Freshly Made Sketches Encouragement Card

I found a little time between trips to do a few challenges.  The card today is for a friend battling breast cancer.  She is an online card making friend I have known for so many years but never met in person.

I saw this sketch at Freshly Made Sketches for their weekly challenge and decided it would be a fun one to use for my card.

This is my card for the sketch challenge.  The background is a piece of die cut watercolor paper.  The rectangles that the flower is stamped on are also die cut.  I used three different Tattered Angels sprays to color the background and the flower background.  

The flower stamp is from Stampers Anonymous Studio 490 Wendy Vecchi Stamp it Stencil it.  The sentiment is from Stampendous stamped in Black Versafine Ink.

Thanks for stopping by.

ATC's With the Canvas Corp Brand Team

I recently became a new design team member with Canvas Corp Brands.  A team building activity was to make ATC's.  There were 12 people in my group.  Each ATC I have received have been beautiful and everyone of them very unique.  Today I am going to share my ATC.

I think of all the ATC's I received mine was the only painted/stamped one.  I guess I had a hard time leaving my card making skills behind me.

Here are the supplies I started with.  The base of my ATC was Canvas Corp ATC Artist Trading Cards (White).  There were 25 ATC's in the package.  They have the basic ATC cards in many different bases - ie black, kraft, cream, burlap.....

I used all these paints from the Tattered Angels line at Canvas Corp to achieve my watercolor look on my ATC.

The flower stamp is from Penny Black and the sentiment is from Paper Smooches.

Here are pictures of the process of making the ATC's.

Yes the color of those poppies started out with yellow with pink on top.

See what a beautiful orangey color I achieved.

I then watered down my paints and colored the background of the cards.

I decided my cards needed just something a little extra on the left side.  I found my trusty Cardstock Pad and carefully cut a single row of black with ivory dots.

They were adhered  to the side of the ATC.  After this step was done, I am sure I went and placed all the ATC's in the press.  The press is four books.  It is amazing what a good heavy press will do to flatten out painted paper.

I sent my ATC's to 12 people and I believe half of them were outside the United States.  It is nice knowing that a small piece of my creative soul is now all over the world.

If you have not tried ATC's, you really should.  It is fun but sometimes difficult to work in such a tiny space.  It is always good to stretch our creative souls.

Here is a look at the finished ATC.

Thanks for stopping by.

Pretty In Pink

As the cold winds blow in February and the snow falls, I start to think about flowers and spring.  Canvas Corp has a beautiful collection called The Watering Can.  I used the sheet of paper from this collection called The Watering Can:  Seed Packets on Ivory.  There are six images on the sheet that called out to me to make cards.

The images are beautiful in the black and cream but I wanted to highlight the flowers with the color pink.  Pink is my Mom's favorite color so I am very partial to it.  I colored the flowers with the Plain Jane Baseboard paint (Gerber) which has been mixed with water to make it more transparent.

The images are matted with black.  The images have rounded corners so I rounded the corners on the black mats. 

I colored seam binding with the paint.  I wet the seam binding and then put some paint and water in a small container with the seam binding.  Once I achieved the color I wanted, I scrunched it up in a ball and let it dry.  Once it is dry it keeps this crumpled look and makes the most beautiful bows.  These bows are very easy to make and because of the crumples, they hide any mistakes in your bow making.  (As an afterthought I wish I had added some Tattered Angels mist to the ribbon when it was wet to make it sparkle.) 

I wrapped a small piece of the ribbon around each of the matted card fronts.  After this was done, foam tape was added to the back of the fronts and mounted on the card front.  

Bows were then tied and adhered to the front of the card.  

   

Do these wonderful images make you think of spring and flowers?  I am looking forward to having some time to work on my flower gardens this year.  My Mom loved her flowers and so I plant lots of pink flowers since she is no longer able to have a flower garden.