Masculine Theme February 2020 Challenge at APTS blog

Greetings from the USA heartland and Becca's Heart for Creativity!

For this inspirational card for my resident designer commitment with A Place To Start challenge blog is a masculine birthday card that will be sent to either my oldest nephew or nephew-in-law who both have upcoming February birthdays. Since it has a travel theme I will probably send it to the N-I-L, who enjoys vacationing on his off-time (an ER doc).

Didn't these elements come together to make an interesting guy's birthday card?!!?!!! The ship image was an insert of a frame about traveling, but due to the base dimension of 5"x 7", the frame couldn't be used but this perfect insert could be by itself. It's propped up a bit with foam squares. This ship oval was stamped (from Hampton Arts) and edge inked. Brenda Walton's Around the World Frame & Journaling Pad (2011) including acetate designs is available by K & Company. A few weeks ago, one of my sweet fellow church members & a very crafty gal herself gifted this to me, so I'm excited to start using a blessing!

February 2020's masculine theme challenge for APTS blog starts Monday, February 3rd=
link= https://hereisaplacetostart.blogspot.com/2020/02/february-2020-challenge-create.html

more pics:

another vendor credit to Martha Stewart Crafts for the "Happy Birthday" ribbon; it's been in my stash for several years. This is my 2nd card in 4 days that I've used it so there's not much left on the spool. (Another good feeling when you can finish up a product that's been buried in amongst other ribbons and cording within larger stockpile!) :)

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other challenge blogs and Facebook groups to which this card's photo or the posting will be linked=
a. Crafts Galore Encore Challenge blog: #72= Anything Goes theme for February 2020
link= https://cardsgalorechallenges.blogspot.com/2020/02/february-crafts-galore-encore-challenge.html


b. Penny's Paper-Crafty Challenges blog: anything goes theme; now a bi-weekly deadline format; used to be weekly
link= https://pennyschallenges.blogspot.com/2020/01/welcome-to-pennys-challenge-463.html

c. Paper, Paper, Paper & Design Team Calls group on Facebook; a sharing group for crafting bloggers

d. Mixed Media Creativity group on Facebook; a private group for artists and crafters to share their mixed medium projects [mine uses different cardstocks, washi tape, ribbon, black ink pad, stamped sentiment]

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Crafting in the USA heartland,
Becca S for Becca's Heart for Creativity

besides being a resident designer for A Place To Start, I'm on these design teams=

The Crafter's Café Challenge blog
Scrapping 4 fun Challenges blog
My Time To Craft challenge blog
52 Christmas Card Throwdown challenge blog

Christmas 2017 postcard minis

In late October to early November, I got the urge to start crafting again in order to help motivate me to keep working on my recovery. You know, get out of bed; get moving; get something accomplished beside sleep and eat.

I knew with our limited budget (due to our triple traumas/dramas) that I would need to buy a few things every 2 weeks or so and slowly re-build my stash of craft supplies. In Wal-Mart I found blank 3" x 5" index cards in heavyweight cardstock. I knew they were under-sized to be mailed as a postcard but the simplicity of size and lack of bulk appealed to my circumstances in temporary displacement to a rental house.

A friend from church gave me a gift of set of 6 stencils of a Bible journaling from American Crafts about the same time.

So with purchases of markers and colored pencils from Dollar Tree, I started looking at the stencil set with creative imagination on how I could use individual letters from words and some of the shapes.

I made about 15 Thanksgiving or thankful for you types to mail or give to people that had given us money to help pay for my medicines or medical bills or housing needs or made visits to hospital, etc.

Then I got about 10 Christmas and about 7 New Years themed ones created. Most have been mailed. The few left are to be mailed or given in the next few days were photographed last night and will be blogged about today. (Have to see New Years blog post later.)

Creative re-imagination: pennant used on 1 card but I inverted it and only traced 3 to make trees (or they could symbolize 3 wise men) for the other 3 shown. The stencil set had a mini journal page set up for sermon notes and the date back-slash lines were used to help space for dating.

Here's Thanksgiving/'thankful for you' selection:

"Thankful and 'u'" were traced out of different words provided in the Bible Journaling set.  I really like the mix of font styles! It makes it time-consuming but fun and interesting creatively.

As the saying goes "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade". Well life handed me quite a lot in a matter of 2 1/2 months and I'm trying to start with the seeds to plant a lemon tree!!!!!!!

Blessings from the blessed to be alive,

Becca