For A Friend

Last night, I worked on a card that I want to give to a special friend for Valentine's Day. I used the "Bouquet Bunch Framelits" set.

For the bouquet I used Pale Plum, Wisteria Wonder and Old Olive card stock. I did use a different die for my bow because it was just a little bit larger. I am really happy the way the card turned out.

Getting Ready For Our Valentine Lunch with Friends.

On Wednesday, February 14, we are to have lunch with three other couples. What do we have in common with these folks? All of our husbands have Parkinson's Disease. We have all been married about 50 years.  All of our husbands have had great careers. Our husbands are currently attending the "Rock Steady Boxing" exercise program here in Jackson. All are active in their church. Most of all, we enjoy being together.

Since it will be Valentine's Day, I wanted to do a little something special to celebrate our time together. I would like to share with you what I came up with.

First, I made these little boxes filled with candy. I purchased a bag of Dove Chocolates -- milk chocolate with swirls of dark chocolate wrapped in purple foil. For the box top, I chose SU Elegant Eggplant card stock.The box is small -- about 2 1/4" x 3 1/2"and about 5/8" tall. It holds 6 pieces of the chocolate. I made the flowers using a couple of punches that I have. I used Pale Plum card stock (a long retired color), sponged the edges with Elegant Eggplant ink, shaped the petals, glued two large pieces together, added one layer of the smaller petals, filled the center with glue and topped that off with yellow prills. I truly love making these flowers. I found some pieces of greenery and added them to the box top before gluing on the flower. To finish off the flower, I added a little bit of diamond stickles to the edge of each petal.

I wanted a card to go with the little boxes. I chose to do a little 3" x 3" card. It is made using white card stock for the base. For the top layer, I punched the heats out of white card stock, trimmed it to about 2 3/4" square, embossed that layer and added a piece of Elegant Eggplant card stock underneath. The last thing I had to do was make the envelopes. I think that the little boxes will look so pretty setting on the table.

I looked and looked for a sentiment to go inside the card. I couldn't find one in my stamp collection. Last night, I went looking on Pintrest. I found a quote that I thought might work. This morning I was playing with it, changed some of the words and this is the result. Using Microsoft Publisher, I created and printed the inside of my card. I was able to get the three cards I needed from one sheet of white card stock. I found the RGB code for "Elegant Eggplant" and used that as the color for the printing. It comes out being pretty close to a match.

From My Heart

Valentine's Day is less than a month away. I thought that we would make a Valentine card in our class on Saturday. I was also looking for a way to use my new stamp set called "Beautiful Bouquet". This is such a pretty set and I had not had the opportunity to use it. As I was looking on Pintrest for inspiration, I ran across a simple but very pretty card. My card is a CASE of that card that you can see here.

The stems are from the "Beautiful Bouquet" set. The heart stamp is from the set called "Banner Blast". When I stamped the heart, I had a hard time getting it to stamp solid. I just left it. When I was all finished, I went over each heart with my "Wink of Stella" pen. That spread the ink color around just enough that it created a very pretty effect. My accent color was Cherry Cobbler--such a beautiful, rich red.

For my bow, I used some white  twine that had been on clearance and colored it with my "Cherry Cobbler" reinker. That is such a cool way of getting the color needed. It's just a little bit messy. Especially when working the "red".

February Love Notes

Valentines Day sort of came and then was gone. Don had a neurology appointment that morning in Ann Arbor. In the evening we had our Parkinson's Support Group meeting. There was not much time for us to celebrate the day. On the Sunday evening before, we hosted a Valentine Dinner party. We had fun sharing the evening with friends. I also made a couple of small valentine cards for Don and hid them in some unusual places. He enjoyed finding them.

For the first card I found the "I love you" paper in the scrap box. I had used it before for a Valentine card but I still thought it was a good choice for this card. Added a couple of die cuts and I was done. The card was very simple but it said just what I wanted it to say. For 55 years I have loved this man. In June I will have shared 50 years of my life with him as his wife.

The second card had more stamping on it but still very simple. I used stamps from four different stamp sets. Added some sponging to soften the white card stock. Used two layers of card stock for accent and this card was finished.

day after day  year after year

"You are my sunshine"

One Sheet Wonder Technique

I have looked at different pictures of cards that were made using only one sheet of designer paper. Some instructions call for a 12 x 12--inch sheet of paper. Some call for a 8 x 8--inch square of paper, some 8 1/2 x 11--inch piece. I chose to make four cards using a 6 x 6--inch piece of designer paper.

I chose to use a sheet from the Stampin' Up's "Love Blossoms" designer series paper stack. The card bases and mats were made using SU Early Espresso card stock. I also used a couple of small pieces of SU Crumb Cake card stock for a second layer on the first two cards.

From Pinterest, I found the cutting guide and sketches on the following blog -- Crafts By Happy Stamper. I also found the sketches on this address -- Poetic Artistry. I believe that this last one may be one of the original posts. The date was September 5, 2008.

Here is a picture of each card.

The sentiment for this card is from Our Daily Bread Designs. It is stamped in Memento's Rich Cocoa ink.

This sentiment is a stamp from Stampin' Up's set called "Awesomely Artistic". I used my Misti to get the words in perfect alignment. "Friend" is stamped in three colors--SU Blushing Bride, Rose Red and Memento Rich Cocoa.

This "Thinking of You" sentiment is from SU's Sassy Salutations" stamped with Rose Red ink.

No Frills--Just CAS

Today I am posting some simple cards that were made for a class on the CAS style. I love the simplicity of each one.

These last two cards are made using designer paper. I wanted the paper to be the focal image of the first card so I tried to keep it very simple.

I also used some paper from my collection and several scrap pieces that I found that worked perfectly for this next card. A punch was used to create the scalloped border. Another punch was used to make the hearts.

Simple Cards

I have been trying to make some really easy cards for an upcoming class. I am focusing on simple cards with limited supplies. Not everyone is able to purchase large numbers of "tools". So the goal was to see what kind of cards can be made using mainly stamps and ink. It has been challenging and fun. The advantage -- cards are quick to make and very easy to mail.

These hearts were stamped and heat embossed, then punched out with the coordinating punch. They could have been cut out using scissors as well.

Again the hearts on the following card were punched out of red card stock. They could have also been stamped. Ink was used to add the ground and sky. This was a CASE of a card that I saw on Pinterest. What a great place to get ideas.

This next card is so simple. The mouse and greeting were stamped. The mouse was colored with Prisma pencils and a little sponging was added for dimension.

CAS #311 -- Rainbows

I was so anxious to work on my card for today's challenge. I had so many ideas running through my head when I went to my craft room. After finding some papers that I thought might work, I set out cutting my hearts. Having a number of hearts in different sizes, I finally chose to use the ones on my card. It is quite simple; most of all, I love the colors. I think I will use the extra hearts for other Valentine cards I need to make for the grandkids.

*02-15-2015 Chosen as a "CAS Favorite".

Two Challenges

My card today is for two challenges. The first was from The Paper Players.

The second challenge was at Splitcoast Stampers. It was this weeks Clean and Simple challenge to create a card with the theme "Love".

The little hedgehog is from a clear set by Penny Black colored with Copic markers. The heart outline stamp is from SU's "I {heart} Hearts" set and the sentiment is from SU's "Filled With Love" set. I cut the image out using a Spellbinders pierced rectangle die. The image was then layered with black and red card stock (both from my scrap box). To add a little bling I used three little heart rain dots.

 

February 8, 2015  My card was chosen for "A Cut Above" at The Paper Players.

Valentines for the Grandkids

My grandkids are getting older. Four of the five are teenagers. I find it harder and harder to make cards like valentines for them. I want them to be fun but not too childish. So I always struggle with what to make. These are the cards that I made for 2014.

Maddie, the youngest, got so excited last year when we went to the Newport Aquarium in Cincinnati, Ohio. She loved the penguins. I thought of the SU set called "Zoo Review". A friend loaned me her stamp set and I got to work. Also, the cold, cold weather made these animals seem very appropriate. I hope that the cards will make the kids smile.

For the two boys

Inside of the above card

For the Girls

Each one turned out just a little bit different



The inside of the girls' cards

The envelope

A Valentine Thank You

I need a thank you card to give to someone on Thursday, February 13. This sketch turned out to be perfect.

The base card stock is SU Rose Red -- one of my favorite colors. The designer paper is from We R Memory Keepers "Crazy For You" 6 x 6-inch pad. I used Spellbinder dies for the heart, 1/2 inch seam binding for the bow and a punch from Martha Stewart. The sentiment is from the SU stamp set "Postage Collection".

Valentines

Last week, I did a class on "Heat Embossing". I have a friend who had never done this technique, so it was a chance to share some of the things I have learned over the last few years. In preparing for the class, I learned a lot myself. I had materials for them to make a valentine card that required them to stamp and emboss three hearts. We had a great time together. I am sorry that I forgot to get pictures of their cards. I made two cards using the same layout which created two unique cards. We used white detail embossing powder on red card stock and then punched them out. The hearts were from two Stampin' Up sets--"Punched Potpourri" and "Filled with Love". We also used the heart punch from Stampin' Up. I love having several options that go with the same punch.

SC421

Love doing the Sketch Challenges at SCS. Today's sketch was so much fun! The heart stamp was from the dollar bin at Michael's. Great fine.

More Valentine cards

 

Mojo Challenge #270

My time for making cards has been rather limited these past few weeks. I have had several projects lying on my desk for some time, but I did want to get this posted. Thursday night some friends and I were making valentine cards to send to From Our Hearts. We made 116 cards that I am mailing to them on Monday morning.These cards will then be sent to the troops overseas.  This challenge fit right in with what I was doing. The sketch was so much fun to work with.

 

 

I love seeing everyone's cards. I am always amazed by the fact that we all start at the same point--with the same sketch and we all see it a different way. Each card is an inspiration to me.