Day 7 of the Official We Love Dawn Blog Hop with Papertrey Ink

Today is the 7th and last day of the Official We Love Dawn Blog Hophonoring Dawn McVey and her joy filled heart, even in the midst of 7 years of very trying circumstances.  I speak from experience when I say that being sick a lot is difficult and being sick every single day can suck the joy, peace and hope right out of you.  Yet, through it all, Dawn has maintained a positive attitude.  I've only known Dawn via the paper crafting industry for about 2 years when I first found Papertrey Ink.  It was December of 2015 and now I don't know how I missed them for so long. I love their products and they just seem to suit my style so much.

Today's card uses a couple of sets designed by Dawn.  The first is "A Thrill of Hope" which features many faith based holiday sentiments for Christmas Cards.  This particular verse is my favorite of the set and the typography is fantastic.

I started by die cutting a stitched rectangle from gold foiled cardstock for the background.  Then I die cut a smaller hem stitched rectangle (Spellbinders) from the Scarlet Shimmer Cardstock.  I knew that I wanted to use the Holiday Greens Borders Stamps and Dies to create at least one border, so I cut a piece of 4.5 inch x 6 inch Stamper's Select White Cardstock and then cut two of the berry borders from that piece of cardstock.  That way, I could make sure they stamped end to end (the full 5.5 inches) but I could keep the cardstock in place using my Mini MISTI with the die cut negative as my placeholder.  This just makes it incredibly easy to stamp the two layers while keeping everything aligned.  I stamped the greenery in Ripe Avocado Ink and the berries in Scarlet Jewel Ink.

For the sentiment, I went over the Scarlet Shimmer rectangle with my powder tool which is especially important with vellum or shimmer cardstock.  Because the surface is a bit slicker, I find that any residual oils or lotions on my hands are even likelier to trap stray particles of embossing powder so I always make sure to use my powder tool first.   I stamped the sentiment in Versamark and heat set it.  Then I adhered that onto the lower right hand side of the larger background panel so that I could put the greenery on the top and left sides of the sentiment panel.  Once I had the greenery added, I went over all of the berries with my Wink of Stella Clear Shimmer Pen which you may or may not be able to see here. 

For a finishing touch, I added a few gold sequins for a touch of elegance. The way the light caught the shimmer cardstock here, it looks lighter than it actually is.  While not as deep a color, it is a good match to the Scarlet Jewel Ink that I used for the berries.

I hope you've enjoyed this week long festival of projects I've made using products from Papertrey Ink and all the Stamp and Dies that were designed by Dawn. You can read more about Dawn's Journey and help with fundraising efforts on their behalf here.

If you'd like to send a card to Dawn you can do that at this address:

Dawn McVey

PO Box 25322

Overland Park, KS 66213

*Updated Address 11/17/2017*

Thank you so much for checking out my posts each day this week and I hope you'll come back soon.  Dawn is doing incredibly well since her transplant. 

Day Four of the We Love Dawn Blog Hop

For Day Four of the Official We Love Dawn Blog Hop, I am using two of Dawn's Stamp Sets and another one that is also Papertrey Ink.  This card is also for The Paper Players Challenge, Holiday Pines, which you can find here.  I think it was last year that the Holiday Greens Borders Stamp Set  was released.  There is also Holiday Greens and both sets have the coordinating dies found here and here.  I happen to love this row of pine branches and I used it a lot last year.  This is my first time using it this year but with the companion die, it is so easy to create a row of pine across the top of a vertical or horizontal card.

I was going for a Rustic look, so I decided to use a sheet of the wood grain patterned paper pack that I picked up last time I was in Dallas visiting my daughter and my grand kids. Since I was planning to use Pinefeather Cardstock for my greens I chose this wood grain with the green tint to it.  There are several different shades in this paper pad, from grey to brown and a lot of colors in between.  The sheets in this paper pad are 5.5 inches wide by 7.5 inches tall and since I wanted to be able to get two cards out of one sheet, I cut the sheet in half, then put it into my stitched rectangle die which just put the stitch line on it but didn't actually cut anything.  The Pine Border was tall enough to cover the rest of the card panel so that I could get two cards out of it. I attached the wood grain panel with tape runner. 

I needed to heat emboss my sentiment before I could move on to the rest of my card so I chose this greeting from Dawn's A Thrill of Hope Stamp Set.  I think it's a bit hard to read here but it says, "Season Greetings to you and those you love.  May joy dance around you like snowflakes from above."

Today I used the same technique for the pine branch border that I did for yesterday's card which was to stamp, heat emboss and repeat until I had 4 layers.  Let me just say, it took four tries today before I got one right.  Since the border stamp is a bit wider than the background it was very tricky to get it lined up in the exact same place. I didn't have the corner to use in my Misti as I usually do, so my first three attempts were unsuccessful.  Once I had the heat embossing finished, I die cut it using the coordinating die.  I used 3D Foam Tape to mount that to my card base which then covered the rest of the card front.  The ornament is What The Doodle Ornament that was colored previously.

And another card using the leftovers from the wood grain paper.  I used Limitless Layers 2¼" Squares for the gold foil frame and the insert from the same set to die cut the greeting.  I'm sorry you can't really see the gold frame.  As you know, it's hard to photograph. 

There are still three more days in this hop so I will have more projects for you this week. Be sure to stop back by later in the week to check out all of the finished projects. Thanks for stopping today.