A Guy Card, Cards for SCS Card Swap

I've been busy at my craft table this week. I needed to make a guy birthday card. As a lot of stampers do, I struggle with trying to come up with an idea for a guy card. I remembered I had this sailing ship stamp. I think I've used it before for either my son-in-law or my grandson. :) So I inked it up with a grayish blue ink pad. I don't even remember which one I used. :) The card base is navy blue. I used a strip of pattern cardstock from a Memory Box paper pack. The ship is backed with a piece of gray and I used SU's ticket corner punch. It is not all that exciting. The card is for Dave Arnold whose birthday was Thursday, April 15th. Kazumi, the owner of the Japanese restaurant where I eat every week, wanted another card made with the same sentiment that I used on one of the cards she bought last week. And she wanted flowers. So I put this together. The card base is lavender. I think the border punch is one by Fiskars. I colored the daffodil with Copics and tried to do some shading. As you can see, I did not do a very good job. I've seen cards on other stampers' blogs where they've done shading and blending with the Copics and they are gorgeous. I'll take the card to her this next week and see if she likes it. I used some sheer, polka dot ribbon and purple crystal sticker to finish the card.

I've signed up for more card swaps on Splitcoast Stampers. The first one is due May 6th and the cards are "Ladybugs, Butterflies and Dragonflies". I signed up for Butterflies. The card base is SU's Handsome Hunter, then a black layer and the white is SU Ultrasmooth White. I used Cuttlebug's embossing folder called Leaves on the white layer. I inked up the EF with a dark green ink and ran the card stock through the Cuttlebug. I didn't like the results so I just did it plain. I had the hardest time getting the EF clean again. LOL! I used card stock from two Basic Gray pads called Infuse and Blush for the butterflies. The large butterfly was cut with Cuttlebug's Butterfly Die Cut and Embossing Folder. There are 4 EF's in the set and the one I used is the Swiss Dots. Each butterfly looks a little different depending on what part of the cardstock I used. I used the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots EF for the small butterflies and used Martha Stewarts butterfly punch. The pearl stickers were part of my prize package I got at our Nor Cal Card Swap a couple of weeks ago.

Since I finished my butterfly cards, I decided to sign up for a spot doing a dragonfly card. I CASED a layout on SCS for this card. The SCS card used butterflies and a similar color for the card base. I used SU's Cool Carribean for the card base, Mellow Moss for the next layer and a new Martha Stewart border punch I just got at "Tuesday Morning" for $4.00. The white is Neenah Solar White that I stamped a flourish stamp on with Colorbox Chalk ink in Blue Lagoon. I think the flourish stamp is a Hero Arts stamp. I'm not sure because I got it in a set that was on clearance at The Paper Garden. The dragonflies were punched out with a Marvy punch using a piece from Basic Gray's Perhaps paper pad. Ribbon from A Muse, crystal stickers from Hero Arts and sentiment from A Muse finish off the card.

I will put these in the mail the first of next week. The other swaps are "Palm Trees & Pina Colada's" due June 1st, "All Kinds of Pocket Cards" due June 18th and "Wedding and Anniversary Cards" due July 6th. I'm thinking about hosting a swap on SCS. Its not hard, just have to think of a theme, post it on SCS and wait for stampers to sign up. The requirements are pretty simple: no vendor required, either 4 cards or 6 cards to make, and at least 2 layers and 1 or 2 embellishments, and good quality cardstock.

A stamping friend who lives in Oroville is hosting an all day stamp and scrap workday. The cost is $55 which includes lunch, dinner, snacks and soft drinks. There will be make 'n takes during the day, demonstrations of different techniques and stamping or scrapbooking all day. I am thinking of going with my other stamping friend, Candice. It will be a great time to work on swaps.

Next week Saturday I am taking two classes at The Paper Garden with Linda, who is the owner of A Muse Art Stamps in Seattle, WA. I have taken classes from her before when she's come to town so am looking forward to seeing her next Saturday.