fall friend

There are a number of fall/leaf challenges at the moment and I wanted to make one to help celebrate the season that I'm going to miss this year (we're doing winter/spring/winter/spring with our international move later this year). So please, all of you in the northern hemisphere, please enjoy fall, because I've got to wait a long time before I get to hear the crunch of leaves.

I've used the background challenge that Karen created for Yvonne's blog, Do More With Less. I made this card already, so I borrowed from my previous card and used another brown paper bag as one of the layers. Hero Arts & Critter Challenge are celebrating fall, Stamp Simply is celebrating leaves. The Secret Saturday Crafter is celebrating CAS this week, my kinda style.

Materials: Hero Arts friend leaf stamp, Wooden stampers leaves, PTI kraft, Versacolor bamboo ink, Versacolor canary ink, brown twine, Fiskars rotary scallop cutter, green art paper from stash, brown paper bag

Time to relax!

I was inspired by Giesle's card to make a one layer male card for the Pals Paper Arts challenge (male and K.I.S.S). And since Susan took the week off from her one layer challenge this week I thought I'd branch out and enter this in Ted's Happily Ever Crafter and Stamp Simply's one layer challenges.

Materials: PTI kraft, PTI On the Couch stamp and sentiment, Stampin Up black ink, corner rounder punch

Come on over friend!

I love CAS cards, they make me smile and this PTI couch set is just far too much fun. I'm going to enter this in the Moxie Fab World Clean and Graphic Challenge (anyone know if there's a limit to how many times you can enter?). I'm also going to enter it in the Totally Stampalicious Best Friend challenge and the Stamp Simply 2 of anything challenge.

Materials: PTI couch and sentiment stamp, Stampin Up black ink, Stampin Up red designer paper

Bright summery flowers

Stamp Simply has the above sketch this week and I started out trying to follow it, and then went for a slightly different layout and tried to figure out how I could get back to the sketch. So I tried paper ribbon tabs. I used Dawn's W Plus 9 Woodgrain Silhouette flowers and it made me think of her lovely post all about ribbon last month, click here. I think ribbon might have looked better, but I didn't have any in the red/yellow/orange theme I was working on for Mark's Finest Papers Speedy Cat challenge. Jenny at Wee Memories is giving away a Lawn Fawn gift certificate (drool) for summer themed cards and while mine isn't hit you over your head summer, these colors do make think of warmth and sunshine, which is a nice alternative to my current cold and grey winter weather.

Materials: W Plus 9 Woodgrain Silhouette flower stamp, Versacolor Marigold ink, orange and yellow card stock from Spotlight, Stampin Up Red card stock, paper ribbon tabs

EBTKS tin foil cards

Everything But the Kitchen Sink is challenging folks to try to incorporate tin foil into their cards and I was a bit stuck. So I asked my husband for some input and I was pleasantly surprised to see that he got completely absorbed in the project. He even made a card! The best part of this family agenda was that after we left out all the scraps on the coffee table our 5 year old son decided he wanted to make a card too. The most precious thing of all was when I asked him what he wanted to do with the card and he said "I want to enter it in a card competition." How sweet! (Hum, starting to think perhaps I spend a bit too much time making cards! But if I can drag the family into a challenge or two once in awhile that might not be a bad idea?). We decided to make Christmas cards, a great way to celebrate our winter wonderland outside our window.

These are Ben's cards. I love how he put these pieces together. He even dipped the small punched snowflake on the right in blue ink.

This is Dan's card. He'll probably not like that I've posted this, but then again he doesn't read this blog!

Flourishes' Timeless Tuesday is for a Christmas card. Unscripted Sketches & Corrosive Challenge, Christmas All Year Round, Stamp Simply are celebrating Christmas in July. Stampendous is having any "anything challenge".

Materials: for my card: Stampendous snowflake stamp, silver ink, Kaiser stamp sentiment, snowflake punch, velum, tin foil, Making Memories silver eyelets, American Crafts red ribbon, E-1953 snowflake stamp

Yellow & Gray Friends

I'm not sure folks really want to hear all the details on how some of my cards come to life. I have a very non-linear train of thought and sometimes it's hard to follow along. I saw this lovely color inspiration challenge on Deb's Paper, Ink, Scissors, & Stamps blog and thought it was a great color combination. Then I was thinking about the current 2 Sketches 4 You sketch and wanted to do something with words, but then I printed the Hero Arts digital image too large. So somehow, the card turned out like it is- which is very similar to Deb's DT card... I didn't indeed it to be that way. Will have to try another version for the sketch challenge... but in the mean time here's a very CAS Friends card. Its for the Stamp Simply color challenge. And since it's got a quote about friends it'll work well for the Simon Says Stamps friends challenge. And while hunting for the right shade of grey I decided to recycle the cardboard that came in the card stock packet which works for the Cute Card Thursday recycle challenge. Hope the lovely folks at Cute Card Thursday don't get sick of me this week, such a great challenge!

Materials: Hero Arts digital friends sentiment, yellow card stock from Spotlight, Cardboard from card stock packet, Fiskars scallop rotary cutter

Polka dot cupcakes

This lovely brown card uses the Stamping 411 sketch and uses the theme "Sweet Stuff" for this week's Stamp Simply Challenge. I need help tying bows, not sure what my problem is, but they need work. Anyone got any tips?

Materials: Stampin Up Chocolate Chip card stock and designer papers, Studio G cupcakes, American Crafts ribbon, pop dots, can't remember the name of the orange and green paper....

Cherry Thank You

This cute cherry card is for Stamp Simply's Flying High and Proud Color Challenge, Red, white and blue.

Materials: Cosmo Cricket paper, Stampin Up thank you stamp and scallop punch

Butterfly Thank You

A simple card using the sketch from Card Patterns and putting the main message askew for the challenge on Stamp Simply Challenge #40. Hope Card Patterns doesn't mind that I chose to put two eyelets in each corner instead of one on each corner.