Perfect Pair

After being sick in bed for an entire week, I am finally beginning to feel like I am rejoining the living! I can't even blame my children for this particular viral illness- in fact, I think they now have ear infections because of me (oops!). A sad testament to how bad I felt is that I was home for a whole week and didn't step foot in my craft room- I was really sick!

I started this card last weekend before I crashed and just got back to finishing it yesterday- sometimes walking away from a card is a good thing-lol! I needed a card for some friends who just got engaged and have been waiting for an excuse to use this great stamp from Unity. Now I need to disclose up front that the colors in this card are not pukey like they appear in this photo- no matter what lighting I used, the greens just did not come through right. If you're coming to my class next Friday, you can see for yourself!

I started with a 5-3/4" square Old Olive card base- my favorite size to use with larger images- gives you more real estate to work with! I stitched some patterned paper from my stash (the name of which I absolutely cannot remember) onto a Very Vanilla square, added some red ric rac (love ric rac!) using 1/4" red line tape and layered it onto the card front.

I tried several different ways to get this image stamped the way I wanted and ended up inking the whole stamp with an Old Olive ink pad, using a Q-Tip to wipe off certain areas and coloring them with Real Red and Chocolate Chip markers. A little heavy breathing on the stamp to moisten it and voila- a multi-colored image! I stamped another one, cut out the large pear and popped it on a foam dot to give the image more dimension. The tree was cut out using a large scalloped die and layered onto a larger patterned paper die cut underneath. A few hemp-tied buttons and the greeting and it's done!

The inside was finished to match with some more of that great red ric rac from my stash (I'm on step 3 of my anti-hoarding program...). Now I just have to actually get it in the mail- always the hard part for me-lol!

Now I get to drive my daughter to swim camp (yay- one less child for the week! I mean, I'll miss her very much...). Hope you have a relaxing Sunday~