Happy Birthday Card with Ferro

I liked working with the Ferro so much for my dotted card that I had to try another pattern.  This time I used the mini peacock feathers stencil from the Crafter's Workshop to make my Ferro background.  Then I decided to try out some other techniques I've been admiring around the web.  I cut out some vellum with my Lawn Fawn Stitched Journaling Die, then heat embossed in white some stamps from the Blissful Botanicals set on the back side of the vellum.  I colored it in with my colored pencils and then stamped the sentiment from my Fiskars' How Many Candles set in Versafine Black Onyx ink then heat embossed that.  I used my Xyron sticker maker on the vellum to attach it to my Ferro piece and then mounted all of it on a standard card base. 

Happy Birthday Card as Seen on Papercrafts

I was browsing through the blogs when I stumbled upon this adorable card using my favorite Stampin' Up stamp, Swallowtail, on the Papercrafts and Scrapbooking blog here.  So while I watched the Seattle/49ers game yesterday, I made my own version.  I stamped the butterfly in Versafine ink and heat embossed it with some clear embossing powder.  I then colored in one with my Spectrum Noir markers and left the other black and white for the base.  I then cut the black and white one down to fit a standard A2 card with a black mat and the colored version smaller.  I then matted both of them on plain black card stock and layered them together.  I stamped the sentiment from my Hero Arts All Occasions set in the Versafine on some vellum and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to match.  I ran the sentiment through my Xyron and adhered it across the bottom of the panel.  Then all I had to was adhere the panel to my card base and I was done.

Looking back on it now, I kind of wish that I had made the colored panel a touch smaller.  Well, maybe next time...

"Berry" fun project

So I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but my husband manages the cafe in the building I work in. I cannot express how grateful I am to him that he does so. He gave up his position of nearly 20 years so that we could have nearly inseparable lives carpooling to work together, enjoying my morning coffee break where I run downstairs to fill my cup, sharing lunch together most days, plus evenings, weekends, holidays and such. I know I'm very lucky because some spouses wouldn't sacrifice their careers or for other reasons don't get that much time with their spouses and, sadly, some wouldn't want that much time. But, we do.

But back to the reason I mentioned the cafe... From time to time, I've had to opportunity to use my crafting skills to help out. I've made vinyl lettering for the daily specials board, I crafted signs to the cover the menu boards on days he does "Breakfast all Day", designed little coins and a purse for them for a promotion and other little things like that. In addition to a daily special, there are seasonal specials. This season, there's a salad featuring whatever fruit is in season at the moment. Since the fruit changes based upon what's available, he asked me if I could cut out berries that he could post on the board to represent the current fruit featured in the salad. Well of course I could and I could do it tonight. It gave me the perfect excuse to spend the evening in my craft room where it's nice and cool compared to the 90 degrees outside (I know that's not hot to a lot of you, but it's TOO HOT for me!).

So tonight I cut out a strawberry that I found on The Lady Wolf's blog then laminated the cut with my Xyron using the laminate/magnet cartridge. Then I cut out around the strawberry. I looked for a blueberry, but couldn't find one, so I made my own SVG using some clip art I found and Inkscape. I don't think it turned out too bad. As a bonus, I made him a couple of signs he can put up over things that sell out or when the product otherwise isn't available. Right now he just tapes up one and I thought this would be a little nicer. It was kind of a fun project to work on tonight. Tomorrow, I think I'll work on raspberries since ours are just about starting to ripen so I'm sure that product is going to available soon for his seasonal salad.