Happy birthday!

This past weekend, one of my friends celebrated a milestone birthday. We've been friends since Grade 7, and have seen each other through many ups and downs. I wanted to make her a card for her birthday, and went to one of my fallback stamps- one that I seem to reach for on a regular basis.

It's just such a happy image, and one that has special sentiment for us, as we've shared more than our fair share of chocolate cake over the years. This housemouse stamp was coloured with copics and then layered on a piece of chocolate brown card stock. It needed a little lift, so I added some patterned card stock behind the image and punched a flower from the same papers. The yellow behind the stamped image is slightly metallic and adds a little bling to the card.

One card, two challenges

I had a few minutes to create a quick card- this one took less than five minutes (including having to restamp three times because I didn't like the way it looked). This is my entry into the Less is More weekly challenge, neutral colours, and the Splitcoast Stampers Saturday inspiration challenge, which is Superfine Bakery.
For this card, I used cream card stock and layered it onto a dark brown base. Not sure why the card looks pink in the photo. The image and sentiment are stamped in Momento ink rich cocoa. I distressed the edges of the cream card with some of the same ink and added three brown brads to the corner to finish it off.

I am pleased with how this one turned out, given that I had the idea pop into my head and it turned out exactly the way I wanted, in the amount of time I had to play!

Thank you

This has been a crazy month- my husband and I got a call on Jan 16 saying we had been matched to adopt a brother and sister- he is 10 months old, and she is nearly three. Our son was placed with us on February 3, and it's been a crazy ride ever since- going from no children to having an infant in the house has turned our world upside down- in the best possible way imaginable. It's incredible to watch him grow and develop each day, and the changes are amazing. He's moving along the furniture, crawling all over the house and is eager to start walking.
We met our daughter for the first time on Friday, and will be doing weekly visits with her to get her used to us and her brother before we start daily visits in April. We are hoping she's going to be home for her birthday close to the end of April.

I was thrilled to see the theme of Don't Scrap It. I'd had an idea for some thank you cards for a while, and this challenge fit it to a tee.

The card is 4.25x5.5 inches- with a piece of white cut 1/4 inch smaller and layered on top. The monkey was stamped on a scrap piece of bristol paper and coloured with copics. The blue is the same shade as the base layer and cut with a spellbinders die. It was adhered to the card with foam tape.

The thank you sentiment is stamped on the inside of the card.

I am hoping to have more time to stamp in the coming weeks, but with the addition of a toddler to our family, I think my fun stamping time will be reserved for after bed... or I could teach her early!

Quickie card

I've had this card made for a while, but haven't had time to post it.

Quite a while ago, my husband and I started the process to adopt. Our homestudy was approved in August 2011, and we were officially waiting.

On January 16, our worker called me at work to tell me that we had been matched with two little people- a boy, 9 months, and a girl, just under three.

On January 17, she came to our house for a disclosure meeting- which is intended to give us more information about the children and their histories. There was no doubt in our minds that these kids were meant to be part of our family.

January 17 is also my dad's birthday. My last post was the card that I made for his birthday. My parents came to our house on the 17th for dad's birthday dinner, and we told them what was going on.

My intention was to come home from work early and make a card. Fortunately, I already had an idea bouncing around in my head. Unfortunately, they were here when I got home, so I had to make the card in record time. I think I banged it out in about five or 10 minutes.

I put it in a pile of cards I made, and told my parents they could go through them. When they got to this one, I got them to open it. Inside, I had written "Hopefully soon, two little monkeys will be joining the zoo."

It took my mom a few minutes, she was looking at me saying "Monkeys? Why on earth do you want monkeys?" (I am a huge animal lover, and we have two dogs and four cats, so apparently it wouldn't be much of a stretch for me to want monkeys, I guess). The icing on the cake was when she commented that monkeys throw poo at each other.

While she was processing the message in the card, my husband was pulling up the photos of the kids that our social worker sent us. My parents were immediately in love, and were over the moon excited.

I am entering this card into the Ways to Use it challenge on Splitcoast Stampers (groundhog day)

The die cuts were cut out using a sizzix die, and the flower is (I think) Penny Black.

I'll have a couple of more cards to post in the coming days, but for now, I need to go spend some time with our little man- today is his first day in our home! 

Try it Tuesday

I have decided that I am going to try a new technique each Tuesday. There is a wealth of information and resources on Splitcoast Stampers, and it's about time I checked it out. So, each week, I am going to pick a technique to try out. It'll either be from SCC, a stamping magazine, or inspiration from a stamping friend. This technique came to me via my friend M.

This week, it's a quarter fold card. It's unique, and could be used to hold a simple wish for someone, a small gift or gift card.

 The finished size for this card is 4x4. To make it, I took two pieces of paper 8 inches by 4 inches each and scored them at 2 and 6 inches. I taped the back of one to the centre of the other to make a plus sign (see image below). The four flaps are closed like a box. Decorate the fronts of each piece. For this card, I wanted to decorate the front of it as well. To decorate, I cut the green pieces at 1.5 inches and the brown pieces were embossed in a Tim Holtz folder and highlighted it with vintage photo distress inks. The bird (Nature Walk, SU) was attached with foam tape.

The centre was decorated with Bo Bunny paper (top and bottom flaps) and cream cardstock. The flap pieces were cut at 1.5 inches by 3.75 inches. The trees are from the SU set Lovely as a Tree.

It would be easy to increase the size of this card, as long as the card is increased equally. A 5x5 card would need a 10x5 strip of paper -scoring would be at 2.5 inches from both ends. A 6x6 would have to be 6x12 - scoring would be at 3 inches from both ends of the paper.

Reflection...

Over the Christmas holiday, my friend M sent me a picture of a card she did, with the word puzzle in the subject line and the instructions not to google it to see how she did it. She sent me a card with the reflection of the Lovely Trees set from Stampin' Up. When we got back to work, she told me how she did it, and I had to try it myself.

This is my second entry for the Less is More one layer bird card challenge.

For this card, I used the bird stamp from the SU Nature Walk set. I stamped the bird on the cardstock, then stamped it again on a sheet of acetate. Then, I lined up the acetate image with the cardstock image and rubbed the acetate to transfer the bird onto the card stock.

I coloured the grass with shabby shutters and crushed olive distress ink. The water is broken china distress ink and the sky is stormy sky distress ink.

The birds were coloured with copics- E31 and E33 for the reflection and Y21 for the legs and beak. The top bird was coloured with E33 and E35 and Y26 for the legs and beak.

A tutorial for the reflection technique can be found here. 

I am really pleased with how this card turned out. I have to say, it's one of my favourites so far this year.

Bird is the word

This week's challenge at the Less is  More blog is a one layer card using birds.

Some days, CAS cards are no problem for me- others, it seems next to impossible. I checked out the LIM blog yesterday morning while I was waiting for the dogs to come in from their morning constitutional, and immediately had a couple of ideas, but I needed to get chores done first. I also wanted to go to Michaels yesterday to see if they had any new spring stamps out. I hit it lucky in the $1.50 bins. I picked up a new bird stamp, along with a couple of others that I can't wait to use.

I really like the look of a coloured focal point on cards, and I took a little inspiration from Chrissie's so happy for you card. For the coloured oval, I used Dried Marigold, Spiced Marmalade, Wild Honey and Scattered Straw distress ink. The bird and sentiment were stamped in Archival black ink. To give the image a little dimension, I outlined the oval with N0 copic marker.

I have another card to fit this theme, but I'll have to post it later.