Two Encouragement Cards

I have 2 more cards for the "Texture-fied" challenge at the Lawnscaping challenge blog. Both will go to Darlene at Live Love Cards, to give to Meals on Wheels recipients. If you would like to donate cards, you can find out more information on her site.

I used Lawn Fawn's "Best Pun Ever" stamp set for both cards. For my first card, I used Operation Write Home's Sketch #206 for my design. I stamped the fan onto a scrap of white cardstock with Hero Arts Soft Granite ink, then colored it with my Prismacolor colored pencils. I punched it with a 2" circle punch. For the greeting, I die cut a slightly larger circle with a Spellbinders "Standard Circles LG" die from red cardstock. I curved the greeting stamps to match the curve of the die cut on my MISTI (not a very easy task!), and stamped with Versamark ink. I heat embossed that with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder.

I cut a piece of patterned paper from my scrap stash to size, and matted it with teal & red cardstocks. I glued the red circle to the back of that, so the greeting still showed around the focal circle, then popped the fan up on foam adhesive.

For my background, I used The Crafters Workshop "Sunburst" 6x6" stencil and Ranger Texture paste. I spread the paste over the stencil onto some yellow cardstock, then let that dry. The rays didn't reach all the way in the corners, so after the paste had dried, I used tiny pieces of painter's tape to mask off the areas in between, and spread more paste on to extend the rays. When that had dried, I replaced the stencil, and sponged Wild Honey Distress ink over the paste. Finally, I adhered my focal piece, and matted the panel with navy & teal cardstocks, then mounted it to a white A2 card base.

For my second card, I used Sketch #SC569 from Splitcoaststampers.com for my design. I stamped the teapot & cup onto Canson XL Mixed Media paper with Versamark, and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. I colored them with a Crimson Inktense pencil and waterbrush, getting a soft color. I used Stampabilities' Bright Pink dye ink to stamp the flowers from Paper Smooches' "Botanicals 2" set. On the teapot, I stamped the leaf image (also from "Botanicals 2" in Hero Arts Green Hills ink. The teacup was too small for the leaf stamp, so I just used a fine-tip green marker to draw in some leaves. Finally, I die cut them with the coordinating "Best Pun Ever" dies.

I cut a piece of patterned paper from my scrap stash, and glued the teapot to it, then popped the teacup over it with foam tape. I also stamped the steam trails from "Best Pun Ever" above the teapot's spout in Hero Arts Wet Cement ink.

For the background, I stamped the "You're Tea-riffic" in Wet Cement repeatedly on the top part of a white cardstock panel. I had masked off the bottom, so I wouldn't stamp there accidentally. When I had finished stamping, I cleaned my stamps, moved the masking tape, and stamped the bottom part in Green Hills, lining up the words at the seam, to give me a two-tone stamped background. Then I inked the top portion with Spun Sugar & the bottom with Bundled Sage Distress inks.

I cut a mat for my focal panel from white cardstock, and inked the perimeter with Wet Cement. I dried that with my heat tool, and adhered my focal panel to it, before gluing it to my background. I adhered a length of cream satin ribbon around the seam between the 2 colors on the background, and used more ribbon to tie a bow around the first piece. Finally, I cut a doily using a Spellbinders "Delicate Doilies" die, trimmed a bit off one side, and glued that next to the focal piece, to add just a bit of texture & visual interest.

To finish my card, I inked an A2-size piece of white cardstock with Wet Cement, just around the edges. After that dried, I adhered my main panel, and mounted that to a white A2 card base.