Two of my favourite cards...

I was looking for a picture on one of my sd cards and came across these two pictures.  They are of two cards I made in the last little while that I really like.  This first card is a card I made for my niece's birthday this past week.  I made the card last month because she lives down east and I have to get stuff in the mail a couple weeks ahead of time.  I used one of my Pink Cat Studio stamps that I hadn't used yet (I bought it last year) and I used a new Spellbinders die set (Classic Frame) that I got an awesome deal on at Scrapbooker's Paradise (70% off with an addition 25% off that).  I also used a Sizzix die for the little present, and the Martha Stewart Floral Vine deep edge punch.  I don't know who the patterned paper is by - I think I picked it up at the dollar store - and the pink cardstock is either American Crafts or DCWV.  The card base is Wausau Exact Index 110# card stock from Office Depot.  I stamped the image on Domtar Cougar smooth white 130# cardstock (excellent cardstock to use with copics by the way) I love the colour combination of this card and how girly it turned out.  A little bit of sponging before the paper came out of the die and a little bit of glitter and some ribbon and I think it looks cute. :)  I also made this card larger than what I usually make.  I usually make A2 cards (4.25 x 5.5), but this is one is 5x7.  Do you know how hard it is to find a 5x7 envelope if you're not buying a set of cards?  I had to make my own envelope for it - good thing I recently bought the Martha Stewart score board with the envelope jig. Unfortunately, the picture isn't that great.

The second card I made was for a One on One swap at Stampin' Canada.  The theme of the swap was bling, bling and more bling.  I usually don't use a whole lot of bling, but I usually do have some on most of my cards.  Although some of the participants said they had a hard time with this card, this one was easy for me.  I saw the ribbon and the card design just popped into my head.  I used SU! cardstock for the card, the image is a Scrappy Cat stamp set I got at Michaels (on clearance for about $2.99 I think), and I also got the ribbon at Michaels.  I bought a tube of rhinestones from Walmart, and used black stickles and a blood red colour Studio G glitter glue.  I stamped the image in black craft ink and then embossed wtih black detail embossing powder. I then used my glue pen and used different coloured glitter on the body of the bird (Craft Decor ultrafine glitter).  The scallop mat as cut on my Craft Robo using a dingbat font called KutUps and I used the Fiskars threading water punch for the bottom scallop on the red cardstock.  Since the card base is black I adhered a mat of red cardstock and then white 28lb bond paper to the inside.  I cut a swirl on my CraftRobo (downloaded shape from UK Scrappers) and used a Fiskars corner punch on the red cardstock.  I was amazed how this card just materialized inside my head and that the execution ended up looking fairly close to what I had envisioned.  It doesn't happen often that my cards look like what I envision, but when it does, its sooooo great.  Here's what the card looked like with the inside as well:

Well, that's all I have today.  I'm going to work on my husband's birthday card today.  His birthday is next week, so we'll see what I can come up with.

Talk to you later...

Cat