Retiring to a Rose Garden

Hello, fellow crafty folks! =)

I have been a busy stamper the past two weeks and have officially made more cards in the last two weeks than in the 6 months before that. Which feels good, but whew!

Here's the first... which is also the one with the most time invested. Our department VP retired after 40 years and is an avid gardener. She's been talking about looking forward to building a rose garden now that she'll have the time, so a group of us gathered together and got a rather hefty gift card for a local garden shop. My task was to create a card with enough space for 30 or so people to write messages and to 'package' the gift card. As soon as they said "roses", I knew this one had to be a Magnolia stamp. This little Tilda is one of the first stamps I bought when I officially discovered cardmaking online two years ago, and my coloring has most definitely improved since the last time I used her...

Isn't she sweet?

The rose paper from which I took my color inspiration is from a rather inexpensive Colorbok packet I was given as a gift last Christmas. I loved the deep burgundy and dusty pink together with the slightly shabby distressed look.  I cut them with stitched panel dies from My Favorite Things. Love the effect of that little bit of stitch detail! I used a bit of Walnut Distress Ink to age the edges of all my papers and the Spellbinders diecut I used for my image.   I colored Tilda, the Magnolia leaves die cuts, the largest rose, and the four little rosebuds with Copics so that they all matched.  On the image I used a bit of Liquid Pearl around her and some Lemon Ice Stickles on the rose centers.
 On the Wild Orchid Crafts flowers, just  a touch of Wink of Stella on the large rose and Stardust Stickles on some of the smaller pink roses gave them a bit of sparkle. A bit of creamy lace, a few pearls, and a little Magnolia dragonfly die finished off the front panel.



Now, for the really fun part...  again, there were about 30 people to sign the card, so I had to find a way to make the card a lot bigger... so I went for an accordion fold that goes on and on for about 7 more panels!

I had to glue together a number of burgundy card bases. I colored six sets of these Magnolia rose stamps, then fussy cut them before shimmering them up with some clear Wink of Stella.

Each panel is a triple layer of the Colorbok rose paper, a piece of white cardstock colored with the same YG95 that I used on the rose stamps, and another piece from the same Colorbok paper pad. All the edges are inked with either Walnut or Peeled Paint Distress Ink.

(The pages look slightly different colors here because there was daylight on the right panel but not the left when I photographed the panels. Oops!)

For the final page, I searched the internet for quotes about gardens. I loved this one:

"I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself. 

And I find sufficient purpose for my day. - Robert Brault"

...so I typed it up on the computer, added my own note below it and printed directly onto the Colorbok paper. This panel was also going to hold the gift card, so I cut a notch out of it using the bottom bit of a Magnolia tag. I used the same tag to cut a tag from white cardstock, colored it with YG95 and coated it with clear Wink of Stella.
When everyone had signed, the tag was attached to a little envelope that held the gift card. Another little dragon fly perches on the the bottom of this panel as well.

To finish off the project, I created a 1" thick box out of gold metallic paper and created a little label for the front.  The box was done envelope style, with a little velcro closure on the back.

Everyone loved it... it even made her cry - in a good way, of course! =)  I won't be doing something so elaborate again for a while... it took at least 2 hours just to color and cut out all those roses for the panels. But it was well worth it in the end. A special card for a special event!

I'll be popping over to a few challenges to link my little Tilda creation...
Tilda's Town Challenges - Challenge #129 Anything Goes
Lovely hAnglar or Sweet Magnolia Challenge - Challenge #106 Sparkle
Midweek Magnolias Challenge - Challenge #101 Glitter, Lace and Pearls
Crafting When We Can Challenge - Challenge #82 Use Your Markers

My next two posts will be all about birthdays! Woohoo! Til then, happy crafting!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Anything Goes for Kids - Sweet Spring Birthday Girl

Happy Saturday to you, my crafty friends!

I cannot tell you how glad I am to have survived to the weekend. Too bad it's only two days before it's back to the trenches. There has been so much going on at work lately that my boss is getting stressed out not having enough time to feel like he is on top of everything. Late yesterday I managed to capture him for enough time to plot out the next two weeks' schedule so I can cancel meetings and reschedule service so he has some time to work on the projects. Hopefully next week we'll be surfing the wave instead of being tumbled under it as it crashes into shore. LOL

Earlier this week I finished a card that I thought would be for today's post... and realized I'd used the wrong images! Apparently my boss's mental disorganization this week was catching. LOL So I got my hands on the really sweet images from Sylvia Zet's Wee Stamps, one of our two generous sponsors for our Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge... (it's an easy one!)... ANYTHING GOES! Yep, whip up any kind of card for a kid and you can enter it as the SAS4K challenge from now until June 1st! Randomly picked winners will get 3 digital stamps of their choice from Wee Stamps or Karen's Doodles, our fantastic sponsors for this challenge!

Even better... this challenge we will be linking up with Paper-Crafting Journey (my other DT!) so you'll be able to enter your creation in both challenges and have twice the fun! The PCJ challenge goes live Thursday, May 24... but you'll be able to backlink as long as you've also entered it in SAS4K, so you don't have to wait to post your cards at SAS4K! =)

On to my card for SAS4K... this is Suzi with Bunny...

Isn't she totally sweet? I love Sylvia Zet's images, but the hair has always put me off. LOL There are stamp images like Wee Stamps, Mo Manning and Make It Crafty that I love, but that I just haven't felt ready to tackle yet. My coloring is getting better and I'm hoping to have some time to practice lots and lots this summer when I can be outside while the pups play, the kitty lounges in the sun and I can color while ignoring the growing grass and the weedy edge of the backyard. LOL Since I was a bit hurried this time, I'm not altogether happy with her hair, but she'll do. And that face is so sweet, it distracts you from her hair. LOL

I colored her with a combination of Copics and ProMarkers. I tried my hand at one of my favorite Coops Tricks... shading darker on one side of the image and barely or not at all on the other side to get some depth. It lightened up a bit on my photo, so she doesn't quite pop off the page, but I like the effect and it does look better on the actual card, so I'll be practicing and borrowing that technique again. (thanks, Coops!)

I used Liquid Pearls to color the flowers in her basket. I got a little carried away and the white center dots spread a bit more than I would have liked, but I love the colors and the bit of shine.

I even did a BOW on this card, can you believe it? I used a pale greenish-yellow ribbon on my card and paired it with a Martha Stewart border punch... I can't remember its name right now, but I love the art deco shell design. A little elegance.

The papers are from the Spring Fling DCWV line... I picked up the 180-page pack of combined Spring Fling and Summer Days for less than 10 bucks. Not that I needed more papers. (Has anyone created a Paper-Addicts Anonymous group yet? I seriously need an intervention. LOL)  Paper hoarding aside, I love the rose design and found the perfect little WOC rose to match in my stash. The sentiment was done on the computer and I used one end of a Nestie Labels Eighteen to create a tag. The image panel was popped up on foam dots. (can't do a card without those!) Some Kaiser pearls, a little Distress Inking in Spun Sugar, Scattered Straw and Shabby Shutters on my edges and done!

My teamies over at SAS4K have created some really wonderful cards using not only Wee Stamp images but a few great Karen's Doodles, too, so get on over to the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge post today! Can't wait to see what fantastic kids cards you create... and even better, you can choose to donate them to kids in hospital by following the guidelines here.

Zoe just ran away with the cat's jingle ball, so I'm off to get it back before the silly creature swallows it... in the meantime, happy crafting and I'll see you all soon!

Christy

Tie-Dye and Sparkles

Hi! Popping in to post a birthday card I made for a coworker. She's in to the late 60s early 70s hippie tie-dye Grateful Dead era and not much into froufrou flowers and such, so when I saw a sheet of glittered tie-dye paper at Michaels I knew I had to have it.

I used a slightly oval card that started as a snowman's head that I found in the Christmas clearance at Michaels as the base and covered it up with the tie-dye paper, using the center of the paper where the spiral was nice and tight and I could get all the colors. =) Sooooooo pretty!

I didn't want to cover too much of it up, so for my lovely Hero Arts sentiment, stamped with VersaMark on a bit of Spellbinders acetate packaging and used Winter Wonderland embossing powder from Stamp-N Stuff, an opaque white with silver glitter in it. I did warp the plastic a bit... okay a lot, but I let it cool down under an acrylic block which helped get it flattened out enough. Yet another lesson learned! =) I used a Heather Ellis Pure Innocence image and colored her with Copics and popped her up over a strip of tie-dye ribbon I picked up at WalMart a couple months ago.

I stayed simple with my embellies, using a couple WOC Summer Blooms. The largest pearl I had looked a little too small once I had it on, so I filled in the gap around it with some Stickles that I brushed up along the flower petals. I am so addicted to glitter and sparkle now (I can't count the number of times I catch my inner crafty child thinking, "oooooooooooh, shiny!" LOL

I filled in the hearts in the sentiment with Ruby Red Liquid Pearls so I could hide the foam dots and decided to try to make some matching little heart embellies. I squeezed them out onto a craft sheet and let them dry, then Glossy Accented them to the card. After the first couple I got the hang of using just enough to keep a recognizable heart shape even after they oozed around and flattened out. (Euw, that sounds so gross! LOL) I did a really simple couple of circles on the inside and accented those with some Crystal Stickles and a few more hearts.

It's nice and colorful and girly but not too frou-frou, so I'm hoping it fits the bill =) 

Only one challenge for my card tonight--I'm posting it over at Hiding in My Craft Room where this week's challenge was "Freestyle". Nice and easy. =) haha

Hope you all have a really great weekend!  See you soon!

Happy Crafting,

Christy