Friday, May 8, 2015

Mother's Day

Hey folks!

We're just a few days away from Mother's Day, so I thought I'd share my gift to the Mommy's in my life.

I actually started with one card (first pic) and it just kind of grew from there, but I'm super duper happy I did it! Once I decided to make more, it was easy to make them in an assembly line fashion, but change them up just enough to make each one a lil different.

If you're interested in any of the products I've used, I will have links for you at the end of this post!


Hero Arts has some really fabulous stencils, and I think the Tweed Stencil was a perfect background for these cards. My main focus was the Hennah Elements Flowers from Altenew and the Hand Lettered Hello sentiments from Wplus9, so I didn't want a background with too much color. I could have dry embossed the background with an embossing folder, but then I would have missed out on the fun of using Ranger Texture Paste! Gasp! Stencils and paste are the peas and carrots of card making. I have a HUGE container of Martha Stewart Crystal Fine Glitter, so while the paste was still wet I put some over the top. My kids have devised a glitter scale. It goes from Tinker Belle (the least amount) to Unicorns (A LOT). They haven't decided what's in between, but I was informed I didn't quite reach Unicorn Status with these. If this isn't their idea of a lot of glitter, I'm afraid to see what is! 


I think Altenew does some of the best florals on the market. I could spend almost my entire craft budget on their floral stamp sets. They are fabulous! Next to Kristina Werner's handwriting, Wplus9 is my fave. I did just purchase a couple of sets from Winnie & Walter, that look pretty stinkin great too,  but I haven't used them yet.


I decided to do a rainbow in Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Inks after I made the first card. All of the Flowers and Leaves were heat embossed with Clear Ranger Embossing Powder on Ranger Watercolor Paper. I picked two shades in each color for each flower and watercolored over the embossing. What actually took the longest, was fussy cutting all of the Flowers and Leaves. Achy fingers because your detail scissors are super hard plastic are No Bueno, but I'm a whiner anyway, so it's all good!


I was running out of rainbow, but still had cards to make, so I thought I'd go a lil bit further in my color scheme and go for some black/grey flowers and I switched up the embossing powder on the white one and used Silver Ranger Embossing Powder. Also, because I was going for straight up white on this flower, I simply mixed some Ranger Perfect Pearl Pigment Powder with water and treated it like a watercolor. 


It's not easy to tell in the pic (let's be honest peeps, photography is NOT my calling), but the Ranger Perfect Pearl Pigment and water dried kind of swirly and uneven, which looks really cool!


I rode the struggle bus on this one a lil bit. I really loved the white/silver one, and I wanted to do gold as well. The Flowers and Leaves were easy. For those, I used Ranger Princess Gold Embossing Powder and Gold Ranger Perfect Pearls Pigment Powder. The problem I ran into was how I wanted the rest to look. In the end, I decided to break out the American Crafts Kraft Cardstock and use something different with the stencil. I went over the Hero Arts Tweed Stencil with Versamark Ink, then heat embossed that with Stampendous Clear Bark Embossing Powder. I'm still not sold overall, but in it's own way, it's groovy and the recipient loved it, so nuff said. 


My favorite Distress Ink color combination EVER is Picked Raspberry, Squeezed Lemonade and Wild Honey! Love it!!! I had already done a card with purple, but my I needed another, so I picked a couple of different shades of purple. Easy Peasy.


Ok folks, time to get a lil sappy. I promise not to climb too high onto my soap box, but out of all the cards I made, these two are the most personal to me. Don't get me wrong, all the Mum's in my life are AH-MAZING, but there is a special place in my heart for step-moms. Especially new ones! I have a step-mom, but she has been in my life so long, that I don't necessarily think in terms of mom vs. step-mom. She is one of my four parents. Period. However, in the last few years I had learned a new perspective on what it means to be a step-parent. Without getting into too much detail, I will just simply say that being a biological parent is hard. For most, it's the hardest job in the world. Being a step-parent is harder. There are things that get taken for granted in our relationships with our children. Natural bonding, trust, and respect, just to name a few. As a step-parent, none of that comes naturally and you have to work all that much harder for it. Sometimes, there's enough support and consistency it helps alleviate some of the pressure, sometimes not so much. Regardless, step-parents sometimes don't get the acknowledgement they deserve. I think it's easy for people to forget there is a reason why we are called step-mom, step-dad, or step-parent and not just Mom's husband or Dad's wife. I know of two step-mommies that fall into both of these scenarios. They are EXCEPTIONAL people and are FABULOUS Mom's. Step or otherwise. So, these were for them. 

That's it for now folks! I hope you enjoyed them. Any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to leave me a comment below. Until next time!



9 comments:

  1. Oh my, these are beautiful!!! You're like me - you make lots of cards! :-) I am going to follow your blog now ;-)

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    1. Thank you! Making cards for people and seeing how happy it makes them just fills me up. Even better when I can do a whole bunch at once!

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    2. I sent you a FB message but I don't think you see it because it might be in your 'other' folder. Just wanted to say that I tried to look for a follow button but couldn't find it. Love your cards!!

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  2. These are STUNNING! Think I need to follow you too. hugs Linda x

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  3. I'm loving the glitter scale - your kids sound like a riot! I always thought I leaned towards 'unicorn' when it comes to glitter, but it sounds like perhaps their standards are much higher than mine!! These cards are just beautiful - really love how they came out. I might just be copying your technique. :) Maybe to avoid fussy cutting you can stamp the flower, scan it in and turn it into an svg? Then you can cut a bunch of flower shapes at a time and stamp on those. Anyway, just an idea. Might be hard to match up the stamp just perfectly though. Thanks for sharing - beautiful work!

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    1. Thank you! My kids are total goobers, but it's cool. Silly is a main ingredient in our house! I never thought to make these into SVG's, but that'd be great too! I'm a die hard Distress Ink fan, so even though I knew there would be a lot of fussy cutting, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to play with my inks. Like I said, I'm just a whiner! :)

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  4. These are gorgeous!! I used the same Altenew set for my Mother's Day cards, too. After looking through your cards, I realize I have pinned SO many of them on Pinterest. I adore your style. ;)

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    1. Thank you so much Claire! That made my day! Altenew has such great stamps and this is one of my favorite sets. :)

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