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.