Helpful Friends

I have discovered digital stamps. "Really?", you ask, "you JUST NOW discovered them?" Yes, I just now discovered them. Since I am new at blogging, and made my blog because I discovered card challenges that I wanted to enter, I have JUST NOW discovered digi stamps and lots of other blogging things! One of the most important things is the friendly community. I have quickly made some new blogging friends that have helped me by answering newbie questions and I have 2 followers! Woohoo! We all need friends, and I have found that this close community of cardmaking & papercrafting bloggers is going to be a great source of friendship! I believe this because another discovery is the Help For Katie Blog which I would like for you to visit if you have not. I purchased a digital package as part of the fundraiser and working on sizing the art for some upcoming cards.

Before I found Help for Katie, I found some other blogs with digital art. There is free art and art for purchase, and I now have both. I had never used digi-stamps so I had to learn how to use them. I printed out a few, practiced coloring them with different mediums and am ready to present 2 cards with this as the first. This digi came from Designed2Delight and is the subject of the challenge Ladybug Balancing Act". I was too late for the previous challenge and getting this stamp for free so I purchased it because it is adorable, and I purchased the previous challenge stamp "Garden Party".

This card was made based on the digi. The 3 backgrounds were made with Fiskars Texture Plates - yes, I do it old school, I don't have any of the machinery LOL. The leaves texture goes with the flowers, the spots go with the ladybugs, and the hearts are for the love of friends. The 3 paper flowers are pink, white and lavendar but I added color to the white to try making it match the yellow/orange and maybe I should have put the pink on pink and purple on purple because they do not look like the right colors where they are but Zots are holding them fast so they are stuck there ;) The 3 tiny gems in the flower centers are actually from a kit to add to fingernails which I don't use so why not use them on cards?? I used watercolor pencils for coloring the digi and blended everything but then I wanted some sparkle so I went over a lot of it with glitter crayons (yep, I really used crayons!) and tried to get it to show up but not sure it worked. The ribbon and brads just tied everything together along with the inked edge to make the background whole instead of 3 tiles of handmade textured cardstock.

I am keeping this blog entry because time has snuck up on me and I need to get the next one done to enter the challenges on time! I was browsing through digi stores for way too long!! haha, I just drool over all this stuff to make cards with!

Many blessings, Deborah

Challenges this card is being entered into are:

Designed2Delight Ladybug Balancing Act using this digital stamp

Stamp, Scrap and Doodle Saturdays 3 pattern papers, 3 flowers, 3 sparklys and 1 ribbon

Craft Your Passion Challenges #54 - You've been spotted!

Stamps R Us #19 Bugs & Embossing - Sponsored by Doodle Pantry Digital Doodles

Happy Birthday card and quilled magnet

Debbie and Grandma Rose

   Hi! So glad you came to see the new post! I am enjoying learning about blogging through much trial and error LOL. I added a list of links for card challenges (took 2 tries) and added a couple of the little badges for other blogs but still have other things to figure out. I guess if I learned how to make web sites, I can learn how to make my blog - but this time I have asked for help from a couple ladies and am waiting to hear from them. If I limit my trial and error time, then I have more time to craft and post!! Woot!

   This card was made for my Grandma. She likes pink so I used different shades and coordinating colors in the embellishments. I made it for her birthday in January - and it is the last birthday card I will ever make her because she passed away the last day of January. I miss her terribly so why not showcase the love I translated to paper?

   I embossed the outside inch + and then inked over the raised hearts slightly so some spots would be darker than others. I always used the bottom sentiment somewhere on the cards I made her, even if it were on the back with the Love is Homemade. For the center topper I stamped happy Birthday on white cardstock, cut it out and edged it with ink and adhered it to a larger piece of pink so it left room for the fussy cut flower and leaf out of some scrap floral paper, and double ribbon bow (that I fought to make pretty and flat!). My real work went to the magnet I made for the inside.

   Since most all people only keep cards out to view for a short length of time, I wanted to make something that Grandma could keep in view for a long time, so the inside became a magnet for her to put on her fridge (which I now have on mine). I traced and cut out the cardstock and adhesive sheet magnet from a Fiskars template, then went to work on the quilling. If I can quill then anyone can! There are easy to follow instructions of the net and in kits. Another bow was made out of 2 more ribbons and adhere with a Zots dot on top of the quilling. I went through my stash and found a pink rose (her name is Rose) and pink butterfly button I threaded with pink cross-stitch thread and inked the edges of the to make it stand out more, and adhered them with Zots dots. To add some bling, I added Stickles to the butterfly, rose, quilled hearts and the stamped flower design coming out of the hearts as well as a little on the inked edges of the magnet, and wrote I Love You in a pink glitter pen. She loved it and was very proud to show it off to her friends and neighbors in her building.

   I think I have learned my lesson about where the light source is when taking photos, I didn't notice it at the time I took them and am usually pretty careful about it to get a good image, so I apologize for these photos with the top right corner glare. This picture is here to show that the cardstock was the same color, but the individual photos make it look different. That has happened with most of the photos I have taken and even with editing I have not been able to make them match.

   I hope you enjoyed viewing this double creation that I posted in honor of the memory of my Grandmother, Rose. She was a fabulous woman! I will be looking forward to seeing her again in heaven.

Many Blessings, Deborah

This card is entered in the following challenges:

Crafts and Me Challenges - Challenge #30 - Ribbon

Christy's Sweet 16

Christy is my youngest daughter, now 21 and on her own thus leaving us with an empty nest. She is blonde, blue-eyed, bubbly, and very loving. We are very proud of her and who she has become and is still becoming. I went all out making this card for her 16th birthday in 2005. As you can guess, she likes purple (as much as I like orange) so I used everything purple I could think of. Paper, ink, and ribbons are all purples - and way too various in origin to begin to tell you where they all came from or what brand they are, I have a huge stash that dates back 7 or 8 years.

You can see all the various crafting techniques and types of products on the card front. I quilled the center flower and ahdered it to embossed handmade paper. That topper is layered onto mulberry paper and adhered to the card that is stamped (I know the heart and scroll is CTMH). The top ribbon is threaded through eyelets. The bottom is torn layers of paper, mulberry and caedstock.

The inside top shows the torn paper and ribbon. I enlarged and darkened the handwritten text so you could read it. I used some of the text from a Blue Mountain Arts card I purchased as inspiration and if you like it and want to use some of it for a card of your own, that is fine with me :o)

This photo of Christy was taken on her Myrtle Beach Vacation with family friends. It is blurry because it was actually taken by a 2 year old little girl!

A friend of Christy's who is a fabulous artist decided to draw pictures of some of his facebook friends and so she set it as her profile picture as of March 20th to current April 18, 2011. It just deserved to be here since it is awesome art.

I hope you like this blog of my daughter and 16th birthday card, it is very close to my heart. I would love to see your comments.

Many Blessings, Deborah