Throwdown My Heart Desires When Making on Monday

Happy Thursday! Wanted to share four cards with you today. Haven't played along with some of these challenges in a while so excited to get some crafty time in these past two days and build up my birthday card stash.

First card is inspired by the fabulous color palette at Color Throwdown.  It was a big challenge for me because the color scheme has a masculine feel to it but without any blue (my favorite color!).

I stamped paisley images from PTI Woodblock prints along the bottom of a white panel. I added a die cut Happy (PTI One-Liners) on top of a strip of Pure Poppy card stock with the 'birthday' embossed on it. For a different touch I kept the red strip long, reach end to end on the card base. 

Second card is inspired by the Heart Desires Challenge. My first time joining in! I was drawn to the blues of course as well as the fun winter images. 

I was also inspired by THIS recent amazing card from Laura Bassen. I stamped my large sentiment from Mama Elephant in the middle of a white panel. I used my MISTI to make sure the sentiment was nice, bold, and dark. Then I heat embossed white snowflakes (with clear powder) in the two diagonal corners. Then I blended in a few colors (PTI Bright Buttercup, Hawaiian Shores, Stormy Sea, and Dark Indigo) on top of the embossed snowflakes. Truthfully, this is my second panel because the first time I embossed the snowflakes with white powder, not realizing that the embossing powder would also stick to the main sentiment, making it white. Oops. Lesson learned. 

Last two cards use Melissa Phillips' Masked Heart Wreaths technique in PTI Make It Monday this week. I used mask paper to die cut a heart and stamped flowers from Ruby Rose and Ruby Rose Reprise in my favorite blues and greens - Tropical Teal, Limeade Ice, Hawaiian Shores and New Leaf. I didn't add anything else so I could keep it clean and simple. LOVED how it turned out! 

Mask was still sticky so I used it to make another card. Instead of flowers I used the leaves from PTI Mighty Oak stamped in another favorite color combination - Tropical Teal, Aqua Mist, Stormy Sea, and Vintage Jadeite.  Birthday diecut is PTI with a softer Happy from Simon Says Stamp. Added a few matching pearls for a final touch. 

Like my attempt at mashing all the challenge names into my blog post title? LOL. 

Thanks for taking a peek at my latest creations. See you soon. 

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Happy Friday!

Hello friends! Happy Friday! Feels like its been a LONG week but I ended it with some crafty time so all is good.

First up is a card inspired by this week's ColourQ challenge. These colors are happy and bright so a birthday card was in order.

I used a Tim Holtz flower stencil and placed it on an angle on white cardstock and sponged the various ink colors onto the flower areas. I cut it off and added it to an Aqua Mist card base. Finishing touch was one of the  Everyday Happiness dies and sentiment. So bright and cheerful and perfect for my aunt's birthday. 

I've also been watching the videos in the Heat Wave online class this week. So many great projects but I'm finding the tips each teacher gives in the videos are so valuable. 

This first card was inspired by Kristina Werner's Basics video for an partially embossed one layer card. I used my favorite go-to PTI Snowflake Flurries set to form a sunburst border in Aqua Mist, Dark Chocolate, and Hawaiian Shores. I embossed in gold some smaller and partial sunbursts as well as the sentiment. Love the look of regular inked images with the gold embossing. Forgot all about this design trick until I saw Kristina's video and sample project (which I can't seem to link here) which is so gorgeous and CAS. 

And since I'm on an embossing roll, I made another card inspired by Kathy Racoosin's embossed resist lesson and Laurie Willison's PTI release gorgeous project below. 

Unfortunately I've been using a few sympathy cards lately so I made another one to add to my stash. 

I didn't have the Outline stamp set she used so I heat embossed the frame from PTI Fillable Frames Additions 2 in white on watercolor paper. I wanted them to overlap a little for a more organic look to the background. I feel like purples are appropriate for sympathy cards so I added water to smears of Royal Velvet, Winter Wisteria, and Amethyst Allure on my craft mat and painted over the embossed watercolor paper. I added a layer butterfly to the center like Laurie's pineapple but didn't have a small diecut sentiment to use so I stamped it in one of the frames and added rainstones in a diagonal from the sentiment to butterfly and up - kinda like Laurie did. But in hindsight it might have looked better if the sentiment and rainstones were in the same direction as the paintstrokes. Didn't really think of it until now. Oh well. 

OK, that's it for me. I've got to pack as I am headed out for the weekend to meet up with my sister and her family at an amusement park. Hope you have a great weekend and stay cool. Thanks for popping in.