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 

TGIFC53 - Casing April Favorites!

Wow!  What a great turn out we had last week for the two challenges over at TGIF Challenges!  We had such great cards for the "All About Mom" theme and you all did a great job helping us celebrate our first blog birthday!  We will announce who won the free stamp set soon :)

Usually at the end of the month we do our Remix challenge .. But things have changed and I'm excited to say we are now doing something different at the end of the month.  Now instead of mixing 2 or more of the monthly's challenges together, YOU get to pick your inspiration.

You could pick any card from April - a design team member, a challenger, a winner... YOU decide! 

So for today's card, I chose Krista Frattin's card.  I love her chic style and soft color choices.  She has been one of my favorite designers since I saw her at Convention a few years ago.  (Long story short, I actually thought she was Mindy from BadaBing Paper-Crafting.  I went up to her and told her I loved her blog and then said, you're Mindy Backes right?.... yeah... that was embarrasing.)  Fast forward a few years and I'm on a Design Team with her! Say whaaaaa? 

I really like the technique Krista used on her background.  She sponged the white cardstock with versamark ink and embossed it with silver.  However, mine didn't look as cute.  I decided to stamp the background with the Watercolor Wash stamp in So Saffron ink.  I used the Botanical Builder framelits and cut white and vellum flowers.

The strip of filter paper is actually a Honeycomb Embellishment that I stretched apart and flattened out.  I did not have any filter paper, but I'm loving the way this looks! Might have to try the other colors.

So this card is for my best friend.  Her and her husband adopted little E last September, so this will be her first Mother's Day.  They waited years to be placed with a child and I'm so happy for them. God is good! :) 

Hope to see you playing along this week!  You can head on over to TGIF Challenges for all the links for April's challenges.  Pick and choose something that inspires you and make it your own! 

Have a great weekend!

-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 

OSAT Blog Hop - Mother's Day

Welcome to the OSAT blog for April!  If this is your first time with us, I'm glad you're here!  And if you joined us last month, thanks for stopping by again!  Make sure to check out all of the talented ladies and gents in the hop!  Lots of talent to share :)  We will be making 2 projects each month so make sure to check back on the second Thursday each month. 

This month's theme is Mother's Day.  This was kind of a bummer at first for me because I knew my mom would likely read my blog and see her card early! (Hey ma!)  I don't like to ruin surprises.  But I figured since she would more than likely see the card, I had to make sure I was allowed to use this photo.  This is one of her favorites of her and my grandma.  I love this picture too and had it hanging on my fridge.  Then last week my friend sent me a photo of a card she made her sister with an old B&W photo on the front and I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

(Thanks Karen!)

I cut the flowers from the painted blooms DSP and added some dimensionals to add some detail.  The MOM were leftovers from another Mother's Day card I recently blogged.   I embossed the sentiment in blackberry bliss with clear embossing powder.  

You can read it as "mom you make me happy" or "you make me happy mom" :)

I kept the inside fairly simple by just adding the same DSP and ribbon from the front.

The second project is a small trinket box made with the bow builder punch, painted blooms DSP, blackberry bliss ribbon & tiny treat box.  I cannot take credit for the big bow - good ol' Pinterest!  

The tag and sentiment are from the Handpicked/From the Garden bundle. 

Perfect for jewelry or chocolate :)

I hope you all enjoyed my creations!  I did save one last Mother's Day surprise for next month and I will share the sappy stuff later.  :)

  Make sure to "pin" your favorite cards from the hop!  Click the "next" button and head over to see what James has in store.  They call him the "Stampin' Stud" and he's a pretty talented guy!  Thanks for joining us!

-Holly

Darla

Eva

Tina 

Elizabeth

Andrea

Megan

Debbie

Holly - that's me :)

James

Diane

Maggie 

Wynne

Martie

Justin

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