Female Birthday card for the church

I made this card for a lady who is not only a member of our church but she's also Brian's cousin and someone we love dearly.  This is a 51/2" sq card and I've used patterned papers from My minds Eye, I used a border punch from Martha Stewart and a few dies from Sizzix and Tim Holtz like the flourish and the top note label die, I've used the dizzy doily die from Memory Box dies for the sentiment and that sentiment stamp is from Close to my Heart. The winged angel is a mod podge melt  made from a mold that I made.  I colored it with Viva Deco rubs.   I made the flower using the Ariana Blooms dies from Heartfelt Creations and the patterned paper from the collection.  I colored the seam binding bow using my glimmer sprays. And lastly, I distressed all the edges using my Tim Holtz distress inks. 

That's all for this post.  I hope you all are having a blessed Sunday morning.  I've got to keep this short as I've still got to go get dressed for church.  I am trying to make a solid effort to get these cards posted and catch up my blog.  I hope you are enjoying it:)  I hope to be back within a few days with another card.  Till then,  Much Love and Hugs, Amy K.

UMC Female Birthday card

Sorry, guys, that it's been so long sense my last post.  I just don't know how I will be feeling day to day with this Fibromyalgia.  I wish it didn't impact my life as much as it does but hey, what you gonna do?  You just have to live each day and be grateful the situation isn't worse. Right? lol.  I try to have a healthy outlook, If I didn't it would consume me.

This card was totally made from one of the new Cricut card making cartridges.  I think of these as my "Cheater cards" lol.  I think of them as such because all I have to do is pick out a sentiment and paper to use and the cuts are all right there and the card is totally designed for you.  It's great when you've got to make a card in a rush.  And I'm not ashamed so say that in making all these cards for the church sometimes I have to rush and I just don't have the time to totally design every aspect of the card.   I've bought all 3 or 4  of these card making cartridges and I'm very happy with them.  This card was made using the Creative cards cartridge.  I just used a few sheets of colored card stock and I cut out the bottom three layers (including the card base) with the cricut and then I added the doily die cut to the center using a Spellbinders die.  I used a floral image from an Inkadinkado stamp set and used my Prisma color pencils to color it in.  The sentiment stamp is from Unity Stamp co. I inked the edges of all the cuts then added a few bling to finish the card off.  Easy peasy! Gotta love it.  By the way this card was made for a beautiful Lady in our church by the name of Donna Smith.  I hope she really enjoyed her card. I definitely had a good time making it.  I'm really glad Art, our preacher, asked me to make  the cards for the church.  It keeps me busy and doesn't allow me to become too lazy. lol.  I just can't keep up with all the blogging and posting of the cards once I get them made.   The process defiantly doesn't stop once I complete the card and turn it in.  There have been many a Sunday that I'm out in the front yard with my camera and set up taking pictures of the cards for the week before heading to church where I hand them in to Art and Sylvia.  I always fear that one card may escape with out having it's picture made and then It would be  lost to me forever.  I have hundreds of photos on my computer of past cards made.  I've been taking photo's of my creations for years before I even started blogging.  I love to look back thru them and remember each card I made.  I've had to start making notes of who they were for because I just cant remember that part to save my life. lol.

That's all for today, I hope to be back soon with more cards to share with you,  Till then, may you all be a blessing to one another.  Much love and hugs, Amy K.

Birthday card for our Nana's 89th birthday

Nana is actually my hubby, Brian's grandmother but she has claimed me as one of her own for years now and I have always felt like she and I had that kind of bond between us.  Brian doesn't have to be with me for me to stop by and check on her and spend some time with her just talking and catching up.  She's a wonderful lady and such a joy to be around.  You know how it is when a person has lived as long as she has and been alone for the better part of the last decade.  By that I mean her children are grown and husband is passed and she lives alone and has for years.  Most of her grandchildren are parents themselves now.  I can't remember how many grand children she has but I know that she has 25 great grandchildren.  Isn't that amazing!  She's so awesome and we all love her dearly.  I am always happy to make cards for her.  This year I got to make two cards for her, one from Brian and I and the other from the church.  I will show that one in another post.

For this card I used a card base from Micheals and went around the edges with white gesso and then added a sheet of patterned paper from a Paper Studio paper pad from Hobby Lobby and I just distressed the edges (I use my dremol tool to do that) and the added some Vintage Photo distress ink.  I just layered a doily then some vintage lace and some seam binding that I colored using some of my glimmer sprays and a few flat backed pearls on a strand.  I used my bow it all to tie the double bow then added a brad with a pearl in the center to the bow after I removed the prongs from it.  I added the chipboard flower after I went over the top of it with some white pigment ink to bring out some definition to the raised areas.  I stamped the sentiment from Close to My Heart with Black India ink from Hero Arts on cream card stock and then cut it down into a flag shape.

That's all  for this card, I hope you enjoyed it.  I thought it turned out really nice for Nana and I'm really enjoying this color combination lately.  I will show you another card in the coming post that uses the same color combo.  I just love the gold with the white and cream.  I think it looks so classy.  I will try and come back tomorrow with another card for you so until then I hope you have a wonderful day.   I will be back soon, till then, Much love and hugs, Amy K.

August, Altered Birdhouse challenge for the Craft Hole group on FB

BFF Birthday Card

Good morning all.  Well, morning is about over so I guess I need to hurry up and get on the ball before this day gets away from me.  I just wanted to pop in and share a birthday card that I made for my BFF, Wendy.  Yes, I'm still very behind on posting my cards because you all know her birthday was last month. lol.  I'm working on it, I promise, so if you've received a card from me or from the church but haven't yet seen it posted just wait a little bit longer, It's coming. lol.  I may catch up before the end of the year lol.  

So, Wendy's card.  Anybody who knows my girl, Wendy, knows she loves her some loud and gawdy stuff lol.  God love her.  She just can't help herself lol.   So I included some things I know she loves like flowers and feathers and bling.  I do hope I got it right, She did say she loved it when I gave it to her but you know she may be just trying to be nice :)  This is such a big card that I didn't even bother trying to make an envelope for it.  I think the patterned paper measures 6x6 so with that boarder around it who knows how big it is lol.  I knew I was hand delivering it so I really didn't worry about the size.  Anyway, here's the card I made for Wendy and I do hope she really liked it. :)  

That's all for now, I say for now because the way things are looking I may have to start posting twice a day to get caught up lol.  I'll see you back here real soon.  I've got to film a You Tube video for my birdhouse project I did for the Facebook group "The Craft Hole."  So keep a look out for that.  For all my Facebook peps I will be posting the link to the video there too so you wont miss it.  Thank you all for checking out my cards and videos, you mean the world to me.  Don't forget I love to hear from you guys so I know somebody is out there reading this and I'm not just talking to myself. (like usual). lol.  I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed day.  Don't forget to be good to one another. Till next time, have a great day.  Much love and hugs, Amy K.

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.