Getting Back to Creativity

I must admit that it has been a little difficult getting back into the swing of creating, well actually doing anything much after work these days.  I guess I've been so charged up over the wedding while trying to keep the stress out of work that it's taking me more time to rebound.  It didn't help that I had that cold the week before the wedding either.  Our office still sounds like a sick ward with all the coughing going on.  

But, slowly I have been trying to hack away at the list of cards and projects that I want to accomplish this month. 

The card above is a thank you to a dear friend who brought me a special gift and was really supportive of me during this whole wedding process.  I was literally driving myself crazy trying to find my diagonal plate to do the scoring on the wedding card (in another post) before the wedding, but last week I was able to put my hands on it and I also found the punch that I thought that I had lost.  Yippee!  

The card above uses the fancy doily die and I tried a little trick that I found on Pinterest - to put clear packing tape on the cutting side of the die so it is much easier to get those intricate cuts and pieces out.  

One of Rachel's college roommates is expecting and she wanted me to make a card for the shower. Admittedly, baby cards seem to be out of my comfort zone and I don't have very many images that I feel are usable.  So I went to the stand-by onesie stamp and stamped it onto dsp, cut it out and used some mini clothespins to hang it on some pink cotton thread over the embossed panel.  In the background is the lattice die framing the onesie panel.  Some punched paper lace at the bottom, ribbon and bow and we're done.  

The stamped image above is Tweet Leaves from the SU Holiday mini catty.  I do not yet have the leaf die that it's made for so I lightly sketched out a leaf shape of my own.  I adhered that image to a piece of More Mustard and then trimmed that to frame the leaf image.  The card base is Summer Starfruit and the other pieces are of Early Espresso, Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, and I believe Cherry Cobbler.  Much like the marker colors used on the image.  This is going to a friend who just had some pretty serious surgery.  Hoping it will brighten her day.

The next two cards were inspired by Monday's Try a New Technique on Splitcoast - Acrylic Block Collage.  You basically take one of your acrylic blocks and add ink to it by swiping, daubing, sponging - however you want - spritz it with water (go lightly with the spritzing!)  and press it onto your paper.  

Let it dry and then mask around the edges with some post-its.  You can then stamp your image(s) over the background that you have created.  Thus creating a one-layer card.  But you will see from both of mine that there is an additional layer and that is due to the fact that I used too much water and things looked a little messy.  Fixing messy is sometimes easier than you think.

In this case I added the circle pieces on the first card on either side and on the second I stamped the leaves onto some colored cardstock and cut them out.  

The bird image is from Serene Silhouettes and the feathers are from Fine Feathers.  The sentiment is from the retired set Warmest Regards - another one of my stand-bys.

I still have a few things to catch up on and then there's also Halloween at the end of the month.  Oh, my and two birthdays I nearly forgot!  It feels good to be getting inky again!