Inspiration Thank You

Good morning, and welcome to a sunny hot Wednesday in Upstate South Carolina. Recently our neighbor was kind enough to present such a beautiful card with a little birthday gift. I thought the card was so pretty that I wanted to try to use for the thank you card in return. I didn't succeed totally, and will try again, but having recently gotten one of the Gina K Wreath Builder sets, I decided to try my hand with the tiny flowers in that set.

Inspiration Card



My Card





The card base used was from a $1.00 pack of Dollar Store small cards, that was purchased enroute to one of the family kids' birthday picnic, as I didn't have time to make her a card. I thought a good way to use this pack up was to cover the front with whatever design I wanted. It's the perfect size for a thank you card.

Heat embossed the sentiment using Ranger Seafoam White. I didn't think to 'prepare' the flower stamps first (where you pre-stamp or sort of sand the polymer lightly) and some of them didn't stamp as well as I'd expected. Good thing for Misti. Used various cube inks for the colors, and this would bead up on the tiny stamps.  After stamping around the edges and creating a 'frame' for the sentiment, sponged a DI light pink shade and then tea dye, going darker in the corners. The Inspiration card has more yellow tones than my pink card, and I didn't do any 'stitching' lines, but I think my neighbor will like it.

Hope all of you are keeping cool as I know so many of my European pals are dealing with brutal heat as well as we Yanks are. Thanks for dropping in....I hope I got my visiting caught up. We were busy earlier in the week, so I got behind - Uh-gin! Life and Lazy get in my way too much!

Big Hugs. Have a wonderful day and come back when you have time.

Christmas Card Club - Challenge 14 - White on White

Hello and welcome to another Christmas Card Club post. These 2 weeks fly by so quickly it seems. Christine selected the theme for Challenge 14 to be White on White with just a smidgen of color. So let's get to it.

 

 

- Sizzix Tim Holtz 3D Botanical was used for the background behind the Memory Box Shining Candles die. Cut white cardstock with a S/Binders Scalloped Labels One die. Then used WOW embossing ink over the EF, embossed this, then heat embossed with WOW White Pearl. This made the background show as pearl paper, while the flourishes are just the white cardstock. Very pretty look I think.

 

- Used Sookwang tape over white c/s to die cut the candles. Not a great idea, as the outlines of the candles were extremely fussy to try to place properly. Kept the flame part of the tape in place, while Ritz Cool Diamond microfine glitter was applied to the outlines and holly base, then burnished to a shine. Removed the flame portions, sprinkled a gold glitter over that part. Glued this over the background...(and that was a bit touchy as well, as the skinny outlines did not want to stick to the raised surfaces.)Then inlaid the inner parts of the candles into the frames, added a Warm Diamond micro glitter to the 'candles' and IRL - the slight color difference in the glitter whites shows quite nicely.

 

Heartfelt Poinsettia & Holly Clusters Stamps and Dies were used with a pearlized vellum to stamp, heat emboss with Wow White Pearl, die cut. Then used the matching mold to shape the flowers. Sprayed the vellum very lightly before using the mold to shape the flowers, and again, probably would have been better to not spray. However, once the petals had dried, I was able to glue and arrange the poinsettias. I wanted the poinsettias to hide the places where the vellum sentiment was glued down. The sentiment hides a lot of the holly cluster at the bottom of the candle arrangement, and I rather wish I'd just skipped having a sentiment on the front.

 

Do please take time to visit my team members to see their inspirations on Christine's White on White theme. Their blog links are on the right sidebar.

 

Have a lovely day, come again when you have time. Hugs

 



Happy July 4th!

Good Morning and to all my pals in the USA, HAPPY JULY 4th!  I only made one card, so here 'tis. I have added some lovely cards on the Cards by Friends page, so I hope you take time to look and  enjoy some inspiration by clicking on the links under each photo.

- Red paper is some old specialty paper from the stash. The swirl design of the paper shows on the right side by the white star. It's shiny & looks like it has waves in it if the light hits it in a certain way. Blue paper is textured Bazzill...also VOS.

- Paper Trey Ink die cut the swirl shapes.

- Gina Marie dies cut the stars, and a GM 4th of July stamp set was used for the sentiment.

- red, white & blue stars from stash as well.

Ya'll have a wonderful day, and if you celebrate, be careful if you're handling any fireworks. And Stay Cool. It was 96F here yesterday evening at 7:30pm.

Thanks for visiting, and come again when you have time. Blessings and Hugs.

Birthday Leaves

Good evening, and sure hope you had a fabulous weekend. Ours was hot, quiet, but pleasant. Relaxed. Had a lovely birthday, spent with most of the folks I love best (DD is in Italy, so she was missing). Thanks to all who sent lovely birthday wishes. It made my day.  Stayed inside in the cool as much as I could, and just did some piddly house things and read a good book, by Anne Cleves (writes the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series - both of which are tv series).

Please help me welcome a recent new follower:

Lynn of Lynne's Craft Haven

 

Very happy to make a new friend, and I hope my blog pals will hop over to see Lynn's work and say hello. It's been a while since I realized I had any new followers, so if I've neglected to give you a shout out, please call it to my attention. It's a lovely way to meet new bloggers and get to enjoy what they do, and get to know new folks. 

Here's a card that I hope has reached its destination:

Are you as intimidated as I am to send one of your cards to someone that you consider to be a truly fine card maker? This one was made from an old wooden set (NBUS I think...as the trio of stamps was still in the cellophane wrapping). Inkadinkadoo

- used a pierced rectangle set to cut each cream piece, then stamped each fern/leaf in a different shade of green. Matted with a kraft mat - and intended to add a black mat as well. The black made the trio too large for the 5.5x4.25 cream card base. Looked a bit bare, so added an olive green and kraft strip below and above the leaves. In the photo the green strip looks a sort of lime color, IRL it is more of an olive shade. As I look at this photo, guess I should have 'grounded' the leaves. I was so pleased with myself for finding the die that would fit the stamp, then die cutting before I stamped. Usually I've not planned that well :-).

Simple Happy Birthday for the sentiment, and it was stamped in the same green shade as the right hand leaf. Which did have a bit more of a lime tone.

That's it folks. Thanks for drifting by to visit, and have a wonderful week. Blessings and Hugs.