CAS - Colours and Sketches #58 (a/k/a dynamically blocked love)

4 Responses »
Jan 232014

Hello!  Today marks the beginning of another sketch challenge at CAS – Colours and Sketches.  This time Karen has us working with blocks – which really leaves a lot to the imagination as to how you want to use them!

I’ve decided to combine this challenge with the Dynamic Duos challenge that ends today.  They’re asking us to use soft shades of aqua and pink.  I’ve run some Pink Pirouette cardstock through an embossing folder for the bottom block of the sketch.  For the vertical block, I’ve chosen a piece of designer paper that’s Pool Party and Very Vanilla, and colored in the centers of the flowers with a pink marker to tie all the colors together.   I’ve used both colors to stamp the sentiment so that I could highlight the last word.  The blocks of color also work for the current CAS-ual Fridays challenge, and the pastel colors tie into this week’s OWH Midweek Throwdown challenge.

 

Be sure to check out what the rest of the CAS – Colours and Sketches design team did with this sketch. Then show us what you can make with it! You can link your card to the challenge blog until 1:00 p.m. eastern time Wednesday, January 29. Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps: You (Sweet ‘n Sassy Stamps)
Cardstock: Pure Luxury Vanilla (Gina K. Designs); Pink Pirouette, Spice Cake designer paper (Stampin’ Up)
Ink: Pink Pirouette, Pool Party (SU)
Other: Paisley embossing folder (ProvoCraft); marker (Copic)

Posted by PH in VA at 4:00 am Cards, CAS Colours & Sketches, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Dynamic Duos, Operation Write Home, OWH Midweek/Midmonth Throwdown, Stampin' Up!, Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps

CAS - Colours and Sketches #41

3 Responses »
Sep 052013

Hello!  A new month means a new hostess for our challenges at CAS – Colours and Sketches!  Karen has some fun ideas planned for September, so I hope you’ll consider playing along with us.

The first Thursday of the month means its color challenge time, and Karen really pulled out the stops with this one!  She’s challenging us to use rainbow colors on our cards.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a bright happy rainbow, or a pastel rainbow, or a rainbow of jewel tones.  It also doesn’t matter if the colors are arranged as a rainbow.  So long as at least five colors are represented, it’s good.  See the challenge blog for all the details.

I decided to go traditional with my rainbow colors.  This challenge seemed like a good time to break out my Faber Castell gel sticks and give them a try.  I’ve used the brand name Gelatos before; the gel sticks look and work just like them, but I found them on Amazon.com at a fraction of the price of Gelatos.  For the card, I swiped the gel sticks on a piece of white cardstock and blended them with my fingers.  Then I stamped the sentiment over the colors.  I thought the sketchy font of the sentiment and the scribbled look of the colors worked well together.  I decided to round the opposing corners of the image panel and the card.  I also popped up the image panel with shims made from scrap cardstock.

I hadn’t played in a CAS-ual Fridays challenge for a while, so I checked out their blog to see what they had going on now.  Their challenge is to combine kraft with text.  I had originally planned to use a white card base, but I decided to use kraft instead.  I like the way the colors pop against it.

So there you have it – an any-season thank you card suitable for me to include in my next shipment to Operation Write Home.

I hope you’ll join us at CAS – Colours and Sketches and give our rainbow challenge a try!  You have until 1:00 p.m. eastern time Wednesday, September 11 to share your card there.

Supplies:
Stamps: Wonderful Words (Stampin’ Up)
Cardstock: Kraft, Basic Black (SU); Pure Luxury White (Gina K. Designs)
Ink: Onyx Black (VersaFine)
Other: corner rounder punch (SU); gel sticks (Faber Castell)

Posted by PH in VA at 4:00 am Cards, CAS Colours & Sketches, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

dynamic sketchy birthday butterflies

11 Responses »
May 012013

Here’s a card I put together quickly this morning to get it into a few of my favorite online challenges.  The layout is from CAS – Colours and Sketches challenge #22 and the color scheme comes from Dynamic Duos challenge #50.  I chose to make a birthday card to fit in with CAS-ual Fridays challenge #99, and the butterfly embellishments fit the theme for the current Cards in Envy challenge.

 

 

It’s not one of my favorite cards I’ve ever made, but it’ll be fine for Operation Write Home!  Actually, now that I think about it, I’m going to go back and add either some pearls or some rhinestones to the butterflies to dress them up a bit.

Supplies:
Stamps: Happy Everything (Lawn Fawn)
Cardstock: Very Vanilla, Blushing Bride, Everyday Enchantment designer series paper (Stampin’ Up)
Ink: Calypso Coral (SU)
Other: Beautiful Wings die (SU); petite oval and petite scalloped oval Nestabilities dies (Spellbinders)

Posted by PH in VA at 11:00 am Cards, Cards in Envy, CAS Colours & Sketches, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Dynamic Duos, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

CAS-ual thanks

2 Responses »
Mar 282013

If you’ve kept up with my blog for a while, you should have learned two things about my crafting habits by now:  1) I love participating in a variety of card making challenges, and 2) I enjoy making cards for Operation Write Home.  These two things mesh together quite well because most of the cards I create for the challenges end up being sent to OWH.  (I do keep some for personal use.)

So as I was working on cards to fill up the box I sent to OWH this week, I came across this week’s CAS-ual Fridays challenge.  This time they are asking the challenge participants to create a card using no stamps.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  I needed some thank you, birthday and thinking of you cards for OWH.  So I decided I’d try to create a no stamps card for one of those categories.

I looked through my rub-ons, but wasn’t liking anything that I was coming up with along that line.  Then I thought about using some of my dies.  Bingo!  I remembered one of my sets of Cuttlebug alphabets contained the word “thanks”.  So I pulled it off the shelf and chose to use that along with the vase and floral images in that set.  Picking the colors didn’t take long; I had actually used these colors together on a card about 5 years ago. (And as I’m typing this post, I realize that all of the SU colors are retired.)  Once I figured out how to fit everything on the card front (the vase and flower ended up taller than I realized at first, so I snipped a bit off of the flower stem) and ran it through my Xyron, I had a reasonably quick one-layer card.

See the dot in the center of the flower?  That’s actually the scrap punched out by the letter “a”.  I like when I can use little pieces parts like that!  🙂

So, that’s another card for my latest shipment to OWH.  I’ll have another one to share later today.

Supplies:
Cardstock: Pure Luxury Ivory (Gina K. Designs); Cool Caribbean, Cameo Coral, Blush Blossom, Mellow Moss (Stampin’ Up)
Other: “Olivia” Cuttlebug alphabet dies (ProvoCraft); corner rounder (EK Success)

Posted by PH in VA at 12:00 am Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

dynamic blocks of color for dad

3 Responses »
Mar 142013

Time slipped up on me this week, and I realized this morning that I hadn’t made anything yet for this week’s Dynamic Duos challenge.  Since I’ve played in all of them thus far, I didn’t want to slip up now.  So I came up with a quick little CAS card for it.  I also am getting in on this week’s CAS-ual Fridays challenge just in the nick of time.  The CAS-ual Fridays challenge is to use blocks of color.  Since no particular color is specified, I think I’m OK with combining that challenge with the Dynamic Duos.

I made this card in mind to go in with the other Father’s Day cards I’m working on for Operation Write Home, but I suppose the sentiment is generic enough that it would work just as well as a birthday card, too.  The pewter buttons are actually brads.  I received them as part of a secret sister gift at least 5 years ago and stashed them away.  I found them a few days ago and decided it was time to put them to use.

I concede this isn’t one of my bestest cards, but for getting it together in a hurry, it’s not too bad.

 

Thanks for stopping by today!  It’s almost Friday, so hang in there – the weekend is almost here! 🙂

Supplies:
Stamps: Masculine Messages (Gina K. Designs)
Cardstock: Kraft, Naturals Ivory, Pool Party, Lucky Limeade (Stampin’ Up)
Ink: Pool Party, Lucky Limeade (SU)
Other: square punch (EK Success); scoring board (Martha Stewart Crafts); brads (Hot Off the Press)

Posted by PH in VA at 11:30 am Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Dynamic Duos, Gina K Designs, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

an alternative to lemonade

7 Responses »
Feb 202013

You’ve probably heard the expression “When Life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”  There’s also a version where you combine the lemons with tequila and salt and make margaritas.  But if neither of those is your style, today’s card might have the solution for you.

I first saw the sentiment I used on today’s card about 10 years ago.  It made me laugh, so I tucked it away into my memory.  Over the weekend when I first saw the sketch for challenge #12 at CAS – Colours and Sketches, I thought this sentiment might work for it.  The main part of the sentiment seemed like it would fit in the long rectangle, the last three words could go in the small panel, and images of lemon slices could fill in for the half circles.  I finally took the time to get it all together with cardstock and ink, and here it is.  The sentiment is computer generated, and the lemon stamp is one that I’ve had for a long time.  I inked only the cut lemon part of the image when I stamped it for the half circles.  When I stamped over the sentiment on the image panel, I stamped off the ink lightly onto a scrap piece of paper first so the yellow wouldn’t be quite so bold against the print.

Although I’d already made one card for the CAS – Colours and Sketches challenge, I felt bad about it because I accidentally left an element off of the sketch.  So this is my attempt at redeeming my oversight there.  The fruit element makes this card work for the February Our Daily Bread Designs challenge on the OWH Stars and Stamps blog.  I also had kept the CAS-ual Fridays challenge of black and white plus one other color in the back of my mind while I was making this card.

Thanks for stopping by today!  And remember, when Life starts getting rough, sometimes you need to give it a back a little attitude of your own.

Supplies:
Stamp: Lemons (Impression Obsession)
Cardstock: Daffodil Delight (Stampin’ Up); Pure Luxury White (Gina K. Designs)
Ink: Daffodil Delight (SU); printer ink

Posted by PH in VA at 2:00 pm Cards, CAS Colours & Sketches, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

dynamic inspirational love letters

3 Responses »
Feb 062013

When I saw this week’s color combination for the Dynamic Duos challenge, I knew I was going to have a hard time with it.  I really like red, and I’m OK with pink, but I don’t always like them paired with each other.  But seeing the colors in the prompt for the current Lawnscaping challenge helped, and with the aid of some chocolate brown I pulled the red and pink together.  I also wanted to create something for this week’s CAS-ual Fridays challenge to use letters, and I knew I wanted to use this alphabet set for that.  It’s not one of my favorite cards, but I think it turned out all right.

 

 

 

Supplies:
Stamps: Quinn’s ABCs, Belinda’s Borders (Lawn Fawn)
Cardstock: Pretty in Pink, Chocolate Chip, Real Red (Stampin’ Up); Pure Luxury Ivory (Gina K. Designs)
Ink: Chocolate Chip (SU)
Other: markers (Copic); heart dies (Sweet ‘n Sassy Stamps)

Posted by PH in VA at 8:00 pm Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Dynamic Duos, Lawn Fawn, Lawnscaping challenges, Stampin' Up!, Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps

dynamic holy cow!

5 Responses »
Jan 152013

Today’s card is a blending of three rather different challenges.  First off, Lawnscaping is celebrating their second birthday, so their challenge is to create a birthday or celebratory card.  The CAS-ual Fridays challenge this week is to create a card that celebrates an accomplishment, and that contains at least one circle.  I think getting through another year and celebrating a birthday can be an accomplishment, don’t you?  And once I figured which stamps I wanted to use for my card, this week’s Dynamic Duos color challenge lent itself perfectly to creating a little scene.

The cow on today’s card is actually a leftover from something I was working on some time in the last year.  She’s been sitting on my desk this whole time and I thought it would be cute to pair her with the sentiment “holy cow!”  I wanted her to have a party hat to help show off the birthday theme, but I also toyed with the idea of drawing in a halo to go along with the sentiment. In the end the party hat by itself won out.  The circle element for the CAS-ual Fridays challenge is the sun, punched from a scrap of designer paper, with narrow scraps added for rays.  The scrap of floral designer paper made a great meadow for the cow.

 

I continued the birthday theme inside the card.  I normally don’t put sentiments inside the cards I make for Operation Write Home.  So I put this one up higher than I typically would in a card for my own use, to maximize the amount of writing space for the hero who chooses to send this card to someone.

Challenge recap:

 

Thanks for stopping by today! And congratulations to Lawnscaping for two fun years of challenges. Keep up the awesome work!

Supplies for this card:
Stamps: Critters on the Farm, Hats Off to You, Jesse’s ABCs (Lawn Fawn)
Cardstock: Certainly Celery, So Saffron, Very Vanilla, Certainly Celery and So Saffron Prints designer papers (Stampin’ Up); scrap from Ambrosia 6″ x 6″ paper pad [for the cow] (Basic Grey)
Ink: Tuxedo Black (Memento)
Other: markers (Copic); 3/4″ circle punch (Creative Memories)

Posted by PH in VA at 10:00 pm Basic Grey, Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Dynamic Duos, Lawn Fawn, Lawnscaping challenges, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

simple thanks

7 Responses »
Jan 062013

I’ve had some cardmaking momentum going the last few days so I decided I’d better ride with it before it runs out.  So I looked up some online challenges and rediscovered some older ones and found a few new ones.

I was pleased to see that CAS-ual Fridays was still very active.  It’s been over a year since the last time I participated in a CAS-ual Fridays challenge, but I decided to give it a go anyway since most of my cards tend to be either clean and simple or clean and layered.  They’re looking for thank you cards this week, and I’ve been wanting to make a few thank you cards for my Operation Write Home stash, so this helped me choose the theme for my card.

One of the new challenges just started last Wednesday.  It’s called Inkspirational, and each week they’ll present a different type of in(k)spiration to spark creativity.  The first week of each month, they’ll have a color challenge.  This time the colors are black, dark pink, and kiwi green.  So I chose Stampin’ Up’s Melon Mambo for the pink, and Lucky Limeade for the green.  I considered Kiwi Kiss but I liked the look of Lucky Limeade better with the pink.  I’m not sure why, but when I see bright colors like these put together, I tend to reach for this one particular stamp set I own that has kind of modern looking line drawings of flowers.  And I decided to use it for this challenge.  Here’s the result:

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps: Everyday Greetings Collection (Wordsworth)
Cardstock: Basic Black, Melon Mambo, Lucky Limeade (Stampin’ Up); Pure Luxury Ivory (Gina K. Designs)
Ink: Melon Mambo, Lucky Limeade (SU)
Other: corner rounder punch (SU)

Posted by PH in VA at 5:30 pm Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Inkspirational challenges, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

black, white and read all over

9 Responses »
Sep 032011

In honor of International Literacy Day on September 8th, Cas-ual Fridays is presenting a challenge to create a CAS card that’s inspired by a book – but there’s a slight catch. You also have to use the colors black, white and red.

After giving this challenge some thought, I decided to make a card based on one of my all-time favorite books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  I figured since fall is approaching, it was appropriate to have red leaves.  Instead of pulling out my distressing tool, I roughed the edges of the focal panel with my thumbnail to distress them just a little bit.  I chose the sentiment for two reasons – it relates how Francie felt after one of the other characters died (I don’t want to give away too much of the story for anyone who hasn’t read it!), and because I wanted to make another “missing you” themed card for Operation Write Home. I used textured cardstock for the card base to add a little extra visual interest.

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

Supplies:
Stamps: Branch Out, Three Little Words (Stampin’ Up)
Cardstock: Whisper White, Real Red, Basic Black, Whisper White textured (SU)
Ink: Real Red (SU); Onyx Black (VersaFine)

Posted by PH in VA at 12:30 pm Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Operation Write Home, Stampin' Up!

a rainbow of butterflies

5 Responses »
Aug 032011

I’ve been eyeing a relatively new challenge blog called CAS-ual Fridays for several weeks, but haven’t had the chance to participate in one of their challenges until now.  Last Friday’s challenge was to make a 4″ x 9″ card and keep it clean and simple.

I have to admit, working with a card about 1.5 times the size of a typical A2 card wasn’t really easy.  What I finally ended up with is probably the fourth or fifth variation of the original mental image I had (I lost track).  But I’m satisfied with how it turned out.

Supplies:
Stamps: Critters in the ‘Burbs, Sophie’s Sentiments (Lawn Fawn)
Cardstock: Basics White (Papertrey Ink); Real Red, Only Orange, Yoyo Yellow, Glorious Green, Brilliant Blue, Lovely Lilac (Stampin’ Up)
Ink: Tuxedo Black (Memento)
Other: markers (Copic)

Posted by PH in VA at 8:00 pm Cards, CAS-ual Fridays challenges, Lawn Fawn, Stampin' Up!
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