Watercolored Poppies for Sherry

Happy Thursday!  I looked out my window this morning to see that God has blessed us with rain.  We've been in a drought for quite awhile now, so rain is most welcome where I live!  (Since I use natural light for photographing my cards and today was quite a dreary day, I hope you'll forgive the poor photo quality on this post.)

I'm running behind on my Teapot Tuesday challenge at Splitcoast Stampers this week, but I finally finished my card last night.  This week's recipient is a lovely lady whose husband died last year and she needs some cheering up.  We were asked to make "thinking of you" cards with flowers, and perhaps a butterfly or two.  After I went to bed last night I realized I forgot the butterflies!  So I will add a couple to the inside liner of my card before mailing it to her.  I am also submitting this card for the current Addicted to Stamps and More Challenge, where the theme this week is "nature".  In the midst of winter, it was nice to take a break and make a flower card!

Here's my card: 

While I usually make A2 sized cards (4.25" x 5.5"), this time I wanted to make something a little different.  This card is 3" x 5 3/8", a rather odd size, but I liked the way it worked for my design.  Sometimes you just have to mix things up a bit!

I started by stamping my image and sentiment in StazOn Timber Brown on watercolor paper, then I watercolored my image.  I attached the stamped panel to a piece of brown card stock and trimmed to fit.  I made a card base from some lightly textured dark green card stock and cut a smaller piece of the same card stock to put in the middle section of my stamped panel.  I embossed the smaller green piece using the Square Lattice embossing folder, then adhered it to my watercolored panel.  I wrapped jute around the center section and secured it with a decorative brad.  (The brad is a bit bulky and heavy so I also used a mini glue dot to hold it in place.)  I attached the panel to my card base and added a liner to the inside for writing.       

It's been a busy week at my house, and I'm so glad we've almost made it to Friday!  I hope you have a wonderful day.  Thanks for stopping by!

Products Used:

Ink: Timber Brown (StazOn)

Stamps: Poppies (Penny Black); Sincere Salutations (Stampin' Up!)

Paper: Watercolor paper (Strathmore); dark green card stock, dark brown card stock (unknown)

Tools and Accessories: Watercolor crayons (Staedtler); watercolor pencils (Prismacolor);
Square Lattice embossing folder (Stampin' Up!); brad (Recollections); jute (unknown)

Black Lace/White Tag Card

Today's card is for this week's Sketch Challenge and the Ways to Use It Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers.  The Sketch Challenge was a tough one for me, because I knew at least one of the layers needed to be a patterned paper.  Patterned paper and I have a love/hate relationship: I love to buy it but I hate figuring out how to use it!  As a personal challenge, I am trying to use more patterned paper in my cards.  I followed the sketch pretty closely.  If you want to see the sketch and play along with us, you can go HERE to get all the details!

For the Ways to Use It Challenge, we were to use a tag on a card.  If you want to see more about that challenge, just click HERE.

This card is a bit outside of my usual style, but I loved using these colors and this patterned paper.  I think the lace on this paper is so vivid!  This week was my grandmother's birthday (she passed away last year) and this card is very much her style.  So in honor of my Grammy, I made a card that reminds me of her:

On this card I incorporated some mulberry paper (the torn black paper behind the tag).  I love the texture mulberry paper provides.  Here's a hint, though: When you're tearing black mulberry paper at 2:00 in the morning, there's a darned good chance some of the little scrap pieces are going to look like hairy spiders on your craft table when you see them out of the corner of your sleepy eyes!  Don't ask me how I know this...

I adhered a strip of Black Floral Lace patterned paper (Recollections) to a piece of red cardstock.  I used the Dainty Lace Border Die-Namics die (My Favorite Things) on my Big Shot to die cut the white border.  I attached the border to the back of the long red piece and adhered both pieces to the black card base.  I embossed a piece of red card stock using the Square Lattice embossing folder from Stampin' Up! and attached that piece to the card base.  I tore a piece of black mulberry paper and adhered it to the patterned paper.   I stamped the sentiment in Memento Black using a Gina K stamp on a white tag, then attached the tag to the card with a small silver brad.  I also used a small amount of Tombow Mono Multi adhesive to secure the tag. 

You could easily change the sentiment on this card to fit any situation.  I chose "smile" so I could use this as an encouragement card, but the sentiment is general enough to be used for almost any occasion.

Thanks for stopping by!