Even More Catching Up

I have had a lovely long "weekend" but return to work tonight.  I hope to get a little more crafting in before then, though!

Here are some more of the cards I made recently:

These are a couple of early Father's Day cards.  I used Maya Road's chipboard trees as a base, then covered them with various designer papers.  The wood grain paper is from K&Co.'s Edamame line.  All the other papers are from Basic Grey's Archaic line, which is just great for masculine cards!  After creating the backgrounds from various papers, I attached the tree top to the card, then the tree part to the tree top and added some foam tape under the bottom of the tree to keep it layered nicely.  I stamped the greeting on a scrap, glued it to the card and then topped it with the frame die cut, which was part of a set of them that I purchased on line years ago.  I added copper brads to finish off.

This is an early birthday card for my nephew, whose birthday is coming up in June.  He has a convenient 4-letter name, which worked out because I wanted to use a 4-circle sketch design from the Mojo Monday sketch challenge blog.  Here is the sketch:

This was a perfect design for an item I had been collecting for a while and wanted to figure out how to recycle on cards--the colored rings on Target pharmacy medicine bottles that indicate whose medicine is in each bottle (each family member has a different color).  I found that one of my circle punches makes a circle that fits perfectly inside the ring, and I punched four circles and added stickers to spell out Jake's name.  The card background paper is more of that fabulous Basic Grey Archaic paper.  The layers of red paper and striped paper both came from my scrap box and I don't know their origins.  On top of the striped paper I attached the circles with the letter stickers, and then glued the rings on top of them to "frame" them.  I really like how that turned out and I love using repurposed "trash" as card elements!

The final touch was stamping the sentiment on a scrap of orange paper and cutting the notches in the ends.  Trial and error on the correct length led to me having a leftover "banner", which led directly to the next card. I was thinking of a way to use the leftover piece and since the length was right on one side but not the other, I had the idea of making a "flag" from it by wrapping the "wrong" end around a toothpick.  I had a vague thought of using it as an embellishment on a cupcake image.

After making my "flag" however, I noticed that the toothpick was somewhat curved, and it made me think of  someone or something carrying the flag.  A dig in my embellishments produced a chipboard elephant from American Crafts, and from there I designed the rest of the card around the colors of the elephant and the flag:

The card base is light green Bazzill cardstock and the other papers are from the scrap box.  The blue circle is a scrap of cardstock, and I layered it onto a circle of Basic Grey "Cupcake" paper.  The paper has balloons all over it, but I like the abstract multicolored edge produced by showing just a little of it!  The yellow swirl paper is from a Provo Craft paper pad.

Both this card and the tree cards above were inspired by the same sketch from Splitcoast Stampers' Wednesday sketch challenge from April 18, 2012:

I love how one simple design can inspire a variety of cards!

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!