#1130 – Happy New Year!!

Hello and welcome!! It’s the New Year!!!

WISHING EVERYONE A VERY HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

I have no idea how 2025 flew by so fast – I am trying to recollect what happened in my life and everything seems like a blur – I feel like I did so many things, but I just can’t remember what! I guess being busy while not having many sad moments itself is an achievement and I can at least be happy about that feeling!

So anyway, while I wasn’t able to make any Diwali cards this year since I was so busy (one of the fre regrets!) I am happy I made new year’s card to give my sister. We also made this an Inspiration Station challenge – which seems to have been a yearly occurance, but we hope to change that this year!

So this time is my turn and I chose a trio of images –

_{sources: butterfly, Humming bird, Water Lilies}

The challenge is to take basically from the image – the colors, elements – nature, flora, fauna, shining – anything that you like! I wanted to use one or the other element from each image. Initially I thought of using the butterfly, bird and flowers, but then changed that to use the colors from the first image, and use the humming bird from the second and using the floral theme from the third. And here’s what I created –

Truthfully, I did change my idea quite a few times before I arrived at this one. But that seems to be the usual process with me! I used the Neat & Tangled Geometric Blooms on the base of the card and gently blended in some darker ink on the sea green cardstock, leaving the center un touched. I then die cut a frame for this panel using Pink Fresh Studio Ornate Rectangle Frame and set the pieces aside.

I then used various colored cardstock to die cut the florals from Spellbinders Fresh Picked Anemones. I used some ink blending only on the stalk and leaves, while leaving the rest of die cuts with solid colors. For the humming bird, I used Simon Says Stamp Delicate Hummingbird Duo on watercolor paper and then watercolored the bird before using a shimmery champagne watercolor from Gansai Tambi Starry Colors to color certain areas on the bird to make it shine – after all Humming birds are wicked shimmery! I used Sakura black Glaze pen on its eyes and beak. I also added dots of gold on the already die cut areas of the center of the flowers using a gold gel pen for doing so.

Once everything was dry and ready, I assembled all the pieces on the card base, and felt that the background was too flat. So I splattered some gold from the Gansai Tambi Starry Colors, let it dry and then adhered all the pieces on the card base. I also cut off the cardstock from the corners of the card base to match the frame.

For the sentiment, I used a sentiment from CrafTangles Happy Holidays and stamped it on gold pearl shimmer cardstock using a Colorbox teal pigment ink. I then stamped it using Versamark clear sticky ink before heat embossing it with clear embossing powder. I then die cut this using a die from Simon Says Stamp Stitched Circles and adhered it on the card.

And that’s my card for my sister – Happy New Year to you sis!!

Checkout my sister’s card here. It’s still hidden from me at the time of writing this post, so I am excited to receive it, but I bet I’m gonna love it! ❤ ..and oh, wow!! Her mixed media card just blew me away!! I am delighted to be at it’s receiving end!! Thank you sis!! ❤

Thank you so much for stopping by!

#1105 – Birthday Shrooms

Hello and welcome! Welcome to a new challenge at Seize the Birthday! It’s always an Anything Goes challenge with an optional topping provided by our leading ladies. This time, our leading lady, Glenda, has chosen the topping as ‘Kraft & Red‘.

And here’s what I made –

I got a few new dies from Dress My Craft last year, and I thought this challenge would be perfect to play with the Mushroom dies.

The Dress My Craft Mushrooms originally has only three dies – one each for 3 mushrooms of a large, medium and small size. But I wanted my mushrooms to carry different colors. Coloring them was an option, but instead I die cut them using the kraft and red cardstocks and trimmed the base of the mushrooms from the red die cut before adhering it on top of the kraft piece. For the white spots, I just outlined the die cuts on a scrap white cardstock and fussy cut it before adhering it behind the piece. Of course, I could have adhered the white spots after die cutting them, but some of the pieces were too small for me to handle.

Once done, I switched to the frame. The frame comes from Pink Fresh Studio Ornate Rectangle Frame. I added a piece of kraft panel embossed using Spellbinders Flora embossing folder and inked the embossed part with a brown ink by swiping the ink pad on top. I then adhered the frame, fussy cut the edges and adhered it on top of the card base.

Before adhering the mushrooms on the card, I also added a few leaves from Dress My Craft Foliage & Leaves 5 dies die cut from black cardstock. I die cut the sentiment from Altenew Essential Sentiment Strips from red card stock and backed it with white cardstock before adhering it on the card.

And that finished my card! Checkout the Seize the Birthday challenge blog for more inspiration from our talented DT and from our party guests.

Thank you so much for stopping by!