Female Shabby Chic Easel Card

When I started making this card I had someone particular in mind and the more time went by and longer I worked on it I kept thinking, "You know, I don't ever get to keep any of my creations any more now that I'm not scrap booking so much."  So long story short, by the time the card was done,  I had completely convinced myself that there was nothing wrong with me wanting to keep a creation here and there and I was not behind in my obligations to the church so I wanted it and decided I would keep it!  So this became my birthday card to myself that I just so happened to make about 3 months later.  I think this is a tradition that I will be keeping tho.  I think every year I would like to make a birthday card to myself to keep and remember where I was in my hobby at that time in my life.

I do love the card, It's not because I made it, it's the stamps and the inks and the patterned paper that I used.  I would never brag on my own work like that and say "It's beautiful" "Look how beautiful I made this".  No, I think that's other's place to judge whether something I made is beautiful or  not but I am allowed to fall in love and think that the products used are beautiful. lol.  I used the Divine paper stack in 6x6 from Prima for the patterned paper and the banner is also from a sheet of that paper. I just covered the tops with glossy accents to make them shine. I used a lot of Close to my Heart stamps for this card and the coordinating die cuts from the cricut cartridges that Close to my Heart has come out with.  I used mostly inks from Hero Arts, Shadow inks, and Colorbox fluid chalk inks.  I have the most colors in these ink pads and I just love the colors that they have.  I am sure I would probably love Close to my Heart or Stampin up ink pads too if I ever tried them.  Who needs that extra stress tho. lol  I have a hard enough time finding room to store the ink pads that I currently own and I always feel the need to own every color in each line that I fall in love with.  I have a whole other blog post about what ink I love and why.  It's on a card post but just a few post back so it shouldn't be hard to find if you are interested in my opinion's on that subject.  Just look for the longest post in the past month. lol

I think I may have mentioned that this was a 6x6" easel card and when I made this one I had only made like one before it.  So hey, it's not perfect. lol.  I added a lot of hand made flowers to this card.  Most of the roses were made by me.  I have  yellow striped Prima flower there that I changed the center in and the beautiful pink tie-dye looking flower at the bottom is from The paper Studio at Hobby Lobby..  It has a new center as well, actually the flower was so sloppily made that I had to take the whole thing apart and re glue it so I just added the center then too.

Here's a shot of the card opened up:

You can see where I distressed all the edges with my Prima distress tool (I actually use my dremol tool most of the time for this) and then went back over the edges with distress ink from Ranger.  I used an ek success boarder punch and just punched along both edges of a strip of paper then layered it with a Martha Stewart strip punch and inked the edges of all that and then finished off the layer with a scalloped circle punch that had been stamped with more Close to my Heart stamps in pink Hero Arts ink and the sentiment was from Hot off the Press and stamped with the Hero arts blackboard ink. love that black. It and the black India black ink. For the stopper I used a fragment from Tim Holtz and used patterned paper from the line to back it.  It doesn't show here in the picture but I later went back and added another one to the other side to make the card stay open better and sit a little straighter. 

Here's one more picture then I promise to let you go:

This is a better shot of what the inside or bottom of the card looks like.  I did the whole card on a brown card base.  Like I said, I love the way this card turned out.  All the colors and products just seemed to work so well together for my taste anyway.  I guess that's why I wanted to keep it.  I finally turned out a card I was really proud of and I wanted to keep it to hold on to that memory and sometimes pictures alone just wont do it..  I make a lot of cards and all I have to show for it is pictures.  I wanted something real this one time.  Please don't judge me.  Till next time, Much love and hugs, Amy k.

Boy and a girl "Teen Themed" Thank you for visiting the church cards.

Today I've got something special in store for you! Are you ready, awe you've  already read the title of the blog post.  But, yeah, I've got some teen themed cards.  That's something that I rarely get to do unless they are graduation cards.  From time to time I will get a birthday card for a teen that I do.  I think now that I'm making the cards for the church I'll get to make more of these types of cards.  Or at least cards for this age group, I should say.  I loved it, making these cards.  They are so fun and freeing.  You get to just get out your supplies and play and I think we all need some "crafty play" time from time to time.  You know that time when you just do what you feel to the project and there are no rules and you aren't making it necessarily for one person or another.  It's just for you in alot of cases.  I think it keeps us moving forward creatively and that's important.  I was just saying yesterday while getting my nails done, I finally took time to do That for myself and it felt so good! but I was saying that I never even have time to do scrapbook layouts anymore and that is my first love.  With all the cards that I'm making for the church I am always on a time crunch it seams.  I wish I had more time to craft for me.  I don't get to join swaps right now but I feel that making the cards for the church is important.  I'm getting some wonderful feed back and people are thanking me for their cards and I think that's wonderful. If making the amount of cards that I do for the church becomes too much for me to create individual works then I can always switch to what I call cookie cutter cards where you have one sketch that you follow and just change up the papers and the sentiments and some of the embellishments. But for the most part the cards are just the same.  Some months are busier than others and last month was really busy but I managed and I was happy with the cards I made.  You will be seeing those cards coming up on the next few weeks and who knows maybe one month I will only have a few cards to make and will be able to get back to working on my layouts.  I know I don't do any blogging about my scrap booking but if its something you would like to see then shoot me an email or leave a comment below and I'll post some layouts for you to see.  Okay that's enough talk, lets see these cards!

Now, keep in mind that the purpose of these cards, both of them, is to give to visitors of the church to thank them for attending service and let them know we enjoyed them just being there.  So with that in mind, here is the female version of the card.    I used some distress ink to add color to a white sheet of card stock.  lately I'm using the Neenah 110lb  exact index smooth card stock.  I'm really loving this paper.  It's a good quality, heavy card and super smooth.  It's great for stamping and doing techniques with distress ink.  I haven't really used it with water so I can't comment on that aspect but for the money I think it's a great card stock especially for stampers.  I am using my Georgia Pacific white to make the card bases out of still but for the stamping Im always using the Neenah.  I used some image stamps from Autumn Leaves.  I am not sure what black ink I used but It would have either been versa fine or Hero Arts India dye ink.  That's another product that I'm really loving.  I've got a huge investment in Hero Arts ink pads as it is.  I have all the dye ink colors except for the soft colors.  I will be working on that next.  Ink pads are something that I have no shortage of.  I also have  a huge assortment of Color box fluid chalk ink pads.  Not the little q's either I've bought all the big ones.  I don't think I have all the colors but I've got a really good start on it anyway.  I use the Hero Arts for all my stamping unless I'm using the clear Acrylic stamps which we all know are a lesser quality stamp and alot of ink will just bead up on it and then when you stamp it out you get a blotchy image that's not clean and smooth.  I bought alot of the cheaper acrylic stamps when I was starting out in paper crafting mainly because they were cheap and I didn't know there was a difference in the quality of the stamp.  I thought that all clear stamps were created equal.  lol, How little did I know. lol.  These Autumn Leaves stamps are acrylic but versa fine and the Hero Arts black ink, well the India dye ink and one more they have called blackboard, they will stamp out pretty clean on these stamps.  I will add one more thing sense I'm talking about stamping, I've had those specific stamps a long time and I've conditioned them so that they take ink much better.  To do this all you have to do is take a white art eraser and rub the stamp image a few times, make sure you get all the areas and then clean all the eraser droppings off the stamp and give it a try.  I got that tip from my good friend, Robin who has been stamping over 20 years.  She also said that if that didn't work you can use a fine grit emery board and scratch the surface of the stamp up a bit and that will help it hold ink.  I found that the Colorbox Chalk ink stamps beautifully with these cheap stamps and that is why I spent the money on buying so many of them.  Also they come in beautiful colors and the browns are wonderful for doing some edging on you paper.  I bought the refills for the browns because I use

them so much.  

Here's a shot of the inside of the card.

You can see I've lined the inside with yellow card stock and then done some more of the image stamps from Autumn Leaves.  The sentiment stamp is one I bought from an online seller, its an old Stampin up stamp but I love the whole set I got from that seller.  I was looking for some faith based stamps and she had just what I was looking for.  That's another of the stamps I got from her on the front of the card.

Okay I'm going to try a wrap this up, it's turning to a really long post.

Here's the Male version of the card:

Once again, I turned to my trusty distress inks to color the background paper.  This time I used watercolor paper and water with the distress inks to help them blend and get that water colored effect.  I used a stamp set from Close to My Heart and heat embossed the controller straight on the watercolor piece with white embossing powder but the piece that says "next level" is heat embossed on a coordinating die cut from the Artiste cartrige for the cricut.  The sentiment is from a Hobby Lobby stamp set and I also used a strip of filmstrip washi tape.  I used my white paint pen to draw in the cord to the controller.  i thought it looked weird just floating there in the middle of the card and the cord helps ground the image to the edge of the panel. Lastly I added  home made enamel dots and my white gel pen to add dash lines around the edges of the card and I used my corner chomper to round the bottom edges.

Here's a shot of the inside:

To line the inside I used the red and green distress ink from the front of the card to color these panels then added white to finish it off.  That sentiment stamp is also from that seller and it's stampin up too I believe.  I just ran the piece thru the printer to add "Thank you visiting  us a Fisher's Chapel".  I did that to the inside of both cards then I leave the other side blank to give the preacher room to write.

Okay, that's finally all for today, sorry It got to be so long.  if you stuck it out to the end then God love you, Is all I've got to say. lol.  I will try and keep the post a little shorter from now own.  I have no idea who will be getting these cards, that falls on the preacher to decide but who ever it is, I hope they enjoy them.  They were fun to make but It also was good exercise for my creativity. I hope I get to make more cards for this age group.  I know I have a few birthday's coming up.  Till next time, have a wonderful and blessed day. I'll see you in the next post.  Much love and hugs, amy k

Birthday card for my Sis in law

Melissa or Mel to us who know and love her, is a wonderful Sister in law to me.  She's such a sweet, caring and most of all, she's good to my Brother and their children.  She's very active in the kids activities such as coaching her daughters pee wee soft ball team (or t-ball or what ever they call it for 4 year olds lol).  She's got a great sense of humor and that's probably her most redeeming quality to me anyway.  She's great to just sit and chat with and I've never, ever sense meeting her for the first time, ever had that weird awkward silence when talking to her.  I just love her.  I love both my sil's and I couldn't have picked better ones myself.

I'm not sure that Mel likes the shabby chic type cards that I make but she's never complained about any that I've sent to her.:)  I believe this was a 6x6 inch card base and I used Prima paper for the background,  The banners are Close to My Heart stamps and they cut out with a coordinating cricut cartridge. I also used some cheese cloth on this card and some of my very treasured vintage lace.  The flourishes are from My Favorite Things, I just cut them down to make them smaller.  The flower is a stamp and die set from Heartfelt Creations.  I just love this die set to make flowers.  I used a small bling button in the center and I used my distress ink to water color the flower. I just added a few flat back pearls to the trim to finish the card off.  I sure hope that Mel liked this card, I had a good time making it.

That's all I've got for this post, thank you for stopping by the blog today.  I will be back soon with more cards.  I've got some teen age "Thank You for Visiting the church" cards coming up.  They are fun cards so be sure to keep on the look out for them, you don't want to miss these teen themed cards.  It's not a category that I get to explore often and I had fun making them.  So till then I hope you all are having a great day and till next time, much love and hugs, Amy K.

Birthday card for young boy, from the church

This card was made for one of our youngest members at Fisher's Chapel.   Mister Nate Scott.  I'm not exactly sure of his age but I don't believe he's started any kind of schooling just yet.  He's a very active and lively young man.  What we, here in the south, would call a "live wire".  lol.  That describes him to a T.  He has several bigger brothers and sisters to play with and they all look out for him..  I wanted to make a cute little boy card for him and nothing to complicated for such a young man.  So I used my Cricut to die cut the background layer out of the striped paper and then the lion figure and the flag on a pole.  Of course the lion's wearing a happy birthday hat and waving the happy birthday flag.  On top of the flag I placed a large gold pear shaped jewel.  I scattered some of my homemade enamel dots in vibrant colors all over the card front and added red stickles around the flag piece and glossy accents down the flag pole to make it seem like it was shiny metal.

That's all for this card, any questions just leave them in the comments and I will answer asap.  Thank you for stopping by today.  I hope you all have a blessed and wonderful Sunday.  Get lots of good rest in to start the week again on Monday. I'll try and be back Monday with another card and until then, Much love and hugs, amy k.

Card made for Jesenia Pagan over on the Craft Hole on Fb.

I know I'm about a month behind on these blog post but I still wanted to share the card I made for my swap partner, Jesenia Pagan on The Craft Hole Facebook group for the Dollar/pound swap we did last month.  We were not required to make cards for this swap, it was for an altered item that you purchased at the dollar store (If you live in the US and the pound store if you live over seas).  I just don't feel right sending something in the mail without a card to go with it.  Call me crazy, it's just how I roll lol. This is the first ever easel card that I've made.  I really like the paper line and the stamp.  I loved those stamps when I saw them and I bought three different sets but I can't use them on my typical everyday card so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to use them finally.  Here's a pretty good shot of the front of the card.

This second picture shows the inside of the card too and you can read the sentiment.  I handmade most of the flowers for this card out of the designer paper.  The patterned paper was from My Minds Eye and I used a Sizzix doily die for the black part and heat embossed the sentiment in white.  I used a couple of Martha Stewart boarder punches, one on the front and one for the boarder on the inside. This is a 6x6 inch card made from heavy black cardstock.  I edged all the papers with black soot distress ink from Tim Holtz.  The label shape on the inside is a punch from the paper studio by Hobby Lobby. I believe to sign this card, with the inside being all black, I just used my white gelly roll pen. 

That's all for this post, thank you for stopping by the blog.  I hope you are all having a great Friday and the weekend is off to a wonderful start.  I hope you all have a blessed day and I'll maybe be back tomorrow with another card.  I've got to start catching these post up lol. Talk to you soon, till then, Much love and hugs, Amy K.

card share video, Male and female birthday cards

Feminine Birthday card from the church

I made this card for a female member of the church.  It was so simple to make and fast too.  It never ceases to amaze me at what a little stamping and ink will do for your projects.  I'm so glad that I took the time to learn how to do it correctly and I'm grateful to my stamping buddy, Robin who was always there to offer advice and answer any questions that  I had about stamps or inks or how to get the best results.  I also owe a big thank you to all the wonderful ladies of You Tube who make the videos that taught me so much about techniques and different inks.  I tell you, I don't think there's anything that you can't learn from a you tube video.   What ever you are looking for there's a video on it. 

The background stamp of the bird and clocks etc. is a Hero Arts cling stamp and I stamped all the images using Hero Arts inks. The rest of the stamps are by Prima.  I backed the designer paper on a piece of Bazzill Basics paper and also lined the insides with that card stock.  I just added some ribbon and bling trim and a flowers with leaves and then liquid pearls in a few places on the corners.  That finishes off the card for today.  Thank you for stopping by to take a look at my card.  Remember all comments are welcome, I just ask that you try to be nice.  Thank you for your consideration.:)   I've got to run get ready for church this morning so I will have to let you go.  Not to worry, I will be back Monday with more cards to share.  I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Sunday.  Till next time, much love and hugs, Amy K.

Masculine Birthday card for the church

This card was made for a male member of our church named Ronnie.  Ronnie is also distant kin to me so I've known him all my life.  I guess he's like my 2nd cousin or something lol.  I remember going to school with his daughter and she and I were always friends and liked that we got to go to the same family gatherings together. 

For his card I used a TPC studio stamp from Hobby Lobby for the background and the sentiment and the flourishes are stamps from Autumn Leaves.  I've had those flourish stamps a long time now and I think I've really gotten my money's worth out of them cause I've used them a ton of times on cards and especially scrapbook layouts.  I used some Lindy's Stamp Gang spray mist for the middle layer and Glimmer Mist for the yellow layer.  I just used some washi tape on the white layer to give it a little pop and then some sequins with bling in the centers and a bow and that's all for this little card.  Not too complicated at all.  I enjoy the simple cards when I get to make them and I try to keep the cards that I make for the church members pretty simple.  It gets really expensive to put a lot of product on so many cards that I've been making for them.  It's not that I'm trying to be cheap but come on now, Why use up all my crafting budget on products that I am giving to people who may just end up throwing them away?  I know you crafters know what I'm talking about..  Besides, my hubby would kill me if I bought product for all the cards that I've been making.  I love Prima but it gets expensive and  I want to save my flowers to use on my scrapbook layouts that I know I will be keeping for ever.  One thing to note, if any of you are thinking about making cards or anything crafty for your church or other charity organization, one thing that I've found out about my state of Ga anyway is that I can claim whatever products that I buy for my crafting on my taxes under charitable contributions.  All I have to do is turn my receipts into our funds officer at the church and she will keep up with it for me all year.  Then all I have to do is claim it on my taxes.  It's a great excuse to buy new stuff.  I just tell the hubby "I can claim it on  my taxes" lol.  No, he doesn't let me get away with that. lol.

That's all for today.  I hope you enjoyed today's card and I thank you for stopping by.  I hope you all are having a great Monday.  I'll be back maybe in the morning with another card for you.  Till then, much love and hugs, Amy K.

Missing You from Church Female version

Sorry I didn't get back to make this post yesterday as promised.  I've been so sick here lately.  Well, for the last week anyway.  Me and the hubby both have been sick.  I also had to get down to Mom's yesterday to help on her house remodel.  I say I help but honestly I mainly watch. lol.  So here's the card all tho a little late.  This is another square 5.5" card and I used My Mind's Eye designer paper pad called "Sky's the Limit", and If you haven't checked out this paper yet you so should.  I mean it's beautiful.  I think It may be my new favorite paper pad.  Of course, for card making I buy the 6x6" pads for the smaller prints. I also used a Martha Stewart doily die cut and it's done in like a metallic white paper, pretty cool.  I also die cut the sentiment label from a Spellbinders die and cut it from the designer paper then inked it with Worn Lipstick distress ink from Tim Holtz.  I used a couple of washi tapes: the blue and pink with the cross's cause it's from the church, and the yellow flourish that I cut into fish tail banner shapes.  I stamped out the "Know that you are Loved" stamp and added it to the pink card stock, the same as what I mounted the card base onto, then added the banner of washi tape to the bottom.  To make the tape more workable I first adheared it to a strip of white card then cut out around it.  That also made the flowers on the tape show up white because it's naturaly translucent.  I did the same thing with adding it to white card and cutting it out to the piece in the lower right hand corner and added it with my tiny attacher from Tim Holtz. The flowers are a mix from Prima and the Paper Studio and the leaf is Recollections. And that's it for this card.  Sorry, once again, that it's a whole day late.  I wish I could have gotten it up yesterday.  I hope you guys are all having an awesome weekend, I know we are having some really mild weather here and I'm really enjoying it. I hope you are having nice weather where ever you may be.  I hope you all have a blessed Sunday and Until next time, Much Love and Hugs, Amy K.

Masculine "Missing you from Church" card

Our Preacher, Art, and his lovely wife, Sylvia, had the awesome idea for me to make up some "Missing you at church" cards to send out to people whose attendance at church may have just kinda fallen off lately.  It's nothing pushy or anything to make the person receiving the card feel bad for not coming to church.  It's just meant to be a nice gesture to make them feel like they are truly missed and convey how much we would love to have them back at church.  It's really meant to make them feel how truly special we feel they are and to let them know that they are missed and yeah, we notice when they are not around.  I thought it was a lovely idea and I was totally on board to make those kinds of cards.  I've never seen a card that says anything like that so I was just winging it and I didn't have any stamps that say anything like that, of course, so I just improvised and used my computer and printer to make the sentiment.  I think that's a great look and I really like using that technique.  Not as much as I enjoy stamping lol, but I think its fun and it looks professional.

Art told me that he wanted one card to be for a male and one for a female so this post is for the male card and I'll follow up with a post featuring the female version.  For this card I used patterned paper by Authentic and a die cut from Anna Griffin and the note paper die is from Papertray ink. I had to cut that die cut down a bit to make it fit nicely on the card but I don't think it looks bad that short.  I added some washi tape in a silver pattern on the note page die and that tab die is also from Papertray Ink. On the corner die cut from Anna G. I used some silver rub and buff to highlight the embossed areas.  I pulled out an old boarder punch from Fiskars with the diamond shape edge and used it along the bottom piece of paper and distressed all the edges with Black Soot distress ink from Tim Holtz to tie in all the black and then added the panel to a piece of black card stock then mounted it to the front of a 5.5 x 5.5" corrugated card base (you know, the ones that I love) from Micheals. I just added a bow layered with some mesh bling that I got from Hobby Lobby to finish off the card.   

That's all for this post, I hope you enjoyed it.  I try not to make them too long. Tee Hee.  I talk alot. lol. I'll be right back with the follow up post to show you the female version of this card.  Hope everyone is off to a great start on their weekend.  Brian and I are possibly going to visit some of our friends today so that will be lots of fun.  She wants to show me all her crafty collections.  I can't wait.  She possibly has some goodies for me too.  The kind that I like, the antique paper and lace and trim and buttons, oh my.  I can't wait.  I'll come back and show you what I got If she wants to sell any of it. Hope you all have a wonderful and blessed day and I'll talk to you soon.  Till then, much love and hugs, Amy K.