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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Thursday, April 3, 2025

Sending You Cheer!


Hi y'all!  Glad to see you!  I hope you're having a great week.    

I have an online friend who's really been having a hard time lately. She is currently in the hospital, so I thought a hand-made card might cheer her up a little!  


I shuffled through my papers and stamps looking for the right combination of sentiments and some cheerful papers.  I found the sentiments in our Pitcher of Daisies and Floral Cluster Summer Roses stamp sets.  


The "Gather at Home" designer paper pad from Carte Bella had a bunch of coordinating prints in soothing colors with a printed tag that will work just perfectly for Alexis.  I hope she'll be able to go home soon!  This JOY fold card is great for using various prints together because it gives you lots of surfaces to decorate!  It's definitely a favorite of mine!  Here's Beate's JOY fold card tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers.


I even had lots of little scraps of the paper tucked into the cover of the pad, and I was able to use a few of those to embellish the inside, saving the larger pieces for another project.  Nice!  


Here's another one of those printed tags adhered to the back of the card along with another little Farmhouse pierced heart.  

It would have been easier to mail without the bow on the front but I just couldn't resist adding one!  

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And now for those who are interested, a little follow-up regarding my Sock Madness progress since last week.  


That was a really cool pattern and joining it from flat to in-the-round was quite magical...but it was one size only and turned out to be absolutely ginormous!  


I continued knitting through the heel flap and gusset into the foot but in the end just couldn't stay motivated to continue knitting an entire pair of socks that I knew would not be wearable.  Too bad I could not get either of my fellas to agree to wear this hot pink!  ;)   


I stacked the qualifier and Round 1 socks on top of the pink Round 2 sock just to show their relative size.  The white ones are nice and snug and fit just the way I like, the blue ones are a little looser, and that pink one, whoa!  It will end up in the frog pile and maybe someday I'll knit a pair using modifications for a smaller size.  I haven't decided whether I'll use this yarn for the same but smaller pattern or if I will reclaim this awesome yarn for something else. Only time will tell!


Not finishing that pair means that I cannot advance to the next round of Sock Madness, but I'm ok with that, ready to get back to spinning and to knitting other things than socks!  So I immediately started spinning some "Lenten Roses."  This fiber is gorgeous and it's spinning like a dream!

Have a great week everyone!  
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Thursday, March 27, 2025

Warm and Cozy

It's March Madness which (for many knitters) also means Sock Madness on Ravelry, so I have been knitting nearly non-stop for weeks...breathing, eating, sleeping and dreaming about sock knitting!  So when it was time to make this week's Stamp Simply project, is it any surprise that it's also about knitting?!  Although it uses some of dies and sentiments from Stamp Simply, it is definitely something a little different and I'm grateful to Sharon that she allowed me to stray quite a bit far from "stamping center" for this one!  My hope is that it will inspire you to think a little more broadly about ways to use your stamps and that you'll enjoy the way your crafts/hobbies might intersect in the process.  

One of my dear card-making friends recently sent me a wonderful box full of gorgeous yarn.  She's having wrist pain and therefore has decided to take a rest from knitting.  After I'd posted a photo of my Sock Madness socks on FaceBook, she blessed me with a gift of some of the skeins from her stash (a huge box!) and I immediately put one set of sock yarn to good use.  I want her to know how grateful I am for her generous gift!  I'll share a photo of my socks so far after telling you more about this week's card.

To me, this designer paper print (Craft Consortium Watercolours designer paper pad) looks a lot like knitted or woven stitches.  I decided to go a step further and knit a tiny scarf using some baker's twine.  It was a little bit of a challenge to knit with because of its cotton content and high twist but I was pleased with the way it turned out.  I used a pair of US 1 double-pointed needles (cast on 6 stitches, knitted in stockinette stitch, slipping the first stitch of every row) and once it seemed long enough I transferred it to a pair of toothpick "needles."  

 

I had planned to glue a pretty bead onto the end of each toothpick to make them look a little more like actual knitting needles but the centers of the beads that I have were too small for the size of these large cocktail toothpicks.  

But doesn't this sentiment from our Boho Pumpkins set work just perfectly for this card/occasion?!  


Here's the inside, stamped with a thank you in a lovely combination of fonts from another of our sets, Delightful Dahlias.  

Supplies:
Hopefully Winter is on its last huzzah for this year, but that doesn't mean that I'm ready to put my wool away!  I spin and knit pretty much year round.  

Sock Madness is a game for knitters (hosted online on Ravelry) that works more or less like musical chairs...there are fewer spots on the team than there are players and the available slots decrease in number as the players advance to the next round.  The patterns are usually unusual and quite challenging, with intriguing construction and unfamiliar techniques that really stretch a knitter's skills.    

Here are a few progress shots of my sock for Round 2.  This pattern is named Chattahoochee by Shuyi Wu.  


It's knitted flat in a chevron stitch from self-striping yarn, then folded so that the chevrons align and can be stitched into a tube.  The process of changing from flat to round is really quite magical and mesmerizing to see.     


In this photo the cuff is toward the bottom left.  The heel/sole stitches will be picked up and knitted along the remaining edges (both sides of the "L" at the top right) and then knitting the toe (at the top) will be the final step.  

You can tell I still have a good way to go to finish this one, and then of course, I'll have to knit its mate, but it is a lot of fun and always an incredible learning experience.  I am a relatively slow knitter and require frequent rests to avoid repetitive motion stess/strain, so we shall see if I can manage to make it into Round 3. 

Thanks Melissa, for this fun Neapolitan self-striping yarn and its coordinating hot pink mini-skein, and for all of the other beautiful yarn that you sent!  I really hope I can do it justice although I'm sure it will take me years to knit through it all!  xo

Thank you everyone for your indulgence for today's project!          
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Thursday, March 20, 2025

An Easter "Valentine"


Hello again everyone!

When I sat down to make this week's project I did not set out to make a Valentine, but I would indeed call this an Easter Valentine.  It all started with this interesting "corner fold" and the desire to use some of our thinner bronze metallic card stock to implement it.  One thing led to another and here we are!  

This is another one of those folds that is impressive in appearance but quite simple to achieve.  Gotta love that!  Here is a link to the tutorial that I found for this fun fold.

Of course, these beautiful rosy colors would lend themselves equally well to a wedding/anniversary card or a card to welcome a new baby girl, but I love these passages of scripture and decided to use them in this instance.


The card in the tutorial had another panel adhered to the card front, but I chose instead to adhere the cross die cut (top and center only), and to stamp a sentiment directly onto the card stock square panel at the top left.  


The LOVE sentiment is actually stamped onto the inside of the card that peeks out of the bottom right of the fold.  


When the card is opened, the LOVE sentiment forms a pleasing diagonal with the familiar scripture that is stamped at the top left.  

These three sentiments/scriptures are from three different stamp sets but I really love the way they work together to convey God's love and His original plan for our redemption.  No greater love.  ❤️

Were it not for the pearls that I used to embellish the cross, this would also make a great flat-for-mailing card.  

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Thursday, March 13, 2025

Easter Egg Hunt


Hi y'all!  Today's Stamp Simply project was inspired by a little trip down Memory Lane!  

When I was young my cousins and I would Easter egg hunt in the semi-circle drive of my maternal grandparents' "old house place" where there was a low slate wall and a profusion of blooms...daffodils if I remember correctly.  (This was up until the time that I was around 10 years old when my grandmother passed away and my grandfather sold the property to a logging/tree farm company.)

This does indeed look like lots of plants clustered together with a bounty of eggs laid in relatively plain view, and that is exactly what I was going for!  This card just makes me smile!  We always had SO much fun!  


I have been told that many years later when some of those old pine trees came down, there was still an old plastic Easter egg up there in one of the crooks of a low limb!  Can you imagine?!      


I decided to experiment with reversing a few of the flowers by stamping some onto a gelliplate and then rubbing a piece of card stock over it. It worked but meant fussy-cutting those reversed blooms so it ended up probably being more work than it was worth. Nice to know it is do-able if needs must, though.  

I really wish I would've left a small border around those that I fussy cut so that they would have been more contsistent with the ones that were die cut.  At least this way you can see what they look like both ways.  :)  

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Thursday, March 6, 2025

Fold and Tuck Sympathy Card


Hello friends!

I sadly needed another sympathy card and decided to try one of the "fold and tuck" cards that I have seen recently on Pinterest.  This is a really easy construction where a strip the bottom of a standard sized card front is trimmed away (I removed a little more than an inch) and a triangular flap is adhered to the inside for the shortened front to tuck underneath.  I really like getting to see that peek of pretty paper from the inside and echoing those lovely colors on the outside of the card too.  


Here you can see the layers of several triangles (die cut squares cut in half).  This wood and patina paper inspired me to use metallic card stock and a Tim Holtz mixed media die for some decorative "metal" to embellish the closure.  It's just a small detail but I love it.  

You'll want to use some strong sticky tape to adhere just the long edge of that triangle along the bottom edge of the card so that it is fastened securely.  I added a thin decorative strip of the wood designer paper just to give it a little more oomph and to add to its visual weight as well.


I stamped the Eucalyptus Silhouettes directly onto a scrap of the designer paper using distress oxide inks, then die cut a third silhouette from metallic card stock to decorate the card front and frame the outside sentiment.


The sentiment on the inside is from another one of our sympathy sentiment sets.  It's so nice to have a variety of options for sentiments so you can choose a combination that feels just right.  


Here's a full view those pretty papers/colors on the inside.  

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Thursday, February 27, 2025

Happy Easter


Hi everyone!

The weather has been absolutely glorious this week!  We have azaleas, irises, and lots of other beautiful blooms showing their gorgeous colors in our neighborhood, so it was really easy to get into a Springy, Easter mood for today's project.  

Although it looks like a conventional fold, this card is made from a full sheet of card stock scored horizontally and vertically with the top left corner removed, which creates an extra flap and more space to decorate on the inside.  I cut a window through the outermost section for this darling bunny to peek through.  (I trimmed just a little off the bottom of the bunny for ease of opening/closing the card.) 


When the front is opened it reveals this "cracked egg shell" designer paper (probably actually parched earth, but y'know!) with a sweet sentiment.  Maybe your family "pocked" eggs...a Cajun Easter tradition...so you get where I'm comin' from!  Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday are next week, so the season of Lent is truly almost upon us!        


And here's the very innermost fold of the card.  I love this simple rustic cross and traditional Easter sentiment.  I kept everything inside really simple with some sunrise stenciling using distress inks.

I know this is most oft said about Christmas, but it applies here as well!  Jesus is the Reason for the Season!    

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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Masculine Happy Birthday!


Hi friends!

I often find masculine cards challenging, but today's clean and simple masculine birthday card was a piece of cake using prints from three paper pads from Craft Consortium and our Stamp Simply Autumn Silhouettes set.  


I stamped the sentiment and the cattails image directly onto the designer papers, die cut the one using our fishtail banners and adhered them to the card front.  I added a knot of ribbon with a very simple men's wear style of a button tied onto it as a simple embellishment, then splashed and splattered some diluted brown and grey-black distress oxide ink onto everything.  


Here's a peek at the inside.  The kind of no-nonsense card that my fellas prefer!  I hope you like it too!  

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Thursday, February 13, 2025

Pet Condolences


Hi everyone!

I love that Stamp Simply has a stamp set which includes a "beloved pet" sentiment among all of the more traditional sympathy sentiments that are oft spoken after the loss of a loved one.  One of my spinning/crafting friends recently lost her sweet Corgi "Marti" and I am so glad to be able to craft a card especially for her to comfort her in her grief.  Our pets really are cherished members of our families and it hurts so much to let them go, even when we know it is the right time and for the right reasons.   


I chose Spring-y colors for this card in celebration of a happy life well-lived.  A photo of a leather collar and leash inspired the decorative element along the left edge of the card.  I used strips of card stock, some of them folded and "faux braided" along with an end of a die cut from the Tim Holtz Tags Collection to construct it. Several colors of distress oxide ink gave it that weathered leather look, and I even used a few very old eyelets applied with a Crop-a-dile!    


Here's the inside, with plenty of room to write a heart-felt note.  

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