Another "We Love Dawn Blog Hop" Encouragement Card

I have another card to share over at the Papertrey Ink Official We Love You Dawn Blog Hop in honor of Dawn McVey who received a small intestine transplant early last Sunday!  She's had major health issues over the last few years and this has the potential to change her life.  Can you even imagine not being able to eat while still cooking for your man every night?  Anyway, she has a recovery period of 4 - 6 months and must live within 30 minutes of the hospital where she received the transplant for the next several months.  So we are continuing to honor her with a Blog Hop all week long.  Be sure to link up a project using Stamps and Dies designed by Dawn to participate, but you can enter as many projects as you wish.  They do have to be separate Blog Posts for it to work and let you put another link in.

For today's card, I used a set that always reminds me of the person Dawn is because she has such a strong faith in God. This set is called New Every Morning and has several different scripture verses to choose from that are meant to be encouraging.  They were designed to fit on the bookmarks that Dawn designed, Bookmark I, Bookmark II and Bookmark III.  They can also be used on cards as I have done here.

A month or so ago, it was love at first sight for me when I saw the Bitty Big Patterned Paper in Spring Rain.  Michelle Leone had made a gorgeous card during release week last month using it and I was excited because this is the first time there has been a pastel offered.  I can hardly wait to see more!  The Bitty Big Collections are beautiful and the best thing is, they do match the cardstock perfectly.  I love Papertrey's Perfect Match Papers and Inks system and these papers are so incredible having different print on each side.  There are two plaids, two stripes and two polka dot patterns to choose from.  But for me, most of the time, I will like the stripes!  I am so anxious for the release of more colors as this is a new patterned paper line from Papertrey so they are being released 3 colors at a time each month until they are all released.  So far there are 9 colors.

I also wanted to incorporate another of Dawn's designs using To The Point: Edgers II to put a decorative edge on my paper.  These dies cut and also emboss some details into the paper when you cut it.  It is a super nice touch.  I like to die cut everything so that I have those super clean edges.  Trimmer blades can wear out and start making raggedy cuts.  I think that looks incredibly sloppy so I like to use dies and these cut just beautifully as you can see.  To get mine the way it is, I used a stitched rectangle die first to get the clean edges and then I die cut with the Edgers Die to finish that off.  The Dark Indigo Cardstock is also cut with a stitched rectangle die in a slightly larger size.  I have 3 that I use pretty consistently with each and every card and they are all different companies.  The stitching detail is my favorite and I have it in a variety of shapes, styles and sizes.  I cut the Center Style: Feminine Die from Dark Indigo Cardstock as well.



For the sentiment, I cut a stitched rectangle out of Spring Rain Cardstock from yet another set.  I keep basic shapes in one place always on my die cutting table.  This one has double stitched edges.  I laid that in my Mini MISTI and then placed the sentiment on top of it to align it to the rectangle.  To get the Dark Indigo Embossing, I stamped the verse twice in Dark Indigo Ink and then stamped it last in Versamark right over the Dark Indigo Ink and heat set it with clear embossing powder.  I learned early on when I got serious about making cards, that you must use some type of powder tool to keep the embossing clean.  Since I love Heat Embossing and use it on nearly every card, I had to learn how to do it well.  My preferred tool is a big fluffy brush with Baby Powder.  It actually works much better than a powder pouch, Embossing Magic Bag or the EK Success Powder Tool.  It's also easy to clean afterward - just wipe with a microfiber cloth and it will wipe away very easily. The double stitched rectangle fits nicely on the Center Style: Feminine Die Cut.

Because Dawn loves flowers so much, I wanted a way to include on on this card so using the leaves from another of Dawn's sets, Gran's Garden and the coordinating dies, I stamped them in New Leaf Ink and then added a little Prima Flower to it again with a little gem in the center.  Prima Flowers are just paper flowers.  I still have lots of them from my scrapbooking days.  To get the color I wanted, I mix my own color sprays using reinkers.  The Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist that I use has fantastic sprayers on the bottles, so I always keep them to make color sprays with.  I have about 8 of them at this time with different colors in them.  But I keep the colors generic, such as red, blue, green, purple.  Since I'm not using the color "straight", it wouldn't be a match to my inks anyway.  In fact, many of the reinkers I have are Stampin' Up Refills that I kept just for this purpose when I got rid of the large ink pads.  Those ink pads were just too big for me to handle and I would drop them, invariably on my card front when it was finished.  I decided to go with Papertrey Inks and I have been super happy with that choice.

Now that I've dragged this post out to be much longer than I intended, I'm going to wrap it up here.  The background panel was attached to a top folidng card base made from Stamper's Select White Cardstock. The Center Style die cut was attached with a vertical piece of foam tape down the center of the die cut and then Thin 3D foam squares at the edges which gives it a slightly rounded appearance. For the floral leaves and Prima Flower I used Ranger Multi Medium Matte with Kokuyo Tape Runner for everything else.

Thank you again for stopping by today.  This was a really fast and easy card to make although I have dragged out the post for a long time.