This card uses the sketch from Karen’s Sweetest Thing blog (SSSC11).

The purpose of the card is to reconnect with someone – so I thought the mailboxes were a good choice. I wanted a fun cheery card, so I pulled out some older SU paper. Thankfully I had ribbon that worked! I do wish I had the rectangle or square nesties, I’m not completely satisfied with the focal mat, but it works well enough.

Whew, I’m done! And only a week late, lol. This card was hard – my normal format is A2 size cards, so doing a long/tall card was a challenge. Since this was a challenge from the PTI forum, I wanted to use a PTI set – but I challenged myself to use one I haven’t used in a long time. Finally, I took umpteen pictures – I can’t seem to find the right place/angle/lighting in the new house. My pictures keep coming out dark. I am using the same sort of setup, so I’m not sure what is different. Maybe it is time to get a light box

OK, enough whining. I do like this card, it actually ended up much better than I thought it would (I’ve had it half done for a few days). PTI doesn’t have a lot of multi-color pattern paper (I *hope* they start coming up with designs that incorporate more of their colors), so I pulled out a Basic Grey pack that I’ve had for awhile and decided to use that. My colors ended up being all over the map – some retired SU, some current SU, and a PTI color; but that was all in the attempt to match the pattern paper.

I haven’t stamped in what feels like forever, but is probably more realistically only a week. I’m determined to get back in the groove. I had a card I needed to make and I hoped that would spark some other ideas.

The first card is a thank you. I knew I wanted to do a pine tree for this recipient, and I needed the card to be a long card. The pine reminded me of the holidays, so I pulled out some old SU paper. I went with green and blue so it didn’t feel quite so holiday-ish. I went with white accents to balance the dark feeling from using a brown base.  Silly me, though, I knew the paper was Olive, and I thought I grabbed the Olive marker, but I got the Artichoke instead…so yes, my tree doesn’t “go” with the paper…but by the time it really bothered me, it was done! The square behind the tree is cheap chipboard (i.e., cereal box) covered with Cocoa paper and sponged with white ink.

When I was done I definitely wanted to keep stamping, so I checked out some challenges and decided to do both the Mojo Monday challenge from Julee, and the OCC stitching challenge. My daughter was invited to a birthday party this weekend, so I knew I wanted to do a girly birthday card.  When I looked at the Mojo sketch sideways, the optional triangle turned into a candle flame.  I recently appropriated an old pair of jeans into shorts for painting. I used the left over jean material and stitched a piece to Saffron cardstock. Then I stitched and sponged the edges of the Saffront layer. Since the cutting wasn’t too good on the jeans, I put everything on an angle.  I didn’t want to put accents at the bottom of the candle, like in the sketch, so instead I put eyelets throughout the candle. The flame is done with a teardrop punch which is then edged in red, sponged with orange, and stickled. I attached the flame with some wire. In retrospect, I should have used a brighter yellow or even pattern paper for the Saffron panel.