Congratulations on New Home

By now it's obvious I love to color. No matter how many times I keep saying my next project will involve my Cricut cartridges, I still keep coloring. My card today is a Congratulations theme for a friend of my husband's. They're having a celebration next weekend for the new home they bought and I thought I'd prepare this in advance. Yes I used a retired Close To My Heart stamp set again but who could resist this? When I first started out as a consultant this was on my list of must haves. I thought about the current Camper Crazy but it just didn't look right for this occasion.

So, I used Around the Block and colored it using my Spectrum Noirs. I used a mix of Skin Tones, Browns, Tans and Gold Brown colors to complete the house color. The grass is what I had leftover from my previous project. The tree beside the house is also from a retired stamp set named Treetops. The butterflies are from A Tree and the sentiment I believe came from Casual Expressions.

I used Topiary for the tree leave and Cocoa for the bark, Black for the "Congratulations" sentiment, and a mix of Sorbet, Pear, Saddle and Sweet Leaf for the butterflies. I hope my hubby's friend will like it!

Joyful Wishes

The stamp set I'm using today is one of my favorites from this Spring/Summer catalog. When I saw the stamps on that page, I just had to get them all! This stamp set is called Joyful Wishes and in the Idea Book it was used as a decoration for a party favor box front. I wanted to use mine on a card, so here goes my rendition.

It's not perfect. As you can see I pretty much messed up on stamping the arrows. It was my fault as it was a last minute thing. I did not originally mean to have those there but at the last minute decided I'd like to use my Flight of Arrows stamp set to good use. At first I only wanted to do the bottom, but then after I stamped the bottom it looked iffy, so to even it out I decided to just stamp the top. But at that point, I had already adhered my sentiment with brads and all, so getting the block to stamp the arrows perfectly was kind of hard. Of course I tried to clean it up but the more mess I got. So lesson learned, next time lay everything out first and test on a piece of paper before doing the actual card. 

Ok, so for this card I used Bazzill green cardstock as my base, Amerian Crafts gray card stock from the Neutrals pack as the layer. For the sentiment layer I used Ariana paper as the background. The sentiment is Joyful Wishes which I stamped using Slate ink. I colored it in using Spectrum Noirs, mixed of lights and pastels. I attached 4 brads on the corners to make it look like a poster. I then die cut the scallop borders using my Spellbinders dies. And my last minute add on was the Flight of Arrows 'border'. 

Here are the stamp set images. I just love Joyful Wishes! 

A1152 Joyful Wishes

D1578 Flight of Arrows