MOTHER"S DAY CARD

The card I made for my mom took me a week. Not sure why it takes me so long but I work on cards between cooking and taking care of hubby, our 3 cats, church, doctors appointments, laundry, etc. I don't just sit down and make my cards quickly, all in one big time frame. And being retired, I don't have all the kinds of equipment, CS, etc that some of you have. but I do the best I can with what I do have. Taking the time required to finish a card may have something to do with being 67 and relatively "new" to card making. It may have something to do with my decision making skills or the fact that half my stuff is in Wisconsin and it is not easy to find what I need when I need it since I don't have a room for it all to be organized. It is in bins and on shelves and some on the kitchen counter, and some in the basement and some in rolling cases...you get the idea! My designs seem so much simpler than many I see others doing. Maybe my two brain cells just can't work any faster or do complicated designs. LOL

Anyway, I knew I wanted to use the PSX (Personal Stamp Exchange which is out of business much to every ones regret) clematis/star jasmine heart wreath botanical stamp. (WOW, that is a mouthful !) I have bought lots of their stamps on ebay and they are spectacular IMO! My mother lives in central Texas where it is too hot to grow clematis and mom (who is 88 this year) loves flowers. So this seemed a suitable image and would make it special for her.

I stamped the image while in Wisconsin at the condo last month. I leave some of my stamping equipment there and bring the basics back and forth to our home in MN. I painted the wreath with my Twinkling H2O watercolors using three different colors for the clematis alone. (icy iris, periwinkle blue and blue ice.) I added some passion stripes to the centers of each petal. I painted the star jasmine with irridescent oyster white and added rose petal to the baby's breath for a little color there. I used three shades of green for the leaves (kiwi, moss green and forest green) and two shades of brown for the vines (cocoa brown and warm pecan). I also used a fine black Zig pen to emphasize some of the flowers and vines. It took extra time to dry between different layers of the paint which might partly explain why it took me so long. ; )

I used the SU ticket punch on all corners of the image and mats. I used a medium blue solid and then a black to mat the image and set it aside while I worked on covering the card. I used a piece of a fern print in blue from a pad of blue papers, tags and envelopes called Blue Sapphfire by Sarabooks. I found it at Michaels in their sale items. The paper in a soft blue/lavender mix mirrored the colors in the clematis and I cut it to cover the card leaving a 1/4 " border. I matted it with black and added a vellum overlay that had tiny random white dots. Using the Fiskars double slot punch, I punched the upper left corner of this piece and the vellum overlay. I ran a Wal-Mart white sheer 1/2" ribbon down one slot, up the second, down the first again and up the second, leaving tails I trimmed at a slant. It holds the layers in place and gives a ribbon embellishment without the bulk of tying a bow, which I am not very good at...yet! I adhered this beribboned section down to the card, and then positioned the clematis wreath piece under the vellum but on top of the blue fern print. The vellum wouldn't stay straight covering the wreath, so I used just a tiny amount of adhesive on the lower right corner of the vellum. I did stamp "Happy Mother's Day" on the vellum prior to putting it all together when the vellum could be flat on the table. My sample of "stamping on vellum" isn't perfect, but you get the idea anyway.

The card has a soft quality to it, with the image under the vellum. The vellum may also make the image look out-of-focus but the outer edges of the card are crisp so it is just the vellum. ; ) Inside, I stamped, "I'm so lucky to have you for my Mom" and I am!

Thanks for letting me share about me and my Mother's Day card. God bless you, Martha