Hello Peeps!! Welcome back to Day 2 of sneak peeks at my newest stamp set, Signature Greetings, which will be available for purchase on Nov. 15 at Papertrey Ink! It's been SO fun to hear from some of you about what your initial thoughts on this new set are! Thank you for taking the time to comment and tell me what you think.....it really means a lot to me!
I'm ridiculously excited to share this first card with you! Is it fun or WHAT?! Oh my lordy bees, I love this card. Love the colors, the stamp sets, the polka dotty flower....all of it! Hee. I started with an aqua mist card base and adhered a strip of In Bloom patterned paper along the bottom in orange zest. Next, I cut out the brown die cut with my Cricut Expression and the Storybook cartridge. I stamped this FUN new sentiment from Signature Greetings in VersaMark ink and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. Such a fun way to really make a sentiment POP! And can't you think of a ton of people that you could use this sentiment for??? I have lots of people I could make cards for using this one!
Next up, I stamped some of these fabulous leaf images from Nichole's new stamp set, Turning a New Leaf (check out Nichole's blog today for more info about this set!), and then I cut them out. I adhered them to the card front with foam adhesive and then I punched out a flower with one of my Marvy flower punches. I stamped dots on the flower using orange zest ink and then I wadded the flower up, un-wadded the flower (smile), and then stitched a button to the center of the flower with some button twine.
Ahhh......it's just so happy and cheery, don't you think? Happy is good. :)
So, next I thought I'd share a couple of cards that I made for a couple of the men in my life. On Sunday after church, my family got together for lunch to celebrate a couple of November birthdays. We were missing a few of our crew that day but we still had a great time celebrating my Dad's and my brother's birthdays.
Photo L-R: Bart, Me, Dad, Mom, Brother-in-law Chris, Sister Grace (that sort of sounds like she's a nun.....but she's not a nun. Haha!), and that's my brother, Dave.
Anyway, my Dad and my brother are now the two easiest people in the world for us to shop for because they each have a favorite store that they love to get gift cards from!! LOL! My Dad loves Bass Pro Shops......he's mostly a fisherman who occasionally hunts so he can go into the Bass Pro Shop and can spend hooooooours looking at all the fish in the tanks, the stuffed animals on display everywhere, and thennnnnn he can spend a few more hours debating and debating about what to spend his gift cards on. I say gift cardS because he has a stack of them! We all give him Bass Pro cards for all holidays, because it's just what he loves! And honestly, I love giving him this gift because for my entire life, my Dad has hardly spent any money on himself. If we ever pooled our money and gave him cash, he'd pay a bill or buy something for 'the family' rather than for himself. And when I shop for him in the fishing department, I shop for fishing lures based on how bright and shiny and pretty the colors are!! LOL! So really, getting him these gift cards is the PERFECT gift for Dad because he can get what he wants and he HAS to spend it on HIM!
So for the birthday boys' cards, I decided that I wanted to incorporate the gift cards into the actual design of the cards. Here's what I came up with for my Dad. I used the new "Celebrate Your Day!" sentiment from Signature Greetings and paired it up with the Trajan Monogram Edition stamp set to spell out "DAD".
I wanted to sew a pocket on the front of the card that would hold the gift card so I constructed this 'top panel' that I later adhered to the front of my card. I started with a piece of dark chocolate card stock and laid a piece of soft stone card stock on top of it. I slid the gift card in between the two and drew a pencil line across the soft stone panel to show where the bottom edge of the gift card was, to serve as a guide when I stitched the pocket.
I stitched up 3 sides of the pocket and as you can see, the soft stone panel was much longer than necessary, but it doesn't matter because I covered that whole panel with other layers of card stock.
I added a piece of card stock stamped with leaves from the Turning a New Leaf set, as well as a strip of dark chocolate which I adhered a row of buttons to with glue dots. Lastly, I added one more soft stone layer to the bottom of the card, where I stamped my sentiment. My Dad thought it was pretty cool that his gift card was 'built in' to the front of his birthday card!
Now some of you may have heard (read) me refer to my brother as the Rock Star. :) He's in a band and is super talented so I wanted to give him a card that was a little more edgy and I thought the "Dude, You Rock!" sentiment from Signature Greetings was just PERFECT for him!! The other thing that's PERFECT for him is a gift card to Guitar Source where he can buy guitar cords and drum sticks and pedals and all sorts of other things that I know nothing about! Haha! Again, for David's card, I wanted to build the gift card into the card I created, but this time I decided to put the gift card inside the birthday card.
(For purposes of these photos, I used Dad's Bass Pro gift card because we hadn't bought David's Guitar Source gift card yet....but with the magic of television....er.....blogevision, I think you'll get the point!) *wink!*
I started with a standard 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card base made from smokey shadow card stock. I opened the card and will show you how to mount the gift card on the top portion of the card when it's opened up, leaving the bottom portion to write your birthday greeting just like you would on any card.
I placed the gift card just where I wanted it to be mounted inside the card and with a pencil, drew a small line diagonally across the bottom left corner of the gift card.
Next, I did the same thing on the opposite corner -- the top right corner.
Then, I used a cutting mat and craft knife, to cut a little slit in what is the inside of the front of the card base. By laying this ruled mat across my pencil line, all I had to do was drag the knife right next to the 'ruler' to ensure that my line would be straight.
I repeated those steps on the other side, creating two slits inside the front flap of the card.
You can see in the above photo, how the gift card can easily be slid into those slits so when the card is opened, this section is on top and the part that you'd write your greeting on is just below this.
And the above photo shows what the front of the card looks like. Still with me?? :)
Now, you may think that those slits and the corners of the gift card are ugly, but they don't matter one bit because when you mount your decorative panel to the front of the card with foam adhesive, you can't see those slits at all! How simple is that?!!
I created the striped panel by stamping lines from the Faux Ribbon stamp set and the 'flourishy' images you see stamped in white are more leaves from Turning a New Leaf! I thought they were kind of grungy and rockerish. (Yes, I made that word up!) Ha!
Now, be sure and pop over to Nichole's blog to get a peek at projects that she's made using my Signature Greetings set and her Turning a New Leaf set! Heather Nichols will also have peeks at both sets for you! Plus, Lauren Meader will have another fun project to share, and Alli Miles and Tiffany Pastor both have sets coming out this month too! Lots of creativity for you to check out!
That's all I've got for you today. Did you see a new sentiment from Signature Greetings that you could see yourself using?? I hope that you've enjoyed this super girly card and two 'boy cards' too and I hope that you're feeling inspired to incorporate gift cards into the design of your cards now! Just think of the Christmas possibilities!
Hope you have a great day, Friends.
I'll be back tomorrow with more Signature Greetings fun!
{So Sweet of You supplies}
Paper: dark chocolate, aqua mist, vintage cream, In Bloom, terracotta tile
Stamps: Signature Greetings, Turning a New Leaf, Polka Dot Basics II
Ink: versamark, orange zest
Other: vintage cream button twine, vintage button, Cricut Expression/Storybook cartridge, marvy flower punch
{Celebrate Your Day! Dad supplies}
Paper: dark chocolate, soft stone, terracotta tile
Stamps: Signature Greetings, Turning a New Leaf, Trajan Monogram Edition
Ink: dark chocolate, versamark
Other: wood buttons, corner rounder punch, sewing machine/thread
{Dude, You Rock! supplies}
Paper: smokey shadow, pure poppy, soft stone, bitty box basics
Stamps: Signature Greetings, Turning a New Leaf, Birthday Basics, Faux Ribbon
Ink: smokey shadow, true black, pure poppy, fresh snow
Other: corner rounder punch