Freshly Made Special Sympathy Card

When a friend lost her beloved dog of many years last week, I knew that I wanted to use this adorable dog from the new Artistry Cricut cartridge to make her a sympathy card.  This Freshly Made Sketch was perfect for what I had in mind.

I started by making a rainbow with my new CTMH watercolors and then added the puppy cutout embellished with an enamel heart.  If you are not familiar with the Rainbow Bridge, here is a link to the comforting poem.  I wanted to keep the emphasis on the image yet give the card some interest and dimension, so I pierced a border and attached the panel to a Colonial White card base with foam tape.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

Materials used, all Close to My Heart unless otherwise noted:
Paper:  Colonial White cardstock
Ink:  Black
Stamp:  Big Hug
Embellishment:  Enamel Heart (retired)
Other:  Artistry Cricut Cartridge, Watercolors

Not Christmas Cards for Christmas

What do you do when you are making your Christmas card list, and you want to remember someone who does not celebrate Christmas?  Or maybe you know someone who has recently suffered a devastating loss whose Christmas will not be "merry."  Here are two "not necessarily Merry Christmas" cards that I made for the Jingle Belles Challenge using this Freshly Made Sketch:

As y'all may have noticed, I have a fondness for snowflakes as a design element.  The real stuff not so much...   This sketch cries out for snowflakes and seemed like a good opportunity to play with the Bokeh technique and some of Close to My Hearts's new colors.  If you are not familiar with this technique, here is a video tutorial.  For the first card I used Whisper, Glacier (appropriate name for a snow theme, don't you think?), Crystal Blue, Sapphire, and Peacock with White Daisy over top.  The snowflakes were cut using a Spellbinders Shapeability set, Create-a-Flake Five.  I trimmed the smallest flake to make it fit and also removed the portion of the largest flake that is behind the medium sized flake.

For my second card I used Whisper, Crystal Blue, Sapphire, and White Daisy for the background and dug out an old stamp set from the retired Frosted cardmaking workshop to stamp snowflakes and emboss them in silver.  While I had my embossing supplies out I push the edges of the sentiment panel into the Versamark and then embossing powder to guild the edges.

I embellished the centers of my snowflakes with Blue Sparkles which have been retired.  If you don't have any colored sparkles you can always use ShinHan or any other alcohol based markers to color clear ones.  Now I have two cards to send when "Merry Christmas" cards are not appropriate.  Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

Materials used, all Close to My Heart unless otherwise noted:
Paper:  White Daisy cardstock and Silver paper by Recollections
Ink:  Whisper, Glacier, Sapphire, Crystal Blue, Peacock, and White Daisy
Stamps:  Frosted Cardmaking Workshop (retired), Scandinavian Wishes (retired)
Embellishments:  Blue Sparkles (retired), Ranger Silver Super Fine embossing powder, Glacier extra thick twine
Other:  Create-a-Flake Five Shapeabilities by Spellbinders