Let me start right off by letting you know that I can't count on all my fingers and toes the number of times I've said that, when I grow up, I want to create papercrafts like Debby Hughes of Lime Doodle Design blog fame! The girl just ROCKS, and today's card is a shameless CASE of her
April 19th post. I've been neglectful of my Silhouette of late, and when I couldn't locate a decent sized bee stamp, pulled the Silhouette out of mothballs and now have it permanently installed at my desktop PC/printer station. I'd previously been pulling it out of storage each time I used it but I'm ashamed to tell you that I didn't get around to pulling it out all that often tho' I'm really pleased with it!
So, okay, confessions aside, today's card is for a coworker and it's a change of venue for me, as I usually do sailing-themed cards for her! Not to mention that when I think of the normal birthday greeting, I sign cards using the images of a hippo, birdie, and two ewes (all of which I have plenty of stamp samples in my stash, naturally), so this is really a change of pace for me! When I spotted Debby's card, I thought to myself, "Self, don't you have a bee stamp in one of those SU floral stamp sets?" ... and "Self, you haven't even USED that honeycomb embossing folder yet, have you?" ... and "Self, I know you've ORDERED that 'happy bee day' stamp set - no, it's not arrived yet (must be on a slow boat from China) - BUT you DO have Kim Hughes' fonts installed on the PC, don't you?!" After searching through my stamp sets and only finding miniscule honey bees, I decided it was time to pull out the Silhouette and that's where I found the bee used on the card. Such a deal, at only 50 center per image AND I still have a credit due me from my original Silhouette purchase (you see, the store I purchased it from gave me $200 in credits when I purchased it for $309 originally). My only regret is that I purchased it BEFORE the SD version came out, so mine's not especially portable!
stamps: n/a (sentiment is PC-generated using Kim Hughes SNF Daisy Jane and SNF Goody fonts);
paper: Neenah's Solar White, Paper Reflections black, and SU's YoYo Yellow card stocks;
ink: n/a (PC-generated sentiment and honeycomb circle);
tools: Cuttlebug w MFT Stamps' Sweet Stack Labels (circle), QuicKutz's No. 73 Number Set, Simon Says Stamp's You, Talk Bubbles 2 dies; and Silhouette w bumblebee shape
I picked up the cutest dollar stamp yesterday, and used it on the inside of today's card - one of imaginisce's Live Loud collection, this one's Drums. Not that anyone in my household plays drums ... it just went nicely with my "you rock" sentiment. My youngest son rocks, and this card's in celebration of his birthday which is this week. We celebrated with extended family last month - a joint celebration held between my two sons' birthdays. Later the immediate family celebrates, as is our tradition, with him selecting the restaurant of his choice, but I'm betting he'll select it "to go."
Today's card was inspired by the lovely and talented Jen Tapler of Jen Tapler Designs blog fame and her February 28th post. You would not believe how long it took me to find my Damask stamp this weekend! I went through all my stamp sets, then all my individual stamps, and finally found this among my Heidi Swapp ones ... literally, within the last 4-5 stamps I own! I'd ignored that group as I thought all I had there were some very large sentiment stamps. Well, I straightened a bit and sorted some loose stamps into holidays/seasons, so it wasn't all for naught!
My first card of the new year is a case study of sorts! I'm forever inspired by Susan Raihala of Simplicity blog fame, and today's is CASE'd from this post. I'd been planning on inking up the Basic Grey "just because ..." stamp for a Valentine's Day card using a punched heart, but found these cute heart rain dots when I went to my punch stash. Using one for the dot on the J and popping up the notebook page adds a bit of dimension to today's CAS card. Thanx for stopping by! And thanx, SusanR, for the inspiration!
