covid-19 – Stamped Smiles

Hello friends! I hope that your week is finding you in a good place right now. Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed with things that are going on in the world, but I am so thankful that I have the crafty time to keep my mind creative and music to help alongside to keep on keeping on. This is one way that I know I can express myself in a postitive way and hopefully inspire someone too.

In my previous post, I had made several healthcare worker cards and I had made one for my son who is a mail carrier, but I was having a hard time finding an image for a food service worker. (check out that post HERE.) I asked if anyone knew of any images. Someone had reached out to me and shared a few images that were just too adorable and I couldn’t pass up on nabbing one for my other essential worker son:

Isn’t he just as cute as can be?! I’ve used the LOTV Pancake Day digi stamp for my card. It actually reminds me of my son making crepes for a restaurant that he used to work for. I was treated with a delicious pumpkin pecan cream crepe by him a few years back on my birthday! It was yummy!

As you can see, I’ve altered the image a bit to fit with the current covid-19 restrictions by giving him a make-shift face mask as well as coloring some plastic-style gloves on his hands. To make it even more personal, I decided to give him a couple of colored tattos on his arms as my son has tattos on his arms and dark brown hair.😁

For the card, I’ve used some Sidewalk cardstock from Brutus Monroe and used a Stampin’ Up! brick embossing folder over it and then sponged some distress ink around the edges. It was cut out with a stitched rectangle die. I added a strip of Prism paper and some silver metallic ribbon over it before attaching it to a top folding A2 sized black card base. I finished it off with some silver Glossy Dots from Pink and Main.

I colored the image with Copic markers and as mentioned above added the special coloring for the tattos and gloves for his hands. I’ve also covered the pan with a glitter brush pen.

To make the face mask, I took a Copic liner to draw in the lines for the cord around his ear and then I took a tiny piece of thin tissue style paper that was used between the packages of acetate sheets you buy. I wanted it because it was thin and I was able to create tiny folds and wrinkles in it…I just glued it over the area on his face and manipulated it before it completely dried.

I stamped the sentiment from a Lawn Fawn stamp set with black ink next to the image and then I used a stencil that was cut out by my mom, thanks mom, on her Cricut machine and inked it up with some red ink using a foam brush tool. I wasn’t very accurate with not covering the image, but thankfully the sand eraser helped out! I finished coloring up the “ground” area and sponged around the stitched square cut out of the image. I layered it onto another piece of black cardstock and popped it up over the card with craft foam.

I think this card turned out so cute and it’s on the way to him now! I think he’ll get a kick out of it and he’ll probably notice the extra personalized details I’ve added to it too!😂

I hope you have enjoyed my special essential worker card today and brought you a smile! Thank you so kindly for stopping in and I’ll see you again soon!✌

Challenges:

Pearly Sparkles – #52 For the Boys/Men
Love to Scrap – LTSCB134 For the Boys
QKR Stampede – #400 Anything Goes
Digi Choosday – Anything Goes + colored image
Arty Divas – #23 Anything Goes
The Paper Funday – #18 Anything Goes with twist: make it masculine
Simon Say Stamp Wednesday – Masculine
Unicorn – Masculine

Hello friends! I haven’t really mentioned too much about what’s going on in the world right now, and I know it has tremendously affected many people around me. In the crafting community I sense changes as well in different ways. I do hope that crafting can help either take your mind off the situation or at least help with making you ‘feel’ that creating from the heart, as we stay at home, is a fantastic way to contribute and help bring about smiles in many ways.

I would like to ask you if you want to respond about it: Has crafting helped you during this time or has it made it difficult to concentrate? I have found that taking TONS of classes have actually been my savior right now especially as I was taking that break I had. (Helps me to concentrate on something like a technique.) I found MANY having classes (free or having group parties going on with crafters teaching and sharing). Due to this pandemic, I know many people/companies in the crafting community have revved up their classes and challenges as well… along with giving out free digital images!

This brings us to my post for today….

Vicki-TEcarddrive

I have made several stacks of “thank you” cards geared towards our healthcare workers and it has been very rewarding for me to be able to color in all these images in my post today as a salute and honor to those that have been “on the front line” dealing day to day since the beginning of this pandemic. My heart goes out to all in this uncertain time and although there are many horrible stories related to this, there are also some good ones too. Let’s rise up.

Taylored Expressions put on a card drive to send cards to the healthcare workers and it ended today, so these cards have already been sent.

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For this particular stack of cards, I’ve made 6 of the pink and 6 of the green using this adorable MOKA Melissa Nurse free download from Taylored Expressions. I’ve also used the Subway Tiles embossing folder for the background as well as white heat embossed the sentiments from the Life Saver Mini Strips stamp set and die cut them out with the clever Mini Strips Die. I’ve used a heart die that came with an order I had and then I took some tiny images from other sets for the accents.

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I stamped a message on the inside of all of the cards from TE Big Thanks stamp set too. (This set came for free with an order I placed.)

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Vicki-BRMSuperherocards

Here’s another set of 20 cards I made for healthcare workers using the Freebie Healthcare Super Hero Coloring Pages. (To print these out to fit over an A2 sized card base, I used my printer settings to print out 4 pages on one sheet.)

I layered them over some pink and red cardstock and then the base of the card is some A2 sized side folding blue cardstock. The left over pieces from the pink and red cardstock strips were ran through and embossing folder and white white Ink was ran over it.

Vicki-BRMSuperherocardsA

Here’s a closer look at the individual sets. I used a star die to cut out some stars with Glitter paper. I also took some blue and pink glitter glue to create extra “dots” around them. This was good practice for me to experiment with different skin tones too.

Vicki-BRMSuperherocards-B

I’ve used Copic markers to color all of these in with and then I took some gel pens to color in parts of the image as well as the outline in the sentiment too.

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I thought this was a fun one with all of them together and I like that they’re all wearing capes and masks too. I had these finished up at the end of April, but just now getting all of these out where I wanted them to go. I have a sister-in-law who’s teaming up with me to sew some masks and we’re going to deliver them with the cards to our local hospitals.

Vicki-BRMmailhero

One last and important card I made was specifically for my son who’s a postal carrier. Of course I tried coloring it in with the same hair color he has too. LOL! After I made the batch of cards above, they came out with more superhero freebie downloads, so I grabbed the Mail Carrier Superhero Coloring Pages to make one for him too. And this one is already on it’s way as well. For the background, I used the Scene stencil for the clouds with blue distress ink.

I finished this one similar to the ones above.

The ONLY superhero I’m missing is one for my other son who’s a food service worker and I haven’t seen any of those images out yet. Does anyone know where to find one? I would love to make a “thank you” card for him as well. I may just come up with my own version with what I already have…but have to think about how first. LOL!

This particular song came to my mind and was something that I listened to while coloring….

It was somewhat catchy and upbeat I thought. I always like to try and think of the positive ways that cards I make give a positive impact or inspiration somehow. Could be wishful thinking, but it’s my hope anyway.

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today to read my post! I hope that you’ve been inspired in some way! Have a beautiful weekend my friends!

Challenges: