Special Card for Courageous Friend

I have a very special friend who has been fighting the dreaded "C" disease for the past several months.  She is a pillar in our community and loved and respected by all.  But cancer doesn't care how wonderful she is - and that is just one of the MANY things I hate about it. :(

I wanted to send her a little sunny encouragement and I hope this card helped.    I have been stretching to learn new things and/or use techniques that I have not used in a very long time - like distressing.  The Coredinations card stock is great for that because the white core comes through the color when lightly sanded - and I love that look with this card.

The digi image is another beautiful flower from Power Poppy - Climbing Clematis.I used the Spectrum Noir color blend pencils and gamsol to blend the colors together.  I had forgotten how incredible relaxing it is to color with pencils and I am determined to do more of it.  I just need to make more time.  I traced the image in SCAL and cut it out with the Silver Bullet and purposely left a bit of a shadow around it.  The "thinking of you" is a Hero Arts stamp, colored with a Zig Brush Marker to complement the background.

Love the closeup of the butterfly and all of the colors. The rhinestones

give the butterfly that little bit of sparkle and pop!

I highlighted the center of the flowers with Color Technik glitter gel pens.  I love the way they color - so smooth and sparkly. They are my "go to" gel pen because of the wide variety of color choices.  Well, I really love the Sakura gel pens, but they are limited in color - so I use both.

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Even Sweeter Seventeen!

It is so hard to believe that my oldest granddaughter turned 17 the end of October.  How could that be possible when I still remember the day she was born so clearly??  Where has the time gone?  She is now a senior in high school and making college plans - yikes!

So what do you get a 17 year old for her birthday. For many years, when the girls were little, I got them clothes for their birthdays and toys for Christmas.  But Kendra is too old to have her Grammy picking out her clothes so I had to find something else to do for her that she would like.  She loves mandalas, so I had fun finding some great coloring books for her to enjoy and got her a huge collection of glitter gel pens.  I had started doing a little coloring on cards myself, so I at least had an idea of what products were good.  She was thrilled with the Amazon birthday delivery!

And I used her love of mandalas as inspiration for her birthday card.  I found a cool site - Monday Mandala.  They have a lot of downloadable mandalas and saved quite a few of them.  I like the variety and the one I chose for her.  This one is called Sunny Day - just right for a "happy" birthday card!

I printed it out and did a print and cut to make it a little more interesting on the card.  I did all of the coloring with glitter gel pens (they are addicting so consider yourself warned...) and enjoyed every minute of it.  Every time I color a card like this, I understand the popularity of adult coloring books.  It is relaxing and stress relieving. 

Here is the mandala all ready to be cut. I printed it on Paper Temptress

Cryogen  - it has a beautiful sparkle and is the perfect media for coloring 

with pencils, markers or gel pens and more.

You can see the perfect precision of the print and cut.

Here is the cut out mandala all ready to be colored. 

I tend to cut out first just in case I make a mistake setting

up the print and cut. I don't want to go to all of the work of coloring 

and then make a user error setting up the print and cut.

Almost finished - I like leaving some white for contrast - I think it lets 

the other colors shine be the stars!

I added two shadow layers to compliment the colors in the mandala and used small pearls to accent the outer edges. Foam dots were added to the back of the mandala when mounting it to the card front.

I was really happy to send this to my granddaughter, and happier that she loved it as much as I did!

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Heritage Ball Thank You

This is the last time.  Yes I have said it before but I am getting old"ER"....... and burned out..... at least with some things!  I have chaired a lot of fundraising events over the years and I love it because I have learned many of the tricks from many talented people over the years and organizing and cheering people on is easy for me.  But.....I am tired.  It takes a lot of time and energy to do a really good job and I am ready to back away. So my last one (so help me, I mean it this time) is now...tonight (Saturday!).  It is a fundraiser for one of the CA Missions which is a remarkable national historic landmark.  It is rare to have historical landmarks on this side of the country, but for whatever reason, it is challenging to raise funds for this 200 year old Mission.  Much of the existing architecture is original  and is just so amazing - historical, spiritual, and magical all in one.  The grounds are beautiful and they are opened up to all of us for the ball that is held outside in the gardens.  The venue is really breathtaking.  The powers that be have decided that this will indeed be the LAST Heritage ball - after a great 32 year run.    (I can remember attending with my parents as a young woman... it was magical even then and is full of wonderful memories...) That is a long time to hold an event and there are now a lot of other organizations and causes fighting for donor dollars from the same group of people. So it is time to move on, go out on a high, and create something new going forward.  So we all put a lot of effort into this black tie event to pull out all of the stops this year, including fireworks!  My fingers are crossed that all goes off as planned - or even better ! :)

So this year the colors were gold and green and the theme was an elegant summer garden. With the heat we have already experienced, we figured it was a good way to go. :)  (and as I write this, we are having an unprecedented heat wave and breaking records.  It will be over 90 in the heat of the day today so flowers will NOT be going on the tables until the last minutes.)  The good thing is that because the Mission is in a valley, once the sun sets, there will be a wonderful breeze through the area and everyone should be comfortable - eventually!

Over the years, when I have chaired an event, I have tried to make the committee a thank you card and mail it out the day of the event so they receive it the Monday after.  I just want everyone to know their help and support has been so appreciated and is not contingent on how well things go that night -  they helped it all come together and worked hard and that is all anyone can do.  We cannot control what happens that evening - we can only set the stage for success.

The print and cut background 

Print and cut flower with shadow layer...

I often do a cut file from the invitation, but this was a bit more challenging as it was a flowing arrangement of cascading flowers. So I ended up doing a print and cut of the background and of one single rose.  Both were backed in a solid color (the green of the theme) and then assembled. The rose is popped up on foam dots for a touch of dimension and interest.  I wanted it to look elegant and I think I achieved that, as much as possible.  Hopefully they will be delivered on Monday and the recipients will feel appreciated. They truly are....

The label on the back with the themed floral - a simple memento

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A Brusho Birthday Card

I think this may be my new favorite card ever - I mean EVER!!!  For those of you who make cards, you know how much fun it is when you start to put something together and it takes shape on paper even better than you had it in your head.  That is how this process played out.

What did I do before Pinterest?? When I am stuck for inspiration and ALL of the blogs I follow are not quite "directing"  me (don't get me wrong - I have a list of projects that I want to try because of all of them - but wanted something different for the birthday of this friend - just not sure what!)

And then I saw some fun ideas using Brushos and that was all I needed.  I had created some background sheets while playing with them  and wasn't sure what to do with them and this seemed like just the right project. I am still learning and am a bit heavy handed with the sprinkling of the Brushos, but working on that!

I still want to use them to cut out some shapes, but this time I just cut out a simple cylinder shaped background and let the white image on top pop - and I think it does!  This is so simple with just the white and red, but I love how it all came together and am eager to try similar  ideas again.

Love the way the Silver Bullet cuts the thin lines in this image. And look at the fun splashes of color that you get from the Brushos.  This is the Rose Red color.

So not only did the idea succeed (and look at the detail in that butterfly cut), but the stamped greeting was exactly what I wanted.  I know that seems like a no-brainer, but I have rarely had a stamping success like this one. No matter what I do, I either slip with the stamp, or the ink goes down too light in one area or - well you get the picture.  But not this time.  I used my new MISTI tool that everyone is talking about and loving and you can add me to that list.  I was able to position the greeting perfectly and stamp it. The first image was a little splotchy, so I re-inked it and did it again.  Perfection.  You don't have to worry about the positioning being off because nothing moves or shifts and you get a stamp in the exact same spot each time.  I know I will be stamping more now - and loving it!  If you don't already have this tool and you like to stamp -it is an investment worth making. LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!

The central image is a png I found on the internet that  I just traced in SCAL.

The greeting is  Hero Arts stamp.

The image has tiny foam squares behind it to give it dimension on the card.

So........Happy Birthday to my dear friend, Robbie. I hope she likes this card as much as I enjoyed making it.  Cannot wait to try some other ideas that have emerged from doing this...

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Happy Mother's Day!

For those of you who are still blessed to have your Mothers, I hope you are able to spend some time with them today.  And for those of you who are Mom's, I wish you a day full of love and happiness and time with those you love.

 

File is from Birds Cards.  

The beginning - two of these were cut and colored vellum 

was sandwiched in between the flowers and leaves.

Closeup of the greeting.  The layer in the background

is colored with clear Wink of Stella brush marker 

which makes the words appear to be sparkling

Happy Mother's Day!

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