Grateful & Encouraged

Hello friends! It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow for us in the United States and I’d like to send a heartfelt Thanksgiving greeting to you all! I would also like to say a huge thank you to everyone for your kindness and friendship. I’m very grateful for you and encouraged by your support!

I’ve been working on several things and haven’t spent the time to photograph and share everything yet, but I will be sharing soon. In the meantime, I’d like to share a few projects that I’ve made in lieu of the Thanksgiving holiday:

I don’t normally send Thanksgiving cards, but it’s a great way to say thank you to someone that hosted a dinner or brought something to share or just spend time with you! That is the ONLY turkey stamp I own! The stamp set is called “Sassy Thanksgiving” by CZ Designs at Simon Says Stamp. I thought the sentiments in it were too cute and funny. You certainly could make this any type of thank you as well.

This is also a fancy/fun fold card called a “Swing Easel Card”. I found a tutorial using a vertical style on You Tube here – SWING EASEL TUTORIAL (I also used the same detail of embossing an additional panel with leaves and went over the texture with some gold paste.)

I made another panel for the center area and ink blended some blue that faded out and then splattered some gold paint over it. I then layered it over a piece of gold that fits in the center panel of the easel. I gold heat embossed the large sentiment and cut it out with the die. It was popped up over the leaves. I also cut an additional strip with the gold for the “catcher” of the front panel of the easel card. I added the turkey and leaves along with the stamped sentiment on the inside bottom.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year and I enjoy using the colors and images in the cards I make, so here’s more that I’ve made:

I’ve made a couple of encouragement cards to send out to some people and I’ve used a favorite card kit from my stash by Taylored Expressions. The images come from the stamp set Wheatfield Dreams. I’ve used an oval die and oval mask to do some ink blending and just cut out the colored image to pop them over top. Both sentiments were copper heat embossed.

I kept the backgrounds simple with the one on the left stamped with a background stamp from TE and the other was cut out with a wonky stitch die and layered over a green card base.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my creations, and I am so grateful you’ve chosen to stop by!❤️

Challenges:

Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
Crafting Happiness – Thanksgiving/Harvest #148
Four Seasons – Fall Season
The Crafty Addicts – Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore – Anything Goes

You Are Not Alone Ukraine

Hello friends! Welcome to the weekend and hoping it’s a good one for you.

So as I’m sure you’ve been seeing lots of card makers pulling together in making some beautiful inspiration with the Ukraine flag colors and Sunflowers in support. I’m seeing where there is some sort of card auction going on over at Instagram too, but I’m not on there to see anything. It has moved and inspired me, so I would still like to help support in some way as a card maker to share some inspiration and hope for peace in the world too.

So my first thought was to turn to one of my favorite sunflower stamps which comes from the Taylored Expressions Wheatfield Dreams and I thought they would be appropriate for me to pull out some of my Karin Brush markers to watercolor. I’ve also used the coordinating die for the set to die cut the flowers.

For the background, I’ve used some watercolor paper and some Ranger Blue Ribbon Oxide ink for the background by smooshing the ink pad onto my glass mat, spritzing with water and smooshing it over again with layers of water, smooshing, drying, spritzing, etc. I also used the Taylored Expressions Heart to Heart stencil with the same ink and foam tool to go over top of it.

I prepped the background with an anti-static tool and white heat embossed the sentiment from the Taylored Expressions Beautiful Soul stamp set. I cut down the sides of the watercolor paper and added some strips of yellow cardstock to the edges and attached it over an A2 sized top folding white card base.

I then glued down the die cut sunflowers except for the one in front where I used some foam tape to pop it up.

I took a white gel pen and added a few light dots in the center of each flower for some highlights and then took a glitter brush pen for some shimmer to the petals, but it’s so hard to see in the photo. I decided to water down some white paint to add a few splatters.

Lastly, I’ve taken some heart shaped clear dew drops and attached a few to the background.

I’m pleased with how the card turned out and hope you’ve been inspired in some way too. Thanks for stopping in and sharing your wonderful inspiration and lovely thoughts my friends. Take care of yourself and one another.

Challenges:

1. Festive Friday – ###0104 Choose 3 from list: I chose Flowers/Plants, Encouragement & Stencils Festive-Friday-0104challenge-card

2. Freshly Made Sketches – FMS525 FMS Final 525-001

3. Happy Little Stampers Watercolor – March Anything Goes Watercolor

Amazing Autumn🍂

Hello friends! Happy October! I hope that you’re having a great week so far and looking forward to doing something crafty this weekend for World Card Making Day!!🌍😀 I have decided to post something a bit early as I know there will be tons and tons of special posts planned by many, so I thought it best to post today instead!

IN THE MEANTIME, I DO HAVE A FUN GIVEWAY LOCATED ON MY POST BELOW OR CLICK HERE TO SEE IT!! YOU HAVE UNTIL OCTOBER 10th TO ENTER…JUST LEAVE ME A COMMENT THAT YOU’RE INTERESTED!!

There are SO MANY things going on this time of the year and maybe that’s why I love Autumn so much. (WCD, Halloween, birthday, Cooler temps, warm clothes, Harvest, yummy foods, pretty colors, changing leaves, Halloween…oops already said that…but you know!) I am thankful for all of it! I have a couple of cards from a TE kit I recently got (yes, I know…another one to pile on!), but I fell in love with it so much & I am using it right away! 😁

There is some copper EP that comes in the kit, so I heat embossed both the sunflower and wheat images together so that I could color them both at the same time with some watercolor. I then cut them both out with the coordinating dies and set aside to work on my background.

The background was so fun! I’ve used a Bristol Smooth watercolor panel and pulled out some Mica Stains and other sprays from my stash with a spray bottle filled with water and just played. Some of it I splattered to make “dots”. I used the “Burlap” background stamp in the kit and randomly stamped the background as well as heat embossed an element and sentiment from the stamp set. I cut this panel with a die and wrapped some twine around it before attaching to a chocolate truffle card base. I used some foam strips to pop up the flower and added a twine bow to it. Finished it off with some Iridescent Rhinestones.

And this is the second card I’ve made using the wheat image that I previously colored with the sunflower image above. What’s nice about this card is that the background was done using one of the foilable panels from the kit. I found some copper foil and ran it through my laminator. I lined up the cut out wheat image with the background and glued it over top cutting off the bottom portion that stuck out. I also heat embossed a sentiment from the TE clear set in my stash and then punched it out with a circle punch. I used my blender brush to very lightly add some Sea Salt ink at the top of the foiled panel as well as around the sentiment circle.

Lastly, I attached both the image and sentiment panels onto a piece of copper foil cardstock and then mounted it onto a side folding A2 white card base. It was simple, but I like the shine it gives.

I had been discussing with someone recently how I really need to make more sympathy cards to have on hand…so here’s a start to getting a pile going hopefully.

Speaking of needing cards, all of the birthday cards from my last post have been spoken for! Everyone seems to really need birthday cards and like having them on hand. I can totally relate to that! I think I need to get some “sorry I forgot” ones thrown in there too! 😂

I still have some projects that I’ve been working on in the background from some classes I took over the Summer but still haven’t shared yet, so I thought I’d start a little bit at a time and I think these “Autumn themed” cards work with my post today: (If you’re seeing this post on my website, just click on the photos below in the gallery to see them up close.)

These projects were from a class taught by Daniel West for Hero Arts and we received a large woodgrain background stamp for the class. It was fun to make the backgrounds!

I have taken SO MANY classes, so I still have many more projects to share as I go here! Hope that you enjoy seeing what I’ve been up to! It’s just fun to play around and in the process…no matter how little a piece I use…I am using my stash somehow and I’m very happy about that! At least I’m still crafting anyway! LOL

Thanks for dropping in and have a great crafty weekend!

Challenges to enter for the first two cards only: