Earth Day.....Trees

Last week I entered in the challenge at Raise the Bar which was April showers, I was shocked when I was asked by Joni to be a guest designer this week.  WOW thanks Joni.  This was my first time posting on this blog so I was quite excited to hear that I was a guest designer.

Since it is Earth Day on April 22nd, the theme this week is trees.  Make something with trees.  I made this card using a tree stamp that I have and then added Flower soft to the trees.  Since it is also Spring I wanted to make the tree look like they were just beginning to blossom, with a few blossoms on the ground.

Iused some plaid paper from one of my DCWV paper stacks.  The brown paper off on the left was just a plain piece of brown paper that I sprayed with Tom Holtz Walnut Ink spray.  It is pretty cool, I just sprayed it on the paper and it colored it, but the best part is that is also gives it texture, it almost feels like soft fabric.  I used the Terra Cotta color on this piece and the ran it through my Cuttlebug using the diamonds in the rough folder.
Here is a close up of the trees.

 

I distressed the edges of the paper and added brads to the corners.  I also chalked the paper behind the trees to look like clouds.

Thanks so much for stopping by, please leave me a comment so I know you have been here, and I love reading them.  And thanks again Joni for having me as a guest designer this week.

Flower Soft Trees...............

For a long time, for some reason I have wanted a stamp of bare trees, not really sure why just thought that some day it would be nice to make a card with, so I bought one a month or so ago.  Well that day came, when I got my March 2011 issue of CardMaker magazine on the front cover waw a card made with a bare tree and covered with Flower Soft.  Then at Jitterbuggin the challenge this week was to make a card with.   BROWN.....and one other accent color! It also had to include at least one Cricut cut and a bow somewhere.
 So here is the card I made following that theme.

 I think I may have done the color scheme a bit backwards, OOPS seems like it came out green with a "BROWN" accent, but I think that Sherri will let me include it in the Jitterbuggin Challenge :).

I cut the green frame for the Cindy Loo cartridge, this cartridge has some great frames on it and you can cut out the flourish to match.   I stamped my bare tree stamp using a dark brown and heat embossed it.  Then I put dabs of glue randomly on the tree branches then sprinkled it with light green Flower Soft  and pressing it down to push it onto the glue, after that I added a few more dabs of glue and sprinkled on Flower Soft Summer mix to make it look like blossoms on the tree. 

I hope I achieved the effect of blossoms on the trees, with a few that had fallen onto the ground.
We also had to have a bow, well I wanted to try and keep this as a card I can use for a guy so I chose a brown piece of braiding cord to make my bow.  Later I will add a sentiment when I decide how to use it.    I offset the frame at the top corner so I could add that sentiment in the lower right corner when I am ready.
Thanks for stopping by, I always enjoy hearing from you.

A Little Birdie told me........

I love my Straight From The Nest cartridge. there are so many cute images on it and oh so many corners with shadows.  I traded my French Manor for it since I did not really care for French Manor and someone was willing to trade for SFTN which I have been drooling over for a long time.

Anyways, the Birdies are cut using the border feature at about 3 1/2 inches.  The "A little birdie told me... was cut at 2 1/2 inches.   The background paper is from a pack that I bought at Big Lots.  I cut the yellow rectangle from glitter yellow and embossed it using a the checked Cuttlebug folder.  All the papers are glittery but doesn't show up too well in the picture.  The little birdies I put a little light green flower soft along the lower edge of the party hat and then used Diamond Stickles on the rest of the hat.  Then I added googlie eyes on the birds. So blingy in person. as always I did not finish the inside as I wait on that part till I know who I will use it for, but it will say something like "it was your birthday".  I hope you like it as it was a very fun card to make.