Curtain Call Challenge - Flutter

I am popping in with a few quick cards today for the Challenge at Curtain Call. This week the challenge at Curtain Call is "Flutter" which to me always means butterflies or "flutterbys" as I called them when I was young.  I love butterflies and the imagery that just hearing the name invokes. It's kind of like what happened earlier this week. After weeks of rain, it was so nice to wake up Monday Morning and hear the birds sing and see the sun shine! Now we've had storms again since last night with lots of rain. In fact the rain was beating so hard against the windows in the night that it sounded like hail, but it was really only rain. Unfortunately, that was at 3:30 this morning and the dogs even woke up scared so I've been up for several hours already.

Anyhow, I wanted to stamp a couple of the floral branches from Altenew's Extra Special Stamp and Die Bundle. Lately, Altenew has been having some great bundles at a great price. I subscribe to their newsletter to get notifications of sales and blog posts so I picked up the Painted Butterflies Bundle last week for about 25% off the retail price. The stamps and dies are available separately, but I try to always get the bundle because you get a price break vs. buying the items separately and because I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, it's much easier for me to use a die rather than try to fussy cut them.  I love the precision edge that using a die gives me.

Since I had already gotten the MISTI out to stamp, I just went ahead and cut several of the white die cuts to make a few more of the floral branches. This is a multi step layering image, so that's kind of the way I have ended up doing things much more lately.  If I stamp and die cut one thing, I might as well do a few more while I have everything out.  If I don't make cards from all of them right away, I just store the pre-stamped ones in the stamp pocket with the stamp and die set so they are all ready the next time I want one or need a fast card.  For today though, I made all of what I had into cards.

Most of the cards I send are "Just a Note" or "Thinking of You" types of cards and I try to have sentiments stamped, heat embossed and ready to go as was the case today.  I did a whole bunch of these this week while my hubby was working on my computer but I have already used several of them and have plans to make quite a few more today and tomorrow.  Since hubby is still trying to figure out what is going on with my computer, I'll likely have time today to die cut more banners and get them stamped and ready to go.  One of my favorites is a sentiment from Altenew's Beautiful Day Stamp Set that says "Wishing You the most Beautiful Day.  It takes a different type of banner but it's another one that I really like to have on hand.  I keep these banners in a zippered baggie on my desk. Then whenever I am pulling a card together, those are my go to.  If I need something else, I'll stop to get a different sentiment and stamp it on my card or on a banner, but the ones mentioned above are my most used so it's a no-brainer for me to have some ready to go.

One of the things I most like about Altenew Inks is the color collections they are available in. I also really love how nicely they stamp.  Pastel colors are really difficult to get right as they have a tendency to get muddy looking, but Altenew's are awesome. I really like it that they have so many cool color palettes.  My favorites are Rose Petal, Red Cosmos, Sea Shore and Cool Summer Nights.  I have several sets of these and I'm thinking I need to get the rest of the cube collections; Red Sunset, Summer Afternoon and Warm & Cozy.  I have the rest of the colors except the Warm Grays, but I have the cool greys and prefer them anyway.  I don't use much Yellow or Orange but when you need it - you need it and it's nice to have the coordinating colors already done for you. For the cards I have here I used the lightest and 2nd lightest shades in the Rose Petal and Cool Summer Nights Collection. For the yellow flowers I used Papertrey Ink's Lemon Tart and Harvest Gold. The leaves are all done in Papertrey Ink's New Leaf Ink.

For the ink blended background panels, I used the the 2nd lightest colors with a super light touch. These are incredibly easy to do on the watercolor paper I use which is Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper.  Because I almost always use shimmer mist on my backgrounds, that just helps it to blend more.  I always use Tsukineko Sheer Sparkle Shimmer Spritz or Tattered Angels Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist.  All together, I made 7 cards in Pinks, Blues, and Yellows with banners that were pre-cut and stamped.  Most of the time I use Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder so that is what I used to emboss ahead of time. Again, if I needed something different, I would have stopped to create what I needed.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today.  I hope you'll come back soon.