May Cards

There were a few occasions that sprung up this month along with a birthday.  I've been trying to go through some of the stuff in my stamp/craft room and have been distracted by some of the things that I've found that I put away for when I had "more time".  Well, now I just have to focus the time that I now have on getting some of that stuff used up.  One of the things that I came across was a bin of Stampin' Up Paper Pumpkin kits that I had unboxed and had in clear plastic bags just waiting to be put together.  These first three cards are from one of those kits.  I put my spin on how they were put together and didn't follow the plans from the kit.

I wanted to send some good wishes to a friend recovering from foot surgery.

And these were sympathy cards. 

This birthday card was made with the new Greetery BotaniCut Tulips and Market Basket dies.  I added the detail to the tulips with my Inktense pencils. 

I hope that these tulips still had some depth to them after going through the mail.  I did stick some dimensionals under the petals in the hope that they wouldn't get flattened.  I love this Market Baskets die also from The Greetery.  It has three sizes and you have the option of adding a liner or just using the basket alone.  I can see it filled with lots of things for different occasions.  And there is a little stamp set with sentiments to add to the label should you wish to add it.  

I almost forgot to mention that the background is made from The Greetery's Shiplap Builder die done in all white.  I am looking forward to using this some more particularly for masculine cards.

August Cards

I had a few sympathy cards to make this month that I was going to post and then I remembered that there was a new baby card that I hadn't finished.  I saw this sketch from The Paper Players and knew if I dug around in my stash I could find some patterned paper that would work with this cute Crafter's Companion Popcorn the Bear image I had been planning to color.  

Thanks to LeAnne for a great sketch this week.

I used my Derwent Inktense Pencils to color the image.  I stamped "little one"  from an SU set and used a circle die to cut it out.  Then I added some dimensionals to pop it up.  

The sympathy cards were very simple and I made a couple of this first one to have on hand.  Unfortunately, family friends lost two members of their family this month so I quickly put together another one below.  

Be sure to stop over at the Paper Players to see all the other PP505 Sketch Challenge entries.  

Sympathy and Get Well Wishes -

Boy, this has been quite a year so far hasn't it!  I've lost two cousins, a great aunt, an aunt, and my sister since the beginning of January and I'm kind of hoping that I don't have to make any more sympathy cards for a long time.  

One of our school nurses fell at school a couple of weeks ago and had to have surgery to fix her broken leg.  There is a shortage of school nurses already which makes not having her in the district ever so much more of a challenge.  I thought I'd send her a card to cheer her up.  

Tonight we were notified that tomorrow will be the last day of school for our students until April 14th.  Our teachers are using Monday and Tuesday to prepare remote class lessons.  What this means for those of us who work in the office is yet to be determined.  There's only so much of my job that can be done remotely.  I'll keep you updated.  

In the meantime, make sure to wash your hands and keep your hands away from your face.  And let's all hope that these quarantine practices will slow down this virus.  

With Sympathy (CASE)

I used the spotlighting technique to make a couple of sympathy cards I needed this week with a stamp set from Concord & 9th called Wildflower.  I had seen a similar card on Pinterest here.

I colored the two cards differently.  The first coloring the whole image except for the spotlight and the second spotlighting the color only.  I added some gel pen raindrops or tears.  I actually made two sets of these cards, one in purple and the other in blue/turquoise.  I didn't add any sentiment to the blue ones yet so they could be used for any occasion.  

I got some return mail this week in the form of half of a Christmas card that we sent out.  I was able to figure out who it went to by the partial address that was on the envelope, but if there hadn't been enough of that, I could have consulted my excel sheet for the picture.  There was a ribbon on that card and the knot from the bow must have gotten caught in the cancellation machine.  This makes me wonder at what condition some of my other bulkier cards arrive in.  

A Couple of Recent Cards

Get Well for the Little Guy and an Anniversary

Our  little guy had a little procedure recently so I made him a couple of cards.  I just loved this little dinosaur stamp because it reminded me of his costume from Halloween last year.  

This pig stamp is interactive, though it's probably still a little hard for his little hands to figure out. The wings flap when you pull the tab.  (Of course you know I had to have this flying pig!)

His mom sent us this little video of him.  He melts my heart.  (And yes, we're currently grandpa grandpa.)

Shortly after that our son and daughter-in-law celebrated their 6th anniversary.  I played around with some Color Burst powders and used them with this new leaf die that I recently got.  Paired that with the bow die which has longer tails that actually end in snowflakes, but I cut it down and replaced the snowflakes with 6 hearts.  

I did one more card with that leaf but sadly, it was a sympathy card.  

April Fool's Day - My Big Fat Card Boo Boo Blog Hop

Darnell at djkardkreations is hosting a blog hop today featuring cards that might have made you feel like an April Fool because of a boo boo you made creating it.  Goodness knows that mistakes have been made and cards have been discarded, but there was this one...............

It wasn't an ugly card.  I like the colors.  The problem was that this was intended to be used as a sympathy card.  And I was going to use it that way until I started fixating on those three punched shapes......... lined up in a row........... side-by-side............. just like..................... headstones!  Looking back on my blog post, my daughter agreed with me (and so did one of my commenters).  Yeah - who would send something that looked like a cemetery as a sympathy card!  I think it's still in my box of cards - just can't get past those headstones..... for any occasion.

Don't forget to check out the other Boo Boo's at

djkardkreations

Card Catch Up For March

With spring on the way I was glad to use some softer colors for these cards.  Three different occasions - sympathy, birthday, and bridal shower.  My stamp cave is all topsy turvy but seriously, I just cannot bring myself to buy a card.  Not because I think my cards are better than any I could buy but because I have so much invested in supplies that ........get the picture!  And, while I have been cleaning out, I am finding all sorts of good things that I'd forgotten I had, like this heart die,

and this stamp set with the spring wreath, and

this embossing folder that it seemed like I waited forever to come in.  

I spent a few hours, yes hours, on Saturday afternoon sorting paper - cardstock scraps.  Scraps.  All sizes and shapes of scraps. I have to question whether I'm being frugal or a hoarder?  Am I being green by reusing or should I be adding to the recycle bin? What I have come to realize is that it is much easier to have ideas and spend time buying supplies than to actually find the time to put all those ideas in motion.  I can only hope that by getting this room, this stamp cave, this craft studio organized that I can focus on being more creative and more stress free.

Catching Up With Some Cards

I think my card mojo must have been on a winter break or something.  These are cards that I made during the month of February.  Hopefully some warmer weather will be a little more inspiring.

The card above and the one below are both made with the same card base but for whatever reason I just could not get the bottom one to photograph with the same color.  IRL it was better looking though not by much.

I thought I might try watercoloring this image and decided to use my Derwent Inktense pencils.  It's when I got to the backgrounds that this went awry.  What a mess!

I do like the way this birthday card turned out though I might have used a bolder color for the blossom.  

And another sympathy card without any stamping.

January Sympathy

Our family circle grew a little smaller recently, but this card is for one of our PTO mom's who recently lost her mother to complications from MS.  I have had the pleasure to work with this lady for the past year and a half.  She has a tremendous amount of knowledge and energy when it comes to planning school activities and I was so sad to hear that her mom passed away.

I used some new dies and a monochromatic color scheme for this with just a touch of color with the green.  

October

Inspired by a photo posted by the Sunflower Maze we visited last month. Someone was lucky enough to catch a migrating Monarch butterfly smack dab on the center of a giant sunflower.  Drawn and colored with my new Luminance colored pencils.  My poor lighting picked up all the texture of the paper.  IRL it looks much better.

I can't believe that September is already behind us.  It was a busy month for me in almost every way except creatively.  My mojo has been on vacation I fear. I'm having a difficult time dealing with what might be called a professional cyber shaming which has affected my focus and I need to pull myself out of this funk that's blanketed me the past couple of weeks. I read somewhere recently that it's none of our business what other people think of us, but it sure is hard to ignore it when they put their thoughts into writing and you see it and you know others have seen it.  And the silence of some of those others, the one's closest to you, is just as devastating.  And then there's finding out about that one person who feels the need to share what they've seen with those who haven't. Not to worry, this has nothing to do with my blog, and I've done nothing morally wrong to be ashamed of.  I just never in my life ever expected to have a public job evaluation (with both negative and positive input) that I didn't ask for and that I can't rebut.  I really need to refocus on more pleasant and pleasing things.

It's going to be a rainy weekend here and we won't be traveling as we have every weekend since June, so I plan to get to some new crafting supplies that have entered the realm of the stamp cave. Hopefully, that will get me going again.  And there's a personal photo challenge involving some local sights that we've been saving for the fall, so if the sun does come out on Sunday we might start that.  

I did manage to put together a sympathy card that HWNSNBP needed for a co-worker.  I tried the camouflage technique on the vanilla panel.  Not exactly what I had hoped for, probably because I was working from memory of something I read a while back rather than following explicit directions, but it didn't come out bad enough not to be able to use it.  He included a very touching note to his colleague's wife.   

The temperature here has dropped into the 40's but it looks like we've dodged the hurricane (knock on wood).   So I'll leave you with this little conversation I had with a teacher yesterday:

Teacher on the phone:  Did you hear that we're going to have a hurricane this weekend?  Hurricane Wayne.

Me:  Yes, but it's Hurricane Joaquin.

Teacher: Oh is that it!  Hahahahahaha.  (Then she asked me for something.)

Same teacher 10 minutes later in the office during her prep period:

Teacher to me:  Why didn't you correct me when I told you about the hurricane?

Me:  I did.  I told you the name is Joaquin not Wayne.

Teacher:  Yes, but you didn't tell me that it was spelled with a "J".

Me:  Well, do you remember hearing about all of the other storms we would have had to get us to the letter "W"?

Teacher:  That's exactly what another teacher and I were talking about.  We thought we missed all those storms over the summer and then we looked it up on the internet and saw how it was spelled.  I learned something today.

Me:  So did I. (And she did laugh at that.)

Covering the Bases This Week

I was inspired to do the Valentangle above using all heart-related tangles....Heartstrings, Lolo, Heart Divided, Heart Box, Heartfully, and some Mooka hearts.  Then I used my Prismacolor pencils to add color.  It's been extremely cold here and today we have a snow day, though I think they called it too soon.  It started out with a delayed opening and then changed it to closed, but it stopped snowing much earlier than I think they expected - there's only about 3 inches out there.  So now we'll be giving back a day from Spring Break.

Sadly, our daughter-in-law lost her grandfather earlier this weekend.  It's hard losing someone you've been so close with and who has loved you so unconditionally all your life.  So I sat down yesterday to make a couple of cards for her and her family.  Though I never feel I have the right words at times like this.  

Also this week is my son's birthday.  Yes, he's making me feel very old.  And this card below is very lame I fear.  Dare I say that I was running out of mojo at this point.  Still, I know he'll like it because it was made specially for him. 

Now, let me get my biking done because I'll have to get these in the mailbox today and I don't want to waste this gift of a day off!

November Card Catch Up

This card above and below was made for a friend of ours who celebrated his 60th birthday this month.  Part of our Table 7 crew and the last of the men to reach 60.  That means the ladies are next starting in March.  It will be another year to celebrate 60 years.  

I used the retiform technique to be able to use different themes that depicted his interests.  And it was bigger than normal to accommodate all that - 8" x 8".  

And sadly I had to make a sympathy card this month for some friends whose adult children had a car accident and one of them didn't make it.  How my heart is aching for them.  They are friends of my daughter and we've known them for a long time and they're still kids to me.  I can't even begin to imagine what their family is going through and I really didn't have the words.

A blogging friend recently had double knee replacement surgery and since she always makes me smile with her humorous and poignant posts, I sent her a box of sunshine. (I hope you're seeing a honey colored card and not the intense greenish gold that I am seeing.  Don't know if it's the camera or my computer?)

Okay, it's time to count the Christmas cards in my box and see how many more I need to create.  Luckily, thanks to the Jingle Belles challenges I am way ahead of where I would be if I hadn't taken part this year.  One more challenge this week and we'll be done until January.

Is it Okay to Wear White After Labor Day? Well......

that's not really the question.  Is it okay to use pastel colors on cards after Labor Day?  I guess most people wouldn't think about that, but it did cross my mind this week as I was working on some cards that I needed.  Then I thought about the cards that you would see in the card or grocery stores and they pretty much have pastels for various occasions all year round.  So I think I answered my own question.  

In any case, the sympathy card below was for a co-worker who lost her mother (and, I've come to find out her mother-in-law) in the last week.  What a sad time for their families.  

This card, on the other hand was made for my mother for her birthday coming up this week.  And after I finished it I had second thoughts about the colors thinking that it looked too spring-like .....

so I made another one with more fall-like colors.  

She liked it.  And I guess, since I didn't put a sentiment on the first one, I'll have a nice card to use in the spring for any occasion.  So add this to the advantages of making your own cards - you don't have to settle for pastels year-round, you can choose your own colors and design them for any season.