Swat's Up?

I belong to this great cardmaking group on Yahoo groups called Crazy Card Makers (check it out!). We have swaps each month that you can participate in. I made this card for the Don't Bug Me themed-swap. I had been sorting my rubber stamps and saw this fly stamp (it's rubber on foam and I think it may be a Stampendous design--don't have that info any more). Thinking of flies led me to flyswatters and picnics. The background paper is from one of my DCWV stack packs and seemed to holler "picnic" all over it. I stamped the fly images, heat-embossed them, then used colored pencil to highlight their wings & bodies. I made the little flyswatter using a length of floral wire I had handy. I made the mesh portion with drywall tape, then hand-stitched around the frame of the swatter to anchor the tape and make it look more authentic. The swatter is hot-blued to the card front. The flies are attached with foam tape. The little sentiment tag is hand-lettered; the "brads" are red marker circles covered with Clear Accent. Again, I ink-distressed the edges of things, one of my favorite techniques to soften and blend edges.

Til my next post, happy cardmaking! Take care and may the grace of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah be with you!

One Last June Cards Post

This pocket card is one of my very favorites. I love the colors and the design. The background paper comes from a DCWV stack pack, their Flower Shower Spring Stack to be exact. The floral paper is giftwrap paper. I added a border punched strip of white cardstock to the top of the pocket, trimmed with ribbon and a ribbon bow.

This pic shows the little card that goes inside the pocket of the main card. The stamped image is part of a set from Stampin' Up, I believe (I got it second-hand as a gift). I colored it with my Bic markers, then inked the edges.

This is the inside of the main card, as you lift the front flap. You get two sentiments for the price of one with this card.

This card is another of my favorites. I've had a lot of those lately, haven't I? This card started with the image of the bird's nest, which I copied from a book of bird nest illustrations available on the Smithsonian Libraries Digital Libraries website. I apologize for not making note of the artist's name. I LOVE the vintage seed & nursery catalog covers you can find there as well. I haven't had time to explore all the digital stuff archived there, but it looks like a treasure trove. The background paper seemed to fit the image so well, that all I needed to add was the bundle of twigs, from one of our trees, wrapped with a hemp string tied in a bow.

I write to a serviceman in our Armed Forces, the Army to be precise, serving overseas. I got his name and address from this organization: Adopt A US Soldier.org. This year I thought it would be appropriate to make a special card to send to him for our nation's Independence Day. I've never made a card for that holiday before so this was a bit of a challenge. I found this cute digi stamp image offered on the Stars & Stripes Operation Write Home blog, shared by The Stamping Boutique. The image is colored with Bic markers and given some heat embossed accents. I had to ask my sweetheart what colors to use for the little man's uniform as I didn't know what branch of the military this uniform most closely resembled; my sweetheart, who was himself in the Marines and who comes from a military family (Army & Marines), said that it looked the most like the Marines dress blues, so that is how I tried to color it. I used another wooden stamp that I have to do the fireworks on the sentiment tag; I colored the stamp with Crayola markers to get this effect. The round red seal is another stamped image, this time with one of those $1 wooden stamps from JoAnn's or Michaels. The gold button came from my button stash in the sewing room--it looks a lot like the seal of our country, which was too perfect not to use, even though I still think I should have hot-glued the thing down flat instead of just sewing it on where the ribbon is attached. The red shaped mat under the image is cut by hand, using my own template. A couple of star-shaped brads added a nice touch. The diagonal striped paper in the background is from a DCWV stack pack.

My last card for June is a birthday card for my sweetheart's brother Terry. I used clipart from DAISIE Company, which I recently purchased. The papers are from the same graphics pack. I added a mat of brown textured cardstock behind the central image, distressing the edges. I also added a strip of cork on which I mounted the sentiment, edges inked, and 2 bronze dragonflies. The card edges and the smaller printed paper are inked for effect as well.

Well, that does it for my June cardmaking. July is just getting started and I have a card on the work table now. I signed up for 3 swaps in the Crazy Card Maker group for the first half of the month and have a LONG list of other cards for family that I need to make. It feels good to be creative and make cards, though. Those months when I was busy with schoolwork it was very hard to find time to make cards. Cardmaking, along with other creative pursuits, is stress-relieving for me so I'm going to have to find ways to keep it in my schedule, no matter how much other stuff I have to do. Hopefully, it works the same for you.

Til my next post, happy cardmaking! Take care and may the grace of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah be with you!

A Hello Card

This cheery card for an online friend starts with blue cardstock. Then I added a layer of bright dotted paper from one of those Stacks by DCWV. The purple cardstock rectangle was punched with that lattice punch and a piece of flowered & dotted paper, another DCWV piece from that Stack, was inserted into the punched corners. I added yellow flower brads on 3 of the corners. There's a pink dotted strip attached diagonally, a scrap from my bag of paper scraps. Lastly there's another smaller rectangle of the blue cardstock with a white piece on top of that, stamped with the Hello sentiment (one of those dollar stamps from Michaels) and a flower from another stamp set, popped with foam tape. I colored the flower with Sharpie markers and I added two sparkly hair pins as an underliner. In fact, it was a challenge to myself to use the hair pins (aka bobby pins) that pulled this card together. I picked a bunch of hair pins up at a liquidator store by us, thinking they'd make a neat embellishment on cards, then stashed them away. It was time to challenge myself to use them on a card. I like the way they look, too, so expect to use them again; after all, I have quite a few of them, in two different sizes and in different colors. And there you have it....