Happy Mother's Day and a few challenges to boot!

So, with Mother's Day almost upon us I decided to sit down and start creating some cards.  I found these three great challenges and couldn't pass up creating for them. 

I love the color challenge over at The Play Date Café.  It's so fresh and ready for summer!!

 

This sketch from Freshly Made Sketches made easy work of my card today!

 And the final (but really first) challenge is from The Paper Players. Their theme is Mother's day!

Here is my card.  I had a hard time with the basic black in from Stampin' Up! it kept bleeding every time I touched it. Might have to re think my black choice for the white cardstock. I'm not to patient of a person, so when I'm making something I want to just slap it together and having to wait for a regular ink to dry is frustrating to me.

 

Supplies:

SS: mums the word

INK: basic black, raspberry ripple

CS: basic black, raspberry ripple, whisper white, neutrals dsp

ACCES: neutrals brads, square punch

National Scrapbooking Day layout

I am loving that there is a day that recognizes scrapbookers!  Today couldn't have been any better.  The weather was beautiful, I was able to find the perfect mother's day gift for my mother-in-law and I won a contest on Facebook for some freebees!

I have been spending most of the day following the goings on over at Scrapbook & Cards Today's blog. Each hour they are putting up a new post for their design team and boy are they inspirational! I am a huge sketch user as it's the only way I get a lot done.  I love to have my layouts look different and if I didn't use sketches they would end up all looking identical. So when I saw this post
PageMaps, Kelly Goree and Fancy Pants...you’re going to love this! I knew it was just for me!! So I decided to take her up on using one of the previous sketches and get creating!

This is the sketch I decided to use. I almost always scrap in 2 page layout form so this was perfect!!

Here is the layout I made.  It took me about 3 hours since I kept getting distracted by online things, kids and the dogs!!

 

 I've had these pictures for quite a while and I'm not totally sure I haven't scrapped them before lol.  But if I did that's okay!  I'm sure it doesn't look like this!!

 

 My darling daughter is now at the end of her 8th grade year in school so this really takes me back and makes me wish she was small again!!  She was so excited to get her very first locker and couldn't wait to stuff her backpack in!!

 

Supplies:

CS: close to my heart solid color cardstock, sei Claire paper

INK: slate
ACCESS: brads, olive ribbon, paper shapes from sei, label framelits
SS: butterfly set (stamped on circles), believe in you (there she goes)

From 4 to 14 challenge layout

I had a lot of fun today creating this layout. I found these two pictures of my daughter today while cleaning up my scrap room and couldn't believe how much she's changed yet looks the same in the 10 years between these to photos!  I knew I just had to do a layout for them and since I usually do two page layouts this was perfect for the challenge below.  

 Once Upon A...Sketch also has a secondary challenge to use numbers on your layout.

I have frames up on my wall to showcase some of my one page layouts and I think this one will be going up tonight!

 A closer look at some of the embellishments

Supplies:

CS: very vanilla, crumb cake, blushing bride, calypso coral
INK: calypso coral, blushing bride
SS: loving thoughts
ACCESS: large & small flourish, cricut font, butterfly dies, label die, jewel rhinestones

Retiring SU! Colors challenge

I was exploring over at Split Coast Stampers and found this really fun challenge to use the retiring colors.  There are a few of the colors that I am truly going to miss like more mustard and baja breeze and others I'm glad to see go like river rock.

The three colors chosen for this challenge are
not quite navy
baja breeze
river rock

I didn't realize there was a "dessert" option for using stripes or plaids so that I didn't do.  I guess next time I should read farther down before I start a project lol.

I also used Mojo Mondays sketch as my inspiration for the cards layout.

 

Here is the card I made.  I am running out of birthday cards so I figured it would be a good choice. I am loving SU!'s best of... stamp sets.  This is the first one I've used so far and I love the different images in it.

Supplies:

SS: best of birthdays

INK: river rock, baja breeze, night of navy

CS: night of navy, baja breeze, river rock, whisper white, neutrals dsp

ACCESS: whisper white stitched ribbon, stampin dimentionals

FMS82 Cute As A Bug!

I absolutely LOVE The Stamps of Life by Stephanie Barnard!  I have never seen sets like hers and they make me want to stamp! I have only been able to get a few sets but already have two for a cubscout layout I'll be making at a crop next month and it had me joining her monthly group. 

I made the following card for a great sketch challenge over at Freshly Made Sketches. I've been looking at this sketch, and even went as far to bookmark it, all week.  Today I finally decided to play along. It's a really great sketch so I'm not sure why it took me so long to play along.

 Here is the card I made for the sketch.  I used this cute new ladybugs2love set and am very happy with the way it turned out.  I am so going to have to get it's companion!!

Supplies:

SS: ladybugs2love

INK: memento black, midnight muse, raspberry ripple
CS: raspberry ripple, summer starfruit, gumball green, dsp
ACCESS: grey bakers twine, jewel rhinestones, flower embossing folder, scallop oval punch

Friendship with Hexagons!

I have some quite time today so I decided to join along with a couple of challenges! I love doing challenges and I haven't had a lot of time over the last few months to really sit down and make anything. 

These are the two challenges I used to create my card below. I love the colors from the Play Date Café! They are so fresh and springy that I had to play along! The Mojo Monday sketch is not like any I've seen lately so it was a challenge to really make something with it.

Here is my creation.  I just got these cute new hexagon sets and wanted to give them a try.  Towards the end (all the cut out shapes) I was having a hard time figuring out what I was going to do with them. I used a large background stamp to create the honeycomb on the white cardstock and a smaller design hexagon to create the background on the navy cardstock. 

Supplies:

SS: hexagons2love, backgroud4bees

INK: tempting turquoise, tangerine tango, night of navy
CS: tempting turquoise, tangerine tango, night of navy, whisper white, sycamore street dsp
ACCESS: sycamore street tangerine tango ribbon, basic jewels rhinestones, hexagon dies

 

With Sympathy

Sympathy cards are not one of my favorite kinds of cards to make.  Until recently I didn't even own a sympathy verse to use.  It's always so sad when you have to create something like this but nice to know your giving a little piece of yourself to someone that might be hurting.

I created this card for my husbands friend at work who's father past away this week.  I wasn't to sure what colors to use since he's a very fun loving guy but it's such a sad occasion.  I chose to use two darker colors with just  a pop of blue to give him a little brightness when he opens the envelope.

I used a sketch from Unscripted Sketches and changed it just slightly to work for me. I might use this sketch and create a few cards to have on hand. I like the simplicity of it and it made making this card quick and easy.

Here is my card. I choose to have a background stamp instead of using patterned paper.  I really like this set and haven't used it often enough.  The sentiment is from a close to my heart stamp set that I didn't even realize I had lol.

 

 

 

My husband wanted a sentiment on the inside (told me after I created it) so I went back and stamped the inside. I usually don't do this but am loving the way it turned out so I may start do it on future cards.

Supplies:

SS: words of comfort (close to my heart), swallowtail (stampin up), thoughts & prayers (stampin up)
INK: early expresso (stampin up), blu raspberry (mftstamps)
CS: hot fudge, blu raspberry, paver red, whip cream (mftstamps)
ACCESS: stampin dimentionals, early expresso bakers twine