Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Special Delivery: Baby Boy


Ever since I saw the film "Red Tails" I have been wanting to use this little airplane set. I didn't really have a reason, so I kept putting it aside. Since I have gotten back into blogging, I have been visiting some of my favorite stampers. I have sadly realized that while I have been away, so have others. In fact, some of them are just gone. But, I did visit Julee Tilman's blog to discover that she recently had twin boys! How exciting! So...I decided to make a card to send to her darling little twins. She had hoped for some to decorate their NICU walls. I decided that while I was making one, I may as well make two so that I could have one on hand. I think this is a practice that I will keep up on!
Of course that meant that I could use this darling little airplane from PTI. In fact, all of the stamps I used are from PTI. I used quite a few sets to assemble these two cards. Some of them are sets that I have hardly inked, so that felt good. I also used quite a few dies as well. All of them are from PTI except for the circle piece; it is a nestibilities die.







To begin with, I chose my papers which are Authentique and I picked them up at Ellen Hutson's online store. You can see the link on my sidebar under "Places I love to shop". She ships things super fast and she has a great selection of popular items. I love these papers and thought they worked nicely for a baby boy, or two! LOL! Oh....I almost forgot....the sketch is one of the Verve sketches. I saw it while I was on Julee's blog reading about the twins and thought it would be perfect with the set I wanted to use. Now....if you know me, you know that I seem to have a slight problem sticking to sketches, but I think I did pretty good considering.
After I picked my papers, I got to work die-cutting the circle pieces. I stamped onto the Kraft cardstock using Palette Noir ink. I paper pieced the body of the plane using some of the coordinating papers. Once I had it glued in place, I colored in the rest of the plane using copic markers. Once that was all done, I added glossy accents to the body of the plane, the circle on the tail and the nose. I wish that you could see how cute it all looks from the photos.



I set those pieces aside so that they could dry and got to work cutting out the banner pieces. I realize that the alphabet I used was a little large, but I think it looks okay. I also took the time to die-cut a few buttons since I knew that they would need some time to dry as well. Once that was all done, I got to work on the ticket pieces. I used quite a few stamps on these, but I think they turned out quite nicely. I actually hadn't intended to use this stamp set, but while I was rummaging for the ticket set, I stumbled across this neglected set. I thought it would be perfect since I was using the airplane image.





Once every last detail was dry or stamped, I got to work assembling the cards. I needed to machine stitch the felt rick rack border to the left panel. There is something really gratifying about machine stitching on felt, but I think I have already mentioned that. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do. I also wanted the linen twine "ties" for the banner to actually be tied to the card, so I used a needle and thread to get it through the cardstock. I don't think it should be going anywhere now. Once I got everything done, I thought that the right side looked a little light since the left side was so heavy with detail. I added a quick piece of dark coordinating pattern paper to fold over the edge and added a quick line of zig-zag stitching. I thought it did it's job nicely to balance things out. Thanks for fluttering by!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Celebrate Today and Everyday

My friend celebrated her birthday at the beginning of March, but I didn't get her gift to her until last week! Shame on me! I did, however, have a lot of fun getting her gift together. I was going for a "sewing" theme, so I had to use this cute button stamp set from PTI. I haven't really had a chance to sit and fiddle with all of the button die-cuts and stamps until now.

I decided on all of my papers first and then worked on the cute buttons. The tiny circle ones were die-cut and then stamped using the stamps that come in the set. The larger scalloped buttons were die-cut out of pattern paper. I added some glossy accent stuff to all of them and then let them dry.

While I was letting them dry, I got to work on the fun felt flower. I die-cut four flowers out of felt and then four flowers out of tulle. I am sure most of you know how to make these flowers; they are super easy and super cute. I hot glued it all together and added it to the card. I also die-cut some felt ric-rac which I then layered onto some lace and stitched to the card. This is one of my favorite parts of the card. I really like the way sewing looks on felt. The sentiment stitched to the top left corner is from an Autumn set from PTI, but it is one of my favorites. I also stamped the "superior quality" image onto a piece of pattern paper and paper pieced it onto the button card for some extra color and detail.

The reason why I was going for a "sewing" theme is because I sewed a cute little coin purse for her gift to which I added a gift card to one of our favorite quilting/fabric shops, some gum, hand sanitizer and some yummy lip gloss. I will post the coin purse on my "Thimbles and Thread" blog soon, but you can see it photographed here with the card. ETA: You can check it out here It isn't a perfect match, but I thought it went pretty well. As far as "matching" goes, I found some fabulous fabric today that is the same print as some of my favorite papers. I will be sewing and card making soon to show you a "perfectly matching" pair!