Birthday Cards

Kristina Werner had a really pretty card on her blog that imitates watercoloring but instead uses Distress Inks and water. Here is my version.

First emboss the image in white.

Stamp Distress Ink in various colors onto a Ranger Non Stick Craft sheet and add water.

Use a paint brush to "paint the image" and then fill in the background.

Spray or add water droplets to the page and a cool Distress Ink effect takes place. 

Here are two more Kristina Werner-inspired cards, again using Distress Inks:

My first attempt at a shaker card, which are super popular these days:

The theme on the birthday evite for a friend's 30th was black, gold, and white, so I created a birthday card using the same color scheme.

Stamping Bella stamps are so cute and fun to color...

April Birthday Cards

Wow! April came and went! I was so busy last month and only now am able to catch up on my blog posts. It was a busy month for birthdays, from my sister to my father-in-law, to one of my good pals. Here are the cards I made last month for them...

My sister loves cake and cupcakes--guess I am not the only one who knows this. She says every card she received this year had cupcakes on it!

I made this card for my friend Tiffany, such a fun-loving and happy person--I had to make an equally happy card, complete with the color yellow, polka dots, and bees!

When I think of my father-in-law, who turned 69 this year, I think of him growing up in the 60's and being in the peace corp. One of the first things that comes to my mind about the 60's is tie dye! I used an awesome technique I learned in a Distress Ink class and also from one of my favorite card makers, Kristina Werner. You can check out her video here to learn how I made this cool background. The white stars are actually made using a stencil and embossing paste, then covered with glitter. For this technique, check out the blog of Debby Hughes. It creates a little extra dimension, and extra "wow" factor.

Retirement card

My sister asked me to create a tropical retirement card for a coworker, and this is the card I came up with. I wanted to play some more with my distress inks and also use a Lawn Fawn Polaroid stamp set that I have been wanting to use for a long time. When I think of retirement, tropics, and vacation, I imagine taking beautiful sunset photos, these days it's usually with an iPhone, but a Polaroid will do.

Had to add glossy accents to create dimension.

A great quote from Stamping Bella.

Pirate Treasure Map Baby Shower Invitation

It may be raining out here in LA, but hubby and I have been very productive this weekend. Our taxes are done and filed, and I finished creating our DIY wedding presents for two dear couples and a baby shower invite for one of my L&D nurses. I will blog later about the wedding gifts once we have actually given them to our friends. But here is the scoop for this Jake-&-the-Pirates-inspired baby shower invitation. I had a special request from the mom-to-be to make a single large invite to post at work, and a treasure map a la Goonies came to mind. The mom-to-be told me what she wanted the invite to say, and I used Word to type up the invite, using the font Blackadder which simply was perfect for this pirate theme. I cut craft paper I had on hand into legal size 8 1/2 x 14" (my printer ultimately determined the width) and printed out the invite. I "attempted" to char the edges of the craft paper, but as you can see along the bottom right hand corner, the flame was harder to control than I thought (fire honestly still scares me!), so I gave up and decided to create a faux finish. I ripped the edges of the craft paper in a haphazard way, and used my blending tool and Distress Inks in Black Soot, Vintage Photo, and Walnut Stain--just as good as the real thing I think! I created the images using my Cricut, and pasted them onto the invite. I hand drew the rest. Ahoy! My treasure map invite is complete!

Fingerprint Tree Guest Book for Bridal Shower

Years ago I attended a bridal shower during which the bride's sister created a cute way of recording the names of guests who attended the event. The "guest book" was basically a tree trunk with branches, and each guest pressed their thumb into a green ink pad and left their fingerprint along the tree branches. I have since then seen various versions of this guestbook, and I wanted to help one of my friends create this for her sister's bridal shower. I could have drawn or painted a tree, but I decided to create the tree trunk using a Cricut die cut. I used a wood grain stamp over the tree and Distress ink to make it look more like wood.The letters and numbers were cut out again using the Cricut, and covered with Wink of Stella and Glossy accents. The banner flags were made using the Stamps of Life alpha4banners and sampler2love stamp sets. The tree looks great and is "frame-able" both before and after the fingerprints.

Before

What it would look like in a black matted frame

After all the guests have "signed"

The Finished Product