Lavendar and pastel pink young adult birthday card

Favorite colors for my niece and me!!!

Clean simple style

Card size: 5" x 7"
Supplies: pink cardstock, lavender cardstock, off-white cardstock, printed cardstock mat, 3 decorative tapes, sentiment small stamps, ink pad (Hampton Inks), heart embellishment/sticker
Tools: paper trimmer, scissors, heart stencil, glue stick and glue dots

Front:

Inside:

My niece received the card this past Saturday night at the family birthday dinner which was 5 days early, but since this was #18, it will probably be the last official one held by her parents. She's working this summer and getting ready for college this fall. She was thrilled with the card and more so with the gift card and cash tucked inside (tee-hee!!!). :)

I've recently made a 1st anniversary card for my nephew but since it is still traveling in the mail, I will wait a few days before I make a blog post about it. So until this next planned post, loving all things artsy/crafty, Becca

With a heart for creativity in the heartland of America.....

Citrus-bright birthday card

bright summery colors to make this bday card for my great aunt

Base: white cardstock folded to 5" x 7"
Cardstock: bold yellow and grass green
Scotch tapes: chartreuse/light lime green and orange
Sheer ribbon: light lime green
Stickers: butterflies purchased in party supply section at Wal-Mart
Stamps: sentiment set purchased at JoAnne Fabrics Store
Ink pad set: used a dark red-violet ink pad from set purchased at Wal-Mart

My design goal was to place most of items on angles and hoped to get a good layout!!!! I think it turned out well. I tried to keep things simple and for me, fairly clean design.

front

inside using more of the grass green cardstock, happy print patterned blue cardstock with 1 more butterfly sticker and another simple sentiment stamped

And the card shown standing up

My 86 year old great aunt loved the card and just exclaimed wanting to know where I get all my ideas to make the cards. Well, out of love would be one "place" and out of my swirling, churning imagination would be another! :) Hence my blog title: Becca's Heart for Creativity....

I need to create a card for my nephew's 1st wedding anniversary, so that will be an upcoming post and a niece will be #18 soon, too, for another one.

May my heart for creativity inspire yours!

Late May birthday cards for 2 lovely ladies--my sister and 1 niece

birthday 1: card for my sister, my favorite sister (my only sister!:)

This year I decided that I would create a fun festive colorful card for my sister. This is a definite different color palette than the norm that I do for her. Usually I use greens, turquoise, peaches, and then floral patterns. So this is a departure.

Overall card size: 5" x 7"

Multi striped patterned paper was purchased in a paper pad at Dollar Tree (yes!!)

Red doily was part of a 19 cent packaged my mom discovered in a box cleared out from my grandparents' home!!! Couldn't believe after 40-50+ years that they had not colored faded or mildewed!!!!

Here's the inside with the cover folded back so you can see the coordinated efforts here. The dotted paper used for the heart is part of the same paper pad as the cover's multi striped pattern paper.

The stars & balloon stickers are from a graduation theme sticker pack. I just chose to use the silver and blue & silver stickers to emphasize the blue hues in the papers.

The red stripes on the inside are masking tape that I found at Wal-Mart on clearance!!!!

Overall, the time involved in this card creation was probably about a half hour from start to finish due to the masking tape border stripes, stickers, doily, stamps, and using a full piece of pattern paper on the cover of the card. That's amazing for me!!!

Now for my sister's youngest child, my 2nd oldest niece, who has a birthday 6 days after her mother:

birthday card #2: niece

distressed denim blues theme

The edges of the card have 4 different colors of ink pads to add more distressed appearance to the card cover. The denim fabric pattern paper is from a paper pad bought at Dollar Tree. The triangle simulation of a handkerchief is a printed cardstock with repeated text of 'happy'. It was part of a 6" x 6" cardstock pattern paper stack purchased a few years ago. The blue cardstock was cut to a size to approximate a pocket. Oh, and 'birthday' was stamped over the multi ink colors and I only renewed the ink about every 5th or 6th stamping to add to the levels of fading tones of the card.

I apologize again for the low quality of my cellphone camera lens, but it is easier to send to my email and then download to computer. But here is a focus of the corner. I have a photo of the inside but I chose not showcase it for the blog.

That's it for card creations for late May and early June. I have another niece, #3 of my 4 nieces, with a birthday later in the month so that card will be part of a future post.

With a heart for creativity, Becca

Easter bookmarks and Pentecost bookmarks to commemorate and add to worship for a very small congregation

inspiration--clipart image of word Jesus in shape of cross

Easter Sunday commemorative bookmark:

I did several variations of this both in the inking of the printing of the clipart image but also cardstock colors and size of bookmarks. Since Jesus' death was brutal, I thought the cross imagery should also look distressed so that is why I used several colors of ink, but mostly a gold brown to blotch the surface of the paper.

original illustration by me--yes, me

Pentecost Sunday commemorative bookmark:

For Pentecost Sunday, today, June 4, I wanted something similar to the Jesus/cross image, so I made my own Trinity descending dove illustration. I used a heart cut-out and turned it upside down. Remove the point creating a curved line. Marked points for starting & stopping lines for wings and where I would sketch in the head. Then using letter J for Jesus, I drew it in on the left wing/body side as you look at the descending bird and letter G for God the Father was drawn on the right wing/body side. Add in Holy Spirit, Pentecost Sunday 2017 to complete the bookmark. I got 15 made for this morning to give out to our very small congregation and plan on making a few more for some worshippers that come irregularly.

These Pentecost commemorative book markers were a labor of love. Finding a way to use my creative approach to uplift others' spirits is just faith in practice. If you talk the talk, then you better walk it as well!

Next post will be birthday cards made about 8-12 days ago for my sister and niece. Make sure to check out the wedding anniversary cards that I just posted from this weekend, too.

Otherwise, happy crafting!
Loving all things home economics-related, Becca

Wedding Anniversary Cards

Size: 5" x 7" on white blank card
Largest pattern paper size: 4" x 6"
Color palette: kraft paper brown, gray, muted coral-red, corn yellow, and more minor accent colors

Technique on cardstock: distressed edging using scissors blade to rough up

The inside sentiment strip says "Happy 30th Anniversary!!"

Here is a  2nd wedding anniversary card made with some of the same papers but with some different embellishments (letter initial stickers) & techniques (dotted borders & arrow):

The raised dotted surface of the initial letters plus the polka-dotted grayish-brown heart cardstock, I felt needed to be repeated in the left side of the card. So I used a fine point black Sharpie to add dot borders around the 2 sentiment tags and the arrow . And due to the quality of the phone camera, the creamy yellow 4" x 6" cardstock gets lost in the photograph. In person it looked so much better fortunately.

For card #2, the inside sentiment strip says "Happy Anniversary!"

These cards were made June 3. The next post will be 2 recent endeavors for church and then I will backtrack to some birthday cards made about 8-12 days ago or so for my sister and niece.

Loving all things home economics related--Becca