Birthday Time

It's my Dad's birthday this week, and of course I couldn't send him a store-bought card!! I decided I wanted to go with a time theme, so I pulled out the Time Flies and Gifts sets. I had a scrap of this faux mother-of-pearl paper that I'd made quite some time ago (click here for a tutorial), and with the beige ink on it, I thought it worked pretty well for a masculine card. I layered it up with blue (his favorite color), did some light shading around the clock, and added a couple brads for good measure. Of course I know I can't begin to compete with the pictures his grandkids drew, but I think he'll like it :)

A "Timely" Post

Taking a few minutes to post today... I have these two card made with the In Hand set - I just love the style of that hand image! As much as I adore flowers, I do need to make more "guy" cards, and I think these work well (cuz let's be honest, not everyone is into golf or hunting ;)

For this first card, I added a bit of color with Prismacolor pencils, and layered it with BasicGrey paper. And I even dug into my embellishment stash and added a few of those metal things (photo turns?).

Playing off the time idea, I paired the image up with Ps 90:12. The hand is stamped in brilliance pearlescent olive ink, so it has a rich shimmer to it (but not over-the-top sparkley), and I just paired it up with some scraps of 7gypsies paper.

Speaking of scraps, our next smARTworks' Tea Party will feature "scraplings." So what are those? Well, basically it's a little card made from scraps - most frequently it's 1 1/4" x 4 1/4" (the little strip that's left if you chop a standard 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" card down into a square). So why don't you dig through the paper piled up on your desk - come on, we all have those, right?! - and join in the fun this coming Wednesday (4/8). If you have images from smARTworks please use them, but any and all stamps are welcome!

Hoot!

The most recent smART Cookie challenge was to create something using the Hoot set. I know I've seen lots of owl sets lately, but most are more "cutesy," whereas this one is very realistic. I chose a very simple layout for the card, letting the detail of the image sort of speak for itself. I stamped it with black versafine onto brown cardstock, then embossed with Faith's Transcendence powder. I added just a bit of color to the branch and with prismacolor pencils, and then brushed over the moon with silver twinkling H2Os. It might be a stark card, but it can still use some shimmer! I layered it with some black (accented with a line of piercing), then made a simple tent card base.


Head over to Susan's blog to see what the other cookies created and for a chance to win a set of your own!

For My Hubby

I'm so incredibly blessed to have such a great husband - and oddly enough, I'd say the same thing about the kids and having a great dad :) I love the Dad stamp set from Rusty Pickle, and couldn't pick just one "label" so created the panel using all the applicable images. The card layout is based on this week's Mojo Sketch, but I did take some liberties with it. I dug deep into my embellishment stash, and came up with the ruler twill tape and the metal thingamabobs that roughly resemble screw heads. Hopefully he likes it, too!

Blessed Father's Day

Father's Day is looming large on the horizon, and thought I'd share this card I made for my Dad. The background panels are made using the faux leather technique; rather than embossing the panel, though, I covered it in glossy accents. It did take awhile to dry (which is tough when you're an impatient creator such as myself) but I do like the outcome. I ended up trimming it down to three panels, then mounted it on black. I added the sentiment (Clear Dollar Stamps) in black and brown - that's always safe for a masculine card, right? I know it's not exactly a traditional father's day card, but I just wanted to let Dad know that we appreciate the heritage he's given us. The inside reads, "And we're blessed to have YOU!"

Deer Creations

I made these cards a few months ago, but never got around to posting them. I really like the deer image in Horizon, and really enjoyed playing around with it. This tent card was made by first stamping the deer with sepia versafine ink onto watercolor paper. I then added some muted colors with watercolor crayons. The brown printed paper (BasicGrey LilyKate) reminded me of tooled leather and I thought it worked well for the card, but I didn't have a solid brown that matched. Ink to the rescue! I used a scrap of kraft cardstock (the same that I used on the base) and went over it with the versafine ink - mat for the deer now complete. "Dad" was a piece of pre-printed twill buried in my stash, and all it needed was a bit more grunging. Wouldn't this be a great card for birthday, retirement, Father's Day... Well, you get the idea :)

The nice thing about this image is that it's strong enough to stand alone over a background. On this card, I flicked alcohol inks onto my nonstick mat, then repeatedly pressed the textured ivory cardstock onto the mat until I had good overall coverage. I then stamped the deer image with rust ink. I stamped the sentiment (Middie Messages #2) onto a scrap, then punched it out. I tied it onto the ivory panel with some variegated fiber, and then mounted it to the rust base.

Well, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with something new. The sickness of last week definitely cut into my creative time, but I did squeeze in just a bit of stamping and my SALT project is nearly ready to share.