Handmade Birthday card for my Briother

Those of you who know me well know that I only have one sibling and that's my wonderful, fully, sensitive, personable, lovable, and just all around wonderful kinda guy who is my Brother.  His name is Derek but I've pretty much always called him Brother. So don't get confused if I do so here, okay?  Brother and I have a special unspoken very tight bond.  We don't get to see one another near as much as I would like but he has two wonderful children and a loving wife to tend to and I have Brian to tend to, lol, just kidding. Well, No, not really. But anyway, as you know, sometimes life just gets in the way of us being able to get around to doing some of the things we just want to do because there are too many pressing matters that HAVE to be done.  But us being apart hasn't changed how much we love one another in the least.  I don't have to be told he loves me I see it in his eyes and feel it when he gives me a hug, EVERY time he greets me.  I told you he's wonderful, didn't I?  I want to make him a special card every year and each year I try.  I do think or at least I hope, that my card making improves every year so at least they are never the same. 

I made this card on a standard 4.25 x 5.5" card base and covered it with background paper by K & Co. from the "Life's Journey" collection. Yes, I know that's an old collection but I can't help it, I love the paper and I've bought and have like three of the 12 x 12 " paper pads and one of the "Ancestry" pads. LOVE that paper! I used some metallic gold card stock and my new Anna Griffin dies that I recently got from HSN. I got a bunch of dies and embossing folders and I've been loving making cards with those bad boys. lol. So, That corner piece and the scroll type flourish piece that runs behind the sentiment were cut from that gold card using Anna's dies. The die cut in the center from the 'news print' type paper (also from that K & Co. paper pad) is a Spellbinders die, it's called Labels 22. For the top note shape I just used Ga Pacific White card stock from good ole Wal Mart, I punched it out with an extra large punch from the Paper Studio which is made by Hobby Lobby. I distressed the edges of both the die cut and the punched top note shapes with distress ink from Tim Holtz for Ranger.  Sorry, I am unsure about what the color was..  There is also a piece from the K & Co. die cut ephemera shapes in the left of the spellbinders die cut.  For the sentiment I used a stamp set from Close to My Heart called  "Just a Number". It's one of those inside and  out sets. The banner die cut and sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp. I kinda made it read funny but it's supposed to read like this: "Inside every older person is a younger person..... (and Inside) wondering what happened." but it made it read crazy when I put that "wishing you the best" right square in the middle of it all. lol Yeah, I still have those moments.

Here's a picture of the inside just showing the rest of the sentiment. I used that same distress ink on it and punched it from an ek success punch.  One more thing, I've found this wonderful new black ink that I'm loving.  It's from Hero Arts and its India ink black. Love it! Stamps like a dream.

That's all for today, hope you enjoyed my card, Mistakes and all. I hope you have an wonderful day and thank you so much for taking the time to stop by my blog. I hope to see you back here again tomorrow for another card as I still have a few to go to get completely caught up. lol. Till then, I'll c u later. Hugs and love, Amy k

Birthday Card for Nicole using a napkin technique

Nicole's birthday was back in mid April so that just goes to show you how far behind I still am on getting these cards posted but stick with me and I promise to get them all up soon!  This technique for making a card is nothing new altho you may not have seen it before.  I want you to know that I didn't think it up or come up with the idea myself.  I saw it done somewhere and thought it would make a great card and so here we are.  The great thing about making this card is you really need few supplies to get it done and make it look great.  I find these dinner size napkins at dollar stores everywhere.  I found this particular one at my local Tuesday Morning store. I cut the blue mat to size, The card is 5.5 x 5.5 so I believe I cut the mat at 5.25 x 5.25".  The next thing you need is white card stock if you want the color of the napkin to remain true.  You peel away the layers of the napkin and only use the printed top layer so when you apply it to your card stock whatever color you are using will show through.  The napkin becomes kinda translucent. I used gel medium to glue my napkin down but you could use mod podge or pretty much any of your favorite wet glue I suppose but I really only recommend these two.  You have to have edge to edge coverage and you need a glue that will stay wet long enough for you to get the napkin into place.  I will tell you that I made a boo boo when I was gluing down my napkin and instead of throwing it out and starting over I just decided to fix it and I will tell you what I did so that you can learn from my mistake.  Like I said, I was using gel medium and I don't have alot of experience using the stuff so I don't know if all of them are created equal. lol. I happened to be using some that was pretty thick and I don't know if that's just a characteristic of the medium or if you can get it in different thicknesses.  So I took my white card and I use a bigger size than what I need for the card base so that once the medium is dry I can use my trimmer and cut it down to the size needed.  So I was applying my medium and I got my napkin laid down and then the next step is to apply more gel medium over the top to seal it. Just like you would mod podge anything.  So when I was going over the top of the napkin with my medium I got a little heavy handed in the area right where the bird is.  I tore a great big gaping hole in my napkin I thought I had ruined it. but I stuck it down the best I could and let it dry.  While that was drying I took another napkin and removed the layers and then started fussy cutting out the bird.  Not so easy to do on something as thin as tissue paper. lol. But not to fear, I got it done. Once the gel medium on the napkin was dry I CAREFULLY added another layer of medium only to the area where the bird would be going and lay my bird right into place taking care to line up all the edges of the print so it looked seamless. Then I added my top layer of gel medium over the top of the bird only. Now, here's were my bad memory comes into play, I can't remember if I added the glitter to the gel medium or if I waited for that to dry and then added glue back to the bird area and then added glitter.  I think I used the glue but I'm sure you could do it either way but I'm thinking I used the glue because I had gotten the gel medium off the edges of the bird and I only wanted the glitter to stick to the bird.  So I added the glitter and let that dry and then used my enamel accents in black to dot in the eye and let that dry. Once it was all done and had dried over night I used my t square to square up the image and used the paper trimmer to cut the napkin covered card stock down to the proper size to fit the front of my card.  It's really a simple process if you don't have set backs like did and like I said, I could have just as easily tossed it and started over. Napkins are cheap and that's part of the beauty of this technique.  Ok, I'm going to hurry this blog post along and show you the inside of the card because you can obviously see how I just stamped a sentiment and punched it out and then added it with a silk flower I had in my stash. I did remove the plastic center of the flower and I added my own brad to the center. I also had some berry looking bits from a spray and I tucked them in under and around the flower. That finished off the front. and the sentiment is made by Unity stamp co.

For the inside of the card I cut another piece of that same blue card stock and layered it inside then I cut down a piece of white to fit inside the blue and I then took my Martha Stewart boarder punch to punch out the bottom edge. The sentiment was stamped on a separate piece of white card and I used Hero Arts ink but am unsure of the color and the stamp set is by Dylusions By Ranger inc. and the name of set is "say what you mean". I then cut out each line of the stamped sentiment and it comes with the boarder around the words so all I needed to do was cut it apart. The Happy Birthday was a sentiment from Hot off the Press and I'm unsure of the stamp set name but you can still find it in their current catalogs. I used some Powder Puff chalk ink in yellow to stamp that image.  Here's a crafty tip for those of you who are just learning about stamping.  All clear stamps are not created equal. You have just plain acrylic stamps and they are made by companies like Hot off the Press and Inkadinkado and tend to have a cheaper price point. Then you have Photopolimer stamps and they are the cream that rises to the top of the stamping world. lol.  I find them made by companies like Close to my Heart and Hero Arts and Paper Trey Ink and even Simon Says Stamp. Either of these kind of stamps will stick to an acrylic block and sometimes they are hard to tell apart but as you buy more stamps from different companies you will know to look for what they are made of and you will know by the pricing of each stamp set. I have even learned how to tell them apart by the "feel" of the stamp.  I really can't describe that to you but the main thing is the Photo stamps feel stickier. I know that sounds crazy but you will learn how to tell them apart.  Now I took the time to tell you all that to tell you this.  Not all inks will stick to and stamp well with your common acrylic stamps but I have found one kind of ink that does tend to stamp pretty well with all kinds of stamps and that is in particular Colorbox Fluid Chalk Inks.  I've found most other chalk inks pretty much will do a good job too with acrylic stamps but I really like either the colorbox or the powder puff. I know you can get reinkers for the colorbox and it comes in many many different colors, I am not sure if you can however, get reinkers for the powder puff inks. But, Hey, don't just take my word for it. go out and buy from lots of companies and find out what you like best and what works the best for you before you begin stocking up on their products. And don't ever, ever buy crafty supplies just because they are cheap.  If they are cheap and you know that they work great Perfect. I would say go for it..

I also wanted to show you the envelope I stamped for this card because it's kraft card and I wanted to show you how well the chalk inks stamped on it. So here's a picture of that now:

I used acrylic stamps for all these images and they come from lots of different companies. I used chalk ink for all the images and then I used my copic markers to color in the flowers and used my souffle pens to do the yellow centers.

That's all I have for today and I'm sorry that the post was SO long but if you hung in to the end you are a true champion and my crafty hat goes off to you my friend. Thank you all for stopping by and checking out my blog today and I hope you have a wonderful day today. I hope you learned something new today as well and if you liked (Or not) what you saw here leave me a comment. I love to hear your feed back. Lots of hugs, amyk

A Birthday Card!

Today's card was made for a really good and close friend to the family, I can't call him her  husband yet because they are still dating but he is my SIL, Jennifer's boyfriend and baby daddy. lol. We absolutely love Andrew to death and if they are happy not being married then more power to them and I'm happy for them too. Enough said about that, I don't want them to think I'm being all opinionated about their living arrangement lol.

So this card is another card that was actually made back in March but like I said, I'm working on catching them up.  To make this card I first started off with one of my favorite card bases, the coruigated card bases from Micheal's. I then layered a map page over the card base. I absoultely love this map paper. It comes in 12x12 pads only as far as I've seen anyway.  It's called "Uncharted" and it's made by the Paper Studio, which is Hobby Lobby's brand. I then took a sheet of 6x6 card stock from the My Mind's Eye "Cowboy" stack and cut it down some to fit over the map paper.  I distressed the edges in blue, sorry I don't remember the color of distress ink. I stamped the  sentiment out from a Dylusions stamp set called "Say what you mean".  I then cut the stamped image into strips of text and glued them to the front and then once I had them glued down I went over all of them with my Wink Of Stella glitter pen in clear. I had to take the picture on an angle because of all the shine put off from that pen it was blinding out the sentiment behind it.. Lastly I added a tab die cut stamped with Happy Birthday and added it to the side.

I hope you enjoyed the card today,  I enjoy bringing them to you.  I will have many more to come in the near future so stay turned. I hope you all have a Blessed Sunday.  May you be a blessing so someone today.  ttys, Hugs, amyk

Just for being my friend card

Recently (and by that I mean like March lol) I was getting together a small package of a few crafty items that I wanted to share with Robin.  Robin is my very first and oldest online friend. and by oldest I mean she's been my online friend the longest.  I wouldn't dare hint as to her age. no,no, no. That would be bad, bad, bad for me lol. Any way I love her and we enjoy speaking to one another on the phone a few times a week and thru our crafty surprise mail.  I think in this package I had a few duplicates that I loved so much I accidentally bought them twice.  So I don't like to send a package without a card inside so this is the little card that I came up with to send along in this package.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure about the background paper.  I believe its from Hobby Lobby and then I distressed the edges and added gesso to better define the distressed edges. I used a spellbinders die for the cut at the top left with the two friends. It's called Labels 22, for the sentiment cut I  used a punch from Hobby Lobby by the Paper Studio for that.  The stamps that I used was a pair that come together, they are by Dawn Houser for Inkadinkado. After die cutting the image I left it in the die and sponged around the inside of the die but not around the image because I wanted to color it.  For the sentiment I just sponged around the punched piece.  For the image I just got out my Prisma color pencils and colored up the image. I thought it worked out great and I was glad I used the pencils.  I felt like the image was just too small for my coloring to use copics and do any shading. I used some flowers that I received in a gift package that I won from Lavish Laces over on the Little Scrap of Heaven ning site.  I also won some of her fabulous laces and bloomers trims.   I didn't use her ribbon for this card but I did use this fabulous one that I got from Hobby Lobby on a roll.  I Just loved this card and I sure hope that Robin did too.

That's all I've got for now so until tomorrow, have a great day and a blessed day.  May you be a special blessing to someone in need today. ttys, hugs, amy k 

Got an Anniversary card for you today, for a young and in love couple who I love

I love this card and I LOVE this cute little couple I made it for. I won't keep you waiting any longer, its for Jeff and Nicole Cochran, she's my first cousin so you can BELIEVE me when I say we grew up together. It's good. I love their love and I'm so happy to help celebrate it with them if only via the post. lol. 

So, I got my game tight today and went and found out all the names of the papers so that I could share with you.  You ready? Here we go... The animal print on the back is from the Heidi Swap paper pad called Sugar Chic (and in case I forgot to mention and I did lol) all most all of the elements from this card are from Heidi Swap.  I used a  page of the Color Magic pack and sprayed it with her mustard color shine. To get the stripes back you just wipe the paper down with a paper towel after you get done spraying. The pink piece is also from that Color Magic line, they are called notes.  I also used some color shine on it and then the piece that says happy anniversary is a punch from ek success and I stamped it with (I think) a GCD studio stamp and some Hero Arts neon blue ink. to finish it all off I added some Prima flowers and some of those button bling centers with the backs removed, of course. I hope you enjoyed today's card. and you know I will be back tomorrow with another card for you.

Also. I have some news to share and to me its huge! I'm so excited i'm doing the pee pee dance lol.  The Pastor, Mr. Art, gave me a call a few weeks ago and he has asked me to make all the cards for the churches correspondence such as get well cards and sympathy cards, and maybe some post cards that say thank you for visiting our church.  I've made a few demos for them and they loved them, don't worry, I will be sharing them here with you just as soon as I get caught up some.  We are still working out the details on what they want each card to look like. So this is a work in progress but I'm so excited that I'm about to burst at the seams. lol. I can't believe someone took notice of my work and wanted more. That Rocks! 

I'm back and with a few cards to show you!

I've heard many bloggers say  that you should never apologize for lack of posting or not posting more frequently but I thought you deserved an explanation as to why I was gone for so long.  It's simple really and I'll tell you and then we can get on with the showing of the cards. OK? okay. So back towards the end of the year last year round Oct. I had gotten behind on making my blog post. Then all of a sudden, My computer (mind you I was running windows xp and loving it), asked me to do an update for FireFox. so when I did that update in it was a patch for xp.  Long story short, the patch was bad and it totally fried my hard drive loading system.  I think all the information is still there it just cant start up.  All my pictures are there too.  I'm in panic mode and if anyone out there has a really good idea for a back up system that will support alot of large files please let me know.  So now I've just got a new computer and it's taken some getting used to but I'm learning it slowly. Any ho, I'm back to blogging and hopefully back to making you tube videos real soon too.
So on with the cards.

This first card is one that I made for my mother's birthday back in Jan.  You'll have to forgive me that I don't remember all the names of what products that I used.  I know this is some Prima paper and that flower is made by me, it's a Prima dooop. lol.I see some spellbinders labels dies and dies from My Favorite Things, and the circular kinda odd shape is from the cricut and one of the Close to My Heart cartridges because I see that it's stamped with a coordinating stamp of theirs. Same thing with the ticket that says Jan. it's a cricut cut for close to my heart and stamped with one of their stamps that go with the cuts.  The bling is from a flourish beaded spray thing that I got from Micheal's back when they were having their big after Christmas sale. I got two of those things and they are huge. got them puppies for cheap too. I just used some rosette trim around the bottom and I put it all on one of the 5.5 sq. card bases from Micheal's;  love those card bases

This next picture is from Valentines day this year.  I made it for my Husband.  I know that the paper line is from K & Co. and I used a few cricut cuts on it.  The card base is one of the corrugated cardboard bases I love from Micheal's. I used some flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts and one from Recollections.  The leave was also from Recollections.  On the two red toned roses I kinda made my own version of Snow Tex by just mixing some gesso and some of this really chunky glittery stuff I had together. The gesso covers up to color of the glittery stuff. I don't even know if I would call it glitter. It is more like ground up plastic that kinda has a sheen to it. Maybe it's children's glitter. It is definitely on the chunkier side and no fine particles and it looks like some kind of plastic. I know alot of people use sand for this technique and I was all out of sand so I figured I already had the stuff on hand, wasn't going to cost me anything to mix the gesso with it and just see how it worked.  It worked great!  It gave just the chunky texture I was looking for. So that is what I added to the red colored WOC flowers. Loved the way it came out looking.  I made that hanging sign with one of the Close to My Heart cricut cartridges and that stamp set was a coordinating one that I had.  I used my new collection of Hero Arts inks for the stamping.. OH, yeah, sense I've been away for so long I haven't had a chance to tell you that over the winter months I've really been adding to my ink pad collection,  I picked Hero Arts Shadow inks to start with and Color box fluid chalk ink for the other ink I wanted to collect.  Now I've got a solid collection of both. I wanted the chalk in to stamp on my cheaper clear stamps that are made out of acrylic sense it seems to give better coverage and the Hero arts for all other stamping.  I'm loving both, definitely made the right choice in going with those two brands. Now I think I have all the shadow inks from Hero arts or at least all the mid tones.  I have all the neon colors and the new colors they just added. To have the entire collection of their reg. dye based ink pads I still need to get the soft colors and all the older regular colors.  As for the color box chalk inks I've got a great base of colors started and I don't really know of any I need to round out my collection with but will definitely be keeping an eye out for any new colors that I love.  Both companies have been around for along time and you can get re-inkers for all their ink pads so I feel pretty safe in my investment.  These are all the cards I'm going to add for now. I'll definitely do some research and try to come up with a better product list for the next posting. If you saw anything today that you just have to have the name of because you love it so much or something. you know what I mean, then just leave me a comment and I promise I will leave no crafty stone unturned to find you that info. Till next time , Keep crafting and I'll be seeing you soon. Hugs, amyk

Tutorial, how I decorate my buttons.

Masculine Handmade birthday card for my Uncle

 My Uncle, Tim is an original cowboy.  He grew up with his father being President of the Saddle Club here in the small country town of Summerville.  If you're ever down here in North west Ga. make sure to ride thru there but don't blink or you might miss it. lol.  Speaking of his dad, my Granddad, I can remember my child hood was full of horses.  I was riding a horse by myself from the time I was able to sit up on it by myself seems like.  Granddad had me training at the Saddle club to barrel race around the age of 7 or 8.  It was around that time that I turned severely allergic to the horses and could not only no longer ride but I couldn't even stand to be near a saddle that had been on a horse.  Alto dreams were dashed of being able to ride the rodeo and I had to send back the horse I had been given to ride at my home and when ever they would bring the horses into the yard at Granny's house I would have to run and hide inside, I still have fond memories of the family spending time with horses and the Saddle Club.  I can still remember Granddad and Tim working to break in the new horses.  Can you believe my mom used to help break the horses too when she was growing up? Isn't that great!  How's that for empowering women?  You go Mom!

Tim is the youngest of all my aunts and uncles from that side of the family and he's only 13 years older than me so he and I kinda grew up together in a way being that I am the oldest grandchild.  I love him dearly and at one time I felt like he was kinda my big brother that I never had. So... like I started out saying, he is like the original cowboy to me and when I saw this designer paper by one of the Lost and Found collections from My Minds Eye, I thought it was perfect all on its on and that it didn't need a lot of extra embellishment. The sentiment was stamped from an Inkadinkado stamp set and the only other thing I did to this layered card was outline it with Martha Stewart glitter glues, kinda like stickles,  I know this is a simple one layered card but sometimes that's all that's called for when it comes to masculine cards especially. I hope you enjoyed today's card. and I will be back later with a video on how I decorate my buttons. Talk to you all again soon, hugs, amy k.

Feminine birthday card for my Aunt, Naomi

 I made this shabby chic card for my wonderful Aunt, Naomi.  She is my aunt by marriage but you would never know it.  She treats me like one of her own and I try and treat her the same.  I regret that I don't get down to see that part of my family more and I miss them all but they are always in my heart and prayers. 

To make this card I used designer paper from Prima called the Botanicals collections.  I used it for the base layer of my card front then used another sheet for a die cut that's layered in the back and you can't really see it from this picture, but I used a Spellbinders die for it. The little journaling card used for the sentiment is a cut apart from the designer paper.  I like to use the 6x6 paper pads for my card making so the cut aparts are also smaller and more scaled to fit the fronts of cards.  That's why I prefer that size paper pad for my cards, all the images that would be much too big for cards in the full 12x12 size paper pad is scaled down for the 6x6 pads and the images are thus smaller and a much better fit for cards.  The mulberry flower on the right is also from Prima. Remember they were known for their flowers long before they were known for their papers, which are gorgeous, and their embellishments which are equally gorgeous. For the floral image in the center I used a cricut cartridge called Botanicals as well, no connection to the paper pad.  To get that beautiful dark outline around the floral image I used my cricut markers to draw around the outline of the image before I cut it out.  It's been a long time sense I've gotten out my cricut markers and I was glad that I did because I just love the outcome for this card.  The red lace is vintage lace from my stash. I just love it too!

This is a shot of the inside of the card, I used another sheet of the designer paper for the base layer, then another sheet that was border punched I believe with a fiskars punch. The sentiment was stamped with a stamp set from Hot off the Press.  I'm not sure of the color I used in the ink pad but I know I used a colorbox fluid chalk ink pad.  I also used that stamp pad to distress around the edges of the papers.

That's all for this post, I hope you enjoyed it.  I'll be back tomorrow morning with another card.  I am beginning to get caught up in my blog posting but I also just finished another four cards that have to go out in the mail today so look for them in the upcoming weeks. Till then, I hope you all are blessed in your daily life. Hugs to you all, Amy k

Welcome baby "New Addition" card

 

Baby Phoebe Lou Parker was born on Aug, 12, 3013 to parents, Jennifer Kittle and Andrew Parker. We were all there for the birth and I can tell you the room was absolutely full of excitement and anticipation.  We were there at the hospital all day as we waited for them to induce her labor and finally sometime around midnight we all got to come in and see the baby.  She's so beautiful and absolutely perfect.  I would show you a picture but I haven't gotten permission from the parents and that's something I firmly believe in doing.  I do not show a child online at all without first getting the parents permission.  So I made this card to congratulate the parents, by the way, Jennifer is my sis in law, on their new bundle of joy. 

For the front of the card I used designer paper from My Minds Eye called "In Bloom" and I got the sentiment from the Graphically Speaking cartridge for the cricut. I also used a scalloped circle punch from Recollections and the smaller scalloped circle was part of the sentiment from the cartridge. The pink flower is from Prima and I colored it with my homemade color sprays, and I used two velvet finished flowers from imaginese and a brad from Memory Makers, The little elephant stamp is from Hero Arts and I also used Hero arts shadow ink to stamp it and the sentiment that went along with it. I used my Viva Decor pen to make the pearl drops across the bottom and I used my copic markers to do a little coloring on the elephant stamp.  The grey chevron paper is also from the collection.  I believe this was a  5x7 card and I used a 6x6 paper pad so the paper was a tad too short so I had to add that piece to make it long enough.  It turned out to be one of those happy accidents that I think made the card cuter. 

 This is a shot of the inside of the card.  As you can see I used a couple different washi tapes  to the bottom left, and another stamp from that same Hero Arts stamp set.  I also used my copic markers to color the image.  The color has been enhanced to be brighter so I didn't want you to think it really looked this bright. lol.  I used a yellow chevron paper from the collection to back the sentiment on the inside and I have several books which contain sentiments, poems and quotes for the inside of cards and I can use them as long as the card is not for sale.  no worries, I don''t sell any of my cards anymore they are all made for family and friends. So, I distressed around the edge of the sentiment with a couple of colors of distress ink from Ranger.  I used the Ali Edwards font for the main part of the sentiment after I had cut it down to size and then added it to the inside of the card.  I also distressed the edges of the yellow chevron paper with Gathered twigs distress ink.  Well, that's all for this card, hope you enjoyed it.  I'll be back soon with yet anothr card. lol.  Till then, great big Hugs, amy k