CAS Colors and Sketches #358

 I have more than 100 Stampin' Up markers, but of the three colors above, I possess only Pear Pizzazz.  It's amazing how many shades of one color exist in the marker world!   My choice of stamp for the CAS Colors and Sketches #358 was an old Inkadinkado image of sunflowers.  After coloring them, I added Wink of Stella to the flowers for a little shine. (Once again, I'm just slipping across the finish line!)

Watercolored Poppy for April

I actually made two different card fronts with two different poppy stamps for CAS Watercolor's April challenge, only to remember that I needed more white space.  It's always good to go back to the blog post and study the DT cards. 

Hero Arts' clear "Delicate Blossoms" stamp is one of my favorites; two tall arrangements of poppies.  I stamped and heat-embossed the image on white cardstock and then colored with SU's Sweet Sugarplum marker (and another darker pink), while using an water brush. I found a piece of cardstock that matched the color and layered the painted piece on it and a black card.  The sentiment from Wordsworth is one I've had for years but never used.  (I have planted a plum-colored poppy plant twice in the past 4 years and neither one came up in the spring.  I'm not giving up!)

Freshly Made Sketches

How to create the "shape" of the Freshly Made Sketch 329?  I chose the Blended Bloom from Stampin' Up, which I colored with SU! markers; I've had the stamp for a couple of years but it had never seen ink.  The sentiment is an old one from Hero Arts.  (Does anyone else have difficulty finding long one-line sentiments? I do, which means banner sentiments are always difficult for me.) 

Tuesday Card

I skipped a week of Tuesday cards when I was gone for "grandbaby duty" last week.  Today's card will be delivered in person because Chelsea and I have a date for coffee.  If I mailed the card, it wouldn't arrive until Thursday, although the destination is only 30 miles away.  The USPS "consolidated" its sorting sites more than a year ago, which means all of our mail travels about 350 miles west before coming back east for delivery.  That's rural America for you!  (Seriously...there is a little town 8 miles south of here; a piece of mail from here would go all those 350 miles away and then be trucked back a couple of days later.)

For this week's card, I chose another of Unity's faceless women, "Within Us."  It's stamped on watercolor paper and colored with SU's markers. 

A Flower for a Birthday

(I just learned that this particular card was honored on The Flower Challenge blog!)

Stamping with flowers is an appealing challenge, but for me, choosing which flower stamp to use is the real challenge.  For this month's "The Flower Challenge" occasion theme post, I picked Penny Black's "dotted petals" and an old PSX birthday greeting.  The flower was stamped in black and heat-embosssed; I colored it with SU! markers and a blending pen.  Then I added sparkle to the flower and sentiment with some Stickles Lace.