Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day friends! Popping in to share a few cards with you before I head out tonight. DH and I are going out without the kids tonight - dinner and comedy show - for the first time alone in ages (except for work events). YAY! 

First card is for the Papertrey Anniversary Day 8: Blue Ombre Challenge. Love blues....

I heat embossed a background of medallions from Fancy That on white card stock. I applied Enchanted Evening with an ink blending tool, darker in the middle of each medallion and blending lighter outward. I think Laura Bassen created a gorgeous card with this technique but she used wonderful rainbow colors. I heat embossed the sentiment on vellum and wrapped it around the medallion patterned panel. I mounted it on white card stock for some contrast against the Enchanted Evening card panel. 

Next card is for the Day 7: Heavy Metal Challenge where we were challenged to use only metallic gold and silver with neutral colors. I masked off part of a black panel diagonally and heat embossed some images from Mehndi Medallion on the bottom portion. I stamped the sentiment from Thank You Kindly along the invisible diagonal line. The finished panel was adhered with foam tape on top of black card base. The black on black popped up looks really cool. 

 This next card is for the CASology cue card LOVE. I adhered a small envelope from my scrapbooking stash and stamped it with a sentiment from Clearly Besotted stamps. I die cut a bunch of small hearts in a rainbow of colors and added them floating out of the envelope.

This last card uses a new Hero Arts stencil I recently got. LOVE it! I blended Pure Poppy on one floral image in the corner and Sweet Blush in the bottom flower. Sentiment from Keep It Simple is heat embossed in black and whole panel is mounted on Pure Poppy card stock. Color inspiration is from Colour Me Striking challenge this week. 

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend! Thanks so much for taking a peek!

Papertrey Anniversary Part 1

February is one of my favorite times in the crafting world because its Papertrey Ink's anniversary month which means they are unveiling their plans for the coming year, unveiling new goodies, and have lots of contests going on.  You can check out all the fun HERE.

My first two cards were inspired by Maile Belles who is coming back to PTI as a stamp designer this year. Her cards are some of my favorites and always inspiring. I had so much fun looking back at her creations on Pinterest that I couldn't narrow it down to 1 so I made two cards.

I made a top fold card like she did and found that I really like this style of card. My card are usually side folded. Anyway, I heat embossed Mendhi Medallion in gold on a Tropical Teal strip. Before adhering the teal strip, I lay a strip of gold washi on the white card base and stamped the elegant sentiment from Thank You Kindly. My gold washi was very wide so I covered part of it with the teal panel. I really love how this turned out! And I must get more gold washi because its so beautiful.  You can find Maile's card that inspired me HERE. 

Next card is inspired by THIS Maile card. I guess I never saw this particular blog post but she has step by step photos in how to make this card with the cut out panel. Instead of using orange I went back to Tropical Teal. Looks so much better in real life because the white panel is on foam strips so its all raised above the bitty dot pattern. Finished it off with some black rhinestones. 

This card just reminded me how much I love this Life Is Beautiful set. No wonder its one of the top 8 best selling sets in PTI history. 

This last card is for the Day 1 challenge using this sketch and color inspiration:

For my card I used Ruby Rose flowers and added a strip of Simply Chartreuse bitty dot paper for the gap. 

Hope you are enjoying the PTI anniversary festivities. So much fun stuff going on over there.