July Card Chain Challenge Reveal

Hey there - it's time to reveal the July chain for The Card Chain Challenge! Twenty-seven people participated with each sending a card to the person above her on the chain. Cards flew over the world - see the entire chain here! My July card went a bit closer to home to Arlene (A Bit of This and That) in California:

Supplies: Paper - Hero Arts A2 card (retired); Anchor Paper smoke:

Neenah Classic Crest Solar White

Stamps - Sunny Studio Everything's Rosy (with dies)

Hero Arts Friend Definition & Leafy Vines (both retired) 

and CL155 Playful Animals (sentiment, also retired)

Dies - Hero Arts Nesting Circle Infinity Dies

Other - Various Hero Arts & Memento inks; May Arts string twine; 

Michael's gems; white ep; foam tape

As usual, I threw the kitchen sink at this card, starting with the colors - amethyst being my birthstone!  Just had to do the colors!! And I  liked the sketch too, the theme of friendship, and twine since the sketch looked like it included twine. Whew - that's plenty but Arlene deserves every bit of it!!

I moved my circle element to the left as I tend to go left to right. My sentiment is a smaller one so there'd be room for my floral embellishments. You may have spotted a purple roses card by me back in June, luckily my friend likes purple aka amethyst so I stamped enough for her card when I started doing this one! And yes, Arlene got some roses in her favorite red colors. 😊 I went a shade darker on the leaves for this rose since it matched better with my card base. I didn't want a plain circle or a plain card base so I stamped them with some fave Hero Arts cling stamps. Both tone-on-tone, the circle has the friend definition text & the card has leafy vines. Thank goodness for the search feature in Flickr as I found a card I'd made with what I thought was named flourish something or other (I lost the packaging). Didn't work searching on flourish so I searched on cling and found it under its name "Leafy Vines" (new back in 2012, now retired).

I've known Arlene for 11 years - wow! I joined the Hero Arts Flickr Group (still in existence but little used anymore) back in August of 2009. I uploaded my first pitiful card on August 2nd and Arlene was right there to comment with kind words and encouragement. Thanks for that, Arlene - always friends!!

I received this lovely card from Suze (Crafty Suze) in New Zealand and I thank her for sharing her photo!! I love the background stencil, done on a linen card with beautiful texture. And isn't that a fab sentiment?! Of course I love the trio of amethyst gems as a finishing touch. Suze included some cute diecuts for me to use on future projects - many thanks, Suze!!

The Card Chain Challenge is a lot of fun if you ever want to join us; you can get in on the August chain if you sign up by the 6th here. 

If you're still with me, here's a very quick card sorta using the sketch. 

I was "Misty-proofing" for my brother's cat Misty to visit me in July. One of my projects was to sort through a bunch of orphaned diecuts and stamped items. I started making use of some of them, including everything here except the sentiment (from Altenew's Floral Sprig) and Leafy Vines that I stamped. Even the card base was tossed into the box of diecuts, along with some other stuff like gems that shouldn't have been there - I give up!! Sorry I don't know the source of the leafy branch - pretty sure I cut it on the Silhouette. I sent this card to a chorus friend.

Thanks for stopping and thanks to Deborah, Jo & Gail for the Card Chain Challenge!!