Butterfly Easter card, Freshly Made Sketches #474

 

I'm working on my Easter cards. And I'm doing them a little different this year, the Easter sentiment in inside, and I'm making them pretty spring cards with a simple message on the front. 

One great way to get started is using a challenge, so this one is for this weeks Freshly Made Sketches.

Hop on over to see what everyone else made.
 

I'm using a retired die set for my butterfly, Butterfly thinlits, and Bold butterfly.  I've kept it because I just love the whole set along with a couple other pieces like a stamp set and 2 punches with butterflies. 

The floral die is from the Ornate Border Dies, a gorgeous set of border with an equally pretty stamp set.  

My colors are: Rococo Rose, So Saffron, and white. I watercolored a piece of watercolor paper using my ink pads and water brush, and cut the top part of the big butterfly out of that, then punched the 2 little ones out of the left over.

I used the Noble Peacock Rhinestones on my large butterfly, and reg rhinestones on the two little ones. 

I hope I have inspired you some. Thanks for stopping.

 

Wonderful Romance, Just wanted to say

 

As a Stampin Up demo, most of what I buy in the stamping field is from Stampin Up.  But, I've always been a crafter so I'm always looking at what everyone is doing.   I get reg emails from several sources, often I find product SU doesn't have that looks like fun.  What started as make up brushes has come over to stamping now. I had that first for elsewhere.  SU wisely decided to carry them too, they are fab if you haven't tried them.

I remember when I first started stamping. There wasn't much to be had besides stamps. Stampers would buy lots of different things from all kinds of strange places to use.  One I remember well was from the lumber yard.  It was a product meant to tape walls together and it started showing up on cards. It was a lot of fun back then, but stamping has only gotten better and more fun.

So, I saw a card from one of my mailings that hit a nerve, and this is my take from it. It's not the same anything, it just spoke to me and I went off with an idea. The stamp set here is retired, but it's very much a favorite of mine, it's called Wonderful Romance and has matching dies. There are extra pieces to cut, but I liked it simple this time. 

I used Mango Melody, Soft Seafoam, Gorgeous Grape and white.  

My top layer of card stock was embossed using the Tasteful Textile 3D embossing folder. I love that it lets you add something subtle so your eye is drawn to the center.    I just stamped and embossed on vellum and softly colored on the back side adding my purple centers on the front.  I love the little extra that the dots give to the design. 

This is going out as an Easter card this year. Just got 3 or 4 more to go.

Thanks for stopping.

Art Gallery Thinking of you, JAI#541

 

If I had to choose a favorite tool it would have to be embossing folders, there is just so much you can do with them, especially considering how inexpensive they are.  

This is the Parisian Flourish folder, and I'm using it for the Blended background challenge for Just Add Ink this week. 

It's a gorgeous folder and I added another gorgeous item, the flower in the Art Gallery bundle that is in the new Mini.   It'll be good until the end of June.  

Colors: Rococo Rose, Coastal cabana, Dafffodil delight, Garden Green, Bermuda Bay Black and White. 

Normally I use white on the top on something like this, but something told me to try black, both on top and as a small frame under my background piece. I really like the way the black frames it.

I also used Stitched So Sweetly dies on this for that black cut out.  I considered using a bit larger die in the same set to make a frame instead, but I do love the pop you get this way.

I hope you enjoy.

Stampin Up, Purple birthday card 2. Hydrangea Haven

 

If you saw the last purple card I posted, that was birthday card #1, this is purple birthday card #2.   Such a gorgeous set, will be keeping this forever.  

I layered the 2 pieces together, (DSP and Grape CS) and cut them using the Curvy die at the same time, then slid purple out from under to where I wanted it and glued those down to the white card that was on top of the Highland heather card base after wrapping with the purple ribbon.

I stamped my flower using gold embossing, and die cut that out. Then I used my water brush and ink pad to add just a bit of the lighter purple, then a few blotches of the darker purple, did the same with the greens, Soft sea foam and Granny apple green.

Stamped Happy Birthday from the Piece of Cake set, and gold embossed that too.  Then cut out using a die from Stitched Sweetly dies. 

That was about it, if you haven't seen #1 just scroll down.  Thanks for stopping by.