Box of Blossoms

I had a couple of packages of these felt flowers that had been in the $1 bin at Mike's a while back and decided to plant them in this box card.  I used some vellum cardstock that I swiped with my Wild Wasabi ink pad and a Memory Box die for the foliage.  The flowers are being held up by some sturdy acetate which gives them the appearance of free-flowering.  

This "card" will collapse down flat and is mailable.  The back of the box - the tall panel - has my message to the recipient.  I was even able to use another one of the felt flowers on a large paper clip (sorry, not pictured) so I could clip a gift card to the back of the card for mailing.  I used one of those large postcard advertisements as a protective sleeve for the card before I put it into the envelope for mailing.  That made it just a little bit smoother for mailing purposes.  

These box cards are really fun to make and not all that hard.  (I think I've mentioned that before.) And one thing that I like to do is to shorten the panels that fall down when you pop it open so you can see more of the design or designer paper that's used on the base.  

I thought the Melon Mambo and Daffodil Delight papers were quite cheery and matched the felt flowers to a T.

So What Do You Do All Day When You Can't Sit?

Well, I don't do this all day, but I can color........ in snippets of time.........standing and sometimes sitting until I can't anymore and then I jump up like a Jack-in-the-box and walk around and come back in a little while.

My friend Sabrina gifted me this beautiful stamp and actually, I have been working on coloring several of them for a while now.  No sense just doing one and I'll keep one image for myself so I know what colors I used.  The image that came with the stamp used more muted colors, but I guess I just went crazy picking out my pallette.  

By the way, this is all colored with Prismacolor pencils and a blending pencil - no chemical blending this time. The seagulls are from a set of IO dies and I futzed around with some twine to give it a nautical look, but not too lumpy.

Girl Baby, Boy Baby

A couple of our staff members have added to their families lately.  One new little girl joins her older brother and

one new little boy joins his older sister.

Congratulations all around!

Both babies and sentiments are from the new SU set Bundled Baby.  I also used Chalk Lines and Geometrical on the boy card, as well as the Tiny Triangles EF which I brayered over with Marina Mist ink.  I know it looks a little heavy in places but boys are rugged.

The background paper on the baby girl card is some All Abloom DSP.  I added some MS punched eyelet and a strip embossed with a new Sizzix EF called Psychedelic Dreams.  The card backing is in Strawberry slush.  The sentiment was punched out with the word window punch and tied on with some pink cotton crochet thread.

I was a little proactive and colored two more baby images to have on hand as there are a couple more babies on the way.  

If you belong to the Fan Club over at Splitcoast Stampers you can take part in their Dare to Get Dirty Challenges this week.  I'm not sure I'll be able to pull off 42 cards this week, but it will keep me busy and I can stamp standing!  Here's my first two cards, but I have to keep the challenge a secret.