Happy Birthday, sweet Sister!

It was my sister-in-law's birthday this week and

I needed an extra-special card for her. Not only
does she herself make cards, but she truly does
appreciate the time and thought that goes into
all things handmade. I had sketched out this layout
from one of Jennifer McGuire's cards awhile ago
and knew it would be perfect for Tina's birthday.

Isn't it gorgeous?!?
Sorry, I know it's totally rude and lame to
gush over your own creations, but I just can't
help it. I'm in love with this card. Seriously,
it was very difficult to give it to my sister. Ha!!

Anyways, enough drooling. Onto the details.
I've been watching Jennifer McGuire's Holiday
Thinking Inking videos and wanting to try some of her
techniques. She is the queen of distress inks! So, for the
background, I inked up my Canvas background stamp
from SU! with Old Paper distress ink and then gave
it a good spritz of water with my daughter's spray
bottle. Stamped it onto the Top Note die (which I still
just traced and cut out from the negatives I had
scrounged from stamp club...yes, Margaret, I will
finally put that die in my next order! LOL!) and
then inked up the edges with Vintage Photo and
Walnut Stain. Love the detail and dimension it adds!
I then stamped the ledger from a Unity kit and added
the 'Celebrate' sentiment from PTI. Can you believe
the only stamp I purchased on this card is the Canvas
background? All the others were from goodies
I won....sa-weeeeet!!! Love that.

Always inspired by this awesome gal,
I coloured the flowers by sponging various
colours of ink directly onto the cardstock. For
the orange flowers I used: Pumpkin Pie, Tangerine
Tango and Really Rust and for the blue flower I used
Tempting Turquoise, Taken with Teal and Night of
Navy. I love how they turned out!!
To finish things off I added some rhinestones
and pearls to the centers of the flowers and
tied some twine around the top of the card.
I think this must may be my favorite card yet!
Did I mention it was hard to give it away?
Anyways, thanks for indulging me today! ;)
Hope you're having some lovely adventures
in your own crafty corner of the world.
xo

Soft sympathy...

I needed a sympathy card for our friends, whose
dad passed away. I just wanted something simple
and 'soft' that would let them know we were thinking
of them. I wanted to use the flowers from the 'Upsy Daisy'
set and had seen a really neat tutorial doing shadow
stamping so I thought I would give it a try.

Lots of layers with distressed edges and a few little
butterflies to finish it off. I was very tempted to 'bling'
it up with sparkles and some little diamonds and pearls,
but it didn't seem to suit the occasion. (I'm interested
in your thoughts - is it appropriate to send a heavily
embellished sympathy card, or is that in bad taste?)
Anyways, I thought the end result was very serene
and I hope our friends will feel the comfort and peace
of our Heavenly Father's love during this tough,
tough time. If you have a moment, I know your
prayers would mean a lot to our friends, who are
missing their husband, Dad and Opa right now.
Thanks so much.

For my Mama

I wanted to make my Mom a special card, just because.
I didn't have a lot of time (story of my life), so I went
with a 3x3 base to start, which just may have added
to the sweetness I think ;)

I started by cutting out a heart for a mask and a template.
I taped it to the base (will not do this in the future - notice
the tear on the paper near the bottom of the heart? Ya,
good thing it's for my mom and she'll still like it...)
and then stamped the rows of hearts in Always
Artichoke, Tempting Turquoise and Tangerine Tango.
Then, using my new paper piercer (free with my
last SU! order - sweet!!) I pierced holes around the heart
for my very professional stitching guide {grin}.
I backstitched through the holes with some crochet
thread and 'Ta-Da!!' Instant sweetness.

I was able to quickly finish things off with a heart I
punched from some old SU! designer paper, the perfect
sentiment from Verve's Circular Sayings set and last,
but not least, rounded the bottom corners.

A perfectly sweet card for a perfectly sweet mom!

Fall beauties :)

I've long admired Maille Belles clean and simple

style and these cards were an attempt to CASE one
of hers...although,somehow they didn't come out as
'clean and simple' as hers?
Oh well! I'm still pretty happy with them :)

I used Perfect Plum, More Mustard and Night of Navy
to stamp the flowers from 'Year of Flowers: Violets' (PTI).
I love how it still has a warm, fall feel without using the
traditional red, orange, yellow and brown.

I stamped Hero Arts 'Old Letter Writing' on the
purple strip in Versamark to give a bit of subtle
detail and then stitched around the main panel.
I stamped the greeting from Verve's 'Circular
Sayings' and then wrapped the front with
some twine which I had threaded some buttons
onto. I'll definitely do this again. Cute, right?

The second card is for Peter's grandma's 80th
birthday, so it needed to be a little extra special!
I ran the card front through the Cuttlebug with one
of my SU! embossing plates and then ran two strips
of Scor-Tape along the front panel. I attached the
lace to the tape by bunching it up and just sticking
it down. Easy-peasy! Another little cluster of buttons
to finish it off because a card just isn't done until
it's got a few buttons. Ha! I guess that's where
'clean and simple' just went out the window. I
seem to have a tendency to just keep adding
'one more thing'. Oh well! I'm sure grandma
will like it. And 80 years deserves some
lace and buttons, doesn't it?
{grin}
Thanks for visiting!
Hope you all are enjoying this beautiful
fall weather.
xo