor Pencils, Micron

*I did not realize that snapdragons are deer and rabbit resistant and promptly asked HWNSNBP to pick some up at the nursery when he went.  He brought home some beautiful pink ones and we shall see if they make it.

3/61 - Lyrics

Stabilo Markers

I chose the song based on what I thought I could draw and combined the sunshine on a rainbow lollipop.  Who remembers - 1) who originally sang this song; 2) what movie it came from; 3) who wrote the music?  Answers at the end of this post.

4/61 - Snow Globe

Stabilo Markers

These are snowflake seeds for the snowglobes.

5/61 - Verdigris

Acrylic Paint, Copper Paint Pen, Micron Marker, White Gel Pen

Lesson learned from this one is to use your art supplies when you buy them and don't hoard them away.  I recently came upon a bunch of metallic paint pens in my craft room I had forgotten about and knew that there were copper ones in there, so I grabbed them and this pre-prepared card to take with me for the weekend.  Both of the pens still rattled when shaken, but the fineliner wouldn't flow.  I was able to load the tip of the fineliner with ink from the tip of the thicker one to be able to complete this.  I'm wondering if the silver and gold ones will behave the same.

6/61 - Canoe or Kayak

Micron Pen, General's Watercolor Pencils

Based on a photo that I took last spring.

7/61 - Twist

I used cardmaking scraps to make a twisted one-staple collage on another pre-pared card.

I've mentioned pre-pared cards above a couple of times.  What I did for those was to squeeze some blobs of acrylic paint onto the cards and then I used a used gift card to smear the paint around on the cards.  I had ordered these heavy duty index cards on Amazon based on a recommendation from another ICADian.  They hold up pretty well with wet media.  A little messy but effective.

*Answers:  1)  Lesley Gore; 2) Ski Party (Although if you Google it it will say Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs); 3) Marvin Hamlisch.

It's All About the Blue

Whilst weeding and listening to the bluebirds in the trees around me, my eye caught another flash of blue.  There in the weedy daffodil border, on the path to the front porch were these beautiful, bright blue flowers that I remembered seeing in a wildflower guide.  This is called blue-eyed grass and it's a member of the iris family.  I had never seen them in our yard before.  There were about 5 or 6 little bunches - I won't call them clumps yet.  Looking out into the grass next to the path there was another stray one.  So I decided to gather them all so they didn't fall victim to the spin-trimmer and replant them on the other side of the path in with the landscaping because when I read up on them, they are used as perennials and actually can be bought in clumps.  It was a breezy afternoon when I was doing this and though I took quite a few pictures, this was the clearest one.  Can you see the stem and leaves and how they do resemble irises?  The flower is about the size of a dime for reference.  I can't wait to see if they will become clumps in the future.

And of course there would be bluebirds in a post about blue.

Here is Mama Blue taking a break from brooding her second clutch of 6 eggs. 

One of the babies from the first clutch is still begging to be fed.  Mom goes into the worm feeder, but it's up to dad to feed that little beggar.

The day before HWNWNBP saw all four of the first clutch there trying to vie for their parent's attention but this particular time there was only one juvenile.  As I watched this little scene it appeared that the father had a little lesson planned for the youngster.  While he did put worms directly into the baby's mouth he also purposely dropped some worms on the ground and coaxed the baby to go down and get them itself. 

I posted these pictures on our local Facebook nature page and was questioned (politely) why we used live mealworms when the dried ones were less expensive.  We typically use the live worms during the summer when there are babies to be fed and mom needs dad to bring her food while she's brooding.  HWNSNBP puts out a little early in the day and then again at the end of the day - each time when the feeder is mostly in the shade.  We will switch over to the dried worms when they're done with their breeding season.    HWNSNBP orders the mealworms by the 1,000's (there is a video somewhere on this blog showing how he unpacks them when they arrive).  He keeps them in a vented plastic shoebox with oatmeal and a slice of potato as a source of food.  And the box is kept down in our basement.  

Taking care of the birds is an investment in time and money, but if you look at it as a source of entertainment, which we do, it is worth it. 

More Than Turtles

These pictures from the last couple of weeks are a bit out of order but I wanted to share something other than Christmas cards so far this month.  

Friday night, after the rain had blown through for the trip down to the condo, and after a visit with my friend J it didn't look like the sky in the back was going to offer any color as all the pink clouds seemed to be over the bay and fading fast.  I decided to go out and sit on the back porch anyway to listen to the evening sounds in between the drone of the air conditioners.  Then this happened.  That dark cloud on the horizon split the sky in two.

Memorial Day weekend was a bit of a wash out as far as helping our friends on LBI do their planting, but those of us that arrived on Friday did get a round of miniature golf in before the rain started.  I won't say who's who but the winning order was yellow, purple, pink, blue, green.

This black-crowned night heron had been hanging out in that tree for several hours that day.  There was another one in the reeds not too far from the tree. There is a little channel of water in that area that we sometimes see birds diving into at certain times of the day.  It depends on what's in the water that they're interested in we're assuming.  

This Saturday we decided to go on a turtle hunt down Seven Bridges Road in Tuckerton.  There were turtle crossing signs everywhere and we did see a couple of them.  But I didn't get many pictures of them as there were cars either in front or behind us although we all waited for them to cross the road.  So we also focused on finding some birds on either side of the marsh.  It was easier to pull over to let the cars go around us to take pictures.  And it also helped that we were in the truck this time and higher up so I could above the grasses that were growing alongside the road.

This is a Glossy Ibis

We were alone on the road for this one.

Strange to see these three different varieties of birds together in the same place.  A couple of egrets and a heron.  

A car going over the bridge nearby spooked them a bit as I was snapping pics.

And then we all went on our merry way.

 

Jingle Belles - Bringing the Bling

A rainy Sunday enabled me to get another card done for this challenge.  We're still adding bling to our cards as per the Jingle Belles.  This card's main focal point is repurposed from a Christmas card that we received.  I saved the little scene to use at a later date and this happens to be that date.  I used some metallic paint to highlight the areas on the back panel as they were more of a tan color.  Then I added a piece of decorative gold embossed paper that was in a package that I found in my stash recently.  And I picked up that jeweled strip at The $Tree along the way.

Yes, the weeds are calling me again, but I will be back later tonight to visit all the sparkly entries and leave some love.  You can too by clicking here.