Thursday, June 12, 2025

4th of July Celebrations!


Hi y'all!  Just a couple more weeks until July arrives!  4th of July is a big deal in our household because my birthday is a few days before, and the 4th makes it easy to just extend the celebrating!  Besides, my husband is retired USN so we have always been a patriotic family.  Even with all of the craziness going on in our country lately, I still believe that the good ole US of A is the greatest nation on earth and I'm proud to be an American.  ❤️  I am praying for unity and healing in our land.  God bless America!  


I have had several patriotic paper pads on or beside my desk for a few weeks now, and I have wanted to use some of the little printed paper tags that are included, so that was the mission for today's 5.5 inch square card.   


This majestic eagle was a perfect fit and shape atop a Tim Holtz envelope, which is great for stashing a few of those little above-mentioned paper trinkets.  It's been a while since I have heat-embossed anything!   


These are all made from printed paper tags, die cuts, strips of card stock, a little stamping.  It may be a little corny but I couldn't resist using that "Uncle Sam hand" from the Tim Holtz Postale set.  I can just see the original Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster in my mind's eye!  (Here, in case you don't remember it!  It's been around since 1917!)


Here's the inside of my card.  Perfect for filling in a date and time and inviting a friend over to celebrate!

For years we have gotten together with the neighbors for a friendly neighborhood culdesac fireworks show, although with Nori (son's dog) here now, we will probably opt for charcoal snakes and sparklers rather than anything noisy!  

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Thursday, June 5, 2025

For Father's Day


Father's Day is less than two weeks away, so it is time to hurry and place your order so you can get to stamping!  For today's project I used a couple of sets from our Michigan series and several scriptures from a couple of our other stamp sets to make a card for my Yooper husband.   And I have to say...I sure do miss my dad!  ❤️

This project has hardly any coloring at all and even with all its different papers, stamps and die-cuts, was really quick to make.  I loved combining all these masculine prints (one from Scorched Wood and three from Metal Textures, including that cool steel tire tread pattern)...they work so well together.  


Here's a closer look at the Edmund Fitzgerald, stamped on texture printed paper with no coloring at all.  The only coloring on the entire card is the ship's wheel which has a very little bit of Copic brown.    


This fold is just a 4.25 x 11 inch piece of card stock scored at 2 3/4 and 5 1/2 inches. 


This is a peek at the underside of that circle that's adhered to the front and the center panel next to it.  I added scraps of some mappy paper from a discontinued pad that looks much like Vintage Emporium (I need to order that one!).  I wanted to include this "Train up a child" verse on this card as it is so perfect for a Father's Day card, so I stamped it onto another piece of that scraped metal texture paper that the ship was stamped and die cut from.  (I love that this fun fold gives lots of extra space for more stamps or designer prints).  


When the card is closed, the tags and little Father's Day sentiment are hidden, but when it is opened they are in full view.  


Here's a closer look at the tags.  

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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Farmhouse Fresh Peaches and Cream


Hi y'all!

Last week we saw a roadside stand with fresh peaches-for-sale, so Summer is officially not far off!  I have fond memories of fresh peaches and homemade vanilla ice cream with my cousins Karen and Sherrie, and their parents Uncle Roscoe and Aunt Marie (my dad's sister)!  I must've been around 10 and it was close to my birthday. We ate enough peaches and ice cream to just about make ourselves sick!  

Do you remember those old hand-crank ice cream makers?  I was small and usually got nominated to be the one to sit on a pile of towels on top of the thing to keep it stabilized while the guys took turns cranking until the ice cream was ready.  ðŸ¤£  


Isn't it funny the things that can inspire a card!?!  So I pulled out several Stamp Simply sets and a couple of paper pads and Copic markers and this was the result.  The colors of this background paper work really well with the designer prints from the other paper pad, and they make that peach really pop in the foreground.  On top of that, they seem pretty perfect for the nearly red hot temperatures we have been having lately!  


I use our Fishtail Banners dies all the time!  It's definitely a favorite! Here I added a few green pearls on that designer print for some contrast and counter-balance against the peach's one little green leaf!  


I used another sheet of the same brightly colored paper inside along with a sentiment and the little milk barrel from our Farmhouse series.  [With these stamp sets there's a straight line sentiment (Fruit) and this one (Farmhouse) where the words are stacked, so you can take your pick between the two!  I liked the way it looked with the milk can nestled in alongside so I used the Farmhouse one].

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Friday, May 23, 2025

Time for a Cup!

Hi friends!  I am excited to be posting today as a participant in the Spring/Summer Coffee Lover's blog hop!  

 

I drink tea too, but in the mornings I really love my hot cup of coffee to start the day.  This is definitely a coffee card...I used several Stamp Simply stamp/die sets and a Tim Holtz tab die to complete this project.   I even used a Latte shade of pearls.  There's some tea-dye distress ink too!   But it wouldn't be hard at all to make it a tea card instead if coffee is not your thing!  


This is a z-fold card and you can see from the side view why it's called that.  It is not at all hard to make if you know the "recipe."  (I first saw an example on Pinterest and followed the link to this blog post for the measurements.  I'm always browsing Pinterest for inspiration.)  I use a ruler and a scoring board to make the appropriate score lines and then make the one partial cut using a paper cutter with a rotary blade. 


Our Stamp Simply Coffee or Tea paper pad has some lovely blues and purples in addition to the gorgeous, rich creamy coffee golds that I'm using here!  These colors made me think of sunflowers too, so I added one to our tall mug, which is exactly the shape of the white mug I drink from each morning (Pottery Barn classic).    


Here's that tiny Tim Holtz tab die which hopefully gives the recipient a clue to pull here!  


It's Coffee o'clock!  Time for a cup!  ❤️  May your cup runneth over!


The dimensions of the fold are just perfect to hide a gift card inside. There's no pocket so you'll have to secure it with some adhesive, but I love that it is entirely tucked away, hiding there to be discovered once the card is fully opened.  (I need to make a run down to our favorite coffee shop, Spring Park Coffee, to get a real gift card to replace this sample AmEx place holder!  Yay, a justifiable reason to go, but who needs an excuse, right?!).   


Supplies:

To be eligible to win a drawing for a gift code, visit the Stamp Simply blog and leave a comment THERE.  


Enjoy the sale that is happening this Memorial Day weekend.  ❤️


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Thursday, May 15, 2025

Patriotic Stars

Today's project is a star easel card/ornament paying tribute to all of our United States active duty, retired, active reserve and reserve veterans.  Thank you for your service!  We salute and honor you!  


I love these papers so much that I'm resorting to cobbling pieces together between two paper pads to make a project!  I love that they are so perfectly mixy-matchy that that works!  

For today's card/ornament, I die cut lots of stars and glued them together in layers to make an easel card.  There are two layers of decorative papers with one layer of thin card stock sandwiched in between for each side. 


Here you can see what the card looks like from the side, with one single scored fold line across the top point of the star on only the back side.  


A sentiment and smaller star decorate the inside, where again you can see the way the card is adhered only via the top point.  


And even the back is decorated, so if you do choose to tie a ribbon through the middle and hang it as an ornament, there's something patriotic visible from any view.  

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Thursday, May 8, 2025

July 4th Tabletop Decor

Hi y'all!  ❤️  You *know* I love celebrating the 4th of July, so I'm here today with a little bit of patriotic tabletop decor!  I got this star bucket forever ago (I think it was from the $1 spot at Target) and decided it would make a great napkin keeper with a little dangly circular tag to embellish it.  It's just a few circles layered together with some embellishments and it hangs from the bucket handle via a slot/circle (Crop-a-dile + scissors) that slides into place.


Two-sided designer paper makes this project super easy and even more fun!  I used Spellbinders circle dies to cut a few printed layers and a mat to go between them, then embellished them with stamps and tag dies.  The 4 and the july tag are both Tim Holtz dies.  The month stamp uses a click together alphabet stamp set from a big box store.  This cute little flag star is from our American Eagle bundle.  


I stamped, colored and fussy-cut one star, then die-cut two more (unstamped) from gold metallic card stock.  I scored all three across the horizontal arms of the stars and stamped a sentiment onto one of the gold layers.  I adhered the fussy cut layer to a gold layer, then adhered the top triangles of the gold layers together with the "celebrate" sentiment showing on the inside, and finally glued the back of the star onto the circular card underneath.  


Here is a view from the back, where you can get a peek at the benefit of the two-sided papers and those cute printed sentiments that are part of the paper pack.  You can also see the back of the bucket which is really a luminaria with a cut-out for a tea light.  I filled mine with bandana-napkins whose patriotic colors are peeking through the star shaped opening.  

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Thursday, May 1, 2025

Inspired by a Morning Stroll


Hi everyone!  Can you believe it is May already?!  Time sure flies when you're havin' fun!  

We've already had a few days in the 90's so we've had to move our walks earlier and earlier to avoid the heat and humidity.  We try to stay in the shade and sometimes that means taking the "common area" walking paths through our neighborhood which takes us by several retention ponds.  Even though they are man-made, they're still quite peaceful and it's nice to take a pause to gaze at the plants, birds, fish and other wildlife that gather there.  Thankfully we haven't seen any snakes or gators!   


Those morning walks inspired this clean and simple masculine birthday card using our Autumn Silhouettes stamp set.  The designer paper I chose includes the colors of sand/water/sky and the stamps portray a familiar waterside plant.  I kept the layout and the embellishments simple and natural.  I used a bolder brown and a faint, shimmery copper to stamp the cattails, adding splashes of tea dye and faded jeans distress inks to draw the colors of the background into the foreground.  


Here's a peek at the inside.  This sentiment is from our He Lives stamp set.  

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A grass carp (?) that is larger/longer than my forearm!  
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Thursday, April 24, 2025

Thinking of you, dear friend!


Hi everyone!  I have always believed that Spring is wedding season, but sadly this Spring I have needed a steady stream of sympathy cards.  Many of my friends have lost a spouse, one or the other of their parents,  and one friend lost a beloved pet.  

I find sympathy cards difficult to make and typically try to keep a "well" of such cards available but this year I have simply been unable to keep up.  One "silver lining" of being behind is that the card can be much more personalized than a generic/from-the-stash kind of card would be.   Such is the case for today's card, made for a knitting friend who recently lost her mother.  


My friend loves color so I chose a lovely print from one of the Ink Drops series (feminine and in "adjacent" colors that are not too somber) to combine with a medley of sentiments from several Stamp Simply stamp sets.  

This project is made from a 6 x 10.5 inch piece of card stock scored 3.5 inches from each end so that it folds into a finished 3.5 x 6 tri-fold card.  The off-centered window die-cut through the front allows the image stamped onto the middle panel to peek through.  


Then when that front flap is opened you can see the entire floral image and the sentiments clustered around it.  


There are so many beautiful colors of dahlias!  Adding a tiny bit of grey shading around the images helps to subtly "ground" everything and makes it look a little more finished.    


This is the very center/inside, visible when the second flap is opened.  There's a scrap of that same beautiful paper and a sentiment from another stamp set.  As I have mentioned many times before, I LOVE that these sets have a variety of sentiments in this gorgeous font that can be mixed and matched to your liking.  There are even a few of the same sentiments that are arranged differently, such that one layout or the other might prove advantageous for a particular project (that was true for this card where a single straight-line "thinking of you" fit better than the two-line indented one).  

While this card will indeed be sent as a sympathy card, this combination of sentiments would be appropriate for a much broader variety of circumstances.  

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Thursday, April 17, 2025

1776

Hi everyone!

If you've been here before you probably know that my husband served in and retired from the US Navy and that I love making patriotic cards!  You might even remember that my birthday is close to the 4th of July and that I graduated from in 1976, serving on the Bicentennial Commission during my last few years of high school.   No surprise then that the 4th of July is a big deal in our household!    

Of course, we have yet to celebrate this year's Independence Day, but 2026 will be its 250th anniversary!  Lots to look forward to!  (I had to look it up...one of the names for it is the "semi-quincentennial!" What a mouthful!)

Stamp Simply has a fabulous assortment of patriotic stamps that make patriotic cards easy and really fun to make because you can mix and match everything to get exactly the look you want.  

For today's project I made a mini slimline card (finished folded dimensions 3.5 x 6 inches) which gave me a little more wiggle room for the width of that "1776" than a standard A2 card would have.  

First I prepared the card front, stamping the text collage in the background with shimmery copper ink and adding a strip of designer paper to the top of the card.  I filled in any blank spots with sentiments from the Liberty Bell stamp set.  Then I stamped, die-cut and colored the bell images with Memento/Copic markers using coppery colors before adhering them directly onto the card front.  

The numbers, die cut from a couple of sheets of designer paper, were adhered with dimensional adhesive squares.

I added a big red bow embellished with a small tag stamped "USA," tied on with some string through a heart-shaped button from my stash.  (I'll be sad when I run out of these; I can't even remember where I purchased them...JoAnn I think 💔).

Here's the inside, where I stamped sentiments from a couple of our other patriotic sets and layered more of those designer papers.   


The mini slimline card is made using an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of card stock trimmed to 7 x 8.5 inches, scored at 3.5 to fold into 3.5 x 8.5 inches and then trimmed to its final finished 3.5 x 6 inch size.  The fun thing about that is that there's a little flap of card stock left over, onto which "coincidentally" these tiny tags from the designer paper fit just perfectly!  They're cute and fun and fast!  You barely even need to trim them.


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Thursday, April 10, 2025

With Sincere Condolences

 


Hello again!  I'm here today with a feminine sympathy card in colors that remind me of my own dear mother.  (She loved these colors and wore them quite often.)  I was shuffling through paper pads and thought that these two pads from Craft Consortium looked so soft and pretty together.  The layout is one from a while back at Deconstructed Sketches.  


I love using this kraft card stock with these shimmery ink drops prints.  It looks especially pretty when layered with colored card stock and some shimmery ink for the edges and for stamping the sentiments.  That little bit of sparkle seems to soften everything and meld all the colors together (and in this case the extra layers of card stock lend some stability to the thin base layer which is not much thicker than copy paper)!   

The flower I used as an embellishment was my second choice because I am out of my favorites!  This one was a bit bright in comparison to the rest of the card so I tipped its edges with a Copic marker to tone it down and help it to blend in better.  (I've linked to the one that would have been my first choice in the supplies list below).  The variegated ribbon beneath the flower echoes all of the lovely colors in that beautiful paper.  The silk is so soft and elegant!    


Here's the inside.  More of that shimmery paper and a heartfelt sentiment!    

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