Special Cause – Stamped Smiles

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 Coordinations Sandable 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 Coordinations 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) I believe there are still a few kits available in the store if interested. The directions are recorded and saved on their You Tube channel.

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

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.

________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

Vicki-TEcarddrive-inside

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.)

____________________________________________________________________________________________

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: