Merci buckets

Great sentiment from Hero Arts! But this floral stamp that came with it, I thought, ugh too much going on there for me. Til I found this sheet in an Echo Park 6x6 paper pack. The flowers seems to be calling to each other so I colored it in to enhance the coordination.
I added a ribbon from the paper bag lady (etsy) to the bottom to pull in that great blue color. But that covered up the ribbon on the stamp. So I stamped it again, colored the same blue and fussy cut it out. set up on pop dots I think both ribbons work this way.

Gearing up for Father's Day

Operation Write Home mails blank cards to soldiers for them to send home about a month before the actual holiday.  So while you haven’t decided on a Mother’s Day gift yet – us card makers have put away the Mother’s Day stamps for next year and dug out the Father’s Day.  I will be making a box of mostly masculine cards to send in April and this one will fit the bill for any time or Father’s Day.  The sentiment is from one of the Hero Arts sets that is made with OWH in mind.  A portion of the sale of these sets goes directly to OWH to help with shipping costs.  The car stamp is from this month’s Aunt Annie’s stamp kit.

I stamped the car on white paper with Stampin Up’s chocolate chip ink(it was white when I started I promise) and embossed with SU’s clear powder  I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t see the need for a million colors of embossing powder.  I use a good ink and clear powder to heat emboss, that way it always matches my project.  I do keep some silver and white on hand as I find those inks don’t hold the powder for the heat process.

Next I used some Tim Holt’s tea dye to in the whole image and give it a vintage feel.  I find vintage and male to be a challenge and I like how this came out.  Next I layered it on brown and blue.  The patterned paper came in the Aunt Annie’s kit and was layered on the same blue.  I added some brads to the top to help anchor it.

The sentiment got a few pop dots under it to add some dimension. This part was made while grandson napped last week.  I haven’t made many cards this month as I was able to spend some time with family.  But I took some sentiments, card stock and ink to make a nice big stack of layered sentiments so I had them ready for card making when I came home.  It was nice to just pull out my little bag of words and pick the right one for this card.

Since this was a dark card base and our heros don’t have white pens, I needed to line it with white cardstock.  We try to give them lots of room to write home, but I do find a little image or touch inside makes the card feel more finished.  This one got a little car in the far corner.

In total this added four cards to the box.  The deadline for Father’s Day is April 30^th so I should be able to make a nice full box of masculine cards to tell those special guys at home they are missed.

Blue Cards for March

Blue was the color tonight.  No particular reason – except I am out of white A2 envelopes.  I ordered another 1000 yesterday, but they aren’t here yet…slackers!  One of the clocks you will recognize from the OWH set Hero Arts has out now.  The long grandfather style one is a favorite stamp of mine, but I don’t remember where I found it.  The background papers are Webster’s pages.  You know you are a lucky girl when your scrap bin has Webster’s Pages!!  I made two of each of these for the OWH box.