The Final Flutter By Wednesdays Card

I was sad to see that this would be the last challenge at Flutter By Wednesdays. I have a passion for butterflies. So I decided to make this last card special with my favorite butterfly stamp. They provided a great sketch for us to use this last time. I also used the challenge at The Paper Players for additional creative ideas.

I used the first row going down for the Tic Tac Toe - flowers, blue colors, and spring. The chick hatching is definitely for spring along with flowers that look like primroses. Little Red Wagon's challenge to use at least 3 flowers helped me with the finishing touches. I used 8 flowers.

I stamped the butterfly twice with Twilight ink- once on Twilight cardstock (bottom layer) and again on Crystal Blue patterned paper so that the pattern would show more. I inked the edges with Chocolate ink like I did all of the other papers.  In real life, my stamped butterfly matches the color of the one in the patterned paper, but lighting in my house changes things! I used an unusual piece of ribbon I'd been saving for something special. After wrapping it around the card there was a small piece left for a knotted-type bow. In the upper right corner I stamped "best wishes" for the Flutter By Team whose challenges and samples I've enjoyed.

May God bless you as you Fly on to New Pursuits!

Challenges:
Flutter By Wednesdays Challenge #200 Sketch
Little Red Wagon - Use at least 3 flowers
The Paper Players - Challenge #93 Tic Tac Toe

5" x 6.5" Card Recipe:
Paper - Graphic 45 - Once Upon a Springtime; Close To My Heart New England Ivy, Twilight, Colonial White Cardstock, Twitterpated patterned paper
Stamps - CTMH "Find Your Style" (butterfly), "A Little Buzz" (best wishes)
Inks - CTMH Chocolate, New England Ivy, Twilight
Other - Cuttlebug embossing folder, Recollections floral embellishments, Prima (small flowers), CTMH Mocha pearls, ribbon unknown

Fluttering Feel Better Soon

This week at Flutter By Wednesday's Challenge #196 we are to make a get well card using butterflies, fairies or angels. I just opened this paper pack yesterday that the Fed Ex man delivered and discovered it had all of these beautiful butterflies arranged in rainbow-type colors diagonally. I had to use it first! I had seen this color challenge at Purple Onion's Lily Pad and decided to use the rainbow effect for this challenge, too.

The colors on my card are slightly different, but the rainbow idea is the same. I cut out extra butterflies to pop dot across one row and I matted my sentiment in those four colors, also. I put a sparkle in the middle of each of those four butterflies, but they're hard to see.  All of the supplies were Close To My heart. (The paper was an advance pack I was able to get that will be coming out in May called Dotty For You because the back side of each of the 12 patterns is one of the colors in dots like the green here.)

Fun in the Sun for Flutter By Wednesdays

I still have lots of fruit trees and spring flowers blooming. Birds, bees, and beautiful butterflies can be seen fluttering around the blossoms, enjoying the unseasonably warm 70-80 degree days. I hope they're not shocked next week when the temps drop to the 30's. I also hope the mass of cherry and apple blossoms decorating my yard this week mean lots of fruit this summer.

Here's my last card today, just for Flutter By Wednesday's Challenge #195 - Anything Goes with a butterfly, fairy or angel.

I stamped the butterfly on white paper using Versamark, then dusted it with three colors of chalk, using the tiny cotton balls that come in my chalk sets. After I cut it out, I applied Glitz glitter gel to the lighter design left on the wings and to the body and sun. That added just the right amount of sparkle and dimension to give the card more interest.

6.5" x 5" Card Recipe:
Paper - Close To My Heart "Jingle" (striped), Veranda (creme brulee pattern), Splendor (sky), Tulip, Creme Brulee, White Daisy cardstock
Stamps - CTMH "Hot Diggity," "Over the Rainbow"
Ink - Versamark, CTMH Creme Brulee and Black
Other - CTMH Glitz Glitter Gel, Creme Brulee Ribbon collection; chalk, ribbon rose

Freshly Made Sketch #24 with Butterflies

Last week I cut a piece of Basic Grey Curio paper into sections. One of them was this collection of butterflies. Freshly Made Sketch #24 was perfect for displaying this collection. Living in the country with a wide variety of flowers made me passionate about butterflies. I would take caterpillars to school with their food source and let the kids study their life cycle, then release them outdoors. Here's the sketch I used today.

This is also my card for Flutter By Wednesday's Challenge #192 and Ribbon Carousel's Challenge #42, both are "Anything Goes."

 I chose Close To My Heart Stella paper for the background and middle band. It's reversible, so I used the same sheet for both patterns. I thought the background paper gave the card a CAS (Clean and Simple) appearance and looked like the pattern of scales on a butterfly's wings.

I stamped the words in a border on each side using a CTMH set called Classmate Alphabet that has tiny words for each letter. Now, if the weather will continue to warm up here, we'll have more flowers than my snowdrops and with the flowers come the butterflies!

Sweet Sketch A Flitter

I have several friends who absolutely LOVE pink, so when I saw this photo inspiration on Flutter By Wednesday's Challenge #190, I knew I needed to make a pink, flowery card. I used a glittery pink striped scrap so the sketch from Sweet Sketch Wednesday was just right, especially since I could add a flower and pink sparkles.

The butterflies were from a set called A Flutter. I stamped them in Hollyhock ink, colored them with a pink Copic marker, added details with a black 0.1 marker, then added Bitty Sparkles.

5.5" square card recipe:
Paper - Close To My Heart Baby Pink, Blush textured, White Daisy cardstock; DCWV "The Sweet Stack" dp; Basic Grey "Lemonade" (flowered strip)
Stamps - Close To My Heart "A Flitter," "What a Great Day"(retired)
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black; CTMH Hollyhock
Other - Cuttlebug embossing folder; Recollections flower; Copic Markers YG03, R20; CTMH My Legacy Writer 0.1, Red/Pink Sparkles, Bitty Sparkles

A Card for L-O-V-E on Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to my friends. At least, I made this card on Valentine's Day, went out with my hubby for dinner, and finally got to take a photo and post the card, so it may be the 15th by the time I finish posting.

Flutter By Wednesday's Challenge #188 this week was to use the L-O-V-E formula:
L - 2 or more layers
O - Odd number of embellishments (I have 2 flowers and 5 black pearls=7)
V - Violet color
E - any color EXCEPT red

I wanted to use the deconstructed sketch #38 so that I could have a large flower on the large circle and add a butterfly where a small circle would have been. I also wanted to use the strips from one of my new paper packs that I thought would go really well with the violet background (CTMH Petal CS).

6.5" x 5" Card ( All supplies used were from Close To My Heart unless marked):

Paper - Florentine paper pack, Petal CS

Stamps - Quick Cards-Butterfly, True Friends

Ink - Black, Petal, Twilight, Creme Brulee, Garden Green

Other - Petals Paper Flowers, Licorice Opaques Adhesive Gems, Cuttlebug embossing folder

Love as delicate as a butterfly's wings. . .

I have new stamps from Close To My Heart that are jumping up and down, screaming to be used! I love this new stamp. It's perfect for the Valentines I'm making. I especially love the hearts on the wings of the butterfly. It was a combination of image and sentiment in one clear acrylic stamp. They call it Quick Cards-Butterfly and only charged $6.95. They have several Quick-Cards stamps in the new Idea Book that was just released.  I used the Deconstructed Sketch #36 for this card. I also made this for the Valentine challenge this week at Stamps R Us Challenge Blog.

I scored the image rectangle 1/8" from the edges and mounted it on white textured CS with pop dots. I inked the image with the Cotton Candy ink and used the Rock and Roll technique to ink the edges and sentiment portion with the darker Cranberry ink.

5.5" square card:
Paper - K and Company - patterned paper; CTMH - White Daisy CS
Stamp - CTMH "Quick Cards-Butterfly
Ink - CTMH Cotton Candy, Cranberry
Other - CTMH Cranberry ribbon collection; Recollections Floral Embellishments

CAS-ual Friday's Valentine for a Friend

I made several Valentines last night, so here's my next one. I'm still trying to learn to make Clean and simple cards, so I used this sketch from CAS-ual Fridays Sketch #37.

I used a stamp that was a special from Close To My Heart after the Japanese earthquake. I embossed .25" from all four edges. I slightly ran the edge of the papers along a juicy black inkpad, just to give the papers some definition. I pleated the sentiment strip and added one embellishment, a butterfly that I had inked with Cotton Candy ink. It was definitely a quick, easy card to make. Because of the butterflies in the stamp and embellishment, I'm also adding this to Flutter By Wednesday's challenge#188  this week.

6.5" x 5" card:
Paper - K & Co, Darice CS (pink), CTMH CS (white daisy)
Stamp - CTMH "Hope," "True Friends"
Ink - CTMH Black, Cranberry, Cotton Candy
Other - CTMH Just Blooms Paper Shapes (butterfly)

CAS-ual Stippled Butterfly

CAS-ual Fridays challenged us to use Kraft cardstock and string for this card and the Kraft Journal Make It Monday Challenge #52 is Anything Goes.

I began this card by cutting a shape on the Cricut using Art Philosophy Cartridge.  I used the negative space placed over white cardstock as a stencil. I began stippling lighter colors in the center going to darker colors on the outer edge. I used CTMH Crystal Blue, Twilight, Outdoor Denim and Lagoon inks. I removed the "stencil" and stamped the butterfly with Pansy Purple, then used a large foam inker to

highlight the butterfly with Vineyard Berry ink.  I cut out the stenciled area leaving about a 1/4" white border for accent. The Kraft Cardstock was impressed with an embossing stylus 1/4" from all four edges on the inside so that it was raised on the outside. I stamped "Friend" in Memento Black Tuxedo ink and attached the butterfly image with pop dots.

 Two colors of coordinating baker's twine (My Mind's Eye Lime Twist) were tied on the top after inserting into a CTMH Juniper button. This button has a stitched edge appearance, which I love, but has four holes. By tying one color in the top two holes and another in the bottom two holes and tying the two colors together, I finally solved the issue of what to do with four holes. I think any of my friends would enjoy getting a card with this simple treatment. And it was quick and easy to make! This is my favorite butterfly stamp so I'm entering it in the Flutter By Wednesday's challenge, also. Thanks for looking!

The Shabby Tea Room Angel

This is a Kraft-y Christmas card for the challenge at The Shabby Tea Room. Here is their inspiration photo. We're to use kraft, red, silver, newsprint, and a star.

Flutter By Wednesdays Challenge was to use anything with wings. I chose to use an angel from Vintage Holiday Crafts to make a card for my daughter, Lisa. She was always my little angel, and came to love anything "angel" when she grew up. Every Christmas I give her some form of angel. It's my reminder that God always has His angels watching over us. I chose an angel whose coloring seemed really close to that of Kraft cardstock.

I embossed the white with a Cuttlebug snow embossing folder, then rubbed Versamark over the raised surface and sprinkled on CTMH Silver Pearl embossing powder. The red patterned paper was already glittered. I had cut a bracket-shaped square from the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge out of Kraft cardstock. I used one side of it to add to the mat under the angel. I rubbed Versamark on the edge of the bracket and heat embossed with silver embossing powder.

The newsprint was an old public domain December 24th paper I found on line that had the words Christmas and Sunday in one of the titles. I used a 2" scallop punch to cut that portion. The silver star was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and cut out. I stamped "peace and joy" with Brown Staz-on. I tied two different ribbons around the card, organdy and a smaller silver ribbon. I wanted layers of fiber. I tied my favorite twine in the button because it goes so well with Kraft cs.

This was a fun card to make and I kept wanting to add more, but decided that Less is More and stopped. Merry Christmas, Lisa!

Challenges:

The Shabby Tea Room #93 - kraft, red, silver, newsprit, a star

Flutter By Wednesdays #183 - anything with wings

Really Reasonable Ribbon Challenge #38 - anything with ribbon

Supplies:

Paper - Reminisce Naughty or Nice (red); CTMH Kraft, Cranberry, and White Textured, metallic(retired) CS

Ink - Brown Staz-On, Versamark, Tim Holtz's Old Paper distress ink (on newspaper)

Stamp - CTMH "Holiday Cheer"

Accessories - CTMH red organdy and wooden button, Michaels' silver ribbon, Papertrey Ink twine, photo of Vintage Angel from Vintage Holiday Crafts (for personal use or crafts to sell you can use up to 5 of their images free of charge-see terms of use)