September AJ Page-Thankful Imprint

Hello friends! Can you believe we’re already through September?! Today is a scheduled post from me as I’m away in an area with spotty to no connection right now, but wanted to be sure that I had my Art Journal Page posted for this month.

It’s also hard to believe that this is the 9th page done for this year! I’m so glad I’ve done the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” September prompt of “IMPRINT” (using gel plate, print machine, leaves or something to create an impression):

Really had a fun time with this as I hadn’t gotten a chance to play around with my gel plate very much and I received about 15 different prints in one sitting! It started out like I didn’t have a clue, but the more I kept experimenting, the more fun and unique prints came out. Do you have a gel plate and/or do you use it often? (If you’re new to Gel Printing, here’s a link to a You Tube video showing you basics on how to get started – The Basics of Gel Printing)

For my print here, I decided to try something from nature and found a couple of maple leaves in my yard that were laying on the ground starting to turn. I think there are about 3 layers of prints on this one…hard to remember when you just keep going! I cut it out to fit the size of my AJ page.

FOR THE BACKGROUND – I started with my usual 6″ x 9″ Canson 140# cold pressed watercolor paper with pre-punched holes at the top and covered it with DecoArt media fluid acrylic Primary Cyan applied with a baby wipe. Really love the blue background it gave here. Then this is when I applied the gel print piece to my background. I then used some orange, black and white colored acrylic paints to create some splatters over the background and gel print piece.

I die cut some maple looking leaves from the Taylored Expressions Garden Variety-Fall die set and ink blended them. I also splattered some orange paint over them as well. I had some gold glitter sheets that I cut down in a couple of thin strips to add to the top and bottom of my gel print piece. I then attached the die cut maple leaves.

I cut out the word “Thankful” from Impression Obsession three times in Pumpkin cardstock and layered them together for my page. I also grabbed this sentiment from the Tim Holtz small talk stickers and layered it over the same Pumpkin cardstock and attached it next to the “Thankful” word on the page.

I thought about adding something more, but I then thought it would distract from the printing which already has a “busy” look to it and so I called this one done.

I’m very THANKFUL that you’ve taken the time to stop by and your kind support! It’s always more fun to craft with like-minded friends! I’m also THANKFUL to my crafty friend Carol for sharing this monthly AJ fun with me as well! (I will stop by to see your page as soon as I can my friend!)

Have a great day and see you in October! 😊

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Apple Picking Fun

Autumn is always a favorite time of the year with the changing of the Season: cooler temps, pretty colors and being able to go out enjoy all of nature with its bounty and beauty. There’s also nothing better than freshly picked apples from the orchid too! It’s something that I love to do with my husband every year at our local orchid.

So, when Lawn Fawn came out with this adorable set along with a free craft-a-long class, I knew I wanted to participate!

This is the first card we created using the LF Apple-solutely Awesome stamp set and dies. For the class, we actually stamped, colored and cut out all of the images that we would be using for both of these cards. I think the fun thing about this set is arranging the images to figure out where you want to place them for your scene. Since it was a class and I didn’t have to think too much, I decided to just follow along with what I had and just enjoy the process.

I didn’t have the stencil set that they used for the class, so I had this Pink & Main Leafy Stencil that I thought would work out fine and I just blended different colors with some Oxide inks. The white panel was cut with the LF Small Stitched Rectangle dies, popped up over the stenciled leaf panel and the sentiment was stamped at the bottom before attaching the images.

I’ve already sent this card to someone that gifted us some homemade applesauce…YUM! (Already gone!)

And here’s the second card we created for the class using the same stamp set and stitched rectangle dies. I had fun with that “cider jug” and adding a bit of sparkle to the contents inside with my glitter brush pen.

For the sentiment, I die cut it out with some LF Woodgrain Cardstock and ink blended some brown Oxide ink at the bottom of the die cut. I used some foam strips to pop it up over the panel. The white panel was done the same as the above card. I used the same stencil as the above card as well but only kept the yellow tones for this one as it seemed too busy with all that was going on with the card.

So, although this was a class that I mainly followed along with except for a few minor changes, I had fun making these while getting into the Fall spirit! I hope you’ve enjoyed them as well! Thanks for stopping in!

Challenges:

Four Seasons – Anything Goes Fall
Crafty Friends – Use More Than One Die
Happy Little Stampers Stencils – Anything Goes + stencil
Stamping Sensations – All Things Autumn
We Love Stamping – Autumn Colors
Addicted to Stamps & More – Die Cuts & Stencils

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.

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:

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

Thanksgiving Cuteness

Hello! Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow for my U.S. friends! Just wanted to pop in here to share this fun little card I made to help me get into the Thanksgiving mood and I needed a bit of a giggle which is what I was doing as I colored these fun critters:

Aren’t these guys hilarious?! This is one of the stamp sets that was released during the Simon Says Stamp STAMPtember event this year and of course if you recognize the critters, then you know it was designed by Newton’s Nook. The stamp set is called “Talk Turkey” and was only available during this event. I don’t make very many Thanksgiving cards, but when I saw this stamp set come out, it just had me giggling and so I nabbed it up! I think I would certainly enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner with this crew!

For the card, I ink blended the background with the distress inks: Rusty Hinge, Wild Honey and Scattered Straw. I spritzed with water and dried the splotches with a towel. (I’ve done the same method with the sentiment strip too.) I then used some black and white paint to splatter over it and set aside to dry.

While waiting for the panel to dry, I colored up all of the images with my Copics. I’ve added some gold and white gel pen marks in certain places and then I fussy cut them all out leaving a white border around them.

I took a strip of green cardstock and die cut a grassy border and attached to the background panel. I cut both of these layers out with a stitched scallop die and then cut out the black embossed sentiment with a banner die. I then arranged all of the images where I wanted them and glued them down. I took the banner and popped it up with foam tape. I added the leaves and covered them with a glitter brush pen for a bit of sparkle. I attached all of these layers to a white A2 card base and cut off the sentiment strip along the edge.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and it made you smile! Thanks for dropping by!

Enjoy your Thanksgiving with love, laughter and lots of thankfulness in your heart. 🦃

CHALLENGES:

Aud Sentiments – Anything Goes + sentiment.
Creative Knockouts – Anything Goes
Colour Crazy Craft – Anything Goes with coloring
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
Shopping Our Stash – Triple Threat (3 of something- I used 3 different dies, 3 critters, 3 leaves)

Classes, Donation and Challenged

Hey friends! Hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend and will be enjoying the first ‘official’ day of Autumn tomorrow!🍂 Yay! I know that this is my most favorite time of the year and today it seems like it has finally cooled off a bit which is very welcoming to give the air condition a break! Decorating for Fall/Halloween is also a favorite thing I like to do along with being outside…so I’ll be doing that this week and weekend for sure!

Today I have some creations that I’ve been working on. The first one comes from a challenge that I wanted to enter along with breaking out a new stamp set, but excited about using an older embossing folder and some paper that has been in my stash for far too long:

He even looks like a wise old owl…and I thought he would be cute with a little bow around his neck too! This is not a ‘new’ stamp set from Inky Stamper, but it’s the first time I’ve broken out to use this Owl stamp set! Their challenge issued this month was “embossing” and so I pulled out a VERY old embossing folder (remember the Cuttlebug days?! LOL) I think it was one of my very first ones! Plus, I pulled out some Coordination’s textured and colored cardstock. It is weathered looking, but when you sand over it, the color comes out underneath…really cool stuff that I haven’t used very much! You can get the coordinating dies for this ‘Owl’ set which also cuts out the owl and the leaf in the set. I’ve colored them up with Copic markers and used the die to cut them out with.

For the embossing folder card front, I took a piece of the Coordination’s paper, die cut it out and then ran that piece through the selected embossing folder and then sanded over it with a sanding block. I also die cut a frame the same color as the card base and took a separate embossing folder from Stampin’ Up! to go over that with and sanded it a bit as well before popping it up on the card front.

Before placing all of the elements on the card front, I decided to add some white and black paint splatters over the background. I also copper heat embossed the sentiment underneath the owl, die cut the strip and popped it up with one of the leaves over top. (You can also see along the edges that I’ve heat embossed too!) I popped up the owl but left him grounded to the frame and then finished it with copper sequins filled with glitter drops. The copper twine bow was a last element decision. LOL🦉

Speaking of sanding, it reminded me of this class I took with Inky Stamper making these cards. (couple weeks ago)

Anyway, the sanding reminded me of this class because at the bottom of the card, the kit included sandpaper for the beach. Really love the look it gave to the design with the texture and tiny bit of sparkle in it!

And the same day I had the class above, I had this class from Craft Fancy during their OOAK event. These were made from their “Alcohol Pearls Butterfly card kit” (I think they have some left in store if interested). The kit came with one alcohol ink color in Celestial Pearls, which is beautiful, but I decided to also add some copper metallic from my stash for another bit of color. I also went on my own a bit with the white heat embossed sentiments at the bottom. I really had fun playing with the alcohol backgrounds and being able to cut them out in one pass for different looks.

I thought this set of four cards would be perfect to add to my donation box to The Butterfly Project in support of domestic violence. So, I was able to send off a batch of cards for that this past week too.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my mixed collection of projects here and I’m sure I’ll have more fun things coming soon! Thank you for stopping in!

Challenges I’d like to enter for OWL CARD only:

Inky Stamper Inkspirations FB Sept Challenge – Embossing (heat or dry)
Let’s Squash It! – embossing folder (Cuttlebug & SU! used on mine) with letters or #s and sand it
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Allsorts – ‘real’ animal/creature
My Time to Craft – embossing (heat/dry)
Splitcoaststampers – SC871 Wednesday Sketch

Choose to be Grateful for Crafty Chefs

Hello friends! I hope that you’re having a wonderful week so far! The weekend is here, but it sure has been a beautiful couple of days this week with sunny and warm days so hubby and I were able to go out to walk around a bit before the snow starts hitting us!

Something that is great to go out in nature to see are the critters with the birds and the silly squirrels…we have them EVERYWHERE! They’re busy gathering and burying their food for wintertime around here. My thoughts turned to the Simon Says Stamp “Big Thanks Autumn” November card kit (sold out, but not papers) as I love all things Fall/Autumn and this card kit with those beautiful papers spoke to me and I wanted to create with it to make my project for this month’s Crafty Chef’s Group recipe from our lovely friend Meg’s recipe:

There were some blue colored A2 card bases already cut and scored inside the kit, so I used one for my side folding card base here and then layered a dark brown cardstock piece from the kit as well as a piece of copper mirrored cardstock which was then layered over a piece of the decorative papers (I mentioned above) in the kit, which is also where the critter, mushrooms and leaves images came from on this card.

The leafy background paper was cut from a MFT Wonky Stitched Rectangle Die and then I took a strip of the copper mirrored cardstock across the bottom third of the layered pieces and also added some twine wrapped around the bottom of the layers before popping them up with craft foam over the card base. I die cut a branch from a die in my stash and then fussy cut the images out from the papers included in the kit which were glued or popped up with foam squares over the panel. I sponged some Tea Stain Distress Ink around the edges of these pieces before attaching.

Lastly, I’ve taken one of the sentiments from the sentiment strips sheet included in the kit and ran it through my laminator with a piece of copper Deco Foil. (I think that is a cool way to add a little extra something to those sentiments.) I made a banner out of it, sponged it with some of the ink I used for the images and popped it up over the leafy background piece with foam tape.

Here’s a closer look at the critters I’ve cut out and how I’ve arranged and popped some of them up to create my scene. There was also a very pretty SSS Autumn Sequins Mix included in the kit, and I took some of those and added it to the layout and then filled the centers with some gold Stickles glue.

For the Crafty Chef’s recipe that was given, here’s what I MUST use:

Mirror cardstock
3 layers or more
ribbon (I hope my twine counts!)
image of garden visitors (birds, hedgehogs, etc)

CAN do items:

Sparkle/Glitter (I used sequins and Stickles)
pearls/gems (I did not use) *passed onto next chef.
dry embossing (I did not use)

There is a new recipe given for each month and no pressure to follow along or even when you want to follow along and play…which is great and I’m happy to be able to use up some of the goodies from my stash (NEW AND OLD) and just have fun with it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my creation today as well and I will be seeing you all again soon! Thanks so much for stopping in today friend, as I’m very grateful for you!

Challenges:

2 Crafty Critter Crazies – Anything Goes + animal(s)
Crafty Animals – Anything Goes + animal(s)
Creatalicious – #199 Anything Goes optional Autumn/Thanksgiving
The Paper Girls – #212 Thankful/Grateful
The Divas That Cut Paper – Thanks or Thanksgiving
A Bit More Time to Craft – #128 Anything Goes
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – #146 Anything Goes
QKR Stampede – #408 Anything Goes

Beautiful Autumn Color Combo for {Cupcake Inspirations}

Happy Monday morning friends! Hope you all had a great weekend! The weather has actually been really beautiful this past week and it was wonderful to get outside and look at the pretty colors of the trees changing around us. I know that it won’t last long, and the temperature will begin to really drop soon…so always need to enjoy it while it’s still here!

Today begins a brand-new challenge over at {Cupcake Inspirations} and there is a beautiful color palette to inspire your creativity to play along with us! We’d love to see the colors: Red, Orange and Yellow on your creations this time and we look forward to seeing what you come up with! Here’s what I’ve come up with for this week’s inspiration:

I fell in love with these cool dies that were included in a past card kit and thought they would be perfect to use for pairing with some blended inks in a background!

I started with a watercolor panel and used Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Carved Pumpkin, Crackling Campfire and Fired Brick Oxide Inks to blend over it. I spritzed over it with water to form the droplet watermarks and once dried, I splattered the panel with both gold and black acrylic paint using a fan brush. Once this panel was finished drying, I put each leaf die cut down to cover my panel and die cut it, but left them in place. While leaving the leaves in place, I used the MFT Wonky Stitched Rectangle Die and cut out the panel with it.

I wanted the leaves to stand out a bit more in the background, so I die cut each of the leaves about 3 times each with black cardstock and layered them together with the ink blended ones on top.

I took the sentiment from the Autumn Bundles stamp set and heat embossed it over a strip of black cardstock with some Gilded EP. Once I cut down the strip, I ran it through the die cut machine to get the Wonky Stitched Rectangle die marks along the edges. I mounted this panel over a gold mirror cardstock and then over an A2 sized top folding black card base. Lastly, I added some gold sequins that were included in the Inspiration Box and filled them with some gold Stickles in the centers.

Here’s a closer view of the leaves and you can see the pretty embossed pattern in the leaves.

Really like how this turned out and I hope you did too! Be sure to take a look over on the {Cupcake Inspirations} Challenge Blog to see the rest of the inspiration from the design team and join us for this fun color combo!

Thanks for stopping in today and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

Love to Scrap – LTSCB139 Anything Goes November
Dream Valley – #236 Dies and/or Punches
Arty Divas – #31 Anything Goes
Crafty Creations – #415 Anything Goes
The Paper Funday – #23 Anything Goes optional: Thankful

Retirement Time and More Whimsy Stamp Workshop Retreat Projects

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

An Autumn Anniversary

Hello friends! It’s been so cold over my way and even snowed the other day which is a tad bit early for this time of the year. I’m still trying to hold onto to Fall a bit longer as I know that the Holiday/Winter Season will be approaching us very quickly now! It seems that Autumn never gets it’s due justice and goes by so fast!🍂

I’m popping in today to share a card I’ve made for hubby to help celebrate our special day of 21 years together🥰:

I adore this sweet image by Crissy Armstrong for Whimsy Stamps called “Your Love Lifts Me” as I thought it was a great representation of how I feel about hubby and how I wanted it to reflect on my card for him. He will have already received this card by the time this posts…so it’s OK if he sees this!😉

I’ve stamped the image over a panel of Copic Blending Card off to one side of it and then cut it out with a stitched rectangle die. I took a piece of orange colored cardstock and used the same die to cut it with, but I cut this piece in half, stamped the sentiment over it and sponged around the edges of it with some Vintage Photo Distress ink. I also took the Whimsy Stamps Everyday Mini Sentiments set and white heat embossed it over a piece of brown cardstock that was cut out with the Whimsy Stamps Quick Strips die set and attached underneath the sentiment and cut off at the edge.

The few leaves over the design was stamped from an older Simon Says Stamp set and colored with Copics. I then added some more Vintage Photo sponged around the image panel and attached the orange sentiment panel over top of the colored image panel and wrapped some twine around the center of it. I layered this panel over top of an A2 sized top folding brown card base. I’ve added some sequins filled with gold Stickles in the center along with a few more dots.

Here’s a closer look at the Copic coloring I’ve done over the image. I’ve kept it pretty simple and decided I didn’t want to add white dots to their cheeks like I usually do. I don’t know why there are times I do and times I don’t. This time it just seemed to call for none.

I used a light blue marker to color in the background and then with the same colors that I’ve used to color in the leaves, I took the markers and made my own leaves on the ground surrounding the couple. I even stamped some more of the leaves on the inside of the card as well as the envelope and colored them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my Autumn Anniversary card today as I sure had fun colored this sweet image.

I’m very lucky to have such a wonderful person to share my life with in the past 21 years and look forward to our times together in the future. Thank you for stopping in today friends! See you soon!

Challenges:

Colour Crazy Craft – Anything Goes + coloring
Allsorts – Celebration Time
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2043 Anything Goes
Watercooler Wednesday – WWC295 All About Occasions

5. Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes

6. The House That Stamps Built – O2820 Anything Goes

Sports Reminder for {Cupcake Inspirations} Challenge

Hello friends! Stopping by with a reminder today that there are still a few days left to join our “Sports” themed challenge over at the {Cupcake Inspirations} blog! Hope you will join in the fun with us!

It’s that time of the year over here in the U.S. for Fall football season and I have some male family members that enjoy watching it along with having birthdays around this time which brings me to making these type of cards for them! So this challenge has worked out really well for that! So here’s my second card for this challenge:

I’ve pulled out this older Stampin’ Up! stamp set that I refused to part with just for this reason because I knew that I would be using it down the line…which is the “Great Sport” stamp set. (I think it’s maybe circa 2013?)

I think the embossing folder is just as old if not older than the stamp sets that I’ve used as it has that pattern on it that would remind you of the football texture. (pigskin leather as the guys say) I’ve recently picked up some sport themed decorative papers and thought I would use a strip down the center of my design and then I’ve also used the same pattern to stamp the wings and football images over that were all fussy cut out with scissors.

For the navy banner in the background, I’ve used a die cut to cut it out with and then stamped some stars with white ink over it and then sponged around the edged of it as well. I took another strip of orange colored cardstock and stamped a fun birthday greeting over it and then added some stars around it that were punched out from navy cardstock. All of these layered were attached over an A2 sized top folding navy card base.

Really thought it would be fun to add an interactive detail to this card as well by adding a wobbler to the back of the football image. So when you put your finger along the side of the ball, it will wobble.🏈😂 (something fun for the birthday guy to play with!)

For the decorative papers I’ve used, I took a sand block to distress the edges a bit and smooth out the edges of my fussy cutting details.