Here’s the final birthday card for this month – it was for my sister from my brother and I somehow missed posting it earlier. I wanted it to be completely different from my card for Caro. I used the Stampin’ Up! Embellished Events and embossed the image in silver on a piece of scrap blackberry bliss. I then used the oval framelits to cut it out and used the next size up to cut out an oval in silver foil. Then came the tricky part – the sentiment. I messed with the words from Memorable Moments until I had them lined up correctly – the grid paper was invaluable there. On my first attempt despite measuring and measuring, I managed to have the words too far to the left but the second worked properly. I then glued the ovals together and onto the card.
As usual, the backgrounds DSP finished off the envelope in the coordinating blackberry bliss shade.
I made this card at the beginning of the month and it spawned a couple of others – I just changed colours, DSP, ribbon, stamps and shapes and they became totally different cards, but the basic layout is the same. It’s amazing how different they look. The other two can be seen here and here.
I decided that I really needed to actually use my DSP instead of just looking at it and started with one of my favourites – the All is Calm DSP from the Holiday catalogue which has just disappeared from the clearance rack. Sorry about that, but as you can see from the other “copies” of this card, you can use any DSP. I tried the DSP on the bases of all of the colours in the DSP and decided that it looked best on lost lagoon. Then I used my stampin’ write markers in lost lagoon, soft sky and pear pizzazz (still hooked on this combination!) to colour in the image from the Stampin’ Up! Embellished Events set. I originally cropped the image as a square but I was struggling with the layout. My sister (knowing my issues with ribbon) suggested trying ribbon but it wasn’t until I changed the square to an oval, that I really liked it. I think that perhaps the square was just a few too many more vertical and horizontal lines. After matting the oval in lost lagoon, I turned to the ribbon. I tried both pear pizzazz and lost lagoon but you can see that lost lagoon one. I tried to tie a bow but it seemed a bit too girly so I just did an overhand knot and fixed the ends of the ribbon under the DSP with glue dots. I found that it was easier to figure out the placement if I adhered the ribbon before the image.
This is a supremely simple Valentine’s Day card, but none the less effective for it. I was playing with my Stampin’ Up! Perpetual Birthday calendar kit, which has a lot of extra pieces, when it occurred to me that there are far too many heart stickers for the calendar and they’d be good on a card.
I had an ampersand embossed piece of very vanilla cardstock on my desk and this card just fell together. Almost. First I had to redo the dry embossing so that there was room for the sentiment. I originally was going to use the blushing bride stickers and ink and card base but it seemed a bit too subtle. Real red it is then for both the card base and the ink. The sentiment comes from a just retired set called Good Greetings. It’s sad that it was retired before we even got to all the celebrations that it mentions!
I’m working on the calendar again and the observant readers will note that I’ve skipped a few months. I wanted to do the fall colours today for some reason!
Please excuse the wonky picture but I’m heading to the airport very shortly and don’t have time to redo it. I took my colour inspiration from the Stampin’ Up! Color Me Autumn DSP – which I also used for the banner. The colours that I used were cajun craze, crushed curry and mossy meadow. As usual I stamped some of the November images at the bottom right hand corner and then did the same at the top before sticking the banner over it. The text November is stamped in mossy meadow.
Rebecca is the fourth member of our walk club to achieve the challenge of increasing her step average over the previous year. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I decided to send cards to the four members who achieved this. Karen’s, Gary’s and Gail’s cards can be seen using these links.
I am especially proud of Rebecca for meeting this challenge because she had some very painful issues with her back to overcome so she gathered her steps a few at a time. Constantly. And focused on the goal every single day. Such determination is to be applauded.
Rebecca is a member of my Critique Board as I call it. I often email them with photos of cards completed or sometimes in progress. So Rebecca saw Karen’s card before it was published (or even sent) and she commented that she loves square cards. So this is a 4 inch square card in old olive (she loves green too). I was planning to use the tree from the Stampin’ Up! Sheltering Tree set but it didn’t really fit so I just used the grassy bank and the flower stalks both in old olive and the flowers in real red on a layer of very vanilla.
Then I cut out the you using the Hello You thinlits in both real red and old olive so that I could decide on colour. As you can see, old olive won. I’m amassing a nice stash of words from this thinlit set as I usually cut them in a couple of colours and only then decide which to use. The “so proud of” comes from the Crazy About You stamp set and it’s stamped in real red.
I then used the envelope punch board and a square of very vanilla to create an envelope for this card. Instead of lining it, I stamped the images from the card (the stamps were already covered in ink!) onto the front as you see. I’m really pleased with how this came out.
