Thinking of you Sunflowers

I know that these colors are a little out of season but they are some of my favorites!  I love muted yellows and oranges with chocolate brown.

This card uses two different Hero Arts stamps, the text for the background (watermarked image with VersaMark) and the Sunflowers on the main image.  I had to experiment with the ink on the sunflowers to make sure that the two different colors did not bleed into each other.  I used the corners of Tim Holtz distress inks in the end.

Hope you are having a good week?

Stamps : Hero Arts (sunflowers and text background)
Paper : PTI Chocolate and Smooth White, SU! So Saffron (retired?)
Ink : Tim Holtz Distress inks (Wild Honey and Walnut Stain)
Accessories : American Crafts ribbon, EK Success small butterfly punch, TCP Studios gems

Thankful Poppies - Final Teacher Appreciation

This week has been a lot of teacher appreciation!  But they deserve it - I'm not sure I could teach a class of 20 elementary students every day.  I volunteered for 30 minutes in the lunch room last week and that was quite overwhelming!!!!

My card today uses a new Hero Arts stamp that I bought with my Christmas money from my sweet husband.  I had seen a card online using this Poppy stamp and I loved it so much I had to go and find it!  Fortunately my local stamping store has a great Hero Arts section so I was able to find it easily.  It is a solid block image which I stamped using blue chalk ink and then colored in with Prismacolor pencils.  My red background was created using a Stampin'Up! swirl stamp (from a set I forget the name of!) using Versamark for a watermark effect.

The only other detail I added was a couple of green gems either side of the sentiment - otherwise it is quite simple so your attention is drawn to the poppies.

I promise I'm done with teacher appreciation cards now!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Stamps: Hero Arts (poppies), SU! (sentiment)
Paper : PTI Smooth White, SU! Brilliant Blue and Ruby Red
Ink : Versacolor chalk ink (sky blue), SU! Night of Navy
Accessories : TCP Green gems, SU! Oval punch

More Teacher appreciation

This teacher thank you card is very simple and doesn't have a lot of fussy design elements, but that is simply because I wanted everyone's attention drawn to the quote in the center (which is not a stamp, I printed it out  on my printer and then lined it up inside the diecut).  This is for Edward's kindergarten teacher - and she truly has been very inspiring and Edward has had a great year just because of her!

This time I did not use my Cricut Lacy Labels cartridge - the main diecut is a Spellbinders die (one of my favorite shapes!)  To add a little bit of detail to the sentiment I added some Hero Arts nailheads in bright red.  The strip at the bottom is made of patterned paper and a dotted ribbon I got at a Creating Keepsakes Convention a few years ago.

Has anyone else been creating Teacher appreciation cards?  What designs have you come up with?

Stamps : None
Paper : PTI Black and Smooth White, Fancy Pants 'To the Moon' DP
Ink : None
Accesories : Hero Arts Red Nail heads, Ribbon from Imaginisce, Spellbinders Die 

Teacher Appreciation

It's that time of year again.... the end of school!  This the first year all three of my boys have been in school and I have been so grateful to have a little bit of freedom during the day!  I am so grateful to all 6 teachers (Thomas is in 5th and has 4 teachers for different subjects) and I have made a card for each of them to express my thanks for all their hard work this year.  This is the first design I came up with and I created a set of 4 similar cards in slightly different colors :

I will be posting the remaining two cards later this week, so keep checking back to see the other designs!

Stamps : Hero Arts (Spring Meadow and Thanks text background), SU! (Sentiment)
Paper : PTI Smooth White and Spring Moss
Ink : Versamark, Versacolor Bamboo, Versamagic Chalk ink and VersaColor
Accessories : EKSuccess small butterfly punch, Cricut Lacy Labels cartridge, Clear embossing powder

Be Still and Know.....

On Wednesday this week I posted a card that I had made for a dear friend going through a very difficult time - this was the alternative.  It actually took me quite a while to decide which one to send to her!  I like both of them so much and of course, they both feature Verve verses!  It also took quite some time before I was happy with my choice of cardstock to match the patterned paper.  I love the paper (TCP Studios) and I knew I had the perfect flowers to use as an accent, but the main cardstock color was a challenge.  In the end my new cardstock organization system proved just how hardworking it is!  I have added all my cardstock to magazine files and put them in color families in separate files with each shade divided by file tabs.  I can see it all at a glance and it makes the choice so much easier.

The main sentiment is stamped on a Cricut diecut from the Lacy Labels cartridge.  That one cartridge has been the single best investment I have made in cardmaking.  I love being able to choose any shape I want and cutting it at any size.  I also have Spellbinders diecuts, but I find that I use the Cricut far more often.

Does anyone else have this cartridge?  Have you found any other uses for it?

Stamps : Verve Plain Jane Scripture Verse
Paper : SU! Mellow Moss and Chocolate Chip, PTI Vintage Cream, TCP Studios Patterned Paper
Ink : Tuxedo Rich Cocoa, Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Fine Linen)
Accessories : Prima Paper Flowers, Bo Bunny Decorative Brad, Kaisercraft pearls colored with Copic markers, Hole piercer

Elegant Help

My husband and I have a friend, Vicky, whose husband was just in hospital following a stroke.  It was touch and go for a while and we were not sure he would survive, but the whole family was lifted up in prayer on an hourly (or sometimes minute by minute!) basis.  God was so gracious and has granted a remarkable recovery to date.  He is still in rehab but is improving every day.  We give all the glory to God and can see Him at work even in the very small details of such a devastating event.

I made this card as an encouragement for Vicky and I wanted to create something elegant that had just the right verse on the front.  Pink Paislee's Queen Bee paper turned out to be just the pattern I was looking for.  To begin with a struggled to find the right color ribbon (the background paper looks grey by itself, but when I put the olive ribbon next to it, I realized that it was not really grey but a deep olive color.)  The verse is from Verve - naturally most of my encouragement cards feature a Plain Jane Verve stamp - they are so elegant and the font it just perfect.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stamps : Verve (Scripture verse Plain Jane)
Paper : Pink Paislee Queen Bee, PTI Smokey Shadow and Vintage Cream
Ink : Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Marigold)
Accessories : TCP Gems, Ribbon from Michaels, Cricut Lacy Labels Cartridge, EKSuccess Small scallop border punch

Pink Baby Bunny

This sweet pink creation was for a good friend of mine that just had her fourth child (and 3rd girl!).  The bunny is an old image from Stampin'Up! but I still use it a lot on baby cards - it works perfectly and it is a great image to color in.  I used my Prismacolors again and enjoyed choosing the colors based on the chart I've created in my reference binder.  It  helps to hold the patterned paper I'm using as a background against the chart to choose just the right shade.  Now I need some new blending stumps - I've been using the same ones for over two years and they are looking very worn and some of them are in really bad shape.  I remember though, that Paula Williamson, from Paper Possibilities, told me to only buy blending stumps make in Taiwan and not China.  I learned that lesson the hard way when I was first experimenting with colored pencils!

Has anyone else been coloring images using Prismacolors recently?  If so, send me a link to your blog - I'd love to see your work!

Stamps : Bunny and Sentiment from Stampin'Up!
Paper : SU! Rose Romance (retired?), PTI Smooth White and Basic Grey DP, 
Ink : Memento Tuxedo Black
Accessories : Kaisercraft pearls (colored with Copics to match color scheme), Ruffled Ribbon from Archivers, Prismacolor pencils