Cocoa cards on their way to college ;- )

     Well, the cards have been on their way for a few days now, but my husband believes in sharing and shared his nasty cold virus with me (which may have some home from college in the first place with our son, but he doesn't usually get very sick.) There are 14 cards in total, but only 10 were still here for there photo shoot ;- ) The cards for the guys all use the same pattern paper, while I use a few different pattern papers on the ones for the gals.

     The image is from Bugaboo Digi Stamp and I won it during a blog hop from Cely (Creating in Carolina) back during Christmas in July. I colored it digitally, which sure makes making multiples easy ;- ) and cut them out with the large oval nestability. The pattern papers are all from DCWV Holiday Collection Christmas Stack. The mats are a Bazzil paper from Archiver. The ribbon was scavenged from boxes of Godiva Chocolates over many years ;- ) (Yea! Hubby) I used Viva Decor Pearl Pens, to add the pearl dots, on the sentiment, which is from Hero Arts Big Hugs (stamped with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and clear embossed) and also Sickles on the hearts for the gal cards, but only Stardust pens by Sakura to the hearts on the guy cards. Oh, and of course there is inking! The oval for the sentiment was cut on the Cricut using the Gypsy and Accent Essentials, after making sure the keep proportions was unchecked. A friend came over the first day and helped me cut our all of the images, mats, paper and card bases, so a special shout-out to Diana for her help!!!! Her daughter will get her card this week ;- )

     On the first cards, which went out before I took photos, I used pattern paper on the inside, but realized that the sentiment inside covered so much, that it was a waste, so I then just used more of the Bazzil card stock to mat the sentiment. The fonts in the sentiment are LD Penelope (from Lettering Delights) and Kingthings Christmas (the snowy font, available as a freebie Here or at dafont, but dafont was down for maintenance when I went to link to them.) I had added a post-it to the cocoa, because it required the addition of milk instead of water and I wanted to be sure they noticed that. I embossed a stamp from Inkadinkadoo's Warm Holiday Wishes with silver glitter finish.

     Sorry, about the photo, but the sun came out from behind the clouds and I usually photo after the sun is well past this window, but they needed to get into their envelopes. I created eveloboxes with The Ultimate Crafter's Companion for each of these cards (sorry, I didn't photo them), so there was enough room for them to fit. My son said his college treated his card like a package and sent him an e-mail when it arrived and he had to pick it up from the package person.

     Hope your week is full of inspiration and warm weather. We are expecting great weather here ;- ) Thanks for stopping by and I'd appreciating hearing from you! Your comments mean so much to me. Feel free to ask me any questions too!

Progressing on in the Challenge ;- )

     Today's card used the colored digital image provided by Happi Scrappin Doddles for the Progressive Challenge (#12) at Creative Digital Art Center (CDAR) here. This is the last challenge in this round so you can join the next group of challenges for free, so head on over.

     Correction, this is only #11 and it will cost $1 to get in the next round because there is 1 round left before the next group of challenges, but the images are so wonderful, $1 is nothing, for such amazing images. So come and check them out ;- )

     I used the large scalloped oval nestie to cut the image and matted it on blue card stock embossed with Styalized Flowers by Sizzix. The pearlized orange card stock is by Crafter's Companion. The butterfly, flower and leafy element is an SVG from  Images by Heather M. She has many great freebies and you can find her here. I cut it twice to get the butterfly and flowers separate and then added stickles, Pearl Pen and gel ink to the butterfly as well as Me and My Big Ideas gems to the flowers. I also inked the image with Spiced Marmalade distress ink. I plan on sending this card to my aunt in order to just send her a little
cheer ;- )

     I also finished the inside of this card. You may remember, that I was sending it to my friend's daughter and you can find the details on the front here (it's only 2 posts below), but I wanted to share the inside with you.

     I used Print Shop and the border is from that program. The main font is Frazzle and the font in the signature is Black Jack. The doodles are a font called Wendy Doodles which is a freebie and you can find it here. You can check dafont.com for the other two. I've shared a link for Black Jack in a previous post, but dafont should have them both for free. I then colored in the doodles with glitter and gel pens and matted them all and inked with Dusty Concord.

     Thanks for floating by yourselves ;- ) Have a great day and please leave a comment before you go!

Wedding time of year.

     Today's card is a wedding card. Our friend's son is getting married. I used pattern paper that I had picked up at Hobby Lobby from Paper Studio. The stamps were Inkadinkado Spring mini assortment from JoAnn's (I think, either that or Michael's). The scalloped oval was made with nesties. I used a  Icy White Viva Decor Pearl Pen to make the embellishment from the birds to the heart.  I'm not sure why the embossing wasn't coming out very well. The embossing on the card, isn't the only ones I did. I made many attempts to get these. I re-package my embossing powder into different containers, so I'm not sure which gold metallic powder this is, because I couldn't locate the original container.

     On the inside, I used a stamp from Inkadinkado (Wedding/Anniversary set) and some stickers on my digital sentiment. The font is LDWedding from Lettering Delights.

     What would I do differently. Well, I meant to tip the sentiment on the front, but I should have tipped it more, because it just looks crooked. I wish the the embossing turned out better. What type of embossing powder do you like, for metallic embossing?

     While I was out in my yard today, I was greeted with this.

    Happy little volunteer flowers, peeking at me from near my patio. I only put potted flowers here, but some snuck out and have come up again ;- ) What a nice surprise!

     Oh, I want to add the Jacilyn Dashwood is having a  candy give-away on her blog. Click here to go there.

     Thanks for stopping by and looking at what I created today. Please leave me a comment and tell me what you think. It really means a lot to me, to know you were here. I hope your day will have a happy surprise in it as well. Have a great one!

Friends are turning 65?!

     Having my son home is making  it hard to get a card done, every other day. I am soooo glad he is home. I'm just not getting as much done ;- )  I have to have this card done for a party, so I thought I'd better do it today. I used my Expression and Create a Critter. The background paper is from Basic Grey's Granola 12 x 12 paper pad. The bear is cut at 2 1/14 inches and popped up on the card. I used a bunch of scraps for the layers. I used a white gel pen to highlight his eyes. The pinwheel and hat are from the page with the cat from the same cartridge. I used Blueberry Pie paper from Archivers and some scrap yellow pattern paper with white swirls in it. They didn't show up well  in the picture and I was too tired to re-do them, sorry. I went over the swirls with the clear glitter gel pen and added a button with Martha Stewart twine. I also added yellow Viva Decor Pearl Pen to the ball at the top of the hat. The hat and pinwheel were popped up twice as high as the bear. The words were cut from the Phrase on the page with the cat at 2 inches with paper from Basic Grey's Granola and the Blueberry Pie. The top layer was run through the Big Shot with Swiss Dots and popped up. The dots have glitter added by the clear glitter pen as well.

     On the inside, I used the Blueberry Pie paper and a striped pattern from the Basic Grey Granola pad to form a mat for the computer generated sentiment. The fonts I used are SNF Jester Fool (from Scrap n Fonts), Rasp (for the word "age") and Tabitha. The embellishment at the center top, is from JoAnn Craft Essentials Birthday adhesive bubble icons. The candles on either side of it were give to me by a friend as part of a present with a number of other mixed embellishments.

     What would I do different? Maybe add some inking. What do you think? Thanks for stopping by and sharing some of your precious time with me. If you have a moment more, I'd really love to hear from you, so please leave a comment. Thanks!