Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there today.  Here's the card I made this year for my husband.  Although he's not into sailing, I just don't have very many masculine sets so it makes it hard coming up with something for him at times.

 

I used the stamp set The Open Sea, along with the coordinating designer series paper.  The card design is one I fall back to every now and again (see here, here, and here) - it was a weekend challenge by Beate a few years back over at Splitcoast Stampers.

Hope all the dads in your life have a great day today!  We're headed over to my folks' for a relaxing BBQ and swim for the kids.  Have a great one!

June Christmas Cards

Wow, two posts in one day after not a single one in May!  End of the school year is always rough and I don't have much time to stamp until the kids are gone and the grades are done.  Summer is finally here, so now I have some time to get some stamping done. 

Over the weekend we stayed up at my FIL's cabin in Lake Arrowhead.  I always bring along a stamping project when we go up there, and this time was no different.  After finishing my May set of Christmas cards, I wanted to get June's cards out of the way.  I'm out of precut/predesigned cards that were leftovers from past stamp camps, so I needed something new.  I had seen this card by Jill Franchett, which was based on a card she saw in Stampin' Success, a monthly magazine we demonstrator types get each month.  I grabbed my Peaceful Season stamp set (thank you, Jeanne) along with supplies to make the card.  I had pre-cut the border using the Tasteful Trim die before heading up to Arrowhead.  I purposely didn't take a image of Jill's card with me as I wanted to make it my own.  I wanted to isolate the sentiment, so I'd brought my Creative Memories circle and oval cutters with me (LOVE them).  While working on the card Saturday night, I felt it was missing something - I really wanted some texture behind the sentiment and I thought some DSP would look great below the border.  Since I'd brought neither along with me, those elements had to wait until I got home.  Meanwhile, I had plenty of holly leaves to stamp and cut out as I made six of these in all.  Once home, I experimented with three different embossing folders to give my card some texture before settling on the Petals-a-Plenty embossing folder (actually, our youngest chose it as she thought it gave my card the most 'Christmasy' feel).  So, here's what I came up for my June allotment of holiday cards.

 

 

I'm hoping to get two more sets of cards finished up over the next month before we take our summer trip - the cards for July and August (and maybe even September's).  That would take the pressure off until after school has started back up again.  I hope you liked my cards - have a wonderful week!

May Christmas Cards

Christmas cards, you say, in May?  Yes!  I joined a group over at the Stampin' Addicts back in December 2010 to make an allotment of Christmas cards each month so that, by December this year, my cards will be done and ready to use!  I thought making five a month sounded reasonable, and to date, I'm actually ahead as most months I've made more than five.  Up through May's set of cards, all have been leftovers from cards I'd created for stamp camps but hadn't been stamped/assembled.   This month's card saw a slight design change from the original, and I like it better.  Here's my May batch:

I'll be posting June's cards a little later... lots of cutting on those, too!