Life Saver Mini Strips – Stamped Smiles

Hey there friends! I know that Father’s Day is well past us, but I wanted to share some cards I made with a masculine style that don’t necessarily have to be for Father’s Day, but for birthdays, signficant other, thank you, etc.

I have lots of males in my family that I need to have cards on hand for, so these will come in handy when I do need to grab one in the future for sure:

Vicki-MFTToolAround

This is one that I made which can be suited for basically my hubby at some point! LOL! The fun dies, and sentiment including the pattern paper all came from My Favorite Things. I popped up the background over my brown card base, cut out the different tool pieces in wood paper, black paper and silver metallic paper. (I later noticed that one of my metal peg pieces look “off” with the tool…and I’m sure my guy recpient will notice! LOL!)

I silver heat embossed the sentiment over the brown cardstock and cut out my own design with my scissors with it and then went over the edges with some silver ink. I finished this off with some wooden dots I’ve had in my stash for a while.

Vicki-GrillMaster

My next card was for my hubby and it was made for him for Father’s Day which is has already received. He thought the added flames on the grill were pretty cool. LOL!

I actually had another card that was “grill master”theme that I had made for my own dad, but of course forgot to take a photo of it before I gave it. I did use the “left over” letters (the negatives) from his card, however, to place over top of the grill on this card which was cut out using my Cricut machine.

I sponged some clouds in the background of my card panel here and added some grey “smoke” clouds around the grill. The flames were also the “negative” portion from my other card that was used to attach between the grill on this one.

I added details to the grill with a little bit of ink sponging along the edges as well as color portions of it with a glitter gel pen. I die cut a border for the grass and added shadows with Copic markers. I had stamped my original sentiment crooked, so I ended up white heat embossing it over the cardstock, cutting it out and placing it over my boo-boo! I added some hearts around it as well.

Vicki-TE-plaidshirt

For my last card, I was wanting to try out the plaid stencil set that I got from Taylored Expressions and made a “shirt card” with it. Really love that stencil BTW! Very easy to create some fun and unique plaid designs with it! I sponged mine over kraft cardstock.

I wasn’t sure what to do for the pocket because I don’t have any “pocket” type dies, so looking through my dies, I thought that this Labels Stacklets 10 would work for a pocket which was die cut from a plaid piece and then I folded the top portion over and just glued it along the edges so that I could actually use the pocket for something like sticking in some cash.

Lastly, I white heat embossed the sentiment from the Mini Strips-Life Saver and cut it out with the coordinating die to go over the pocket flap. I cut an additional strip from the plaid to go along the edge and added a “collar” at the top. Finished it off with drawing stitch lines and adding buttons.

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These are all so different, but I sure had fun playing with different items in my stash and now have some masculine style cards ready to go as well! I hope you’ve enjoyed them to or has given you some inspiration in some way!

Thanks for dropping in! I have a post coming up with some really fun news so stay tuned in!! I’ll be seeing you soon!

Challenges:

Sweet Stampin – Create Your Own Background (card #2 stenciled clouds card #3 stenciled plaid)
Crafty Cardmakers – Create Your Own Background (same as above)
Arty Divas – Anything Goes
Double D – Stitches (faux, real or dies) top 2 card dies, last card faux
A Perfect Time to Craft – Anything Goes
Craft Rocket – For the Men/Boys

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.

Vicki-BRMSuperherocards-group

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: