With Gratitude

This is a very simple card. The background stamp is Woodgrain Pattern from Hero Arts. The sentiment is computer generated, cut out with a Classic Ovals Nestie, and edged with scattered straw & milled lavender Distress Ink (Ranger). The butterfly is a Cuttlebug Butterfly die, CB EF'd with Swiss Dots, mounted on black cardstock (I then cut around the butterfly to create a mat layer). 5 black pearls were attached to the butterfly's back. The leaves were cut using a Sizzix Sizzlits die. Three light purple Rhinestones (Basics) were attached to the upper right top.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Have a great day!

Ghosts of Halloweens Past Part I

I'm pulling out some Halloween cards from past years as I get ready to make this year's cards. I LOVE HALLOWEEN! Buying Halloween stamps, paper & ephemera; making and sending out Halloween cards; little kids running around so excited in their Halloween costumes - it's absolutely my favorite holiday. I also enjoy revisiting my old cards saved in my Halloween stash box.  Here is my very first Halloween card ever:

I stamped Small Square Background Edge (Hero Arts) six times on a white cs rectangle. I stamped the bats, cat & haunted house from the Halloween Stencil Stamp set (Hero Arts) on Golden Yellow Eloquent LaserKote SP and cut all three into odd shapes and adhered to 3 of the squares. I cut 3 squares from orange corrugated, black wavy corrugated and black velvet SP. Stickers were adhered to the squares. After wrapping an orange piece of wire around a wire spiral tool (no name on this cool tool) I straightened it out half way, added 3 seed beads, curled the ends and adhered it to the black velvet square (along with sticker eyes). The white rectangle was layered to a black rectangle and orange and black metalic threads (Sulky) were wrapped at right angles repeatedly around the layered rectangles. I tied an orange bow and wrapped spiraled black wire around the bow and attached everything to the white card base.

On the second card I used a stamp from The Peddler's Pack Stampworks stamped on vellum, painted with Radiant Pearls with a coating of glitter. The sentiment was computer generated, the dash-dot border was hand-drawn. The vellum was backed with a black layer, and then adhered to a deckle-edge cut rectangle of DP, layered to a black panel layered to an orange cardbase with a dash-dot-equals hand drawn border (black pen). I added a ghost, pumpkin and spider punch and tied a rafia bow to the corner of the main image layer.

A little bug told me . . .

What a fabulous day!  The sun came out early and stayed all day. It doesn't get more beautiful than a sunny day at the beach. Of course, with the sun comes all the tourists so then there's no room at the beach. I just consider myself so lucky that when Monday comes, I get to stay.  In the meantime, there were so many colorful kites flying. I love watching them - so many different shapes, colors & sizes. It's hard to pick just one as my favorite - try as I might.

The card that I'm posting today was one that I made about a year ago. This guy is one of my favorite stamps. Such an attitude! Frog was painted using Radiant Pearls, and I applied loud yellow glitter (Magik Glitter) to his eyes & Royal Coat dimensional magic over that to give his eyes a "pop." I used Cuttlebug's Swiss Dots on the tan background layer and paper pierced the tan scalloped layer behind the frog.

Inside:

Stamps: Thinking Frog and A Little Bug (Diamonds), Happy Birthday (Hero Arts )
Paper: DP: Burgundy Collage (Paper Pizazz), LaCreme Matstack Glittered & Textured DP (DCWV), CS: White, Red, Olive Green, Tan
Ink: Black pigment ink (ColorBox), black dye ink (Memories)
Accessories: Radiant Pearls, loud yellow glitter (Magik Glitter), Royal Coat dimensional magic, Circle punches (Paper Shapers) and scalloped circle punch (Marvy), flourish scroll (BossKut), Spellbinders classic and scalloped rectangle Nestabilities, Swiss Dots e.f. (Cuttlebug), edge distressing tool, paper piercer, Fiskars paper cutter, Scor-pal.
Size: 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 (A2)