Freshly Made Sketches 387

We've got a great new sketch for you at Freshly Made Sketches this week.  Our hostess is Cécile and her designs always make me swoon! 

True confession:  I was trying to be a bit artsy with my card so that I could keep it one layer and play along with the challenge at Less is More.  The problem I found was that aspect ratio of the images was all wrong!  The vertical images were too long and the floral image was too small!  So I started again with more disastrous results involving graduation images I bought on Etsy.  After a few ideas I gave up and decided to go with my original card!  And a special bonus is that I can join in the "Mother" challenge at CASology as well as the challenge at Try Stampin' On Tuesday where I did a bit of masking to make sure that my flower was nestled in with the vertical stripes.

Thanks for stopping by!  My Freshly Made Sketches teamies have made some fabulous cards this week to inspire you to play along with us.  I hope we'll see you in the gallery!

Supplies
Stamps:  Painted Flowers (Altenew); Mixed Media Elements (Stamplorations); Keep It Simple Mother (Papertrey Ink)
Paper:  Solar White Neenah)
Ink:  Smoky Slate, Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose (Stampin' Up!); Nocturne (Versafine Clair)

Happy Holidays, TSOT144

I have been procrastinating about making my Christmas cards this year and I don't really know why.   But now that we are nearly half-way through November mild panic has begun to set in.  I've got a half-formed plan to set aside a few days next week to concentrate on Christmas and to get me in the mood I made this card last night.

The layout for this comes from the new sketch at Try Stampin' on Tuesdays.  It's got a tag on it and it's no secret that tags get me every time so I just had to play along!  I paper pieced some Christmas trees using one of the images from Jolly Holiday and stamped the sentiment from Christmas Magic on the banner.

After a bit of a cold snap the temperatures are expected to go back into the high fifties towards the end of the week.  This is great news because I really need to get the vegetable garden cleaned up for the winter and I hate working outside when it's cold.  It's also great news because I hate winter and I'm not ready for it yet!

Supplies:

Stamps:  Jolly Holiday, Christmas Magic (The Alley Way Stamps)

Paper:  Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive, Very Vanilla, Silver Glimmer (SU)

Ink:  Pitch Black (Adirondack), Onyx Black (Versafine)

Accessories:  Tag Me die (Reverse Confetti); Season of Style washi, Crumb Cake seam binding ribbon (SU); Classic Scallop Small, Classic Circle small (Spellbinders)

BE Inspired 40

It's time for another BE Inspired challenge at The Alley Way Stamps blog!  This week the inspiration photo got all my Halloween juices flowing!

Of course, after seeing the inspiration photo I had to ink up some images from Ghoul Friend and added a bit of spider web embossing for that extra spooky factor.  As an aside I embossed the sentiment and as I always do when I'm working with embossing powder I ran my Embossing Buddy over the cardstock first.  Well it left this cool dusty trail over the embossed spider web so I decided to really play that up by doing some extra taps and swirls of the Embossing Buddy over the web to create the look you see here.  I think it highlights the web nicely!  The layout for my card comes from the latest challenge at Try Stampin' On Tuesday.

Now for the best part about playing along with the BE Inspired challenge:  PRIZES!  It's simple to win.  All you have to do is  play along with the challenge using an image from The Alley Way Stamps.  And if you don't have any stamps you can find FREEBIES here!  One lucky person will be hand picked and one person will be randomly chosen and each will win a free stamp set!

I hope you have a chance to play along.  Good luck!

CCMC206 and Try Stampin' On Tuesday 70

When great color challenges and sketch challenges collide I am one happy stamper!  Such is the case with the color challenge at Create With Connie and Mary and the sketch challenge at Try Stampin' On Tuesday.

I stamped the Cherry Cobbler layer randomly with one of the stamps from French Foliage.  The sentiment is from Word Play and the butterfly is from Summer Solstice. I thought that something was missing from my initial design so I tied some Cherry Cobbler baker's twine around the skinny Crumb Cake layer and added a little Crumb Cake button.  Just what the doctor ordered I think!

Thanks for stopping by!

CCMC197 and Try Stampin' On Tuesday 61

I don't remember how I stumbled on it, but I found a challenge blog called Try Stampin' on Tuesday that I have never participated in before.  They have a sketch this week that is pretty nifty, so I combined it with the color challenge at Create With Connie and Mary.

Connie and Mary have created a color challenge that includes Concord Crush which is one of the colors retiring in just a few short weeks.  Since I've been trying (somewhat sporadically) to use up these retiring colors, I find this very thoughtful of them!

I used this color with a little DSP from Lap of Luxury.  I actually didn't like this paper pack all that much, except for this particular sheet of Concord Crush.  It's got this wonderful leafy design that you can see a hint of in the photo.  The flower from Raining Flowers is stamped in Marina Mist.  I stamped off on the bottom layer to give it a bit more contrast with the top one.

Earlier today I went to a ceremony honoring my father.  He has been involved with his local VFW for about 50 years and today the VFW dedicated and named their meeting room for him.  He didn't know that this was happening - he thought he was going to a fund raiser!  Instead what he got was a dinner and ceremony with about 90 people.  It was quite an emotional day for him.  We're so proud of him and happy that he was acknowledged for his dedication and service.

Thanks for stopping by!