Kate's CASology 97 Card

Here's Kate's card for this week's CASology Cue Card, Bee.



She went punny and Christmas for this one. She cut the MB letters out of yellow and then sponged them with black. She used a Lawnfawn alphabet and an old A Muse Santa hat.

We are thinking that creating a blog for Kate will be one of our summer projects. School is quite busy right now (mostly socially rather than academically!) plus all the end of season recitals are crowding our calendar. So in the meantime, she will post here. She really appreciates all your kind comments - thank you so much!

Muse 69 - Thanks!

A graphic thank you card for this week's Muse challenge, where Cornelia is our guest Muse!

I focused on Cornelia's colour scheme, scripty font and the dots, but went cleaner. I cut the Paper Smooches thanks twice - once in white and once in black. I coloured the white one with copics and glued it onto my panel. I then glued the black one over top, just slightly to the right so that the colours underneath would show. A few enamel dots for texture and shine and done!

There's still some time to play along with us in this challenge - the deadline is Monday at 8 am EDT. At that point, you can vote for your favourite 3 (even if you didn't link up a card) before Tuesday at 8 am. On Tuesday at noon, the top 6 will be posted. I hope to see you there!

CFC132 - What a Catch!

Time for the next CAS-ual Fridays Challenge!



The challenge is to make a masculine card that uses ribbon and (here's the catch!) no kraft.

Hmmmm. It's ALWAYS a challenge for me to use ribbon, but on a masculine card? Seems like that's the trickier catch for me! lol! I chose navy grosgrain.

I came up with this 'gold medal' award idea for Father's Day. Brickworks is the perfect set for that - lots of great sentiments that can be used for a Father's Day card.  I embossed 'good job dad' in gold on brushed gold cardstock and cut it out with a circle nestability. I felt it needed to be bigger so I decided to layer it onto another piece of gold and a slightly larger piece of red. I added hearts from Sands of Time to created more interest.

I could have made this card 4.25x5.5 so that the medal would fit right on the card, but I think it's more fun this way, with the medal sticking out on the top. It will still fit in a regular envelope.

I hope you'll get a chance to play along - the deadline for this challenge is June 20.

FFC32 - Season's Greetings

Here's some mid-challenge inspiration for the current Festive Friday challenge where our inspiration is this photo:

This time I focused on the colour scheme, the tree with red ornaments, and the silver accents. 

Now I am a "Merry Christmas" girl and rarely have use for "Season's Greetings" (especially when it's missing the apostrophe!), but somehow this card called for it. You know that I always listen to my cards!

I used a Stampin' Up tree and 'decorations' stamp - I stamped the ornaments first in Real Red, and because it stays wet, I quickly embossed it with clear ep, so that when I over stamped the tree in green, I could wipe off the ornaments and they would have some shine and dimension.

Once I was finished I thought that the reason I felt "Season's" was right could be because the tree panel reminded me of the Four Seasons logo, so I went to find it - here it is (used without permission for comparison purposes only!)

Card Concept 11 - Bee Happy!

Time for the next Card Concept challenge! This one's a colour challenge:

Black and yellow always makes me think of bees, so I pulled out my favourite bee stamp from Recollections. I stamped it in black on yellow and gave its wings some sparkle with Stickles. A very simple, graphic "Happy" completes this friendly message.

You may not believe this, but I made this card long before I realized that this week's CASology Cue Card is Bee! I'm also linking up there.

What do these colours inspire you to make? I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Our Rules

1. Use the Challenge to create a card.
2. Choose one of the design team "styles" to create your card. Click HERE for the different styles summary.
3. Explain in your post which style you used.
4. Link up your blog post here, not your whole blog.
5. Comment on the card ahead of you and behind you in the linky. Everyone loves comments!

This challenge will end on Monday, June 9 at 3pm EDT.

Happy Birthday (or, I finally got a new flower die!)

A quick post after I got some happy mail from Papertrey today! I used a similar technique as this flower card, but didn't lay anything back into the negative space. I also smeared a thin layer of stickles on the copic colouring for some sparkle!

On another note, can you believe that I ordered the new butterfly stamp set but forgot the dies?! And now they're out of stock! Oh well, something to add to next month's order!

CASology 97 - Bee

This week's CASology Cue Card is Bee!



As I've done in the past, I decided to use blocks of colour to get my message across. Black and yellow is a pretty clear 'bee' message.  The key to using colour blocks on a CAS card is to keep the blocks big. Smaller stripes would have made this 'bee' look a little too busy!

For my sentiment, I used die cuts to ensure a rich black. Happy and Day are Tattered Lace dies and the 'B' is a from a Hero Arts alphabet set of dies.

Now it's your turn - get busy and show us your bee cards! But first, visit the DT blogs for even more inspiration!

Gillian Ross

Jen Wills
Joyce Mehrberg
Judy Marino
Kimberly Wiener
May Park
Meghan McMillan
Melissa Chipperfield
Tracey McNeely

and this week's Guest Designer: Deepti

Inspiration

Remember last week's AAA Cards' Game 3 Inspiration Challenge? Well I must admit that I loved it so much that I may have gone a little crazy. I ended up making 5 cards based on Linda's amazing card!

I didn't want to hog the challenge, so I didn't link these 3 up, but I think they're worth showing to demonstrate how one card can take you in so many different directions!

The first one is the opposite technique of my first card for this challenge. That was 'go big', this one is 'go small'. I used a Papertrey Sentiment and one of Simon's Lots of Dots.

The second one uses a Paper Smooches die, a circle punch and some Doodlebug bling.

The third was made by inlaying rings cut with circle nestabilities and then using a Simon Says Stamp die for the sentiment.

Kate's CASology 96 Flower

First of all let me express Kate's thanks (and mine!) for all the lovely comments you left for her CASology card last week. She was so excited to read them all!

This is her entry for this week's CASology Cue Card, Flower (we may have to get her a blog of her own!)

This one she designed and executed completely on her own using distress inks and a Memory Box flower die. She told me originally she stamped her sentiment on her coloured panel but it smudged so she had to cut the panel down and stamp the sentiment on the card base. Welcome to the world of mistakes, design opportunities, Kate! lol!

ATCAS 39 - Pinterest-Inspired Texture

I was lucky enough to have some time to play in my craft room over the last couple of days and turned to my Pinterest boards for inspiration.

The first one came from this photo:

I used a Michael's stamp, Papertrey star die and a Cuttlebug embossing folder to create the texture. I'll link this up to this week's Addicted to CAS Texture Challenge.

The second one is inspired by a dress that Hilary Swank wore at Cannes:

Love that pop of pink! I decided to inlay the original Clearly Besotted die cut (ie I didn't take it out at all!) in the Hibiscus Burst panel - it's subtle but still evident.

CTS77, AAA3 - Happy Birthday!

Another take on AAA Card's Game 3 - where this card by Linda Beeson is our inspiration:

and also for this week's CAS(E) This Sketch challenge:

This colour scheme is one of my favourites - it's warm and fun and very vibrant. I used re inkers and a water brush to put drops onto a piece of acetate. I then spritzed the acetate with water and laid it on my watercolour paper panel. I finished the card with a MFT die and one black enamel dot.

FFC32 - Merry Christmas

Time for a new Festive Friday Challenge! Here's our inspiration photo:

I chose to focus on the cushions on the chair. I cut the Memory Box trees to leave the negative in the sand panel and then cut another one in white, to enable me to cut and pop up the two larger trees for some interest. And it's not Christmas without some sparkle, so those two trees are coated in Stickles!

This photo is a feast of inspiration! There are so many ways to go with it - I just can't wait to see what you come up with! The deadline for this challenge is Wednesday June 4.

ETA - I used a Verve sentiment - here's a link.

Five-challenge Celebrate!

This one's for this week's Muse challenge, where our inspiration comes from this card by Marion:



It's also for
Addicted to CAS - Off the Edge
LIM172 - Flowers
OLS5 - One-layer Flowers
The Paper Players - CAS Floral

There's a lot of flower challenges out there right now!

I used an old Stampin' Up flower set and an old Stampin' Up sentiment. I masked the pink flower to stamp the green leaves.

I hope you'll have a chance to play along with us at Muse this week - the deadline is Monday morning at 8 am EDT. At that time you can vote for your favourites (even if you didn't make a card!) until Tuesday morning at 8 am EDT and the results will be posted at noon. Hope to see you there!

AAA Cards Game 3 - Happy Birthday!

I'm trying to get better at playing in all the amazing challenges out there - here's another new one called AAA Cards. They're on Game 3 already, so I'm a little slow in finding them, but I'm glad I did. This week our inspiration is this fun birthday card from Linda Beesom

I focused on the colours, but went a little more clean and graphic. A great way to CASify something is to make it big. (another way is to make it small, but that's a tip for another day! lol!) I used an unknown little Happy that I love because it fits right along the B of this Uniko Birthday along with the biggest dot from Simon Says Stamp's Lots of Dots.

ETA - thanks for the reminder, Donna - I'm on the DT at CAS-ual Fridays, where the challenge is Three -thirds - use 3 things on one-third of the card. I used 3 colours (plus black), 3 dots, 3 stamps (dot, happy & birthday). I'll link up there, too - don't forget that the deadline is fast approaching - May 23!

CASology 96 - Flower (or - Not That Die Again!)

This week's CASology Cue Card is Flower!

Yes, I'm using that Papertrey flower die again - it's clean, graphic and so, so versatile. I was inspired by Lisa's card here.

Here's a mini tutorial on how I made this card:

Cut the flower from a 3.75x3.75 panel of Gina K 120lb base - you need something that the Copics won't bleed through or show through.

Put the panel on the cardbase (also Gina K 120lb) and traced the flower in pencil. Drew extra lines between the panels, so that I could erase the petals (pencil will not erase after you've coloured over it with Copics, and I didn't want any chance of pencil peeking through.)

Erased the petals and coloured between the lines. No need to be too neat!

Adhered the top panel with the cut-out over top of the card base. Curled petal edges.

Adhered flower only in the centre. Added sparkly black enamel dot and Stampin' Up sentiment.

(I'm also linking up to Less Is More and The Paper Players where the challenges are also both CAS Flowers - you'll get a lot of challenge bang for your CAS flower buck this week!!)

Now it's your turn! Don't forget to check out the DT blogs for even more inspiration!

Gillian Ross

Jen Wills
Joyce Mehrberg
Judy Marino
Kimberly Wiener
May Park
Meghan McMillan
Melissa Chipperfield
Tracey McNeely

and this week's Guest Designer: Hazel

CTS76 - You're the Best!

A clean and graphic card for this week's CAS(E) This Sketch challenge:

And also inspired by this photo on Pinterest:

Although I felt like I really needed to add a pop of colour!

I started by die cutting the thanks with PTI dies out of the white panel and then added the Technique Tuesday 'you'. 'You're the best' came from a Clearly Besotted sentiment stamp.

Pinterest-Inspired Birthday

This card was inspired by this photo on Pinterest:

I used the outline circles from Simon Says Stamp's Lots of Dots set and a simple sentiment from Papertrey. To add some interest I popped up the strip and stamped the purple and blue circles again underneath, to line up with the ones on the strip.

CS191, FFC31

Another great week of inspiration at CASE Study, where Wida is this month's guest. Here's this week's inspiration card:

I turned the layout 90 degrees to the left and used white die cuts glued onto the white panel and a whimsical Wordsworth sentiment.I love the crisp look of the white on white!

I stuck with just the red and white so that I could also link it up to Festive Friday - there's still a few days before the deadline on Wednesday - hope to see you there!

Happy Birthday, Sandie!

Today is Sandie's birthday and we're having a surprise party! Nonni is hosting and there's a link up on her blog so that everyone can play along!

One of the things I love about these parties is that they give me a chance to get to know the birthday girl a little better. I was scrolling through London Days (Sandie's Blog) to find a card to CASE for her birthday and had such a hard time choosing! Finally, I came across this one (which is coincidentally for one of Nonni's challenges!):

This is a little less CAS than I normally do, and based on my perusal of Sandie's blog, it's a little less CAS than she does too, but you can't say it isn't fun! I love the coloured stripes and the die cuts in the cut out dots. 

Happy Birthday, Sandie - I hope you have a fabulous day!