Star Studded Birthday

Time in my craft room still happens in fits and starts. The last few days have afforded me plenty of time there, which makes me so happy! I finished all of the cards I needed for occasions, so now I can work on building a stockpile.

Today I made a birthday card. I wanted to get away from floral because I use them all the time. I didn't stray too far - I stamped flower pots but used stars for the flowers.

I chose colors using ColourQ.   I love bright pink and orange,  especially at this time of year. I don't have Kraft ink or paper so I substituted with Crumb Cake.  I'm not a fan of the color and never would have chosen it, but I have to say I think it anchors the wild colors quite nicely.

I almost always use MOJO Monday for layouts.  Left on my own cards generally don't turn out looking too great.  I strayed ever so slightly with the background; I was afraid the card would get too busy.

Thanks for stopping by!

~La

One more graduation card, and I think that's it for this year. I went to Color Throwdown for inspiration because I knew they had blue and white this week and those are the colors I wanted to use. Here is their color board:

Santorini,  Greece.  I'm pretty sure I want to live there.  The crisp white buildings with beautiful blue roofs call to me.  A visit, at least, would be delightful. 

I went for clean and simple with this card.  (AKA crisp and white.)  Using CTMH's Charming Cascades, I masked an area of the card front and stamped the star cascade twice with Dew Drop ink in Platinum Planet.  For the sentiment I used the only thing I have that comes close for a graduation card which comes from CTMH's Springtime Wishes.  (I actually combined 2 sentiments from that set.) I simply stamped the sentiment with CTMH Pacifica pigment inks right across the stars.

To finish it off I found a perfectly matched skein of embroidery thread which I tied through a little coin-looking piece I found in my stash of embellishments.

The inside of this card is almost fancier than the front!   I always mount panels to write on, but I noticed that I had somehow smudged ink on the upper half of the inside and it looked tacky.  So I covered it up with a piece of SU's Pacific Point and now all is well.

Thanks for stopping by!

~La

Our kids youth pastor and his wife both graduated from Bible College this weekend and I decided they should each have their own card. I don't know if I ever made a graduation card before; if I have it was a long time ago. I don't have any graduation stamp sets so I set out to find inspiration. I found it at Poetic Artistry; you can see the card I copied here.

I pulled out some watercolor paper, wet it down and rubbed green, blue and yellow distress ink on it. Next I used a wet brush and forced the colors to combine a bit. I picked out some old glittery powder I have, intending to sprinkle a bit here and there. Instead, a rather large amount plopped onto the paper. I did my best to remove the excess but I ended up with fairly glittery paper. That's ok, glitter is rarely bad. That paper served as the main panel for both of my cards. On one card I embossed flowers in pink, orange and green while the on the other I embossed a leaf stem in green.

Next I got a little bleach out.  Using a stencil and a sponge, I bleached out a design on the "male" card.  For the female card I used a small brush and removed a bit of color inside the flowers.

On another piece of watercolor paper, after wetting it down, I rubbed in orange and yellow distress inks and again brushed to combine.  I didn't add any glittery powder to this piece,  but there was enough laying around my counter to glitter up this paper just a bit.  (Without trying!)

I stamped the sentiment for both cards using black ink and embossed them with clear embossing powder.

For the male card I tied some black embroidery thread near the bottom then distressed all of the edges pretty heavily.  I mounted it onto a while panel which also has distressed edges and green distress ink around the edge.  I chose a copper metallic paper for the card base - I wonder where I got copper paper?!

For the female card I embellished simply with a flower brad on which I stuck a rhinestone.   I mounted this one on Melon Mambo cardstock after heavily distressing all edges.  This time the card base was simply white.

I don't think the glittery effect shows in the photos.  Oh well!...  I was quite pleased with these cards.