Bursting Blooms (Card Patterns #125, ColourQ #95)

I hope you all are having a wonderful week so far, I am!  My niece was born yesterday!!  Caylee Leigh weighed 7lbs. 2 oz. and was 18 1/2 inches long.  She's super mellow and such a cutie pie! Caylee is my second niece, but the first grandchild for my mom and she's over the moon.  My brother and his girlfriend are the proud parents.  I'll show you pictures sometime soon, I promise.  Now for the card...

I used PTI's background basics: text style stamp for the background and an old A Muse Artstamps stamp, bursting blooms, for the main image.  I inked the blooms with A|S bermuda ink and then "rolled" the outside of the blooms with Clearsnap turquoise pigment ink.  The stems are inked with Clearsnap lime pastel chalk ink.  The ribbon is from American Crafts and the cardstock from PTI.  I had never tried to stamp an image right over a background before and I really liked the way this turned out.  I also had always wanted to try the "rolling" technique I explained before.  I think I used too  much turquoise ink on the right bloom because you can't really see the lighter bermuda ink in the middle.  Oh well, practice makes perfect.

My card is based on this week's sketch from Card Patterns.  I stayed pretty true to the sketch this week.  Instead of making scallops with cardstock and a punch I used the scalloped ribbon to represent the scallops.  I then tied the white satin ribbon below to represent the ribbon in the sketch.  I made my image panel larger than the sketch in order to accomodate the blooms and background text, but I think it still looks almost identical to the original sketch.

The colors for my card were inspired by this week's color story from ColourQ.  I really enjoyed this week's colors.  They are pretty and seem to go together really well.  They were also fairly easy to work with, which was really nice.  I felt like they made my ideas just flow, which doesn't always happen.  What do you think of the colors?  There is plenty of time for you to play if you like what you see.  I hope you liked my card.  Have a great rest of your week!  Happy Crafting! :)

Happy 50th! (ColourQ #92, CASFTL #148)

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!  I know it's been a little while since I've posted, we've been busy shopping for a mattress.  We could not seem to agree on one because I sleep on my side and my hubby is an all over sleeper, meaning he tosses and turns all night long.  We currently have a pillowtop and we both hate it.  Every mattress I liked he thought was too soft and hated and every one he liked I thought was too firm and I hated.  I found out that I couldn't get a spring mattress because I've been having hip issues, but he didn't like the feel of memory foam and I wasn't crazy about latex.  We had laid on about 30 mattresses and I was about to give up when we finally laid on one and both said at the same time, "I think I like this".  It was a miracle at this point.  Now the only thing in our way was the price.  It was almost double our budget!  We slept on it, not literally, and realized that there was no price too high to pay for a good night sleep so we took the plunge.  Our Simmons ComforPedic will be here in 4-6 weeks and we couldn't be more excited!  I just had to share what has been occupying my life for the past 2 weeks, and if you're still here we'll get on with the card....

I made this card for a friend of ours that's turning 50 today.  Happy birthday John!  The patterned paper is from the Lime Twist collection by My Mind's Eye.  I am in love with this collection!  It has become my go to patterned paper.  It's what I turn to first to choose paper.  I think I've said this before, but the last few collections by MME have been so great and have made me a true fan!  The bingo card is from Jenni Bowlin's calendar bingo cards.  I am loving them for bday cards!  The "happy" is from PTI's Inside & Out: Birthday set and the 50th is from A|S's birthday builder set.  I used a star and circle punch from Marvy Uchida as well as a circle die from Nestabilities to get the shapes on the card.  Everything but the sentiment circle is inked with A|S wheat pigment ink and the green ink is Clearsnap moss green.

My card was inspired by this week's sketch from Clean and Simple Stamping.  I chose to have the stars represent the circles on the top and bottom of the sentiment circle and decided to leave off the "line" that ran through and under all three circles.  This is the first time that I have drifted so far from the original sketch.  I still feel like it's represented and you can see what I've done without me having to explain it.  I wanted to try something different and I also wanted to make sure the recipient of this card would like it. 

The colors for my card came from this week's color story at ColourQ.  At first I thought these colors would be fairly easy, but they turned out to be harder than I thought, especially when I was trying to use them along with making a card for a 50th bday.  They seem more like kid bday colors to me.  Anyway, I figured it out and am happy with the results.  Now let's just hope John is. :)

If you're still with me I hope you enjoyed my card and are having a great weekend!  Happy Crafting!