Hydrangea Birthday Card

Hello again! I made this hydrangea birthday card for a young lady in our family whose favorite color is lavender.

The hydrangea flower is from Walk In My Garden (5 inches). The marquee frame is made using Storybook and Design Studio. I placed a 6 inch marquee shapeinside a 5×7 rectangle so that the shape would cut out leaving the wood patterned paper frame. I cut another 6 inch marquee in cream cardstock and ran that through a Sizzix Damask folder. Here’s a tip I learned out of necessity tonight – my marquee was a little longer than my A2 embossing folder so I took the part that didn’t emboss on the first pass and turned it around and placed it near the bottom of the folder (with most of the embossed marquee sticking out). I then ran it through the embossing machine again. By carefully lining it up with the pattern’s bottom edge, the unembossed tip of the marquee received the needed embossing. Hope this makes sense! 🙂 The frame is raised up with foam dimensionals. I seem to be raising thingsup a lot lately. Guess I’m addicted to the 3-D look! I inked the hydrangea’s edges and the little flowers with brown ink for an aged, distressed look. I then accented the little flowers with pearl adhesives and pinched the petals up a bit. I’m not that tickled with the leaves. I wanted to show the cut lines so I first used a clear ink embossing pen hoping it would darken the lines a bit more than it did. Then I got bold and used some brown ink but it came off too strong, so lastly I resorted to Stardust Stickles to save the flower as much as I could. Sometimes things go the way you want, sometimes they don’t. Overall, I like the idea of the card and its colors so I will try to overlook the leaves.

The inside sentiment was done in Word. The larger font (26 pt.) is called “Waterfalls” which is a free scrapbook font available at Kevin & Amanda’s website. The direct link for this font is here. Just read the terms of use and give proper credit to “Kevin & Amanda” if you post projects online using their fonts. The other font is from Word called “Bookman Old Style” in 18 pt.

Well that’s it! Thanks for checking out my lavender-inspired birthday card! Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July holiday!

~Vanessa

Mother’s Day Cards

I hope all of the mothers out there had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday!  I created my very first mother’s day greeting cards for my mother and mother-in-law this past week and had so much fun making them with my Cricut Expression.  I used the Wild Card, Walk in My Garden, and Storybook cartridges to create the rose and hydrangea cards shown above.  The card base was cut from white cardstock and all of the colored paper came from the My Mind’s Eye “Simply Delightful” paper stack.

Rose Card

Wild Card Cuts ~ Cut a 5 inch scallop card (pg. 32) from white cardstock; made the following cuts from red and white polka dot paper: cut the liner (pg. 32) for the card face and the scallop frame (pg. 32) for the inside of the card at 5 inches; cut “Happy Mother’s Day” phrase (pg. 39) from dark brown paper at 6 inches

Walk in My Garden Cuts ~ Cut a 2 inch pot (pg. 91) and then pressed shift to cut the flower pot rim from dark brown paper; cut four roses (pg. 98) at 2 inches (roses took three cuts  ~ cut the rose with stem in light green, then cut the detailed rose head in red paper by pressing shift, then cut the flower head in pink paper using the blackout feature)

Storybook Cuts ~ Cut a 3 1/2 inch oval in dark brown paper by pressing accent blackout and the shift key (pg. 53); cut a 3 1/4 inch oval in white cardstock by pressing accent blackout and the shift key (pg. 53).  I ran the white oval through my Sizzix embosser using the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder

Used pink gauze ribbon with white polka dots from the Paper Studio pastel ribbon pack (Hobby Lobby)

Hydrangea Card

Wild Card Cuts ~ Cut a 5 inch scallop card (pg. 32) from white cardstock; made the following cuts from multi-color polka dot paper: cut the liner (pg. 32) for the card face and the scallop frame (pg. 32) for the inside of the card at 5 inches; cut “Happy Mother’s Day” phrase (pg. 39) from dark brown paper at 6 inches

Walk in My Garden Cuts ~ Cut a 2 inch vase (pg. 102)  from dark brown paper; cut five hydrangeas (pg. 101) at 2 inches (hydrangeas took three cuts  ~ cut the flower with stem in light green, then cut the flower heads by pressing shift in light blue paper, then cut another set of flower heads in darker blue paper for variety)

Storybook Cuts ~ Cut a 3 1/2 inch oval in dark brown paper by pressing accent blackout and the shift key (pg. 53); cut a 3 1/4 inch oval in white cardstock by pressing accent blackout and the shift key (pg. 53).  I ran the white oval through my Sizzix embosser using the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder

Used light blue gauze ribbon with light blue satin borders from the Paper Studio pastel ribbon pack (Hobby Lobby)