Past Due

I am racking up quite a list of cards to get out to various friends and relations who have celebrated birthdays, need a thank you, and need a lift and I'm slowly catching up. 

This time I took a card base that I had put aside back in November of 2011 when I made two of them while completing a Teapot Challenge using mosaics.  I even had some extra paper roses set aside.  So I positioned them on the card and then added some leaves that I die cut. 

The trick was to be how to get this thing in an envelope.  But, because I was having lunch with it's recipient I didn't have to actually mail it.  So I took a 6 x 9 manilla clasp envelope and cut off about an 3 inches from the top (including the flap and clasp).  Then I punch two holes near the top, slipped the card in and used some decorative string to make a bow to close it up.  It worked perfectly.

On this next card I got to play with some new product.  First, let me say, if you're seeing a strange glowing green cardstock it really is not that color IRL.  This is the new Gumball Green color from SU.  I used my new Decorate a Daisy stamp set and VersaMark ink to stamp those flowers onto the card base.   For the centers, I found I had to use the Stamp-a-ma-jig and I chose to use the Gumball Green ink from the new style stamp pads.  Oooh, are they inky!   You really don't have to use much pressure to get a stamped inked up - this was a new way for me to get a green thumb cleaning the edges of my stamp before I stamped!

I stamped the daisy image two and a partial times with Pumpkin Pie ink on Daffodil Yellow cs and then cut out the layers.  The partial stamped image provided the three petals that I felt were foremost on the daisy to give it even more depth.   On the center circle punched image I used markers doing the whole thing in Daffodil and then adding Pumpkin to the part where the lines criss-crossed to make it look somewhat like gingham. 

The final part was to add the vines from my new Summer Silhouettes set in Gumball Green ink.   This is a thank you for my future DIL's sister for the lovely work that she did preparing the bridal shower. 

A little rambling -

After having not sat down to do some serious stamping for a while now, I was a little frustrated putting this card together.  But this is my luck it seems...... I originally wanted to stamp that flower in the Summer Starfruit ink on the same color paper, but try as I might I could not get the stamp pad to open.  I even had HWNSNBP try it (after giving him a short lesson in how to actually open a stamp pad as he had never done that!) to no avail.  When he suggested a screwdriver I opted to just put it aside and make another color choice.

Then when I went to stamp the vines, I did not realize when I mounted that stamp that it had a flaw in it - a bubble - that prohibited it from making a clean image so I wound up using a marker to fill in.

But, here's where SU is so good.  I called them the next day, and even though I had ordered these things over a month ago, they were most happy to replace them for me.  So I shall be seeing them in the mail in the next couple of days. 

Well, this was a lot of words for these two creations, but I hope you enjoy them.  And I hope to be getting back to more stamping and catching up soon.