Thank You, Marcia!

The very kind and generous Marcia P. (whom I had the pleasure to meet in person last September) sent a batch of birthday cards for Karen's Card Shop at my church. All the cards they sent were lovely, and here are a few of them!

Delightful polka-dots and perfect use of the rule
of thirds make this a fun and beautifully designed card.

Love the bright dark pink and blue, and the ribbon
adds lovely interest as a ground for the vase!

Great texture and colors...and very good advice
rolled into one awesome card.

Daisies are my favorite flower, so this fabulous
card makes me smile! The tassel on the tag
is absolutely perfect.

Great use of delicate yet colorful die cuts
on a fabulously white background.

Many, many thanks to Marcia and her friend for sharing so generously of their talent with Karen's Card Shop. If you're interested in learning more about how my church's card store works, please visit the tab on my blog labeled "Karen's Card Shop."

If you're interested in donating some cards, please email me first. We do have quite a stock of some types of cards and are in constant want of others.

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and gratitude,
Susan

Color, Color Everywhere!

No time to chat tonight, but this card doesn't require chat. It's just a lovely expression of a fun color!

A big stamp like this three ferns wood-mounted rubber stamp from Hero Arts can be used on a CAS card...if you limit the space it takes up with a mask. Add a big sentiment, and you're golden.

Or teal, as it were.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts, Papertrey
ink: Hero Arts ocean, intense black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: silver metallic marker (Prismacolor), ruler, post-its for mask, metallic shimmer enamel dots

Butterfly Blues

Ninety-nine percent of the time, my decision to eschew dies and die cutters fills me with minimalist satisfaction, for I know without a doubt my need to have EVERY DIE OUT THERE to justify the cost of whichever die-cut machine I purchased would exceed rational, healthy boundaries.

But one percent of the time, this decision makes me blue.

This one-percent blue was sparked by seeing a number of cards on Pinterest that use dies to cut out a wide range of interesting shapes so a pretty background can show through. While I'm able to achieve the look of this technique with punches, it's neither easy nor entirely satisfying.

Punches just don't give a stamper the range to reach all over a panel...even a small panel like this. The negative of the punched shape must stay near the edge of the panel. Martha Stewart makes some "anywhere" punches, but I've not purchased them because they are a dozen more things to buy.

My blue background was stamped with a variety of splatter stamps in three shades of blue. Those blues do make me so very, very happy.

Tomorrow, I'll have recovered from my moody blues, but today, I'm feeling a tinge of regret for my minimalism.

But the blues sure are pretty in the negative space of that butterfly, aren't they?

And a 99 is still an A+. I'm happy with that grade!


How do you feel about the supplies you've chosen not to buy? Where do you draw the line? Do you draw a line!?!


Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey (sentiment) and various splatter stamps
ink: various dye inks
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: Martha Stewart butterfly punch, square punches, dimensionals 

We Have Both Kinds of Flowers: Horizontal AND Vertical

Altenew's Extra Special stamp set includes a lovely layered flower...perfect for my MISTI and for one-layer cards in a horizontal or vertical orientation.

Now, the MISTI was given to me by Tina S., who lives in my small town and works in our school district and treats my kids right. She's a wonderful person, generous and kind. As you can see on both of today's cards, the MISTI is extremely helpful with layered stamping, and we can thank Tina for that.

Cheerful yellow with bling for flower centers and as accents...lovely thank you! I like how the sentiment's font mimics the flow of the black outline.

Blissful blue and a bit of black Stickles for flower centers...sister blessings!

The blue and black sentiment enhance the card's unity.

Playing around with colors for layered stamp sets highlights how a simple color change can completely alter the atmosphere of a card. Bright, happy energy or serene beauty...either way, it works!

Supplies
stamps: Altenew Extra Special, Papertrey (sentiment on yellow card)
ink: various dye inks
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: MISTI, rhinestones, Stickles

Bold Color, Bright Bling

Today's card was inspired by a number of cards featuring brightly-colored backgrounds for white die cuts, like this card here by Loll Thompson. Loll used alcohol inks to create her lovely background, but I don't have alcohol inks (a lack I may or may not correct). Using my Tim Holtz Distress Inks, I sponged an ombre backdrop for my white, punched flowers.

I love the way the Distress Inks blend so smoothly with the Tim Holtz mini blending tools. The intensity of the color is wonderful and pops right off the white card base. I added rhinestones to my daisies after coloring them with Sharpies. Because, you know, BLING!

This weekend, we put a downpayment on a new puppy! She's not been born yet, but we have second pick of a litter between two adorable adult golden retrievers. Here are the mom (Annie, left) and dad (Grady, right).

Their previous litter was full of adorable pups!

Around Labor Day, our lives will become very, very chewy and furry. Please say a prayer for Daisy, who will no longer be the only pup. She may not be amused by a little furball.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: My Favorite Things Label Maker Sentiments
ink: Tim Holtz Distress Inks, Memento black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: flower punch, rhinestones, Sharpie markers

Big Stamp Layout

For several reasons, big stamps are the enemy of clean-and-simple (CAS) design. First, they don't leave much room for white space on a card because, you know, they're big. Second, the size and orientation of a big stamp seriously limit the number of layouts you can create on a small rectangle of cardstock, especially if you're not adding lots of mats, ribbon, gee-gaws, and embellishments.

Consequently, big stamps are not my favorites, but I make an exception for this gorgeous lighthouse stamp from PSX. Tricked out in simple black and white, it makes a wonderful masculine birthday card.

This layout works best with this stamp. A vertical layout puts too much vertical into the design (that lighthouse is VERY vertical, even with the clouds and curvy beach and fence to break it up), and even adding a horizontal sentiment isn't enough to create balance. A horizontal layout, with the image offset, creates some tension and lets the horizontal sentiment stand out more as it's reinforced by the horizontal card. Like I said above, there's only so much you can do positioning a big stamp on a small card.

To explore variations, I've applied all sorts of techniques to this stamp over the years, including heat embossing, watercoloring, colored pencils, markers, and chalks. I've added ribbon, eyelets, brads, twine, designer paper, sand, glitter, buttons...all sorts of embellishments. I've created sponged and stippled backgrounds for the image stamped in black.

None of those cards made me as happy as this simple black-and-white version, sans embellishment. This way, a beautiful scene artistically rendered in red rubber gets to be the star.

It doesn't get more CAS than that.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Papertrey (sentiment), PSX (lighthouse)
ink: Archival black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: dimensionals

Peace & Love; Lost & Found

There's a story behind today's card. But before we get to that, I must credit THIS PIN which inspired my card's layout. (Check out Lisa Addesa's blog post here.) Isn't Lisa's original beautiful, with its soft colors and clever use of negative space of the die cut? Perfect!

Well, I don't have a die or punch that would achieve the same effect, so I simply lifted the layout and made a holiday card instead. The snowflakes and hearts seemed the perfect accents for the sentiment, don't you think? You could play around with tiny stamps of all sorts to duplicate this lovely, versatile layout!

Now, as you might imagine, to gather that many small snowflake stamps, I had to raid several different sets. Having only one small acrylic block, it was a chore to switch out the tiny stamps over and over to get a good distribution of flakes, hearts, and dots. Keeping track of everything was a challenge, and when I finished the card, I realized that one of the tiniest snowflake stamps was missing.

ARRRGGHHH!!!!

I searched my craft table high and low, and was so agitated that my husband and older son came to help. All three of us were searching and searching and searching for this tiny, clear stamp.

Then, my younger son, Jack, who has autism and is particularly observant, walks down the stairs to find Nick digging through my trash, George on his hands and knees running hands over the carpet, and me sifting through piles of stamp sets on my desk.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Looking for a tiny stamp," I exclaimed in frustration.

He calmly asked, "What's that thing in your hair, Mom?"

The stamp. It was the stamp.

How it got trapped in my hair is a mystery, but bless Jack for finding it! Who knows where the thing would have ended up had it fallen out away from my craft area, never to be seen again?!?!

Mercy, grace, snowflakes, and hearts,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts sentiment, various snowflakes
ink: Hero Arts pool, red royal, charcoal
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones
 

Verdure

Today's card came about as a variation on these cards which was inspired by this card. I love the depth created by three shades of green:

In addition to the interest of the three shades of green, I popped up the left end of the banner with a dimensional but glued the right side directly to the card base. The punched leaf is then popped up to the same height as the left end of the banner.

The stamp is an old, old, old Hero Arts set called Real Leaves (which includes yesterday's sprig stamp as well). These cards are part of my "use your stamps to make birthday cards for Karen's Card Shop" challenge. I've mostly abandoned that challenge as I've made plenty of birthday cards AND as kind reader Marcia P. sent me a package full of gorgeous birthday cards as a donation to the shop. We are--for the time being--good with birthday cards. Thank you, Marcia, and thanks to all who have donated in the past.

Mercy, grace, peace, love, and gratitude,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts (leaf), unknown sentiment
ink: Memento new sprout; Hero Arts green hills, green; Archival black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: post-it notes for mask, dimensionals, leaf punch

A Little Sprig and Big Cups

Botanicals provide perfect subject matter for guy-ish birthday cards. Consider this little sprig, colored with markers, spritzed with water, and stamped without fuss or ornament. 

Isn't the little sprig delightful? Sometimes, small things carry big weight, and this was an idea I contemplated in Normandy.

Almost everything about Normandy impressed me, from the tiny flowers in the grass, to the giant castles we visited, to virtually every meal we ate, to the hard-working servers of those meals. With my crafter's eye, I soaked in French culture and atmosphere, paying attention to little things: the spray of color on stone from stained glass, the quick glimpse of a beautiful 18th century home through a break in a wall as we drove by, the pansies in a window box, the baa-ing of the goats at Point du Hoc, the perfection of a Nutella crepe or pain au chocolat, the swans floating in the moat at our hotel, a private home made from a German bunker. That last one proves you can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

And not least of all, I deeply appreciated the fact that not one of the French people laughed in my face when I asked them if they spoke English woman. Apparently, that final s on Anglais is silent. Who knew?

But one tiny thing didn't make me happy. 

Can you guess what that might be?

The French drink tiny cups of coffee. Perhaps the rest of the world drinks tiny cups of coffee as well...my coffee-drinking experience is limited to the U.S. But I was all astonishment when I beheld the itty bitty cups of coffee in Normandy. 

Now, generally speaking, I understand that we Americans are vulgar in our need to super-size everything...cars, houses, hair, steaks, sodas, etc. But how in the world would anyone find satisfaction in such a tiny cup of coffee? It's baffling to this thoroughly vulgar American coffee addict. 

Source

While little cups of coffee don't compute for me, a little sprig on a birthday card makes total sense.  

Life is weird, isn't it? 

Or maybe it's just me.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love overflowing a very big cup,

Susan

Supplies

stamps: Hero Arts, StampinUp

ink: Memento

paper: Papertrey white

accessories: Memento markers, water spritzer

A Forgotten Anniversary

Hello! It's good to be back, and I'm happy to report that the past two weeks have been full of fun, solemnity, adventure, and--not insignificantly--pain au chocolat. 

Our family went to Normandy. I'll be blogging more about the trip on my other blog later, but for now, here's photographic proof I was on a different continent.

Yes, that's me beaming with happiness in front of Mont St. Michel, which has been on my bucket list since I was 15.  I'm 50 now. Woohoo!!!

A few days after this photo was taken, we received a text from my husband's mom wishing us a happy anniversary. We had been so absorbed in our amazing adventure that we forgot our 31st anniversary. Neither of us cared. We had more important things to occupy our attention.

Things like pain au chocolat and William the Conqueror's extremely cool castle at Falaise. 

Today's card is in honor of our forgotten anniversary because 31 years is no small accomplishment. 

This card was inspired by a handful of cards on Pinterest that had sprays of flowers topped with a banner. I love the softness of the leaves and flowers combined with the crispness of the banner and all that glorious white space. 

*happy sigh*

And now I'm off to deal with a "mont" of laundry and to love on the dog, who seems to think that we might disappear again if she stops demanding to be petted. 

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,

Susan

Supplies

stamps: Papertrey Embellished Elegance, Hero Arts sentiment

ink: various Hero Arts and Archival dye inks

paper: Papertrey white

accessories: dimensionals

Flowers with Style...and a Blogging Break

Announcement: I am taking a Simplicity blogging break for about two weeks. While I'll miss posting here, I'm going to try to post on Questioning my Intelligence, the personal blog I've neglected far too long. I promise nothing, however, as living life will take priority over documenting it for the next few weeks. Honestly, the past months have been personally quite draining, and it's time to give myself a break and re-energize. Don't worry. Simplicity will be back!

And now for today's card.

I adore crisp, clean, stylized images...images like this stylized flower from Hero Arts.

Combine that crisp, clean image with fun colors and some bling, and you've got a simple winner!

Simple winners are the best winners, at least in my book.

Back in a few weeks.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts, Papertrey
ink: Archival and Hero Arts
paper: Papertrey
accessories: rhinestones

Peace Like a Seashell

An Odd Request: Would any readers who live in or have spent some time vacationing in Normandy, France, please send me a quick email? I have a few questions. susanraihala at roadrunner dot com


My Tuesday post of a shell card was copiously colorful, but today's shell card goes in a different direction: subtle and soft.

These beautiful shell stamps come from a VERY old Hero Arts wood-mounted set that I love immoderately. Each shell was stamped in a soft ink and cut out. Originally, I didn't include the starfish, but it seemed necessary to fill in a bit of space there at the bottom of the pile.

The shells at the back of the pile are glued to the card base at the bottom but popped up on the top edge to add dimension. The two bottom shells are attached with dimensionals only, and the starfish is glued to them and hanging off the edge.

I love the peace of this card, the subtlety, the calm.

That's very much unlike my Facebook feed at the moment. As several different extraordinarily dysfunctional conflicts swirl around my feed right now, I'm reminded of a wonderful motto I found on Pinterest.

Before posting a snarky, politicized, gossipy, angry, or fearful comment on social media, remember this: destructive conflict needs your participation to keep it going.

Post puppy or kitty or owl photos instead. Name something you are grateful for (my blog readers). Share a funny coffee saying ("In dog coffees, I've only had one"). Recommend a great book you just finished reading (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin). Put up an inspirational quotation or a delightful berry crisp recipe.

Feed what is positive in the world of social media; know when to be wise and say nothing. And then go to your seaside happy place in your mind, listen to a seashell, and feel the peace.

Mercy, grace, love, and mucho peace to you,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts, StampinUp
ink: various dye inks
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: dimensionals, glue, CutterBee scissors