Happy Easter & Hello

 Last minute addition and NBUS materials to boot for the Twofer Card Challenge! The Greetery and Altenew to the rescue and so much fun indeed! Sitting down with my new Altenew Craft-A-Flower: Poppy I chose several shades of red for the blossom, two greens for the leaves, and colored a white center piece with yellow Copics. I've had the NBUS Greetery Square Dance stencil set for a few months and dragged it out for my projects. I cut the panel with PTI's Feature Frames and used both the inside portion and the frame on my two cards. Card #1 uses a Petite Places: Church sentiment. Card #2 a SSS Hello die and a small sentiment strip layered over a stamped Altenew Leaf Canopy outline spray of leaves. Feeling happy with my results! And completely in love with this layering poppy die and the stencil background.

Card #1

Card #2

This duo is linked to the Twofer Challenge and NBUS

Church Easter Cards

 The first part of March I was busy putting together 80 Easter cards for a church group. The leadership team will distribute friendship bags in a couple of weeks to their members who haven't met for worship in a year. At first the task seemed daunting as it often takes me a whole year to get our 80 Christmas cards finished. Granted I tend to only make a couple of the same design for them which slows down the process. So I made my 80 white cards, rounding a corner or two sometimes for interest. Next I chose 5 different spring colors of PTI Bitty Big papers and cut 16 mats in each color from a variety of PTI dies. I stamped a complimentary inked sentiment on each mat and added either more stamping or die cut objects from my collection. Many of the decorations were extras stamped from previous cards. The results were fun and will be an attractive part of the encouragement package. I'm sharing a lot of photos, the group shots were already featured on Instagram but this post will include closer looks at the various designs. Get ready for a lot of photos. Though apparently I tired of taking photos of each group and didn't get individual shots from the peach and aqua groups.

Lavender Group

Altenew Line Art and PTI Scallop Stacker: Medium

PTI Shape Shifters Oval 1 die, Stitching Garden stamps/dies, Inspired by: Lord

Hero Arts Thinking of You, PTI Mix & Mat: Confetti die, Grand Botanicals  

                                               

     

PTI Shape Shifters: Circle 1 die, Hero Arts Circle Pattern & Starry Night Cling Bold Prints backgrounds

Yellow Group

PTI Bitty Bouquets, Mix & Mat: Confetti die

The Greetery Caring Cross stamp/die, Altenew Essential Sentiment Strips

PTI Mix & Mat: Confetti, Beautiful Berries: Spring; SSS Kind Flowers (retired)

 

Green Group

PTI Mix & Mat: Postal die, Bitty Bouquets, Simple Stems; The Greetery Thinking of You 

PTI Mix & Mat: Confetti, Beautiful Berries: Spring; SSS Kind Flowers

Peach Group

Aqua Group

Easter Wishes in Shades of Purple

 I'm always ready to enter a colors challenge and The Flower Challenge #54 focus for March is shades of purple with small amounts of other colors. I found in my basket of stamped and colored panels a Waffle Flower Bouquet Builder 1 flower already colored with Altenew alcohol markers in purple and greens.  Today I added a PTI Spring Woods sentiment and PTI Stemmed Statements bee. The panel was die cut with a Waffle Flowers A2 Layers and glued on a PTI pattern paper panel trimmed with a Greetery's Nordic Frames die. The matted panel was added to a purple card front. Voila! a Shades of Purple card ready for Easter mailing. 

A trio of baby cards

Last summer I ordered Waffle Flower's Little One Baby stamps and dies following a blog hop full of darling cards. The set has sweet folk-style images of florals, seasonally bundled babies, and dainty fonts. I have few baby related stamps thus the purchase. Several friends are new grandparents and I like to send a card with a children's book to the new family. In January twin girls arrived in Seattle where their 43 year old parents also have a two year old boy. Grandma Shirlie, my friend, is helping the frantic parents as a temporary live-in nanny but admits it's a circus of laundry, feedings, and no sleep. I planned to make a card with twin babies decorating the card but just in case mama Wendi makes two baby books I made each girl their own card. With the stamps out I also made a boyish card for their big brother. The two pink cards have backgrounds made during a recent Distress Inks/Oxides class with Jean Shurkus. One was ink blended with oxides and the other uses a smooshed technique with acetate and distress inks.

Card #1

Card #2

Card #3

This card also used Waffle Flower Color Combos geometric shapes cut from pattern paper.

The girls' cards were shared previously on Instagram. This card is linked to the NBUS challenge #24.

It's been two months since I've blogged on this site. I'm sorry but Instagram has proven easier to share brief details and photos on my crafting projects. Thank you for your visit.

Two Rennie Rose (Altenew) cards

Recently our good blogging friend, Darnell Knauss, sent a reminder for the January Twofer Card Challenge #34 - Flowers. It's not difficult to find a set of floral stamps on our shelves, right? I chose an older Altenew set, Rennie Roses, for my flowers and also two differently sized cards, a slimline for encouragement and an A2 birthday card. 

Card #1

First I stenciled (Altenew Classy Stripes) a light yellow diagonal stripe on the upper two thirds of the white panel. Three Beautiful Day foliage die sprigs fan out around the flowers adding texture and visual interest. The orange blooms were each stamped in VersaMark ink and gold embossed on an watercolored panel (Altenew Watercolor 36 Pan set). The green leaves were each stamped in green DI, clear embossed, and tucked around the modern roses. More green was added with the Beautiful Day clear embossed sentiment. The white panel was glued to a kraft slimline card which fits nicely in my Paper Source slimline envelope.

Card #2

My dramatic black card focuses on a stamped background. I set up several stamps in the corner on the white panel and with the Misti stamped in black, rotated the panel and stamped the opposite corner. I repeated this with another group of stamps completing the panel with smaller images to fill the background.  Pink Fresh Studio's Lea's Ornate Uppercase Alphabet helped create the focal sentiment cut from black glitter foam. A small sentiment from SS Sentiment Strips was inked with DI to match the small Rennie Rose die cut. The inside of the black card was lined with a white panel for a message. Such a fun card to create.

Both cards fit the Twofer Challenge. Card #2 is also linked to SS - Make Your Own Background. 

                         

I'll see you around the blogs and always on Instagram @vikkispapertrailetc

Happy New Year a few days late!

Welcome to 2021 friends! Confession: I'm a very lazy blogger. I've viewed many of your blogs and have spent a lot of time on Instagram at vikkispapertrailetc the past couple of months as it is easier to post. The mail carriers have been kind to me with new products and new supplies of ink and glue to reinforce my stash.  Next week marks the end of our first year in Portland. We're grateful to live in a walking neighborhood after 40 years on a rural hilltop. It has made the difference in my outlook in this quarantine life. As a natural introvert it has been important to see people daily walking to and fro living the best they can in these circumstances.

I alluded to new items and the two cards in this post feature one of them, the Altenew Hanging Garden dies. My cards use the positive and negative parts of the die in an inlay technique with the additional touch of red to brighten the neutral gray and white. The Color Hues Jan. 1-14 challenge to use gray and red determined the colors of my paper and ink. The two grays vary in their cool and warm tones but work together, I think.

Card #1

Card #1 begins with a side folding PTI Weathervane gray card stock splattered with white. Textured gray woodgrain paper and a white panel were each die cut with the larger die. The positive parts of this process were inlayed in the opposite negative panel. The berry portion of the die was cut twice from red linen paper. The encouraging red sentiment is from a PFS Partial Cut Floral Frame set from 2019's SS Stamptember. A thin red strip on the left finishes the triangle of red areas on the card.

 

Card #2 

My second card uses a PTI soft stone card front and the gray woodgrain panel finished with the largest SSS stitched rectangle. A PTI Enclosed: Wreath's sentiment, Peace, die cut in red and embellished with Wink of Stella clear finishes this one. The texture is so pretty. Christmas card #1 done for the year. I almost wished that it was turned horizontally with the sentiment in another corner.

Both cards are linked to three challenges: 

Color Hues #TCH 9, SSW: Something New, and NBUS

                      

Thanks for your visit and again, Happy New Year! 

Color Hues: TCH #7

Happy holidays on the first of December! I'm delighted to join the Color Hues 7th challenge today as the guest designer. This bi-monthly challenge focuses on a two color palette in your card design. 

The two colors selected this session work well

 for winter themes, don't you agree?

Card #1

My first card sparkles with starry blue holographic paper on one ornament and magenta shimmer paper decorating the second. The blue ball dangles via a scored line from the pine needles. Both ornaments and pine spray were directly glued on a die cut panel which was then adhered to a top-folding white card front. 

Card Menu: Nordic Frames die (The Greetery)

Pine Needle Trio dies (SSS)

What the Doodle: Ornament die (PTI) first time to use this one

December Typed Words (PTI)

Card #2

I hate to discard negative die cuts especially when they serendipitously all line up. After a trim the white rectangle was directly glued to a blue panel to create the blue needles. The winter sentiment will let me use this for Christmas or other occasions.

Card Menu:

Pine Needle Trio dies (SSS)

an old HA monthly kit sentiment

vellum banner (The Greetery)

The Color Hues team have beautiful ideas that you can see on the blog. They would love for you to play along with their new challenge.

My cards are also linked to the SSSW challenge: Anything Goes

Thank you for your visit!