I do not have a green thumb. My mom does. When I was growing up there were always plants everywhere; many were in macrame hangers. The hanger in this set totally reminds me of all those macrame hangers!

Putting this pot together took some effort. First I die cut and stamped all the images; then, I played around with positioning/layering. Once I had it the way I wanted, I had to glue it together (this was the tricky part – not much overlapped enough to hold it together). I glued some of the greenery together and then, from the back, taped it to pot. To hold it all together, I strategically positioned dimensional adhesive.

I did a twine frame around the card – thought the twine was a good compliment to the “macrame”.

The happy word die cut is a perfect match for the same word in the sentiment! I die cut a couple and glued them together and then over the sentiment for a little more dimension.

Thanks for taking a peek!

This is my last July 4th card. I used an old set, but one that I know is perfect for my father-in-law.

I love the inspiration piece for this month’s Papertrey Ink Blog Hop:

The colors are what strike me first, and then the soft watery feel. Those are the things I used when making my card:

The background and shells are done on watercolor paper – all my supplies are listed below. The background was washed with a few different distress inks, splattered with a marker – I loved the speckled background in the inspiration photo. One of the first things I decided when making the card was what I was going to use for the background plant – it is actually a Mistletoe image!

The shells are also first washed with a pale color, and then wet stamped with the 2nd and 3rd images for each shell. I do wish I had an outline image for the shells, I think that would have set them off from the background much better.

I struggled with how to do a sentiment (I didn’t even have a sentiment picked out when I started). Eventually I decided the banners with the shells on top helped the shells to stand out.

Thanks for taking a peek!

In my search for inspiration for July 4th cards, I found a few gorgeous flower cards and that got me thinking out of the box. When I saw the flip flops in my index, I knew this would be a perfect set to use for my sister. When I saw this card by Kara, I had to CASE it.

I changed up the colors to make it patriotic. The thongs are glitter paper – her flip flops are always full of bling! And instead of hearts, I used stars to keep with the theme.

My brother’s birthday is in a couple weeks and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it (like I did last year).

I thought this beer set would be perfect for his card. I had fun adding little touches – the foam on the beer and water drops on the glass. The foam was done with a puffy paint. The water drops are done with a clear lacquer. I made the drops too big – and I wish I had set the image on its edge to have the drops run a bit instead of being perfectly round; live & learn.

The “celebrate” sentiment is a negative die cut. I didn’t go the easy route of putting a white die cut on top of the pattern paper…no, I had to die cut the word out of the pattern paper panel. To make it stand out, I backed the pattern paper with white card stock and then pieced the little elements in the letter loops back into the sentiment.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Today is Papertrey Ink’s May 2016 Blog Hop Challenge. The inspiration photo was awesome and as soon as I saw it, I knew what I wanted to do. Here is the inspiration:

And here is my card:

Even though I knew what I wanted to do, I still had trouble! On my first try, I picked 3 shells and repeated them (2 to a row, not 3), but I found that I didn’t space it very well and the repetition didn’t layout well. So I tried again, but messed up immediately by stamping in the wrong space.

This card is my third try and even this had problems. The pink shell was stamped in the wrong order so the third layer is hard to see. While I paid more attention to the spacing when stamping, I still left too big a margin on the left so I trimmed 1/8″ off (still is a bit off center, but not as badly).

I thought the sentiment die would just go right on, but because it is two lines, it made the spacing of the seashells feel off. So I die cut the sentiment twice and trimmed the words apart and laid them between the seashell lines.

Despite all the trouble – I love this card (and the stamps & die)!!

Thanks for taking a peek!

I need to send a birthday card out this week. It was fun to make a bright cheery card (it has been snowing here for 3 days – no accumulation, but cold and dreary).

I used a few challenges to help me decide what to do. The layout is from the CAS(e) This Sketch. I used pattern paper for the Less is More challenge. And finally, I added a few sprinkles to my cupcake to play along with the CASology challenge.

             

I decided to use the sketch to make my card look like a gift. To keep the twine in place I figured out how I wanted it to run, and cut tiny notches into the layer.

All the challenges are CAS style challenges, so I kept it very clean by just using white for my base and main layer.

Thanks for taking a peek!