Special Delivery: Baby Boy

Ever since I saw the film "Red Tails" I have been wanting to use this little airplane set. I didn't really have a reason, so I kept putting it aside. Since I have gotten back into blogging, I have been visiting some of my favorite stampers. I have sadly realized that while I have been away, so have others. In fact, some of them are just gone. But, I did visit Julee Tilman's blog to discover that she recently had twin boys! How exciting! So...I decided to make a card to send to her darling little twins. She had hoped for some to decorate their NICU walls. I decided that while I was making one, I may as well make two so that I could have one on hand. I think this is a practice that I will keep up on!

Of course that meant that I could use this darling little airplane from PTI. In fact, all of the stamps I used are from PTI. I used quite a few sets to assemble these two cards. Some of them are sets that I have hardly inked, so that felt good. I also used quite a few dies as well. All of them are from PTI except for the circle piece; it is a nestibilities die.

To begin with, I chose my papers which are Authentique and I picked them up at Ellen Hutson's online store. You can see the link on my sidebar under "Places I love to shop". She ships things super fast and she has a great selection of popular items. I love these papers and thought they worked nicely for a baby boy, or two! LOL! Oh....I almost forgot....the sketch is one of the Verve sketches. I saw it while I was on Julee's blog reading about the twins and thought it would be perfect with the set I wanted to use. Now....if you know me, you know that I seem to have a slight problem sticking to sketches, but I think I did pretty good considering.
After I picked my papers, I got to work die-cutting the circle pieces. I stamped onto the Kraft cardstock using Palette Noir ink. I paper pieced the body of the plane using some of the coordinating papers. Once I had it glued in place, I colored in the rest of the plane using copic markers. Once that was all done, I added glossy accents to the body of the plane, the circle on the tail and the nose. I wish that you could see how cute it all looks from the photos.

I set those pieces aside so that they could dry and got to work cutting out the banner pieces. I realize that the alphabet I used was a little large, but I think it looks okay. I also took the time to die-cut a few buttons since I knew that they would need some time to dry as well. Once that was all done, I got to work on the ticket pieces. I used quite a few stamps on these, but I think they turned out quite nicely. I actually hadn't intended to use this stamp set, but while I was rummaging for the ticket set, I stumbled across this neglected set. I thought it would be perfect since I was using the airplane image.

Once every last detail was dry or stamped, I got to work assembling the cards. I needed to machine stitch the felt rick rack border to the left panel. There is something really gratifying about machine stitching on felt, but I think I have already mentioned that. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do. I also wanted the linen twine "ties" for the banner to actually be tied to the card, so I used a needle and thread to get it through the cardstock. I don't think it should be going anywhere now. Once I got everything done, I thought that the right side looked a little light since the left side was so heavy with detail. I added a quick piece of dark coordinating pattern paper to fold over the edge and added a quick line of zig-zag stitching. I thought it did it's job nicely to balance things out. Thanks for fluttering by!

Celebrate Today and Everyday

My friend celebrated her birthday at the beginning of March, but I didn't get her gift to her until last week! Shame on me! I did, however, have a lot of fun getting her gift together. I was going for a "sewing" theme, so I had to use this cute button stamp set from PTI. I haven't really had a chance to sit and fiddle with all of the button die-cuts and stamps until now.

I decided on all of my papers first and then worked on the cute buttons. The tiny circle ones were die-cut and then stamped using the stamps that come in the set. The larger scalloped buttons were die-cut out of pattern paper. I added some glossy accent stuff to all of them and then let them dry.

While I was letting them dry, I got to work on the fun felt flower. I die-cut four flowers out of felt and then four flowers out of tulle. I am sure most of you know how to make these flowers; they are super easy and super cute. I hot glued it all together and added it to the card. I also die-cut some felt ric-rac which I then layered onto some lace and stitched to the card. This is one of my favorite parts of the card. I really like the way sewing looks on felt. The sentiment stitched to the top left corner is from an Autumn set from PTI, but it is one of my favorites. I also stamped the "superior quality" image onto a piece of pattern paper and paper pieced it onto the button card for some extra color and detail.

The reason why I was going for a "sewing" theme is because I sewed a cute little coin purse for her gift to which I added a gift card to one of our favorite quilting/fabric shops, some gum, hand sanitizer and some yummy lip gloss. I will post the coin purse on my "Thimbles and Thread" blog soon, but you can see it photographed here with the card. ETA: You can check it out here It isn't a perfect match, but I thought it went pretty well. As far as "matching" goes, I found some fabulous fabric today that is the same print as some of my favorite papers. I will be sewing and card making soon to show you a "perfectly matching" pair!