Thursday, November 28, 2024

Thankful!


Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I know that today's celebration is an American holiday but being thankful should certainly not be confined to only one day a year, and gratitude is good for all of us regardless of our age, gender, or nationality!  I love this particular holiday and appreciate it more and more the older I get!  I have been missing my parents this week, but especially my mom (she passed in 2014) as I've spent the last several days preparing "heritage family favorite" recipes, and we're saying our thankful prayers as we also just celebrated Patrick's mother's 90th birthday!  We're so grateful to have Matthew with us this year for the holidays!  My gratitude list could go on and on...


Today's card celebrates the vibrant colors of Fall in all its glory!  I wish you could see this card IRL...it is so shimmery and sparkly and very simply elegant.  The camera just doesn't capture it.  


I used copper metallic card stock and a crackle texture sheet of designer paper from Craft Consortium Test of Time for the card's background.  The tag was die-cut from plain white card stock that was inked with Delicata silver and copper inks and spattered with diluted distress inks/distress oxide inks.  That made a bright, shimmery background for the colorful Boho Fall Leaves.    

The inside was kept clean and simple, spattered with silver and copper shimmer and topped with an accent panel of the same metallic and crackle texture papers.

All of the stamps used in this project are from one stamp set, Boho Fall Leaves, which is available individually or as a bundle with its coordinating dies.

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I hope that you enjoy this Thanksgiving Day and the coming weekend!  As it ushers in the remaining holiday season, I hope that you find moments of peace and contentment during this, the busiest and most hectic and often quite stressful time of the year!  Holiday blessings to you and yours!  

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Thursday, November 21, 2024

Tri-fold Pocket Card


Hi everyone!  

In the last week two of my spinning friends (one in Utah, the other in the Netherlands) posted photos of their cold and snowy-white back porches, and that's what inspired today's card.    

Often when we exchange Christmas gifts we include cash or a gift card...it's a preference for some, and easier for travelers than having to transport a gift back home.  So each year when I'm making cards, I always make some sort of gift card wallet to make the presentation more special.  


This one is a tri-fold made from a 5.5 x 11 inch piece of card stock, scored at 4 1/4 and 8 1/2 inches.  I used Spellbinders classic circle dies to cut a window into the card front.  That's a sheet from Craft Consortium Brick Textures there in the background.  The images I used are from a couple of stamp sets from our Christmas collections.    


The right half of "positive" piece from the card front is attached to the flap so that it is visible from the outside.  I stamped the deer directly onto a piece of designer paper from Test of Time.  The stamped images and sentiments were under-stamped with distress inks and then over-stamped with Delicata Silvery Shimmer, so IRL this card is quite shimmery, sparkly and elegant!  I under-stamped the tree with Iced Spruce to give only the very palest hint of green. The deer was under stamped with Hickory Smoke distress oxide ink topped with the Delicata.


I love how the various Craft Consortium papers work so well together.  With the right side of the card opened, the cash/gift card pocket is visible.  It was made from the remaining piece of card stock, accented with designer paper, with a thumb hole cut out using small circle dies.  (Just be sure to only glue it down on three sides!).  The Tim Holtz die cut greenery helps bring the tree theme from the card front to the inside.

The center and innermost section of the card is a sheet of "damask" from Craft Consortium Baroque with one sentiment stamped directly onto the paper and another that is die-cut.  


Both sentiments peek through the window when the card is left partially open for display.

The images on this shimmery but clean-and-simple card would work for either a masculine or feminine recipient.  Without the pearl it could be mailed without requiring hand cancellation although it will likely require extra postage, and sending cash through the mail is considered risky business!  

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Thursday, November 14, 2024

Silent Night "Dutch Door" Card

Hi y'all!  It has been a really busy week here, with chorale dress rehearsal and then two concerts over the weekend.  Between all of that I have been working on Christmas spinning and knitting.  I've finished Mila's hat and have about half of James' done too.  Looks like I'm gonna need to spin a little more green yarn before I can knit his green and white stripes.  I'm really getting impatient to get them finished, and when they're done I'll mail them so that they can open them early and get some good wear from them this winter.  

I had seen variations of these (what I'll call a sort of Dutch Door card) on Pinterest, and since then the idea for this card has been kinda simmering in the background.   I had made a vertical half-front card about a month ago, so it was only logical to make a horizontal one too.  I just had to find the right stamps and dies, and I think these are perfect for it!      

I used the trees die from our Country Church stamp/die set to die cut the trees from the card front, and used scissors to snip the rest of the card front away.  Diluted white acrylic paint scraped along the edges of the card stock and tree branches give the illusion of accumulated snow.  

The star was stamped with Memento ink, colored with Copic markers, given glittering accents with a clear Wink of Stella glitter marker and a sparkling jewel center.  


The starry night background is a combination of translucent distress inks in a variety of colors including pale green, light blue, dark blue and black.  The sentiments were stamped with silver Delicata ink.  

Finally everything was given a liberal "snowing" of diluted white acrylic paint and silver ink.  I love how soft and fluffy some of those snow flakes turned out to be!  

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Thursday, November 7, 2024

A Christmas Cardinal


Hello friends!

On Mondays I facilitate a ukulele group at Shepherd Center and this week, in the adjacent classroom the flower arranging class had beautiful red faux cardinals to include in their floral arrangements. They were SO pretty.  When I sat at my desk to create this week's project, they inspired me!  

I love the symbolism of the cardinal.  They're often associated with messages of love and hope, of remembrance of a loved one who has passed on, or the presence of angels.  Some say that the red signifies the blood of Christ and that cardinals are a sign of divine intervention.      


I combined our Vintage Christmas background stamp with one of our older sets, God Will Take Care of You, to create this project.  The background stamp and the branch were stamped onto some pale grey card stock, colored with Copic markers, die-cut, distressed and heavily inked with tea dye distress ink.


For the inside I stamped the bird and branch directly onto a piece of designer paper that had enough of a design to be interesting when viewed through the card front but was not so busy that it would detract from the stamping.  Here I added just a hint of black to the stamped image because I wanted the cardinals markings to be black rather than grey or brown.  Once again, the edges of the paper were inked and distressed, and the entire card front and back was generously splashed with diluted acrylic paint "snow."  (In all the years that we have lived in Florida it has only snowed once or twice, so here we are, "living vicariously!"  I'm not good at cold, so I'm ok with an only occasional experience of the real thing.)

There are other snowflakes in the store that one could use, but this little snowflake is a tiny little surprise that is not visible when the card is closed.  I added a bright red pearl to its center, but if you're mailing this card you could leave that off if you'd rather.  I kept the embellishments for this one really simple but if the recipient were a girlie girl, it could certainly be blinged and bowed up, especially if it could be hand-delivered!  

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Friday, November 1, 2024

Hot tea and a good read! Well wishes for a sick friend!


Hi y'all!  Happy November!  Wow, time is absolutely flying by! Christmas is not far away!  If you're making cards and hand-made gifts, seriously, it is not that far off!  

And if you're here for the coffee lover's blog hop, a special welcome!


Illness seems to go hand-in-hand with this busy season.  My friend recently tested positive for Covid, so I decided to make a little tea-inspired "well wishes" tea bag/gift card holder for her.  The project has two criss-cross pockets that are perfect for filling with a folded tag, gift cards, tea bags, etc. 

While shuffling through stamp sets I discovered that the verse from one of our other sets would fit perfectly onto the front of this no nonsense mug, which is just the ticket for a not so frilly or frou frou friend.  This verse seems so appropriate for the circumstance, and I'm so grateful that the more recent versions of this virus seem to be less threatening than the original.  It was really scary at the beginning of the pandemic.  


Here is what it looks like from the back side.   


Ironically, the whole thing is tea-bag shaped when viewed from the side! *wink*


I included some soothing hot teas and a bookstore gift card for some sick bed entertainment.  Warm drinks help a sore throat, and curling up with a good book will help the down time seem to go by faster and maybe provide a mental/emotional escape!  I even stamped some eucalyptus silhouettes on the folded tag insert, because it's so often used for coughs and in breathing treatments.    

It would be really easy to convert this project to be coffee themed for a book-and-coffee-loving friend who is not confined to home!  


Making this project is actually pretty simple!  It is basically an 8.25 inch square of card stock scored at 2 3/4 from each long edge with the outside corners cut off (so it is shaped like a stop sign) and then the two outside middles are cut out.  Finally, the center/bottom is scored to fold in half and if desired, notched and tapered just a little so the corners don't show from the front when it's assembled.  

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