Inspired: Faith

Hello everyone!  Today I have a quick and easy card that is somewhat different than my usual style.  I've been working on trying to use all of my supplies which in my case includes a whole host of Prima Flowers and Buttons in every imaginable color.

These daisies always remind me of spring and always feel fresh, clean and crisp. For this card, I paired it up with one of the CHA 2016 Release papers called Perfectly Plaid by Lawn Fawn.  There are a variety of colors in these papers but I like this fresh blue, white and green plaid for this card.

For the stems of the flowers I used the Papertrey Ink Friendship Jar Flowers Stamps and coordinating dies. I started by doing some rough ink blending using Papertrey Ink New Leaf Ink (to give it the variation in color) on a piece of white cardstock. Once I had that done, I stamped the leaf/stem in Versamark over the top, heat set it with Simon Says Stamp Clear Embossing Powder then die cut it. The clear embossing powder gives it a little bit of dimension and shine.

I die cut both background panels with a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle in the largest size.  I just re-aligned my plaid paper in the same die to take a little off of two sides so it would be smaller.  The next size down in the rectangles made it too small. The "Faith" die cut is from Papertrey Ink's Inspired: Faith Collection and was cut using iridescent white cardstock.

I attached the buttons to the flowers with Glossy Accents because I wanted to make sure they were very secure.  Everything was mounted to a Top Folding A2 Card base made from Papertrey Ink's Stamper's Select White Cardstock.  A super quick and easy card.

In other "schtuff" today, I sat down and took apart all of my watercolor paper pads (Fabriano, Arches Cold Pressed, Arches Hot Pressed and Canson Bristol) to be individual sheets and then took all of those to Fed Ex/Kinko's to have them cut down to 4.25 x 5.5 inch panels.  Hobby Lobby actually has their Watercolor Paper Pads on sale this week for 40% off - any brand.  This is the first time since I have been buying it that it has gone on sale.  I normally buy the pad I like with my 40% off coupon but I definitely don't need any right now.  I really love the Arches (pronounced Ar-chez) Hot Pressed as it will hold a lot of water without pilling and it's very smooth, but it isn't as white as what I normally use and it's better quality than I need for what I am doing. If you know how to do any freehand watercolor, this is what I'd recommend.

I am going through way too many of my "no longer available" trimmer blades so I figured I'd just have all my specialty paper cut down.  Their industrial blade made quick work of that task!  I also took 4 packages of Papertrey Ink Stamper's Select White Cardstock and had it all cut down to 4.25 x 11 inches. Now it's just ready to go in a drawer in my studio. Occasionally I do make wide top folding cards so I did put a bit of white cardstock aside for those, but all in all it will be much easier to have card bases ready to score and go without having to stop in the middle of whatever task I'm on to cut a card base.  Now... if I just would have ordered the right sized envelopes to go with those I would have it made.  I think it would cost me more to send them back to Amazon than to just keep them. But I do wish I had ordered the right ones and I'm glad I'm not out yet.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!   Have a great weekend everyone.  It's shaping up to be a nice one here.