Month: October 2020

 

Good Thursday morning everyone, and welcome once again to our Happy Inkin’ Thursday Blog Hop! It has been a chilly week here in the heartland, but today is WARMER, as in summer warmer. However, it won’t last 😦 as temperatures tomorrow are predicted to be lower by 30 degrees!

Today we have for you a color challenge, or, inspiration as I prefer to call it. We are instructed to use a minimum of three of these colors.

You probably took one look and knew what I am making. Yup, Christmas. How did you guess?

My friend Mary, who is also hopping today, did a fun fold recently that I am also using as inspiration for my card. Go here to see that inspiration card, and a video detailing the steps. I could see no point in re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, when her video shows it all.

This card is not at all what I had in my mind’s eye before I actually started the card. I wanted to use plaid and the Poinsettia Petals bundle, but the colors dictated otherwise. None of the plaids matched up with the colors in today’s challenge, so I simply switched paper and stamp sets.

All products used for this card and card cuts are below. So, let’s get going! 

I began with a card base of Garden Green and some of the lovely Poinsettia Place Designer Series Paper. Actually, I used two of them, the wood grain and the pine cones. I think this matches up perfectly with the Peaceful Boughs stamp set and Beautiful Boughs dies.

I started with a Soft Suede mat, which is also the ‘fold’ part of ‘fun fold’. Over this I used Liquid Glue to adhere the wood grain Poinsettia Place Designer Series Paper as well as the folded up flap. The inside of the flap is the Pine Cone paper. Liquid Glue was used to adhere this to the card front.

The smaller card is a Soft Suede base (also acting as a mat) with the Pine Cone Poinsettia Place DSP on the front and on the inside. The Pine Cone paper is also on the inside (when it is folded up) of the flap

Adhere all DSP panels to their respective backgrounds with Liquid Glue. Adhere the small card on the card front with the fold folding up over it.

Decorate the front of the small card with 2 die cuts of the larger pine bough and one of the single bough, 3 die cut pine cones (all from Beautiful Boughs), one red berry branch from Poinsettia dies, and one stamped and die cut pine cone. I also used a length of Linen Thread wound behind the sentiment.

Stamp the sentiment from Peaceful Nativity in Real Red and use the smaller die from Beautiful Boughs to cut it out. Use your Old Olive Stampin’ Write Marker to make a line around the edge of the sentiment piece. Mine is a squiggly, broken line but you can make it look like stitches if you like.

Dry fit all the elements and when you are satisfied with the arrangement, begin adhering with Liquid Glue. The large pine cone and sentiment piece are adhered with Stampin’ Dimensionals.

For the inside of the small card, use the small pine cone stamp in Peaceful Boughs and stamp off the Soft Suede Ink once before stamping your Whisper White panel. Over this stamp the sentiment from Peaceful Nativity in Real Red.

Inside the large card, on a Whisper White panel, stamp the pine bough from Peaceful Boughs in stamped off once Old Olive. Stamp two small pine cones in stamped off once Soft Suede. The sentiment is also from the Peaceful Boughs stamp set and is stamped in Real Red. This panel was cut with the largest Stitched Rectangles die. Liquid Glue adheres this to a Soft Suede mat and into the card base.

The papers, card stock and inks were all looking brown and green and I wanted a pop of color. I didn’t think the Bumblebee was quite right, but the Real Red adds some relief.

I really like this style of card, and it is much easier than it looks.

To finish, I stamped a full strength Old Olive pine bough on the front of the envelope and used more of the Designer Series Paper on the flap.

Now, I still will make the one I originally intended with the plaids, so maybe next week you can look for that.

A BONUS for you, if you like the lovely Designer Series Papers that Stampin’ Up! has. Many of them are on sale until the end of the month at 15% off. This is a very good deal, so get yours while they last.

Now on with the hop. You know the drill…click next, or any name to hop to a blog. Please leave comments below. If you do not have a demonstrator and wish to re-create this card, you may click on the button that says ‘Shop with me Online’ to go to my store.

Amy Koenders

Mary Deatherage

Kristi Gray

Jaimie Babarczy

Sue Prather

Karen Finkle

Akiko Sudano

Karen Ksenzakovic

Julie Johnston-You are Here

 

CARD CUTS: Garden Green: card base 4 1/4″ x 11″ scored at 5 1/2″, pine boughs 3″ x 5″; Soft Suede: fold up mat 4″ x 7 12″, scored at 5 1/4″,  small card base 3 1/4″ x 8″ scored at 4″, mat for inner liner on card base 4″ x 5 1/4″, pine cones 2″ x 8″; Whisper White: large inner liner 4 1/8″ x 5 3/8″, liner small card 3 1/8″ x 3 7/8″, front sentiment 1 1/2″ x 2 1/2″; Old Olive: pine bough 3″ x 3″; Real Red: berry branch 2″ x 2″; Poinsettia Place Designer Series Paper: large front panel 3 7/8″ x 5 1/8″, fold up flap 2 1/8″ x 3 7/8″ (one in wood grain, one in pine cones) front and inside of small card 3 1/8″ x 3 7/8″

Product List

Good Monday morning everyone. There is no card on today’s post, so if you are looking for that you can stop reading right now.

Instead, I bring you another of my paper creations. Well, sort of. I made the photographic images and put together a calendar, then sent it off to the printer. I guess that qualifies as my creation, even if I don’t do my own printing.

Here is an image of the cover

The calendar is 12″ x 12″ with 13 different images. There are fun facts about woodpeckers also. I had so much fun taking these images and as much as I love photography, I also love putting those images together for a practical purpose.

I know, you can get free calendars anywhere, so why would you want to buy one? I would hope that it would be that you like my images, and want a few for yourself. There is no pressure to buy, I just want to let you know that they are available.

These top quality, spiral bound calendars will be ready on November 8, plenty of time to get them as gifts or for yourself. The cost is just $20 each with special pricing if you purchase 3 or more. Shipping is $5.

Here is an image of the back, showing all the woodpeckers included.

Yesterday I went birding with a friend and we found 43 different species, including 4 of the ones on this calendar. However, those particular individuals are not on this calendar! 

Iowa has 7 of the woodpecker family. They are: Pileated, Red-headed, Red-bellied, Downey, and Hairy Woodpeckers, and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Northern Flicker (yellow-shafted). All are present on this calendar. The others are from Canada, Minnesota, and Arizona. I have a few other woodpecker images, but there are only 12 months in a year.

Although, I guess I could have made an 18 month calendar. Maybe next time, since I didn’t even think of that for 2021.

In addition to the photography and making the calendar, I have been busy of late doing quite a bit of canning. One of my daughters and her husband grow and weed the garden, and pick the produce. I do the canning. They freeze some of it, but I process the bulk of the vegetables. I froze peaches and strawberries this year too, and made peach and strawberry jam. The jars look like jewels on the shelf. I enjoy doing that and do not like to weed and pick. This arrangement works well for all concerned.

We didn’t need corn this year, but did need green beans, tomatoes and beets. I have another daughter and 3 granddaughters who also share in the canned goods, so it takes quite a bit produce for canning. We are at the end of the garden now, but when I finish with the last picking of tomatoes and green beans, there will still be pears to can.

A friend has a pear tree and they couldn’t use all the pears. As is the norm in Iowa, people give away most of their excess, so I was the fortunate recipient of 10 buckets of pears. My son-in-law and John, the tree owner, picked them, while I sorted through the ones that had fallen. That’s a lot of peeling folks!

This year the problem was jars and lids. Due to the Covid19 Pandemic early this spring, more people grew gardens and, perhaps for the first time ever, did some canning. The result has been a severe shortage of jars and lids.

I have always saved my jars (I have been canning since the 60s) but the lids are not re-usable. I usually have a few leftover from the previous year, but never enough for all the canning. It has been a struggle to have enough to do all that I wanted (needed) to do, but over the summer we have managed to scrounge up enough so far.

Here are a few of the items I have canned.

Left to right, front Beet Pickles, Tomato Sauce, Dilled Beans. Back Row: Soup vegetables, Lime Water Pickles and Vegetable Stock. I also canned sweet pickle relish, salsa, tomatoes and green peppers, green beans, beets and whole tomatoes.

The Soup veggies got their start in the 60s when, at the close of the growing season, I just threw everything left in the garden into the jars and called it “end of the garden soup”.

I grew everything back in those days, and now my daughter sometimes does. Sometimes I end up purchasing one or more of the veggies to add to the mix. Most of this years’ 40 quarts contain green beans, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes. Everyone in the family loves this as it makes a quick meal as is, or with the vegetable stock,chicken or beef broth added along with your choice (or not) of meat. Sometimes I add hamburger or stew meat, sometimes chicken or turkey, sometimes sausage or ham. It makes a really quick meal and is SO good on a cold winter day!

To go along with all the canned goods, the zucchini and yellow squash were prolific this year (aren’t they always?), so I made many, many loaves of zucchini bread and froze it. All of it will be so welcome this winter.

I know this is not my usual post, but sometimes change is a good thing. I hope you all have a great Monday. If you are interested in a calendar, please comment or private message me.

Thanks for stopping by!

Good Thursday to you all! We’re back! Well, we, being the Happy Inkin’ Krew, are always here on Thursday to bring you some inspiration for your cardmaking. At least, that is the hope.

Today we are working with PLAID as our theme challenge, so come on along and see what the outstanding, awesome and talented Krew has for you.

Inspiration and challenge

I also wanted to use the sketch from Sunday Stamps Challenge even though I knew their challenge would close before our hop so I couldn’t enter this card. No worries, I just like the design, and thought it was great for plaid. I did fudge it a bit, but I guess that is what a challenge is supposed to do…challenge us to adapt any challenge to our own parameters. Here is the design that challenged, and inspired, me:

And here is my card.

I chose a plaid from Plaid Tidings Designer Series Paper (page 57 in the Aug-Dec mini catalog) with fall colors because I wanted to make this a Thanksgiving card without actually saying Thanksgiving. This Pumpkin Pie, Bumblebee, Shaded Spruce and Rich Razzleberry plaid does just that. And, it gave me the colors to use for this card. That is the nice thing about Designer Series Papers-your color scheme is right there for you. And, by the way, a good selection of Designer Series Papers are on sale now at 15% off!

I want to say here that I would not normally choose to use these colors in a card, but I let the plaid dictate the colors. My usual choice would be browns, golds and oranges with some metallic thrown in. It is good to be challenged to get out of what could be a rut.

My card base is Rich Razzleberry with a front layer of Rich Razzleberry embossed in the leaf design Meadow Moments embossing folder, which is adhered to the base with Liquid Glue. This embossing folder is narrow, so I had to run it through twice to get both sides of the front. I chose it because it reminds me of falling leaves, appropriate for this time of year.

The plaid, as are all pieces that are matted, is adhered to a Basic Black mat with Liquid Glue. The next layer of Bumblebee Designer Series Paper from the In-Color 2020-2022 6″ x 6″ pack in the wood grain is also on a black mat. The two small strips of plaid, from Plaid Tidings in Bumblebee, are the last of the pieces with a black mat. Liquid Glue was used to adhere all these pieces to each other. All card cuts will be found below.

One of the liberties I took with the Sunday Stampers design was to cut the plaid pieces smaller to showcase the embossed card front.

I very lightly sponged a piece of Pumpkin Pie card stock with Rich Razzleberry and Shaded Spruce ink for a little dimension, then stamped the large leaf from the Gather Together Bundle in Pumpkin Pie, and cut it with the coordinating die in the bundle. Also from Pumpkin Pie card stock I cut the tri-leaf image found in the Nature’s Roots dies and embossed it with the embossing piece in the die set. I then very lightly sponged it with Shaded Spruce ink. One of the 3 leaves is tucked under the sentiment circle.

Two small leaves in Nature’s Roots dies were cut and embossed from Rich Razzleberry, as well as a leafy branch found in the Birds and More dies. Using this same leafy branch die, I cut another from the woodgrain Bumblebee DSP left from cutting the front panel. There is a small leaf in Rooted in Nature stamp set that I used to stamp in Shaded Spruce on yet another Bumblebee  In-color 2020-2022 DSP design. It was cut with the coordinating die from Nature’s Roots. The last piece of my leafy collage was cut with a die from Stitched Leaves after I sponged a panel of the Bumblebee Plaid (same as the strips) with Pumpkin Pie, Shaded Spruce and Rich Razzleberry. When real leaves turn color, they are seldom just one color and I was attempting to make this look less plaid, and more like a fall leaf. I think I succeeded and the plaid gives depth where a plain color under the sponging would not.

The sentiment, from Gather Together, was stamped on Whisper White in Pumpkin Pie, then cut with one of the Stitched Shapes circles. The leafy branch stamped in Shaded Spruce is from Rooted in Nature stamp set. In hind sight, which as we all know is 20-20, I think I should have used Very Vanilla for the sentiment circle. You can do as you like.

I dry fit everything until it looked pleasing to me, took a photo with my phone, ‘cuz I KNEW I would forget what I wanted it to look like,  and started to adhere the bits and pieces together. I used a combination of Liquid Glue and Stampin’ Dimensionals to accomplish this. The sentiment circle is adhered with Stampin’ Dimensionals.

The inside Whisper White liner was stamped with the large leaf from Gather Together in twice stamped off Pumpkin Pie. I wanted this to be light enough to see the sentiment stamped over it. The sentiment is from the same stamp set and is stamped in Rich Razzleberry. I didn’t really want to use a large chunk of the precious plaid as a mat, but thought Whisper White on Pumpkin Pie rather plain. There was a scrap of the plaid just laying there, so I used the same small leaf die from Nature’s Roots as I used for the Shaded Spruce/Bumblebee leaf on the front to cut leaves from the scrap. These were Liquid Glued to the corners of the Whisper White, adding just a bit of needed OOMPH. This liner was then Liquid Glued to the Pumpkin Pie mat and into the card base. Card done.

NOT QUITE! In looking over the card front, it too needed something. I looked again at the challenge design and noticed the 3 dots between the strips. Good place for 3 Holiday Rhinestones in the Pumpkin Pie color. Perfect! Rhinestones and plaid? W-e-l-l, maybe a bit more glitz to tie them together? Hmmm. A good place for some Clear Wink of Stella on the Rich Razzleberry leaves. OK. NOW  the card is done!

The envelope front is graced with Shaded Spruce, Rich Razzleberry and Pumpkin Pie leaves. The flap has another piece of the fall plaid to finish the envelope. You know, no naked envelopes!

To shop for these products, just click on the bird at right that says Shop Online with Me. Clicking on individual products will take you directly to my online store.

Now, on with the hop! Click on this button to go to the next blog, or click on any name to go directly to her blog. You will like what you find, I assure you!

Amy Koenders

Mary Deatherage

Kristy Gray

Jaime Babarczy

Sue Prather

Karen Finkle

Akiko Sudano

Karen Ksenzakovic

Julie Johnston-You are here

CARD CUTS: Rich Razzleberry: card base 5 1/2″ x 8 1/4″ scored at 4 1/4″, embossed front 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″,  leaves and branch 3″ x 5″; Basic Black for plaid mat 3 1/2″ x 4 3/4″, woodgrain mat 2 1/4″ x 3 1/2″, mat for plaid strips one at 5/8″ x 3″ and one at 5/8″ x 1 5/8″; Pumpkin Pie large leaf 3″ x 3″, tri leaf 2″ x 2″, inside mat 3 3/4″ x 5″; plaid tidings Designer Series Paper: orange plaid 3 3/8″ x 4 5/8″, envelope flap  2 1/4″ x 6″, inside small leaves from scraps; Bumblebee plaid for strips, one at 1/2″ x 2 7/8″ and one at 1/2″ x 1 1 /2″, stitched leaf 2″ x 3″; In-color 2020-2022 Designer Series Paper: Bumblebee wood grain 2 1/8″ x 3 3/8″, branch 2″ x 3″, bumblebee allover design small leaf 1 1/2″ x 1 1/2″; Whisper White: sentiment circle 2″ x 2″

 

 

 

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