Florals and calendars

I did the Taylored Expressions 2025 card class recently and they had some cards that turned into calendars that also had a small post-it style note card on it. I decided to try doing some of them for the Portland Fountain Pen show. These are a couple that I made this week, featuring paper from last month's Simon Says Stamp card kit and Taylored Expression calendars. The minis will fit on a 3 x 3 inch base, which I used champagne gold card stock for. The adhesive notepad was an extra from an old Cocoa Daisy box, and the flowers are from Taylored Expressions. 

On this one, the front of the card is the back of the calendar. The images are from the Simon Says Stamp April kit. I was experimenting with watercolor and varying the color of the embossing to try to figure out which one looks best on which images. This one is embossing powder from Tim Holtz in pumice stone.

This next card I especially like because you have two places for a message; the first one inside and a hidden one under the front easel, which also sets up the florals in a very organic way. 

This last on is from the same florals as above, but I used a pre-embossed front from an old card base from JoAnns to ink blend and then used the 'bloom' as the grounding of the bouquet.

Easter Blessings

 

Man, I am BAD at this. It's not that I have not done any other submissions to the Simon Says Stamp Blog (or any other, but that is the one I am most likely to submit to), but a lot of them have just been on Instagram. I'm going to try to post these to Instagram as well, but I am trying to be more descriptive, and these were part of a project at church.

For the last three years, our church has made Easter and Christmas cards for the people at the care facility, Weiser Cascadia Care Home. This year 6 people from St. Luke's Episcopal church made 48 cards in one morning. We wanted to make certain that whether or not they had family, every resident knew that someone was thinking of them on Easter. These are a few of the cards I made. The prompt for Simon Says Stamps Monday Challenge this week was "sweet treats". Though carrots are a vegetable, anyone who has ever had carrot cake knows that carrots are sweet, and it gives me a chance to show off these cards. I also happen to remember beinng absolutely addicted to Cadbury Eggs as a child, though I can't abide them at this point in my life. Somehow they're just too sweet and have no flavor other than sweet, but I remember  the yellow and white parts of the fondant interior had distinct flavors. 

I am in love with the "Big Pickup" stamps from Honeybee Stamps. The truck is lovely whether you pick the front or back view, and they sell a variety of stamps to help accessorize the truck. The carrots and eggs and bunny are all from the "loads of spring" add-on set. They were all colored with alcohol markers, but I use everything from Copic, Ohuhu and Olo, so I can't really tell you what colors I used.

The bottom wood grain is actually a stamp from Taylored Expressions. It is called "Shiplap background stamp, and that's one of my favorite basic backgrounds as red rubber stamps. The Happy Easter is from Simon Says Stamps Hoppy Easter.

This one is from Simon Says Stamp and its called Hoppy Easter. I love to color these images and these are just perfect to color. The die it is on is  Spellbinders Essential 4 petal labels and the embossing folder is Simon Says Stamp  but I'm not sure which one it is. when I looked for it today. Picnic Floral is similar and has a hidden heart in it you can cut out with a die they sell with it.