Happy New Year! Mixing Up with Mixed Media!

Hello friends and welcome to 2024!🎉  I’m looking forward to a year filled with many happy memories and fun!  I’m wishing these things for you as well!  So to get the year started, I’m inviting you to a fun challenge to play along with at the Mix It Up Challenge!

The theme is always ANYTHING GOES with an optional theme of MIXED MEDIA!  With these challenges, you have plenty of time to enter as they run for 6 weeks!  I look forward to seeing what you come up with!  

I know that mixed media can seem a bit intimidating, but it’s only using more than 1 extra medium of any kind on your creation.  I usually do that anyway!  Here’s the card that I came up with for this challenge using the Mixed Media option:

I’m really loving how this turned out!  I’ve used another fun card kit from Taylored Expressions with the Snow Crystals card kit. (no longer available)

Background:  I started by white heat embossing the Swirling Snow Background Stamp over watercolor cardstock.  I used different shades of blue watercolor with a bit of turquoise in there as well.  I spritzed it with water to get the “watermark” look and let it dry.  I then used some Copic opaque white mixed with water and splattered some over top for another layer of snow.  After it was dry, I also filled in the circles with a glitter brush pen.

I die cut the snowflake die in navy and again in white cardstock 3 times.  I layered the navy at the bottom over the background.  The three snowflakes cut out with white were glued together and then I took 2 layers of sparkle silver embossing powder to heat set.  I layered the embossed snowflake slightly tilted from the navy snowflake and attached over top.  I also silver embossed the sentiment over a navy strip and added some “dash marks” with a white gel pen before attaching to the background.

Finished off the card by running the edges of the background panel with liquid glue and then attaching some chunky glitter to the edges.  I also attached a silver rhinestone in the center of the snowflake.  It’s so glittery and shiny in person!

Thanks so much for stopping in today and I hope that you will take the time to play along with us!  Be sure to check out the Mix It Up Challenge Blog for the design team inspiration!  

Challenges:

  1. Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
  2. Crafting From the Heart – Anything Goes
  3. Allsorts – Cold & Ice
  4. Crafting Happiness – Anything Goes
  5. Gem of a Craft – Anything Goes
  6. Four Seasons – Winter Season

Lots of Joy Mailed Out!

Hello friends!  I hope that you’re having a great start to your week!  We’re almost there as Christmas approaches us quickly!  I’ve been enjoying the Season and having fun keeping busy.  Currently baking cookies and decided to take a break from that to sit and make a post about all of things that I’ve been doing besides posting!😆

This is just one of the several similar cards that I created for my Christmas cards this year.  It came from a Christmas in July card kit from Taylored Expressions.  It mainly used the Wreathed in Joy Stamp & Stencil Combo set.  There are dies you can cut them out with as well as foilable panels which is shown on this one.

I do not like to make several of the “same thing”, so I’ve changed them up to different colors, layouts, etc.  So you can see the different versions I’ve done below.  (If you are visiting my web page, just click on each photo to see it enlarged.)

 *Apologies for the messy stack for photo taking…it was a lot to do all at once!

I thought these would be enough for all of the Christmas cards to send out, but I realized going back through my list that I wasn’t going to quite have enough. 

So I’m glad that at the beginning of this month I took a Hero Arts Stamp-a-Long and made several different types of Christmas cards.  Here are the results of these below:  (Again, if you’re looking on my web page, just click on the photos to enlarge them.)

So some of these were also taken and used for sending out more Christmas cards.  I’m glad that I did the projects for this class or I probably would not have had enough cards.

BUT WAIT!  That’s not all!  I’ve also made a few other Christmas items that I’ve also sent out.  I’m also sharing some gifts and gift tags that I’ve made from a Taylored Expressions Advent Calendar that I got this year.  I made some more cards and tags.  (I tried out wax melting which is something I’ve never done…it was fun)  Others are from classes I took or participated in Craft Roulette for.

If you’re on my web page, just click on the photos below to enlarge each one.

Wow, so that was a lot!  I know that my blog has been pretty sparse with posts lately and I am finally getting around to posting the things that I’ve been working on, so I hope you’ll get that and you’re able to take some time for yourself this season and enjoy the peaceful quiet moments!

I will be sure to take a moment and catch up with everyone before Christmas arrives.  In the meantime, it’s back to cookie making!  Thanks so much for stopping in today!❤️

Guest Design for Try it On Tuesday

Hello friends!  I hope that you’ve had a great start to your December month!  I promise I haven’t been hiding, but it’s a busy time of the year and I’ve been doing all of the Holiday things, so my time has been limited.  I’m glad to have just now finished up some Christmas cards!😉

Speaking of Christmas cards, I have something fun to share with you today!

TioT Guest Designer 2023

Last month I had won a top 5 in a challenge and was asked to be a guest designer for this Try it on Tuesday challenge!  I really enjoy playing along in the challenges to keep motivated, so I was thrilled!   For THIS challenge, the theme is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” which inspired me to pull out this fun Santa stamp for a chuckle:

So, this is Santa’s excuse for being late!  Like me, he’s NOT hiding…just delayed!😆

The stamps and die cuts came from an older My Favorite Things card kit I had called “Stuffed Santa“.  I had fun putting this one together and was the beginning of the cards made to send out this year. (It was my plan to be early, but you know how THAT goes!)

For the background:  I ink blended in a couple of blue oxide colors with the center panel fading to the lightest color.  I sprayed the panel with some shimmer spray for that cold frosty shimmer sky.  I then splattered some white opaque Copic mixed with water for the snowfall.

The Santa, hands, sentiment bubble, and lights around the chimney were all stamped and colored with Copic markers.  I die cut them out along with the chimney, snow and rooftop pieces.  I die cut the pieces with white and used my Copic markers to color in the chimney, roof, window and lights around the roof line.  For the sentiment panel on the house at the bottom, I cut it to size and used my Copic markers to color the same as the roof peek.   I added the sentiment to it, and made this the “base” for the house.

To finish it off, I added some chunky glitter to the die cut snow on the chimney and roof.  I also used a glitter pen to add some sparkle to the inside window panels and the Christmas lights.  I also used some foam squares to pop up the sentiment bubble and Santa’s mittens.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and that you’ll play along with this fun challenge over at Try it on Tuesday as well!  Thanks so much for dropping by!

Challenges:

  1. Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – 2349 Anything Goes
  2. Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
  3. Crafty Catz – #662 Anything Goes
  4. Daring Cardmakers – One Word Prompt: LIGHT (Christmas lights and window light)
  5. Gem of a Challenge – Anything Goes
  6. Inkspirational – Designer’s Choice: Add Glitter
  7. Krafty Chicks – Stamp Act

It’s Christmas in July at Sparkles Monthly!

Hello friends! Have you’ve been enjoying the month of July so far? We finally got some rains, but now it’s humid and warmer. That’s OK because it’s always warm this time of year anyway and a great time for crafting indoors with the air conditoning!

Today starts up a new challenge for the Sparkles Forum Monthly Challenge Blog with the theme: Christmas in July! It’s a favorite for many card makers this month so that they can get an early start on those Christmas cards without having to wait last minute to get them all done. I don’t have an outrageous amount to send out, but I do like to donate and I have done 5 Christmas so far! So if you’re up for it, make a Christmas card and join the gallery at the challenge! Here’s the card that I’ve made:

There’s nothing like the smell of peppermint for Christmas (for me anyway!)  I had gotten this Candy Cane Lane card kit from Taylored Expressions last year and never really used it, so I thought this would be a good time to pull it out.

In the set, there came this cover plate die and I cut it out in the following, gold mirror, white glitter and white cardstock in A2 sizes.  I paper pieced each one over an A2 sized white card base front.  I added some light blue ink blending around the edges and bottom of the center panel and stamped a few “snowflakes” in the same color.

I die cut the candy canes and leaves and ink blended/stenciled those stacked together.  I used a white gel pen for the highlight over the canes, added a gold cord bow and some gold drip drops for the “berries”.  There was a stamp set with sentiments that I stamped out in red and then went over top of it with VersaMark ink so that I could emboss some Peppermint smelling embossing powder over it…that’s where the smell of peppermint came in for me!  I die cut it out with the coordinating die and glued it at the bottom of the candy canes.

Hope you can join the challenge with your Christmas cards this month!  Thanks so much for dropping in today!

Challenges:

  1. Sparkles Christmas – Include Gold
  2. Merry Little Christmas – Anything Christmas Goes
  3. Get Creative – Christmas in July
  4. Craft Rocket – Christmas in July
  5. Most Magical Time of the Year – ATG Christmas/Halloween optional:  Christmas in July
  6. Christmas Craft Creations – Christmas in July007July
  7. Little Red Wagon – Christmas or New Year?  (I hardly ever send out New Year cards)
  8. Krafty Chicks – Christmas
  9. CRAFT – Christmas

Emboss It at Sparkles Monthly + Giveaway WINNER!

Hello friends!  I hope you’re having a great month so far and being able to enjoy the nice Spring weather!  It’s been really nice over my way, but I’m seeing we have a bit of cooler temps coming too.  Hopefully not too chilly! 

Today starts a new challenge over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog and this time we would like for you to “Emboss it”!  I hope you will hop on over to see the inspiration from the team and consider joining in the fun with us this month!

Here’s the DT creation that I’ve made:

I love to do embossing on my cards, and I know it’s a favorite for many!  I’ve decided to do a “Letterpress Embossing” technique and inked up an embossing folder to achieve the effect on my orange layer panel.  The raised areas stay white on the white cardstock.

For the two corners, I’ve taken a Simon Says Stamp Garden Greetings stamp set and gold heat embossed the floral spray image.  I’ve also used the same gold embossing for the “sending hugs” sentiment strip as well as the “Get Well Soon” sentiment over the shimmer vellum which was cut from a stitched circle die.  I added some gold sequins over it.

I wanted to keep it somewhat flat for mailing purposes, but I think some of it popped up would be pretty too. I was also very happy to pull out a past card kit and make another card with it.

I would love to see your embossed creations in the gallery this month, so I’ll hope you’ll play along!  Check out the challenge here – Sparkles Monthly


***ARE YOU A WINNER?!!***

vicki-tegiveaway

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I have taken all of the comments from my last post, added all of the names that mentioned they would be interested in the Beautiful Butterflies dies and foil package and wrote those names on pieces of scrap paper. I folded and crumpled them up and had my husband pick out a name. He threw them all into the hat he was wearing and pulled one out!

HERE IS THE NAME THAT HE PICKED OUT…………….

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Yay!  Congratulations Chrissy! 

Please contact me and send me your full name and snail mail address so that I can pop your package in the mail to you!  I hope you enjoy it!  (I haven’t even used mine yet!)  Sorry if your name didn’t get pulled as I only had one, but I know I have several “double” items that I’ve placed in a bin and will be pulling them out at some point to give away! So, stay tuned!

Thanks so much for dropping in and taking the time to say hello!  I appreciate you!


Challenges I’d like to enter my above card into:

  1. Creative Inspirations – Anything Goes
  2. Can You Handle the Pressure? – Anything Goes optional clouds
  3. Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
  4. Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
  5. Little Red Wagon – At least 2 layers 
  6. Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes
  7. Tic Tac Toe – TTTC204 (middle down: die cut, free, embossing)tttc-challenge-board-204

Rainbow Bridge

Hello friends!  Welcome to March!  Although it’s still cold and even some snow coming in our forecast, I know that warmer weather is coming soon along with those pretty flowers!  I have a full weekend of crafting coming, so I’m prepared to get through this cold snap!

So, I have unfortunately had to make and send a couple of pet sympathy cards as I didn’t have any on hand.  I decided that I needed to pull out a card kit from My Favorite Things called “Rainbow Bridge“, I think.  It’s no longer available, but I know they have a few things in pet sympathy.  I wanted to make sure that I still had some of these on hand when needed because I feel like these can be hard to make.

This card was made and sent out in January for someone who lost their precious fur friend.  I thought the silhouette looked a similar shape to the photos I saw.  I’ve used the stencil and dies that came with the kit along with some of the papers included in the kit with the paw prints.  I’ve also used the same papers as a liner for the inside of the envelope that you can see in the photo.

I’ve ink blended some rainbow colors and then used the die set in the kit to make the rainbow bridge and added some hearts around the silhouette pup which was popped up over the rainbow bridge.

I also needed to make a kitty one and then just decided that I was going to use this card kit to make several of these different pet sympathy cards so that I had some on hand when needed.  I thought that was a clever card kit and knew it would be very useful to create lots of pet sympathy cards with.

  • These are all in the gallery below, so if you’re on my website, just click on each photo to enlarge the size so you can see the details:

Sometimes it’s just good to sit down and craft to have some cards on hand that you know you’ll probably need at some point, but don’t want to hurry to try and put something together because you need it.

Hope you’ve gotten some inspiration in my post today or found some inspiration with it.  Thanks so much for stopping in today!  

Challenges:

  1. Allsorts – Anything Goes optional 4-legged Friends
  2. Crafty Animals – Anything Goes + animal
  3. Critter Crazy – Anything Goes + Featured Creature
  4. Pearly Sparkles – Include Sentiment/Verse
  5. The Diva’s That Cut Paper – Anything Goes
  6. Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes Using Paper
  7. Love to Craft – Anything Goes
  8. Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes

Christmas Fun with Kits and Classes

Hello friends!  We’re headed into the home stretch now for Christmas and the end of the year!  Are you ready yet?  Well I thought that I would try and get some Christmas cards made up and have some fun with it rather than trying to rush things too much.  

Tee hee!  This one makes me giggle!  While I was making up some squares for my sampler swap group, I thought I’d use this same MFT Stuffed Santa kit (that I had gotten last year) and made a card along with making the squares too!  The squares I made turned out cute too and I’ll share those later on.  I added some glitter to the snow on the image and on his gold belt buckle too.  The background was white heat embossed with the MFT Christmas Greetings Background and then ink blended with blue inks.  Finished off with snowflake sequins and Stickles glitter in the centers of each.

And here’s another set of cards that I made from a previously purchased kit by Riley & Co using the cute Riley as the Grinch stamp.  The stamp was included along with the kit and so I just thought it would be nice and easy by just coloring him up, adding my own sentiment and putting it together.  So now I want to watch the movie! 😄

And lastly are some cards that I put together during an OOAK event with the classes that I selected to get the kits for and just enjoyed the process of putting them together.  **If you are on my website, you can click on the photos below to see them up close and larger**

So although I’ve shared several projects here today, I have more craft-making going on so I’m going to shorten up my post and hope that you enjoy the inspiration!  I appreciate you stopping by today!  See you soon!

Challenges:

  1. Christmas Crafts All Year ‘Round – Waiting on Santa (top card! LOL)
  2. Christmas Kickstart – Christmassy
  3. Crafty Friends – Traditional Christmas Colors (2nd card)
  4. Jingle Belles – Wrapping Up Christmas 2022
  5. Winter Wonderland – Anything Goes Christmas
  6. Sweet Stampin’ – Christmas Creations
  7. Moving Along With the Times – Christmas

September AJ Page-Embrace Change

Hello friends!  As of Thursday, Fall has begun!  It actually really does feel like Fall with the cooler temps settling in on exactly that same day too!  I’m looking forward to all of the wonderful changes it brings with it!  I enjoy going out in nature and seeing the trees change into their colors.

It’s also that time for a monthly Art Journal page and collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), so please check out her blog for more inspiration too!🥰  We’re trying to get creative by using up our never-ending stash piles!  So here’s my Art Journal inspiration with the “SMASH OUR STASH” September prompt of “ANY kind(s) of scrap papers!” :

Like many crafters out there, I’m sure we all have those never-ending piles of papers! I especially have a very extensive collection of pattern papers and MANY within those piles of little left-over pieces that never seem to get used and just thrown back into the package!  I not only have packages, but I also have several card kits that ALSO have packages of papers in them too…so I pulled out a past kit and was happy that I’ve used pretty much all of the left-over scraps from it!  One down and a trillion to go!!😅

For the Background:  The page is a 6″ x 9″ Canson 140# cold-pressed paper with the holes prepared at the top for later book binding.  I’ve used Distress Oxide Sprays and used the left-over spray on my glass mat with water until I soaked up all the ink.  I’ve also splattered some Gold and Ivory acrylic paints over top once dry.  I stamped a couple of the tiny leaves with green ink for a bit of depth in the background.

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For the Image Elements:  I used the Simon Says Stamp “Woodland Whimsy” stamp set to paper piece all of the image elements with the tall trees on the right, the leaves, the bear, the bear’s belly and ears, also with the berry and leaf branches next to him.  The trees were fussy cut with scissors and the other images were cut with coordinating dies.  I’ve used Copic markers to add a bit of depth and dimension to some of it. Some were glued down while some were popped up with foam squares.  I’ve also taken the Lawn Fawn Small Stitched Leaves dies to cut out a few extra and sponged around them to add to the scene.  I’ve also used the same papers I’ve used to cut those leaves out and added it as a layer behind the two sentiment quote squares.  The quote was printed out from my computer and the “Autumn” sentiment was cut out from pattern papers using the Lawn Fawn henry’s ABCs dies along with more papers to make an “off-set” shadow behind them.

The “ground” was just fussy cut with scissors and ink sponged around the edges.  Lastly, I’ve taken some gold Stickles to create “berries” on the leaf branches and randomly over the page.

I really enjoyed creating this page as it has inspired me to go out in nature for a walk!  I sure hope you’ve enjoyed it as well!  Thanks for stopping in today!

Challenges:

  1. Art Journal Journey – Fur or Feathers (I went with fur, but love both!)
  2. Country View – Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness
  3. Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media
  4. Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
  5. Love to Craft – Anything Goes
  6. Snippets Playground – Anything Goes using snippets (Happy to use up “snippets” of my pattern papers for the paper pieced images!) YES PLEASE!

Some Summer Session Sets

Happy August friends!  This Summer has really flown right by me this year, how about you?  Before you know it we’ll be getting ready for all things Fall…which is my favorite time of the year!🍂  I haven’t been feeling well for the last several days and haven’t done much crafting, but I do have some sets of cards that I’ve made sometime during these Summer months, but haven’t posted, so I’d like to share them with you today.

Taylored Expression had released an adorable collection of fish themed products this Summer that I thought would be so fun for several different occasions, and not just for those that like to fish, but for anyone for any occasion too!

The first white background card on the left was created with the TE Hook, Line & Sinker Stamp & Stencil Combo.  The stencil is really nice to create different effects in an easy way without lots of coloring. I like that the TE Hook, Line & Sinker Dies cut out some of the mass-produced stenciled fish background too!  (I saved one for the other card as well and still had a few more left over for another project.)  After I created a couple of the stenciled fish backgrounds, I cut out a panel with a wonky stitched rectangle die and placed it over a Kraft A2 card base.  I added some TE Drip Drops for the “bubbles” on the extra fish and you can see that I’ve covered the body of this fish with a glitter brush pen.

The second card on the right was created with the TE Just Keep Swimming Stencil with Toffee Ink color for a watermark look.  I splattered some white and black paint over the background.  The fishing pool as well as the sentiments for both cards came from the TE Reely Great Stamp & Die Combo.  (It includes the fishing pool die cut with it.)  You will also notice the tiny little sparkly fish on both of the cards which were cut from the TE Little Bits-Fish die with some blue and turquoise glitter cardstock.  The ‘frame’ around the sentiment on the first card as well as the green frame for the second card were extra pieces in my stash previously cut out with the TE A2 Thin Frame Cutting Plate. (I save the extras to use for other projects.)  

Of course, I didn’t “invent the wheel” on these as it was simple by following along with the TE “Hugs & Fishes Craft-a-Long Class” which I got for free with my stamp/combo purchase when it came out. I tweaked it slightly, but sometimes it’s nice to just create and follow along without having to think about what to do with it. 😁 


This next set of cards was actually pretty fun and easy to put together:

Continuing on with more Taylored Expressions products, I’ve used the TE Create-in-Quads Hexagon Layering Stencil Set.  Taylor had recently come with this series sometime last year I believe, and they seem to go over pretty well.  (I think I had previously made Christmas cards and some Mother’s Day type of cards earlier this Spring with other “Create-in-Quads” sets.)  It seems like a lot, but when you see how easy it is to knock out four cards at once…which I did with Christmas last year…it’s such a time saver with wonderful results!

All of these cards were finished off with the TE Oh No You Didn’t stamp set & dies (love this set)! A couple of the cards use the TE Simple Strips-Snarky stamp set that were white heat embossed and cut out.  The other cards have sentiments that were foiled from the TE Simple Strips In Reverse-Everyday Occasions and die cut.  And of course, I didn’t want to waste too much of the foiled panels, so I again took my TE A2 Thin Frame Cutting Plate to cut a couple of the frames with it.  I also stamped out a couple of extra stars here and there from another TE stamp set, but I can’t remember which one I used. (I think it was from a previous card kit I have that’s no longer available…but any star will do!)

And again, no need to reinvent the wheel as I believe this was another class I received for free from a purchase.  You can check out the Create-in-Quads Hexagon Craft-a-Long Class if you’re interested in it.  I think I changed up the colors and details a bit for mine, but very similar in style.

**👀 Be on the look-out for another TE project set from me using another Create-in-Quads I recently got and can’t wait to use!  I’m also going to have some things to give away too!  STAY TUNED!!!


I had also attended a class from Riley and Company sometime this Summer as well:

I have loved that little Riley moose character for years, but Tanya (owner) does several of these on-line class events and she comes out with some really cute class kits.  This kit had everything you need to make the projects and this one also included the sentiment die as well as a full 6×6 packet of papers in the coordinating theme.

For my projects, the giraffe was the only pre-cut image to color.  All of the other bee images came from the papers that were included with the kit that you were to fussy cut from.  Since the sentiment die was also included, I die cut all of those pieces for my card too.  I decided to step-up my cards with some glitter cardstock along the edge of the giraffe card and then I die cut the “gold glitter honey drip” on that card from the Riley and Company Corner Goo Die.  I also added little details like the “flying trail” of the bee with a marker and using a glitter brush pen on the bee wings.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my Summer Session Sets today and have been inspired or brought a smile!  Thank you so kindly for your time to stop in and have a look!  I really appreciate it!

Challenges:

  1. Pearly Sparkles – Anything Goes
  2. Moving Along With the Times – Anything Goes
  3. Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
  4. Addicted to Stamps & More – Die Cuts and/or Stencils (I’ve used both!)ATSM die cut stencils
  5. Happy Little Stampers – Anything Goes With Dies challengeimage
  6. Crafty Calendar – Anything Goes
  7. Creative Inspirations – Anything Goes

A Beautiful June Wedding!

Hello friends!  I hope you’re having a great week!  We got a tiny break from the hot weather, so I had to spend the last few days enjoying it and was happy to get away from being indoors!  Now as the temps climb back up, it’s time to get busy and craft some more!😃

As promised, I’m catching up with my postings to share the wedding invites, thank you cards and special wedding card I made from my son’s June wedding.  I made them a few months back, obviously, but I thought it would be nice to condense it altogether here in one posting.

The couple had asked for me to make their invites for them and of course it was a great honor to be able to do that for them.  I was given a photo of an image and was educated about the “Tree of Life” to incorporate that into a design as well as a sample of some color shades.  Making a total of 50, here’s what I came up with:

I was able to find some similar Stampin’ Up! colors that closely resembled the samples given and come up with Bermuda Bay and Mint Macaron for the design.  I wanted both the ink and cardstock colors and worked it out from there.

For the base of the design, I’ve used the darker Bermuda Bay and on the front panel, I used a piece of Mint Macaron with a stenciled “tree of life” over top of it with Bermuda Bay ink.  I actually found a fairly inexpensive stencil on Amazon and thought it looked very similar to the image I was given and thought it would be perfect for the front with a partial side off the edge.  I never inked up 50 panels before, but this stencil certainly got a workout!  I was thinking it needed a bit more to it than just the stenciling, but I didn’t want to do too much with having 50 to make!  I took the Taylored Expressions Diagonal Stitched Rectangle die to impress a design around the edge, wrapped silver ribbon around the front with the knot and layered it over the front of the invite.

So being happy with that, the hardest task was to figure out the inside details….

I wanted to make the inside a portfolio style with a pocket containing the wedding details as well as the RSVP/envelope inside and then the actual “announcement” on the other side.  As I was piecing it together, I thought a decorative flap with some vellum would be pretty over the announcement too.

I’ve used the Stampin’ Up! Basic Borders die set to die cut the pocket front as well as the vellum flap on the left side.  I had to adhere two Bermuda Bay card panels together and cut out the areas I didn’t need.  (I ended up using the left over pieces to punch out a circle layer.  To add a bit more of a decorative detail, I cut strips of silver cardstock as well as silver heat emboss the “tree of life” circle stamp.  (I was happy to also find this really inexpensive rubber stamp image for a couple of dollars to use for this too!)  For the image on the pocket area, it was stamped with Bermuda Bay over the Mint Macaron cardstock, layered with that left over Bermuda Bay circle punched pieces and popped up with foam squares over the silver strip.  I was happy with how the portfolio design was working.

And now once you open up the vellum flap on the left side, you will see the announcement portion.  The silver strips were strategically placed to cover up where all of the layers are glued/attached together, but still looks like it “belongs” there.  The image that was given to me via digital photo was used at the “back drop” behind the wording.  It was a very bright image that I altered on my computer and muted it down so that it was faded in the background, but yet still clearly visible on the design.  I thought it worked out nicely and still coordinated with the stenciled area on the front.

Because this invite was so thick in nature, I didn’t want to add more layers of cardstock, so I used a thinner parchment style copy paper as everything was printed out from the computer anyway.  The parchment made it feel a bit more professional I thought.  I die cut ALL of the printed parchment pieces with a Lawn Fawn RETIRED Small Dotted Rectangle dies. (I thought the “small dots” went with the SU! edges I used on the flaps.) I placed the announcement over a piece of Mint Macaron and then layered it inside the card.  I layered the RSVP card over a piece of Mint Macaron and the “wedding details” card was left on its own.

Finally, you can see that on the silver envelope flaps, I silver heat embossed the image. This was also done for the larger silver envelopes for the whole invite to fit in as well.  I even used the “Tree of Life” computer generated image to create some address sticker labels for them and give them extras ones to use.

Of course, after the wedding, you need to send out the thank you cards, so I also made 50 of those….

I really didn’t want to event a new wheel with it, so I had plenty of cardstock colors and just repeated the same design on the front as I did with the invites except for this one, I used the Taylored Expressions On Occasion stamps.  I stamped them out with the Bermuda Bay over the Mint Macaron cardstock, cut it out with the coordinating dies and popped it up with foam tape over the silver ribbon.  Stenciling another 50 panels with this same stencil gave it another work out yet! 

So, for the actual day of their wedding, this is the card I made FOR the couple.  I was able to get a little more “intense” with this one as it was only ONE card!

I was so excited when I saw this stunning card kit come out from Taylored Expressions called “Modern Eucalyptus” (no longer available) and I thought it was the perfect colors to create something with for their wedding.  The white panel was silver foiled and then I stenciled the colors of the wreath pieces, stenciled some silver paste, die cut them out and popped them up over the foiled wreath.  I stamped the sentiment in the center, added some TE Tiny Diamonds to some areas and cut a strip of silver glitter cardstock to go across the bottom.

Around the edge of the panel, I used a free gift that I got with purchasing items and tried it out and on my panel without realizing that it cut the center.  I went ahead and attached it down anyway as I liked the decorative look to it.  I had a matching envelope and off we went to the wedding!!!!!


The couple was married in Hocking Hills (Ohio State Park area) and it was absolutely beautiful over there!  The venue they used only had a certain capacity limit and so this is why there were only 50 invitations that went out.  It was a very nice private wedding with everything done and organized for them.  I do not have any professional photos of the wedding as of yet, but I had to rely on my husband for taking a few photos on his phone and then handing the phone to someone for photos as well…my dress didn’t allow me for handy phone carrying.  LOL But here a just a few photos (not professional) of the wedding.

As being a first time “mom of the groom”, it is quite an experience and very emotional especially when my son picks out a song for our dance with a song I used to sing to him as a baby in my belly!  We both had tears!! LOL  It was such a joyous occasion and I’m thrilled to welcome our new family into our lives for years to come!  May they always feel the joy and love together for ever after!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my wedding post today and have been inspired in some way to brighten your day.  I thank you so much for taking the time to stop in and say hello!  It means so much to me!  See you soon!

Challenges:

  1. Crafty Friends – Embossing Wet/Dry (heat embossed on invites)
  2. Crafty Calendar – Add a ribbon (on invites and thank you)
  3. Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
  4. Fab ‘N’ Funky – Anything Goes
  5. Penny’s Paper Crafty – Anything Goes using paper
  6. Creative Fingers – Anything Goes