You Are the Apple of My Eye Take Two

I had another apple floating around on my craft table and I had this idea to make my own background paper so I thought "why not use that apple.  So I pulled out my Simon Says Stamp Apple Green ink and the apple image from the Stampendous Fresh Fruit set and started making my own background.  I stamped rows of apples, added in some seeds using another stamp from the set and some Espresso Truffle Memento ink.  I added a stems to the apples and then added my colored apple to the free space I left in stamping. I finished it off with a stem. I then realized I didn't really have any place for my sentiment that would work other than on top of the apple.  It worked out perfectly and placed it on top of a red card base from my stash, but it still needed something.  So I added some Glossy Accents and called that good.

 

Oh, and this came was what I was working on when I let this sneak peek go out on Instagram:



Swallowtail Thank You Card

The hubster had to work on Saturday because they had a busy day of caterings.  He then went on to explain that it was even busier than expected because one of the employees was in a car accident while making a delivery.  He asked me to make a thank you card for a woman who witnessed the accident and stayed to get the employee some help.  I knew just the card I wanted to try.  I saw it on Julie Davidson's blog recently and was excited to try it out.  It's a cute card, but let me tell you, it took some work.  The outside was pretty easy.  Just stamp the Stampin' Up Swallowtail stamp with some Momento Espresso Truffle ink.  Then, I just colored my little heart out with some colored pencils.  I added the sentiment in the same ink using a stamp from Inkadinkado's Thank You Words set.  Then I mounted that on some pink paper from Authentique's Lively collection in the 6x6 pad. 

 

Then I had to set that aside to work on the card base and the inside.  I drew out the card base in Silhouette and added a quarter inch extra to the long side to give me room to sandwich the two sides.  I added a perforated line at the standard 4 1/4 inch to fold the extra 1/4 inch part easily.  Then I duplicated it and horizontally flipped it so I would have two mirrored sides to sandwich together so it looked like this:

 

I cut that out of card stock and used my bone folder to fold over the small flaps so that they would be inside the card.  I then cut seven large and small butterflies with three of each size flipped horizontally so they could be sandwiched together. The larger cuts worked with the large butterfly in the Teresa Collins Spring Fling stamp set. Once they were stamped, I sandwiched the mirrored stamps with a clear acetate strip between them so they would "float" and set them aside to dry.  I skipped the stamping on the smaller butterflies and made just two sandwiches of those with the acetate.  I did a little more coloring on the larger butterflies.  Then, using really sticky tape, I taped the acetate holding the butterfly sandwiches to the flap of one card and then stuck the two halves of the card together.  I punched two pink border strips from the same pink paper and glued those to either side of the flaps to hide them.  I used the extra butterflies on the card base. The card is super cute, but a lot of work!    

Another Birthday Card Inspired by the Technique Tuesday Blog

Since I my last try at the card inspired by Teri Anderson's card from the Technique Tuesday blog didn't turn out quite like what I originally had in mind, I thought I would give it another try.  This time, I really focused on the banner and the card came together very quickly.  I used some washi tape from my ever growing pile to create little pennants for the banner.  I strung them on some Martha Stewart baker's twine.  I hung the banner over some kraft card stock, backed it with white paper and used another DCWV card base from the Brights set.  Then, I stamped a sentiment from a set from Fiskars using Momento Espresso Truffle ink.  I still thought the card needed a little something so I added some Studio Calico veneer stars.  The Glossy Accents I used to glue them down were a little messy so I'm definitely going to have to work on my skills of attaching small embellishments.  But I do have to say that overall I really liked this card and I can't believe how one card can inspire so many looks.