Mother's Day - You Are Made of Wonderful for GDP035

What a beautiful Mother's Day!  It was warm, sunny and filled with so much joy and love.  And sick kids... 

At 5am this morning our middle son woke up crying.  He had thrown up in his bed.  By 9am he was on his second bath of the morning and our youngest wasn't feeling the greatest either.  Lots of clean up and cuddles before church.  But the kids are feeling much better and I wouldn't trade the yucky parts of the best job in the world for anything!

I hope you had a wonderful Sunday too!  We spent the day with my husbands parents, grandparents and his aunt and uncle and cousin. Good food, cake (more on that later this week), fun at the park and a campfire.  God is good and I'm grateful for His many blessings.

I wanted to share with you the card I made for my sweet Mother-in-law.  I absolutely love this new technique I discovered last week.  You can stretch and smash the Honeycombs and make a very cool embellishment.

The calligraphy "mom" is not Stampin' Up! but I love it too much not to use it! :)

For the cards background and the heart around "mom", I used the Project Life stamp set called Memories in the Making.  I love the little cluster of swirls - it makes such a fun background!  You don't have to use the PLxSU sets just for your scrapbook pages...

I am entering this card in this week's "Project Life" theme challenge over at the Global Design Project.

Hopefully by mid-week I can start a page for the challenge too!  I took lots of cute pictures of the boys yesterday.  Sure is great being their momma! :)

I hope you enjoy the rest of your day! 

Blessings to you!

-Holly 

Picture Perfect Mother's Day for TGIFC52 & Giveaway!

Just a quick post today to remind you of a few important things:

1 - The TGIF Challenges site just turned ONE and we have a giveaway! (ends tomorrow)

2 - The TGIF Challenges weekly challenge is all about MOMS <3 (also ends tomorrow)

3 - Mother's Day is less than 2 weeks away!

Guess you better get stamping!

Here's a card I made last night - and not quite sure if I will give it to my mom or my MIL since they both read my blog!  Either way, I hope it gives you an idea for this awesome Picture Perfect stamp set.

I will say it again and again... I'm not a big floral fan when it comes to stamping, but SU! is doing a pretty good job at persuading me!  I love these roses and how beautiful they look with the different shades.  Really gives it a 3D look.

To make this a true Mother's Day card, I inked the 'mother' part of the sentiment from Crazy About You and stamped the background.  I stamped the word off before stamping the background because I wanted it to be subtle, but I think it may be too subtle.  Can you see it?

If you have time, head on over to TGIF Challenges and play along!  You have until 10am PST Thursday, April 28th!

Blessings!

-Holly 

You're a Great Catch! - GDP031 and Guest Designer Eli!

I have a special treat for you today!  I have my youngest (and first) guest designer!  If you follow me here on Instagram, you may have seen my little Eli watercoloring with me last week.  We were attempting to make bubble stationary with soap, water and food coloring.  It was an epic fail - certainly didn't work out like I remember as a child.  So we decided to get some reinkers out with watercolor paper and do something different!  Eli had fun and I was so amazed by the job he did!

So this weekend I sat down and made a card with the paper.  I received the From Land to Sea stamp set in the mail on Friday and wanted to try it out.  I was really pleased with the card and was planning to blog about it today when I saw the new challenge at Global Design Project was "nature"... PERFECT!  Btw, I'm so honored that I was chosen as GDP29's pick!  Thank you everyone! <3

(Click on the image below to go to the site and see all of the other nature inspired cards)

I love the marlin in the stamp set.  When we went on the KLove Cruise with my inlaws in January, we stopped at a Guy Harvey restaurant and store in the Cayman Islands.  I had never heard of the guy "Guy" but his artwork is amazing.  Marlins are one of the things he paints.  So I was inspired to use the blue and purple from the paper Eli made and used the Lost Lagoon and Blackberry Bliss for the marlin too.

I used corrugated paper to make it look like the fish was mounted on wood.  I thought the texture would look better than stamping the hardwood stamp in brown.   I colored the fins using the clear Wink of Stella and found the perfect sentiment from Settin' Sail.  (It's a current photopolymer set with SU!)

Because I stamped the image on Coaster Board, when I colored it using an Aqua Painter, the paper curled.  I wasn't at all upset about it - made it look like a real fish that was mounted!

Thank you for stopping by today! I hope that you are inspired to make your own background paper!  Be sure to head on over to Global Design Project's blog and see some more!

Blessings!

-Holly 

Sophisticated Script & Suite Sayings - Mixing It Up for FabFri83 & GDP029

I'm doubling everything up today!  TWO posts, TWO different stamp companies mixing TWO sentiment sets and TWO challenges in this post... I actually had time to stamp last night! Yay!

I first saw this sketch a few days ago and loved the simplicity.  Both of the cards are using this sketch.  I may have stretched it a little, but it's just how I interpreted the sketch :)

I had just received my Sophisticated Script stamp set from Concord & 9th on Monday and couldn't wait to try it out.  I'm a pretty loyal SU! girl - never blogged about any other stamp set, but I absolutely loved this calligraphy look.  Heck, maybe SU! will come out with something very similar in the new catalog!  

I also love the sentiment set called Suite Sayings in the Occasions catalog.  Here I took the "for being you" part and added the thanks from the Sophisticated Script set.  Those letters lined up so easily!

For the second card using the Fab Friday sketch, I paired the colors from the Global Design Project blog. I'll be honest and say that I got these colors out, glanced at the (already great) submissions and thought "nah... I'll skip this week".  But later on that night I decided to make one more card mixing the C&9th set and the Suite Sayings and thought I'd make this a card I could give to my hubby. 

I do love the orange and it reminded me of my husband's orange Jeep.  I decided to add the chevron embossed layer to look like tire tracks and the sentiment... well, it speaks for itself.

The colors are a great masculine combo, but I did add some Wink of Stella to the word "smiles" just for fun!

Here I stamped the "smiles" out in Bermuda Bay first.  Then I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to line up the "my heart" and "just thinking of you".  

I'm happy with how they both turned out and hope they inspire you to mix things up!  

Make sure to head on over to Fab Friday and the Global Design Project blogs to check out all of the great inspiration!

See you back here Friday for another TGIF Challenge!

-Holly

TGIFC48 - Remix with Sprinkles on Top!

Happy Friday everyone!  I hope you are excited about this month's remix challenge with TGIF Challenges.  I always thought the idea was so fun and clever - so much to challenge you with :)  Want to play along??

Pick 2 or all 3 of the challenges below.  Make sure to mention us in your post and you're all set!

Can you believe March has almost come and gone??  I cannot believe how fast this month has gone by.  And actually, I can't believe how fast this week went!  I realized yesterday afternoon that my card for this month's remix was due last night and I was running out of daylight! I literally took over 90 pictures of this card.  

I know. I'm crazy.

I took pictures outdoors, indoors, under my Ott light... 

I really wanted you to be able to see all the details.  

I used the no-line watercoloring technique on the cones and ice cream and added some Pink Pirouette splatter on the card too.  But my favorite part of the card are the mini ice cream cones and the Dazzling Diamonds circles around the bigger cone.  Both of these stamps come from the Project Life set in the Occasions catalog called Memories in the Making.  

I hope this subtle sweet tooth card inspires you to mix it up with us!  Make sure you head on over to TGIF Challenges and see what the other team has come up with too!

Happy Easter! HE IS RISEN!

-Holly

Love You Sew!

I have been visiting my parents this week in PA.  My mom is my upline and has a bigger stamp collection than I do... So lucky for me, I get to ink some up that I don't own!

Sometimes this is good, sometimes it's bad!  She can be quite the enabler. 

This set is the hostess set from the Occasions Catalog called Love You Sew.  Pretty cute, huh?

I love the look of real stitches on cards too!  It's one of my favorite things to do on a card.

 

And of course I had to add some extra on the inside.  Now I have to pick which friend gets the card! I have many that love sewing, including my mom!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Holly

Congrats on Your Retirement!

 

Today my dear friend Kellie is retiring from the Air Force after 20+ years of dedicated service and sacrifice.  She looks way to young to be retiring doesn't she??

I'm so glad our paths crossed during my military career.  I can honestly say I have never worked for someone so caring and devoted.  Congrats on your career Kel!  Thanks for all you do!

 

Here is the card I made her.  I had this in mind as soon as I saw the set - driving off into a sunset - great way to start an adventure =)

 

 

I used the Shimmer White Cardstock which is perfect for watercoloring and it has a shimmer already on it - even after you add color!  Cool, right?  I did add some Wink of Stella to the balloons for some extra glitz.

 

I did break out an old retired set.  Comes in handy for my military friends. :)

 

Thanks for stopping by!  Leave some love for my friend Kellie!

 

-Holly