I’m back in my studio during these storms we’ve had in the Northeast lately. Twelve plus inches of snow last weekend and then rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow this past Friday. Those are the days I stay inside, except for shoveling. But after the storms I have had a chance to use my new snowshoes. Great fun, but a lot of work, which is good exercise. However, today I wanted to share some of the cards I created during the storms. I made two Birthday Cards, one of which I’ll give to my best friend. Can you help me decide which one?

The first one I made was with Altenew’s Pink Perfection Camellia 3D embossing folder. I had some gold-ish cardstock on hand that I purchased at Michaels a while back, and it does emboss very well.

After embossing I use a pinkish ink to swipe over the raised parts of the flower. I think it was Altenew’s Grape Agate. I have the little ink cubes that work great for this technique. I also use green for the leaves, Forest Glades, I think. I stamped happy birthday on white cardstock and used one of my spellbinders nested labels die to cut it out. I then, foam mounted it on the card and added a few gems. I really like the way it turned out. Do you all have any suggestions?

I’ve been playing around with alcohol inks lately. That is such a cool way to create unique backgrounds. For this one I die cut Happy Birthday out of gold cardstock, then white and off set them to create a sort of shadow, which I mounted over my alcohol ink background. I mounted that on brown cardstock before I attached it to my white card base. Again, I really like this card, just can’t decide which one to send to my friend.

Recently I watched a video by Jaycee Gaspar, 3 Unique Card Making Backgrounds, on YouTube. He showed a different way to use alcohol ink in water to create a background. I tried his technique and came up with this card.

I then created a black and white focal floral using the Crown Bloom stamp set and stamped the sentiment in white on vellum. The sentiment is from the Extra Special stamp set.

I hope this day finds you well and happy. Take care. See you all next time.