Retirement – Stamped Smiles

Hello there friends! It’s hard to believe that we’ve made it to November and rounding the corner to end 2020! It’s been a very strange year all the way around, but I have to say that it’s a bitter sweet day today as hubby will have his last day of work on his 40 year career as an electrician. So today I’m dedicating my post to him:

This would be a perfect situation for my hubby and something he talked about all the time…which was to go out to the lake, relax, enjoy some fishing time on a boat including staying in a cabin. Sure look forward to spending some time with him doing just that next year too!⛵🌅 He is a hard worker and certainly deserves it.

The stamp set that I’ve used for this card was a perfect scene image from Whimsy Stamps called Happy Place. I colored it up with Copic markers and cut it out with an oval die and layered another oval piece from black cardstock.

I found some papers in my stash that I thought would be perfect with this, so I’ve used the Whimsy Stamps Pierced Border Trio Dies to cut it with to fit half-way on my A2 white side folding card base. Before attaching the piece down over the base, I took some Mustard Seed Oxide Ink and sponged across the middle of it and then used some Tumbled Glass Oxide Ink slightly at the top. I then attached all piece including the image panel.

I took the sentiment from the Happy Place stamp set and stamped one of the sentiments at the top of the oval panel and then I white heat embossed the “relax” sentiment over black cardstock and cut it out with the Whimsy Stamps Quick Strips die set, glued it along the edge and trimmed off the excess. Lastly, I’ve added some Whimsy Stamps It’s a Party Enamel Dots.

Then of course I wanted to share the inside of the card which you can see that I’ve used the same image from the stamp set from the front of the card and just stamped that in a lighter grey ink color. I masked off the edge of the inside of the card so it didn’t stamp completely. I also used it in the same way on the envelope as well.

For the greeting, I took the Whimsy Stamps Happy Large Word Die and cut it out with some black cardstock and then attached it with liquid glue. I stamped the “retirement” greeting right underneath it from the Whimsy Stamps Happy Sayings stamp set with black ink.

It may be hard to tell in the photo above, but I’ve also taken a glitter brush pen and went over the sun as well as the water for some added sparkle.

This card was actually fun to put together and I was thinking about the future and all the things we had talked about the last few years and getting ready for this day. Things are a bit different than we had envisioned of course, but we will have “our time” for sure. We’re so excited about it!

This card is being handed to him this morning while we have our coffee before he leaves for work on his last day!😀

And now I also have some more finished kits that I’ve been working on since the Whimsy Stamps Virtual Workshop Weekend! I’m still really enjoying finishing them up and still have MANY more to do! I’m so amazed at how much we received and very happy that there were several Christmas projects which I’ll be working on next! For now…here’s more of the finished kits:

This was for kit 12 and I LOVED the cute dragon in the purples! This card is going to my youngest grandchild as she is my “PURPLE girl”!!

This is the INSIDE of Kit 12. It was a really cool “FUN FOLD” design! I put my image off to the edge so I had room to write a message.

This was for Kit 6 and the entire scene was made using Copic coloring including the sky background! The squirrel and pumpkins were popped up with foam tape.

This was for kit 21 and my first time practicing with no-line coloring!

This was for kit 22. This mega large sunflower is gorgeous! Loved coloring and fussy cutting it out!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my projects and post today! I sure have been having fun just playing and trying out different things with my cards. I do look forward to finishing up these kits as we get near the Christmas time! So be watching for more of those!

Thanks for dropping in with me today and I’ll see you again soon!

Challenges: (For Retirement Card ONLY)

Colour Crazy Craft – Anything Goes + coloring
A Perfect Time to Craft – Anything Goes Nov
A Bit More Time to Craft – Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore – Anything Goes Nov
Love to Craft – LTCCB52 Anything Goes Nov
QKR Stampede – #407 Anything Goes
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – #145 Anything Goes
The Corrosive Challenge – #11Nov Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2044 Anything Goes

Hello friends! I’m hoping that you’ve had a wonderful weekend!

I’m very excited to be sharing my projects today as a guest “Rock Star” for Repeat Impressions! I’ve been asked to share a special post for their “Project of the Week” segment on their blog today! Yay!

If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know how much I love to ink blend! It’s something that is fun to do, and I’m always amazed at the finished colors! I want you to get the same satisfaction when you do it too, so I thought that would take a fun photo tutorial for my guest POTW post!

Vicki-RIGDT-inkblendedscene

There is just something about this scene that makes me feel happy and relaxed! So of course, that sentiment goes just perfectly with it! This sentiment/saying is one of my all-time favorites and I was thrilled to use it for this design!

I’ve used the “Canoeing” (2905-G) along with the “Mountain Vista” (629-I) From Repeat Impressions for the image stamping over the ink blended scene.

Here’s a closer look at the details in this card with how I went about creating it. You can see the different blended colors in both the water and sky. The setting sun was colored in with a glitter gel pen which created some shimmer to it. The white gel pen highlighted details in the water.

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Really had fun creating this scene with these stamps which were just perfect for an ink blended background! I thought this would make for a wonderful retirement card! If you want to create one of these types of cards yourself, please be sure to check out the step-by-step tutorial over at the Repeat Impressions Blog to see how I went about doing this!

I loved that sentiment stamp so much, that I just couldn’t help but create one more card using it again with another ink blended design:

Vicki-RIGDT-inkblendedlife

Really LOVE how this one turned out!

What’s fun about ink blending is all of the different color combinations you can play with and blend together for different looks! This time, I’ve used different colors and started my ink blending in the center. I’ve also used a die to cut out the center of the ink blended panel, heat emboss the sentiment over it, layer with a piece of black cardstock behind it, and pop it up over the rest of the ink blended background. So even though it was cut out in the center, it’s a continuous ink blended design!

On this ink blended panel, I’ve used some Shimmer Spray over it which gives it a really pretty shimmer with a bit of a “water droplet” effect as the Distress Oxide Inks react to water/liquids. I think this turned out really cool as it gives it sort of a “Bokeh Effect”.

Before I cut out the center of the ink blended panel, I’ve used the “Flower Power Frame” (10202-Q) to stamp in black ink at the top and bottom of the panel. You can see that part of the stamped image was die cut on the sentiment panel. I colored the centers of the flowers with a yellow glitter gel pen for added detail.

Vicki-RIGDT-inkblendedlife-flat

To add to the look, I thought it needed some sparkling clear sequins to finish it off!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my creations today and please be sure to stop on over at the Repeat Impressions Blog to check out the full tutorial on ink blending!

Thank you so much to Wendy and the fellow Rock Star friends for having me along as a guest! Really enjoyed creating these projects with these fabulous stamps!!

Also thank YOU for stopping in today! I appreciate your support so much! I’ll be seeing you again soon my friends!

Challenges I’d like to enter: