Sympathy Card - A La Card Monkey

I was invited by the kind crafters at A La Card Monkey to be one of their Guest DTs for this week's challenge - a Sympathy Sketch.  It took me awhile to settle on a color scheme.  Originally I was going to do black and white with a splash of color, but the more I played around with the Cocoa brown, the more I liked it.  

I began by heat embossing the patterned background to give it interest and make it a little fancy.  I stamped the birds in blue after rolling the edges in cocoa to give them that two-tone look.  I put them on some foam tape to make them stand out.  The sentiment panel needed something, so I added a strip of blue there.

The bow and ribbon add the final finishing touch.  Sympathy cards aren't ones I usually make, so this was a nice change of pace.  And I really had fun with the different stamping techniques.  All products are CTMH.

H2H - Simple Sun Card

The theme this week at Heart 2 Heart is Hot, Hot, Hot!  In celebration of summer (which has actually taken a cool turn around here, ironically enough) I crafted this simple sun card:

I thought about embellishing it, but ribbon or more stamped images just made that beautiful blue sky look too cluttered.  So this design stayed clean & simple, which also made it relatively quick to put together - a nice bonus!

The sun is made with a 1 1/2" circle center, stamped with images from Dream Big and Connections on Sunny Yellow cardstock.  I then stamped the pennants from the Pennant Alphabet using Sunflower ink on Sunny Yellow and Sunflower cardstock.  The sky is...well, Sky cardstock, of course!  Last, I used the clouds from Around the Block and stamped them in Pacifica ink.  The sun is attached with foam tape.

The colors are more bright and cheerful than I was able to capture on this cloudy day.  Enjoy the rest of your day!

Child's Birthday Card

I combined two challenges in my latest card creation.  Heart 2 Heart is celebrating kid's birthdays this week and the a la Card Monkey Monkey Challenge #67 is a celebration card with pennant.

I made this card using the new Zoology Stamp Set, which I'm having a lot of fun with.  The animals are stamped in Smokey Plum and Sunflower.  The balloons came from a different set.  I used some embroidery floss to stitch the balloon string around each animal.  The star border and the Celebrate Banner came from the July Stamp of the Month.

Next I layered on some cardstock pennant triangles separated by tiny Licorice Opaques.  You can also see the little dabs of glitter glue I added to some of the stars here:

The result is a whimsical little card.  I think it could be done up in a variety of color palettes and look really cute.  The Sunflower cardstock & ink is kind of overpowering in the pictures, but is less obnoxious in person.  The Smokey Plum isn't as dark as it looks here.  Today was not a good picture-taking day for me!

Christmas Layout - Mistletoe Paper Pack

The Lasting Memories Layout Challenge this week is perfect for people who are way behind in their scrapbooking (like me!)  It's a Christmas theme challenge.  I've been finishing up my layouts from last December, so it was easy to grab one to share.  This one features our annual Christmas cookie-making session.

I started with a layout from the CTMH Magic book, and modified it to fit my photos.  I put the journaling right on the center frame.  The strips of Mistletoe paper have edges inked in New England Ivy.  I inked the edges of the whole layout, too.

I did a continuous line of paper strips on the right page, and used two of them to highlight the words "Special Times" cut with my Cricut.  This is a great layout for using up scraps.  All products are CTMH.

New Product Blog Hop

The wonderful Tresa Black at Fabulously Artsy is hosting a CTMH new product blog hop.  I have a small contribution - a set of 3x3 thank you cards I happened to be working on.

I used the new Elemental Paper Pack, as well as the Zoology Stamp Set.  The card bases are made from the Desert Sand cardstock included in the paper pack.  Then I layered on some of the new, heavier-weight B&Ts, flipping over the paper on two of them to get different patterns.  

I love the Zoology Stamp Set, but those little numbers on the tickets are ridiculously hard to work with!  They are SO tiny.  If you use them, plan on going for a fun, random pattern to your numbers instead of trying to get them evenly spaced in a line!  It will save you a lot of heartache (and maybe a headache, too)!  The animals in the set are adorable.  I used sentiments from a different set to complete the tickets since I wanted these to be thank you cards, although the stamp set does come with some cute phrases.

You can continue hopping by using the links below.  Thanks for visiting!