A Birthday Card

It has actually been a pretty busy week craft-wise, but I don't have much to show for it at this time.  It's a holiday weekend- the 4th of July is tomorrow- so there are sales everywhere!  I have hit the sales at a few different stores, and have been very excited about the deals I've gotten!  First, Craft Warehouse sent out some email coupons, 40% off one item for Friday and Saturday, 50% off one item for Sunday and Monday.  I have managed to get over there every day so far to take advantage of the sales and coupons.  For one thing, all of their stamps are 40% off - no coupon needed!  I've gotten a few that I am excited about.  I also got a Scotch brand tape gun which I am really liking so far!  I have been using up a lot of those smaller craft adhesive cartridges and after talking to one of the sales ladies at CW, I was persuaded to get the Scotch one.  It is pretty nice- I am still getting the hang of it, but it will pay for itself pretty quicky, since the refills cost less than the other ones overall.

I have been working on a couple of different things- one is a Christmas card for the Christmas in July swap for the PBS Swappers group.  Sign-ups are still going on, so I don't know how many I need to make yet, but I wanted to figure out a design.  I had an idea in mind that was based on something I saw in the book I mentioned in my last posting....but you know how sometimes you get an idea in your head, but no matter what you do, you can't seem to make it come out the way you envisioned it?  Yeah, that's what happened there.  So, I had to move on to Plan B.  Fortunately, as I mentioned before, I had done some shopping.  My daughter Meredith and I went to Craft Warehouse on Saturday, and followed that up wiih a trip to the brand new JoAnn's, which moved from another location- and oh, what a beautiful store!!  Their paper crafting section is at least twice the size of their old store, and EVERYTHING was on sale!  I got lots of paper, a leaf stamp set, a snowflake Sizzlits die, and several other items that I probably would not have paid full price for, but at 40% off, who could resist?  One of the papers I got was a Christmas holly paper, and that is what I used to design my Christmas card.  I am pretty happy with the results, and will post a pic when I finalize the design.  I am happy with what I have done so far, but still have to finalize a couple of details before I can consider it "done".

In the meantime, I realized that my husband's neice Monica will be 13 in the next week- how did that happen already?!  I remember visiting just after she was born, a chicken lasagna in hand for her parents, and it seems like just last week!  Oh how time flies anymore!  Anyway, I wanted to make a card to send her.  I found a really cool paper at JoAnn's yesterday that was very similar in its look to the mottled look I did in my last card with stamp ink- only this would save me a lot of work (and ink) since the paper already has the design on it.  I wanted to try something similar to that last card, but with a different technique.  On this one, I stamped the flower design in white pigment ink, then embossed it with a sparkly embossing powder.  The result is kind of a translucent but sparkly, iridescent finish.

So, here is what I did here: the card is a white card base, to which I attached a purple card front, then a turquoise piece that I punched with a corner punch for interest.  Then I stamped the patterned paper with the flower stamp and White Frost pigment ink and embossed with a sparkly iridescent embossing powder.  I stamped the Happy Birthday message in purple, and embossed with the same embossing powder.  I then added the lavendar ribbon.

I also embellished the inside of the card:

This was fun- I used a border punch for the sides, and the same corner punch that was used on the front, on a piece of light purple pastel card stock, and put it over the white inside of the card.  Then I added a white piece of card stock that I had punched out the corners with the same corner punch, and stamped the sentiment with purple pigment stamp ink.

I really like this.  I had been thinking since I made the cards for the June PBS Swappers swap about an alternate method of doing the silhouette in white against a mottled background, and am glad to have found something that works.  It was also fun to experiment with the sparkly embossing powder.  One of these days, I will be brave and try a colored embossing powder, like my daughter is itching to do!

I have lots of new things to try in the near future- amongst my new acquisitions is a set of watercolor paints, so there is a technique with those I want to try soon.  I also have plenty of stamps to play with, so look forward to that.  If only I had more time to do crafting!  Well, it is a 3 day weekend, and I have much of tomorrow that I can use for experimenting.  I am having a lot of fun, that is for sure!  I'll be sure to post pictures next time!