Spring Floral Card

How about a Clean and Simple Card?  I love the sketches at CAS(E) this Sketch. The sketch always pushes my clean and simple abilities. I always tend to overthink/spend a ton of time producing cards, but when I use the CAS(E) sketch I try to think more simply and work quickly to complete a card.

Here is what I came up with. 

I limited myself to two stamp sets, one for the florals and one for the sentiment. The sentiment is from an older Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday stamp set and the florals are from an older Hero Arts stamp set (Color Layering Let Love Grow) stamp set. 

I stamped the solid images in different light color Distress Inks around a penciled-in circle the size of the sentiment circle. I then misted the solid images with water and let them dry. I added detail stamped images, from the same stamp set, in darker shades on top of the dried solid images. 

The sentiment is stamped in Archival Jet Black ink and clear heat embossed. To finish the card I added sequins from my stash and stamped a matching envelope.

Love how this one turned out. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Color Throwdown #553

I loved this week's Color Throwdown combination! Very fun and summery!

Here is my card using this color scheme. 

I used an older background stamp from Hero Arts that coordinated with the Hello Luscious paper line from Basic Grey:

I really miss the Basic Grey paper lines & stamps. I wish I spent more time sewing to justify purchasing some of their beautiful fabric.

I stamped the Luscious Floral Background stamp (Hero Arts CG301) onto Strathmore Watercolor paper that I had cut down to 4 x 5 1/4 and embossed in Hero Arts white embossing powder.  I then ink blended the background using Distress Inks in Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade and Picked Raspberry. Using those same colors, I watercolored them into some of the open flowers to give the background more depth and interest. I finished the background with flicks of water that I dried with a heat gun. 

The sentiment is from the Bring on the Sun stamp set from Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday.

This stamp set is from 2012, but one I still reach for summer projects. Stamps are so versatile and

timeless. 

I stamped the sentiment with Distress Oxide Ink in Picked Rasberry onto shimmery vellum from my stash & then heat embossed it. Adhering vellum is always tricky because you don't want the adhesive to show through the vellum. To combat this, I used DMC cross stitch thread to sew the sentiment strip on. 

To finish the card, I used sequins from my stash and Crystal Stickles to fill in the flower centers.

Hope your week is great! Check the Color Throwdown website on Wednesday to see the next challenge and play along! It is a great way to stretch your creativity and use your supplies! 

Aspire and Dream

Yesterday I shared my love for Ronda Palazzari's monthly One Little Word's. Today I want to share two more layouts, one for January 2014 word #79 Aspire & one for March 2014 word #81 Dream.

For Aspire, I wanted to share how proud I am of my big boys and the amazing people they are becoming. I am the first to admonish them when they make mistakes, but I am also their biggest champion. My mother heard a speaker on American Family Radio speak about raising children and shared some of the wisdom with me. The biggest thing I took away from our conversation is that many parents spend their time trying to raise great children, when in fact parents should be trying to raise their children to be great adults.

That really resonated with me & it is exactly what Jess and I try to do on a daily basis. We want our boys to be able to leave our home and be responsible, Christian young men. I don't always feel like we are accomplishing it, but I am always willing to get up the next day and try it all over again.

Jeremiah 29:11 is a verse that we use often in our house to remind our boys that God has even bigger plans for them than we do & that his plans are more important than any we can make for them or that they can make for themselves. They just have to be willing to be patient and listen to the Lord.

This verse was my jumping off point for my Aspire layout, along with sharing with the boys what I hope they aspire to do in their lives now & in the future. 

For this layout I used the January 2014 Cocoa Daisy Kit- Blueprint along with stamps from Technique Tuesday and some labels from My Mind's Eye. 

My second layout was for the word Dream and I knew immediately that I wanted to scrap pictures of all three boys sleeping. The biggest obstacle for this layout was picking a single picture of each boy to use from the 4,580 sleeping boy images I have saved. That number might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much, because I love catching the innocence of them as they are sleeping. 

There are not enough words to describe how much I love this layout. I am thinking that this one may end up hanging in a shadow box in the house somewhere. Such a calming layout and beautiful pictures of my little boys. Such a brutally, sweet reminder at how quickly time passes. 

For this layout I used the January 2013 Cocoa Daisy Kit- Pemberley, some older Heidi Swapp ghost shape stars covered in Slate and Silver Alcohol Inks, a Technique Tuesday stamp, and some small wood veneer stars from Studio Calico.