Two Father's Day cards for you all today

This first Father's Day card is for my Mother in law's husband, Frank.  Or as he's known to all of us, Papa Frank.  We love him just like he's always been in our lives.  I can't think of any one of us who at any time, ever treated him like he was a new comer or an outsider, because that's just not how we have ever thought of him.  He's been Papa Frank all along and he's always been good to Judy, my MIL, and to all us kids and he especially adores all the grand children.  He's a wonderful man and I'm so glad Judy found him.  He's good for her and she's good for him.  I think they will never split.  I hope they never do. 

To make this card I just cut my card base to 81/2 x5.5 and that makes a folded card of 4.25 x 5.5. I did the base layer in black card stock and then used designer papers from the Teresa Collins "World Traveler" 6 x6 pad. I layered a map pattern on the top portion of the card then another layer of black with cream card stock layered on top of that.  I stamped the sentiment on that layer with Versa Mark embossing ink and then heat embossed it using "Red Dragon" opaque powder by Stampendous,  It's a really cool embossing powder in this awesome red that also contains some glitter too,  So when you heat set it you get the red and the glitter (that wont rub off) and it has all these other colors in it like orange and different hues of red that make it really look like you are looking at fire.  So cool. I had that glitter everywhere! It was totally worth it tho.  I used a bunch of the designer papers to make the fish tail flag shapes at different widths and lengths. I really was going for a layered effect here.  Once I had all the flags in place I glued the sentiment block on top to secure them in place.  Then I took the handle of a paint brush and curled the tails up to give the card some dimension

This second card was made for Brian's Dad, Dale.  We love him dearly too despite the fact that he now lives so far away.  We always look forward to seeing him and all of us getting together when he comes into town.  I know that Dale works allot. He's a Turban engineer with a very big Power Plant.  He works a lot of over time and he's really great because no matter how hard he is having to work, if Brian calls him, he may have to call back at a less hectic moment but he always does call back and he doesn't just make short calls to Brian, No, when they get on the phone they talk for hours. (it seams that way anyway)  I know they love to catch up and now that Brian is a Journeyman wielder/Pipe fitter. and he works a lot out at the power plants in our area so they now have that in common and they love to talk shop.  I think it's just great that  they have that in common and it gives them stuff to talk about. Brian values the  advice that Dale gives him and he loves the opportunity to talk things over with Dale and get his opinion on what he thinks would be good ideas for Brian to follow and Brian does look up to his father, no matter how old Brian gets, and his dad does impart some great wisdom on Brian.  And Brian looks up to him for that wisdom and guidance.  I'm so glad that Brian still has both his parents in his life, I think it's good for him.  I do love Dale too.  He's always been kind to me and shows interest in my scrap booking and card making. He always asks what I've been working on when ever he comes into town and we get together. It's nice to have people who show interest in what I do and give me complements on what they have seen off projects that I've completed.  I don't think he reads my blog or anything but he has seen allot of my work..  Frank and Judy have always both shown great interest in my work too and they keep all the cards I've ever made them., so they say anyway. and I've got no reason to doubt them. lol. I'm surrounded by lot of wonderful people who love my work and they love getting hand made projects by me, including cards and mini albums and they all promise that they keep every card I've ever given them. I love all of the support and inspiration that I get from all these wonderful people.

ON with the card.  I used the same designer paper for this card as I did for the first one and just added a few different twist.  I used a piece of Bazzill basics patterned paper from the antiques line for the ledger sheet in the back ground.  Like the first card I used black for the base layer.  Them I took several sheets of the designer paper and cut it out with one of my Spellbinders Hexagons dies.  I edged everything in black soot distress ink and the sentiment shape was cut from red card stock using the Sweet hearts cricut cartridge and I stamped it using Versa Color on onxy black with a Close to My Heart stamp.  To finish off the card I added a few bling in several places,  I also added a couple strips of washi tape behind the hexagon die cuts and I cut the washi tape into fish tail banner shapes on the end,.  Well, that was a long post.  I'm going to go for now, If you hung around till the end , thank you for sticking with me.  Most of the cards I make these days are just for my friends and family  and just loved ones in general for their birthdays and anniversary's and I can't show you the cards I made for these special people without telling you a little about the recipient, the people I love so much.  Thanks for stopping by today I hope you will come back tomorrow and I hope to have a new post for you then. ttyl, hugs, amy k

Summer themed Junk Journal swap and a card share

Here's a video showing the Summer themed Junk Journal Swap that I was in this month hosted by kayluvs2scrap on You tube.  I hope you enjoy the video.  This was my first time making a "Junk Journal" and I didn't even know what the term really meant till I signed up for the swap. lol.  I really enjoyed making the journal and I guess they call it Junk Journal because anything goes as for what you can put in it.  Lots of fun. Now I have to make one for my BFF, Wendy after she saw this one.  I hope to get that done soon and I will, of course, share that with you once I get it completed. That's all for now, talk to you again tomorrow. Hugs, amyk

Wedding Card for Tony and Heather

 Tony has been a good friend of my husband and I for several years now.  This past Saturday he married the love of his life, Heather.  I have never seen Tony so happy as he is now that she's in his life.  Brian and I regretted that we couldn't make the trip up to Tenn. to see them married but I did things just didn't work out to allow us to go.  This is the card that I made them to celebrate their special day.  I used a pearlized designer paper from DCWV called the Luxury stack.  I took pictures with and without the flash to help you get a better idea of how the paper looked.  I know the picture without the flash didn't turn out too good but it's hard to take pictures in low light and have them turn out clear.  I thought you could better see the design in the paper tho so I included it in this post.  I also used some purple metallic paper that I used on the left side punched out with my Martha Stewart punch and then one the right side where I used the ek success boarder punch on the top and bottom sides.  I stamped the sentiment and then heat embossed it with white embossing powder.  I placed a white dolly in the back and a hand made flower that included a feather and some pearl spray.  I added the black and clear bling from Recollections.

I hope you can see the card clear enough in this picture. I apologize for the blurry ness.  I hope Tony and Heather like their card and I wish them all the happiness in the world on their new life together.  They really seem to be happy together.  

Ok, that's all for today, I'll be back tomorrow to show you my recent Junk Journal swap in a video.  Till then, I hope you all have a wonderful night. ttys, hugs, amyk

Masculine Birthday Card

I made this card for my awesome Father In-law, Frank.  He's my husband's step father but you would never know it.  He's just Pop to all of us and we love him dearly, the whole family.  He seems to really appreciate the craft that I do and always tells me how much he enjoys my cards, him and my Mother in-law, Judy.  I just love it because it gives me such a big head, you know?  To get all that praise. I'm just kidding, but they do make me feel good about the projects I've created for them.

On that note, I always try to put just a little more craftyness into their cards.  For this card I used a Tim Holtz technique, one from his book, where you take white card stock and heat emboss it with clear ink, then you color the card stock with whatever distress ink you like and use some water to really get the ink moving around the paper.  I used watercolor paper for this card, it helps with the warping from all the water.  Then you heat set and dry your inks and then lastly, you take an iron (one just for crafts) and a sheet of newsprint paper or I just used copy paper and it worked fine, and you place the paper over the image and use the hot iron to "remove" the embossing powder.  What happens is when you heat up the image that has been heat embossed the embossing powder will transfer to the copy paper and it leaves the white card stock behind, no more shine from embossing powder and the whole reason for using embossing powder is because it preserves the color of card stock underneath and resist the distress ink. once you are done adding all that distress ink and water and then drying it all you have to do is use a dry towel or baby wipe to wipe away any stray ink.  It's really cool and I really should use the technique more than I do.  I always like the results.  I didn't use any designer paper on this card just stamps and inks.  The background is faux letterpress.  You just take any embossing folder, (I used one from the Paper Studio) and ink up one side using dye based ink and a brayer, then CAREFULLY place your paper inside the folder trying not to move it any once you've closed the folder or the ink will smear. Then run it thru your cutting or embossing machine like usual and when it comes out the ink has transferred to the debossed areas of your paper.  It's totally cool too.  Then to finish off the card I stamped the sentiment and star from a Hero Arts stamp set in black and yellow for the star and cut it into a banner shape.  I let it hang off the right side of the card a little so I had to use an envelope that was slightly larger or you could just cut a little off one side of your card if you were going to do this. That's it for today.  I really hope Frank enjoys this card.  I certainly had fun creating it.  As my friend, Robin says, "You know you've done a good job when you don't want to let your project go".  Sometimes I find I just like a card so much I want to keep it myself. lol.  When I create a card using all these cool techniques I've learned I usually just sit back and think to myself, "I really made this!" It's like I can't believe I made it. lol.  I hope you all have a really great day and I'll see you back here again tomorrow with a wedding card. ttys, Hugs, amyk

Get Well Card for Maddy Justice

  One morning while reading my blogs I came across a post about a young lady whose story just touched my heart.  I regret to say that I do not recall the blog which contained that original post so I can not refer you back to it.  I just jotted down her name and information that day.  The blog post was about this young lady named Maddy Justice. She is battling Acute Myeloid Leukemia at St. Jude's Children's hospital.  At the time of that blog post Maddy was waiting to receive stem cell from her father.  That post was encouraging people to make and send Maddy cards and they include her address and a web site where you can check on Maddy's progress and leave personal messages for her.  I was moved by her story because she is such a brave young lady.  I believe she's 13 and she's been battling this horrible disease for a long time now.  This will be the second time that she's received stem cells from members of her family and she's so positive in her attitude.  She doesn't want anyone to worry about her.  She says things like, "it doesn't hurt that bad" and constantly assures her mother that she's feeling OK. No matter what the hospital has to do or procedures that she has to undergo she never complains and just remains a strong little solder.  I wanted to send her a card and a positive message to encourage her so I made her this card.  If you would like to send Maddy a card you may send it her at:

 St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Maddy Justice - Patient
262 Danny Thomas Place
Memphis, Tn 38105

If you would like to check on Maddy's progress daily you can log on to caringbridge.org/maddyjustice and see her daily journal and you can leave her a positive message and send her some encouraging words. I think she's a pretty amazing little girl.

Masculine Birthday Card

Good Morning All, Hope your day is off to a great start. Yesterday I got up feeling like I was coming down with something and as the day wore on I just felt worse and worse.  I was hopeful that a good night's sleep would leave me feeling better in the morning and I did wake up this morning feeling almost normal but now that I've been up for an hour an had breakfast and a little time to get woke up, I can tell that whatever it is it's still with me. I just feel like I have the flu all over my body and I haven't found any medicine to help it yet. Maybe today wont be as bad as yesterday was anyway.  I've got to drive out of town today and will be on the road and in traffic for the larger part of the morning.  I hate to drive knowing I'm feeling under the weather. I don't even think it's flu season, is it? Plus I've had my flu shot. I don't know what's going on but I hope it passes soon.

On with the card for today.  How about I show you something crafty and stop whining  OK. So Here's my card.

 

I made this fun card for a great Uncle of mine, goes by the name of Harvey.  In the early stages, this didn't look like a card at all.  I took a small piece of white watercolor paper and first added some distress inks with the ink blending tool, in shabby shutters and broken china. Then I got out my Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Amethyst and Mint Green and sprayed that in different areas of the water color paper. Now, mind you, at this point I was just having some creative play time and didn't have anything in particular in mind that I wanted my finished product to be.  So, I continued to play.  I used my heat tool to dry the Color Shine.  Then I looked at what I had created and decided that I didn't really like it yet.  I knew the distress inks would activate and move around if I sprayed it with water and I kinda thought I would be playing with water and that's why I used the water color paper.  I didn't know what the color shine would do, if anything, with water so I thought I would try it and find out.  Boy, was I surprised!  You can see how much movement I got out of the Amethyst color and this was me spraying it with water AFTER I had dried it.  It came right back to life and all that beautiful color moved all around the page. I just let it go where it wanted to go and moved and tilted my paper to keep them moving .  I didn't have to use a ton of water either.  It was totally meant to be. lol.  I used a towel to blot up some of the bigger droplets of water and then used the heat tool again and just let it blow the color all around as it dried.  It was like the color shine moved on top of the paper and distress ink.  When you wet an area of distress ink. It reacts with water but it also kinda melts into the paper at the same time. Not the color shine, it just moved around the top of everything.  That's how I got that wonderful swirlish pattern.  When it was dry, I absolutely loved the look it gave.  All that shimmer was still there and you have this wonderful water color effect that you normally don't get from a spray.   I still had a Masculine card that I needed to make so I thought I would pair these colors with black to ground it some.  I used the old car stamp from Prima and I tried for the first time some of my new embossing powder from Recollections called "Aged Black". I had no idea what "Aged" meant or how it would look but it sounded distressed so I embossed the car with it.  When I started to heat it up to melt it alot of the bigger chunks of black in the embossing powder kinda blew all around the page or away all together.  So I was thinking, "Okay, this must be like distress embossing powder from Ranger,. or something similar" But under the black I could also see a finer powder of gold and even finer powder of silver, but the black was really chunky.  I thought before I was done with it it would look awful. Recollections usually makes pretty good products even tho they are the "House Brand" at Micheal's so I didn't know what to expect.  When I was done melting all of it I was very pleasantly surprised.   Well, You can see the final result.  It looks SO COOL! I added a couple more stamps from a Close to My Heart stamp set called, "It's your Day",  for the sentiments in Versa Fine black. Then added a few sequins and bling to match on top. I mounted it on black card stock and then again on a sheet of this metallic green paper I found in my stash.  I thought one of our vintage bags would look great on this card so I cut one up and added strips to the top and bottom before I added the watercolor paper with its layers. The "Happy Birthday" stamp is another from Close to My Heart called, "Casual Expressions" and this stamp set also coordinates with the Circut Artiste cartridge.  So I used it to cut out the oval. Then I wanted to heat emboss the sentiment and I didn't have the right color in green that I wanted to use and I wanted to pull in some of the other colors from the focal piece to tie it all together and not just focus on that purple.  So I took my Pearl Ex in a green I thought would match and mixed a little bit in a small container (that I could put a lid on afterwards) and a little bit of Ultra fine clear embossing powder and mixed them all together and ta da, you have your own, custom made embossing powder! Isn't that great!  I love it.  One thing to note, if you try this technique out, is that when you sprinkle the new embossing mixture on your card stock, the mica powder in the Pearl ex will stick all over your paper.  Not to worry, just flick off as much as you can and all the heaver embossing powder will fall off and just leave the mica powder left behind.  Go ahead and heat emboss like usual and once it's cooled off take a fluffy brush and just dust the mica powder away. Oh, and make sure you use an embossing buddy or powder tool prior to stamping your embossing ink. That way you are sure not to have any stray embossing powder stuck to your project.  Well, I hope you liked today's card. I know it was a long post and I hope you stayed till the end.  I promise one day I will do some process pictures to show you how to do these techniques I keep telling you about lol. Well, I'm off to see the Doctor who lives so far away it may as well be the land of Oz, lol,. I hope you all have a wonderful day and I'll see you back here again tomorrow with another Masculine card.  Till then, Hugs,

Graduation card

 I made this card for my good friend, Cassidy.  She is my best friend, Wendy's daughter and she just graduated from High school with honors.  We are all so very proud of Cass. I know she worked hard for it and now she has plans to take the summer off from school and then go on to college full force in the fall. I missed her graduation because there was a mishap with my invitation and I didn't know anything about it till very last minute and I will always hate that but I didn't want her to feel like I wasn't thinking of her so I made her this card to acknowledge her accomplishments and to let her know how proud of her that we are.

I made this card using a 6x6 pad of designer paper from My Minds Eye called "Dolled up". I used several of the papers just layering them on for a shabby chic feel. This is the style of creating cards that I enjoy the most. I die cut the frame from a Spellbinders die set using the designer paper and then I embossed it with the die and stenciled the blue in with distress ink in broken china. For the rosette and ribbon I used a Close to My Heart bundle of the cricut Artiste cartridge and the Kudos stamp set. This bundle is really cool because the stamps have coordinating die cuts that are found on that Cricut cartridge. The stamp set even tells you what size to make your die cuts and then you can stamp the image on the cut outs and they fit perfectly. I used a Recollections 51/2x51/2" corrugated card base from Michael's. After adhering all the designer papers to the card base I went around the out side distressing with white paint from Ranger.

This is a peak into the inside of the card.  You know, I used to never decorate the inside of my cards.  I would just add the sentiment, usually matted on a coordinating color of card stock but then I decided the inside was just an extension of the front of the card and more real estate to decorate. Why not? I think the cards look much better this way and much more finished. I just added more of the designer paper.  I cut the edges of the background piece cleanly but tore and distressed the pink patterned paper on top for interest.  I believe that label shape is also from the Artiste cartridge.  I used some pink pigment ink by Martha Stewart for the edges and added my sentiment verse with my printer.  It's so easy to print on these die cut shapes. All you have to do is create your sentiment in Word and print it out on regular copy paper. Then take your die cut or what ever you want to print your final sentiment on and add removable adhesive to the back, now use a lamp to back light your copy paper and use it to line up where you want the sentiment to print on your die cut and stick it down.  Now, put the copy paper right back in the printer just the exact way it was when you printed on it the first time.  Now hit Print and watch the magic happen.  If you don't touch any of your computer settings and you make sure to put the paper back just the way it printed the first time, then your printer will duplicate the print now on your die cut.  Pretty awesome, huh?  I learned that trick along time ago when I first started scrapbooking and I still use it today. you can even use that technique to print on ribbon.  That's right, actual ribbon.  I would go for a lighter color of ribbon, of course.

Well, that's all I've got for today. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow with another card for you. Till then I hope you have a wonderful night. Hugs to you all and thanks for stopping by. Amyk