Lori Whitlock Lemonade Glass Shaped Card - Wishing you a day full of sunshine

Summer's here and I'm in the mood for some bright sunny colors and  a tall frosty glass of lemonade. My friends are located all over the country, but the one thing we all seem to have in common lately is the HEAT!!!  It's 107 degrees here in sunny California and rising  What better time to take to my air conditioned craft room and create some snail mail full of lemonade-y goodness.

I admit, I'm obsessed with shaped cards.  I cut this adorable lemonade glass card on my Cricut with a Lori Whitlock SVG file. I like to change my cut files to make my cards as large as I can...this one is about 5 x 7 inches.  I couldn't help casing this sweet card from the Lori Whitlock website (circa 2015). The sequin bubbles are such a cute added sparkly touch.  I found the fun fruit stamps with matching dies in my stash and couldn't find a company for them.  Sorry I can't enable you with more info.

Off to send some handmade sunshine to my friends.

Thanks for vising.

Go forth and be fabulous.

Nancy

Playing along with:

        Simply Create Too

        Word Art Wednesday
        Curtain Call
        Dragonfly Journeys
        My Time to Craft
        Creative With Stamps

Anita Goodesign Tropical Quilt - Another Embroidered Block Update

Oh, what fun I'm having machine embroidering appliqued blocks for my tropical quilt. Check out some of the blocks I've already finished in my earlier tropical quilt and tropical quilt 2 blog posts. I've completed nine blocks so far...only four more to go!  I can't wait to start piecing and get this ship sailing.

Then comes the hardest part for me, choosing the shashing and border fabrics.  Help!!! I'm thinking of a light blue fabric with some texture that looks like waves or water. Or maybe a very subdued tropical tone on tone. Or plain, so it won't compete with my bright colored blocks?  I have too many choices in my stash.  I love striped borders, but I'm not sure how stripes will look with a tropical quilt.  Maybe like a striped beach umbrella! That would be cool.

I won't know exactly what my design will be until I get all the blocks done and organize them to see what shape and size my quilt will be.  It's like arranging puzzle pieces.. I'm praying that they'll all fit together perfectly.

I guess part of the excitement is seeing where the process takes me. Speak to me, quilt! 

Thanks for visiting.

Go forth and be fabulous.

Nancy

Stamping Bella Birthday - Shaker Card Drama

                                        

The minute I saw this cute happy birthday die I knew it would make the perfect shaker card for my friend's birthday. For this card I colored my Stamping Bella image with copics, die cut my Spellbinders border and created my shaker card element...easy peasy.  But it didn't start out that way....

This was my first attempt.   How hard could it be? I've made shaker cards before. I had already water colored the peonies from Altenew's Peony Bouquet stamp set and they were the perfect colors for the Splitcoaststampers Tuesday color challenge.   I often struggle with layouts, but usually things fall together in the end. In this case, I think my  peonies just didn't want to live on this card.  Those gray looking elements are actually silver and I don't hate them.  The most frustrating part of this card was the shaker doohickey!  Apparently I'm not patient enough to let glue dry and my sequins like swimming in it.  I was glad when this card was finally finished and, happily, when I woke up this morning I was ready to give it another try.  My husband likes this one best.  I like the Stamping Bella one way better. What do you think?

Thanks for visiting.
Go forth and be fabulous.
Nancy

Playing along with:
   
         Word Art Wednesday
         Glitter and Sparkle
         Addicted to Stamps
         Crafty Creations
         The Paper Shelter
         The Crafty Addicts

Cheery Rag Quilt and Card - For My Sweet Friend's Little One

These fun rag quilts are my answer to being machine quilting-challenged.  I can just sew as I go and end up with a soft, fluffy finished quilt - no top quilting necessary. Babies seem to be fascinated with the texture of these quilts and, happily, they get fluffier the more they are washed. (Both the babies and the quilts.😄)

I bought these adorable bright cotton charm squares in a kit at my fabric store a while ago and decided they would make a perfect quilt for my friend and her little baby girl.  I linked directions for this quilt in an earlier post here.

I used premium quilting cotton for the bottom and top layers on my blocks and white cotton flannel for the batting.  This produces beautiful fraying on the finished quilt. These vibrant colors and dainty prints are delightfully girly and  the juvenile patterns are adorable.

The quilt is reversible because the back is just as pretty as the front! 

I almost always make matching cards for my gifts, just because I can...and it's loads of fun trying to match colors and designs.   The card base was made from the Sizzix Framelets Die Set - Friends Forever Step Ups.

The cute onsies were die cut with the Sizzix Triplets "Oh, Baby" die set. I've made several of these cards for friends because it's easy to adapt the onsies for a boy or girl just by changing the colors.  It would be fun to match the print on them to one of the fabrics in the quilt. I'll try that next time!

Thanks for visiting.

Go forth and be fabulous.

Nancy

Altenew Peony Bouquet Flip Cards

I adore these Tonic Studio Flip Flop die sets when I need to make something special and don't have much time.  I got a little panicky last night when I realized I needed to make two birthday cards and a sympathy card for today.  

                                         

I stamped these lavender flowers with Tim Holtz distress Ink.  The layers on these Altenew Peony Bouquet stamps are pretty easy to line up in my Misti if I just pick a few spots to concentrate on.

I'm into stripes lately, both in my quilt borders and cards.  They just seem to coordinate with everything.  This beautiful gold and white striped Stampin' Up vellum called to me from my stash.

I used two different Tonic Flip Flop dies, an oval and a rectangle.  The die cut sets include a large die to cut the flip flop card (over 5 x 7) which can be sized to different dimensions and several layering dies for the shape area. There's a sentiment die for the center, but I chose to pop up my peonies for my focal point and put my sentiment on the back.  I dug out my Marvy stamp pads from a hundred years ago and now I remember why I love them so much.  The pinks and reds stamped very evenly and I am happy with the bright, vivid colors. Good thing I have the reinkers because I think I'll be using them a lot for my layered stamps.

The little swirls around the flowers were the scraps from the die cut frame.  Glad I didn't throw them away!  I added a pretty sparkly gold bow to my side panel and some sequins to match the flowers and I'm almost done.

I use tons of die cut sentiments because I can put them anywhere on the card, even over stamped images, and I don't have to worry about ink smudges.  This "Prayers" image is from Hero Arts and it has several stamp phrases to go with it.  And, of course, I messed up stamping the "sending hugs" phrase, so I just stamped it again on another piece of paper and popped it up over my boo boo. I'm a boo boo guru. 

Thanks for visiting.

Go forth and be fabulous.

Nancy

Adding my card to these challenges:

Crafty Creations

Dream Valley

The Card Concept

Really Reasonable Ribbon

Make My Monday
Aurora Wings