Another Art Impression Watercolor Sympathy Card

I really love these new Art Impression stamps for water coloring.  They are so much fun to play with using my Distress Markers even if it's a sympathy card.  For this one, I decided to just do a one layer card with a simple sentiment from the Sympathy4you set from the Stamps of Life. 

Inspired by Simon Says Stamp and Freshly Made Sketches #120...

I was trolling through my blogs looking for inspiration that would encourage me to overcome this lingering headache (at times migraine) of the last couple of days and do something in my craft room when I came across the new Simon Says Stamp challenge on their blog to make something funny.  Well, I have a lot of punny stamps including this month's Stamps of Life set, popcorn2stamp, which has been sitting on my craft desk waiting to be stamped on something.

So I set about stamping the popcorn container with Momento ink on some white card stock and colored it with my Spectrum Noir pens.  I masked the container off and stamped some popcorn on the top (after cutting a bunch of popcorn masks too).  Then I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.  I didn't really have any creative mojo so I pulled up the sketch for Freshly Made Sketches to see if it gave me any ideas and decided I could make it work. 

So I flipped through my 6x6 paper pads until I found some paper I liked in the Dilly Dally pad by My Mind's Eye.  Then it was just a matter of trimming my banner, gluing the background paper to my card stock, adding my banner and layering my popcorn box and some individual popcorn.  I used a few pop dots for some dimension and then decided the label needed a bit of sparkle with some Wink of Stella. 

For the inside, I stamped my sentiment in VersaFine Black Onyx and then matted it on a scrap of the paper from the banner and added a few more pops of corn. 

 

 

Oh Deer - Inspired by Owl Be Craftin' with Tracy

My father-in-law has been in the hospital and the new the recovery center for a while so hubby and I went to visit him on Sunday.  I made him a get well card that we took with us.  It's funny how inspiration works.  I started by looking at this cute card on Tracy's blog Owl Be Crafting.  As I started working on my version, I thought I would do a Christmas card and somehow it completely morphed into this get well soon card.

I started with embossing some DCWV blue card stock using a Darice embossing folder called Cloudy Sky.  In then brushed on some white Color Box ink onto the clouds.  I then stamped the cute little tree from the Lawn Fawn set Critters in the Forest set onto some paper from the Snap Color Vibe 6x6 paper and cut it out with the matching dies.   I was about to make it snowy when the card took an abrupt turn when I saw the cute little deer from the Into the Woods set from Lawn Fawn.  I just had to use it.  I stamped it onto some brown card stock I added the deer on top of some greed card stock cut to look like a hill and stamped with the grass from the Lawn Fawn set Critters in the Burbs in Mowed Lawn Distress ink.

I then used the banner die from the Lawn Fawn Stitched Journaling Card to cut the cute little banner that I stamped with the Oh Deer sentiment from the Into the Woods set.  For the inside, I added together two from the Stamps of Life Umbrella4you set for the perfect sentiment.

Fight Like a Girl - Inspired by Julie Davidson's Herringbone Faux Quilt Technique

I learned just before I left for Denver that another program manager in my office has cancer, which is just inconceivable considering there are only five of us, well four following the recent death of another co-worker.  I wanted to make a card to let her know I'm pulling for her.  Coincidentally while I was in Denver, the Stamps of Life released their new sets, including ribbon4cure.  I had to call the hubster to give my my club code because I wanted the set right away and didn't want to wait to order it when I got home. 

Strangely enough though, on Saturday I simply didn't feel like spending any time in my craft room.  At first I thought it was the headache caused by the air pressure that led to Saturday's crazy thunder and lightning show.  But yesterday, I realized that it went farther than that when the hubster and I both came up sick.  I spent all day yesterday in bed watching a marathon of "Under the Dome."  I even e-mailed in sick today because my throat was on fire and I was running a temp.  But by 2 p.m., I had to get out of bed.  I just could NOT lay there any longer, but I also found out that I have no energy to do anything else either.  I managed to stumble up the street to the mail box. But by the time I got back (seriously the mail box is one house away) and sorted through the mail and unpacked the new Sodastream that arrived, I was exhausted.  So then it was break time in the chair for more cuddling with Smoke and some crafty TV.  That's where I saw the video by the Stamps of Life announcing the new set ribbon4cure that had arrived in the mail that I picked up earlier that day.  From the video, I learned that all the profits of this stamp set go to the Susan Komen foundation and that the pink of the stamp is special for this limited release.  Now that I had bit of a nap and some inspiring information about my new set, I went into my craft room and made this card based up a video showing the herringbone faux quilt technique posted by Julie Davidson today.  I just used strips of the Lively 6x6 paper pad from Authentique to make the herringbone pattern.  I matted it on another piece of paper from that pad and made the banner from a strip from that same pad.  The sentiment from the new set was stamped on with Chocolate Chip Stampin' Up ink and then folded over to resemble a banner before I adhered it with pop dots. 

 

The inside was stamped with the large ribbon in Spun Sugar Distress Ink and the sentiment stamped on top of it with the same Chocolate Chip Stampin' Up ink.  



 

 

And that's all the energy I have tonight.  I'm going to bed.

Sympathy Card

Well, well the day I knew was coming finally arrived.  My colleague passed away.  I know that it's for the best because he was not doing well, but it's never easy.  I needed a card for his family so I went back to my Pinterest board for some inspiration, which, as happens a lot, I found in a card by Rita of Rita's Creations.  This was one posted for challenge #91 on Freshly Made Sketches.  I really do love her style. 

Lately, I've really been drawn to pink.  I don't know why because I'm not really a girly girl and pink has never really been a color I've favored.  But I really like how it looks with the black.  For the sentiment, I pulled out the Sympathy4you set by The Stamps of Life for the sentiment.  I stamped it with some Versafine ink on some white linen card stock, then cut the edges into banner.  I secured it under the butterflies I created on the Silhouette using an Echo Park cut and the pink Authentique paper from the Lively 6x6 pad I used in a card I made a few days ago.  By using the two sides of the paper, I was able to the right look for the card.  I cut the front of the card about .375 of an inch shorter than the back and added a scalloped border punched with my Stampin' Up border punch.  I then finished it off with some scattered rhinestones added with my Irock.

For the inside, I stamped another sentiment from that same set with the Versafine.  I thought it still needed something, so I inked up the butterfly from the Teresa Collins Spring Fling set, but decided to stamp it off one so it wouldn't be so stark on the inside.  With that, I called the card done.