Home {Sweet} Home

A new family moved in around the corner over the weekend and I've been wanting to walk over with my family to introduce ourselves and give them a little treat! After church, I pulled the butter out of the fridge to soften for some cookies and got to work putting together a card and a tag/bag combo. Let's just say things were NOT going my way! Nothing seemed to be going right and I felt like maybe I should just walk away from the project. I took a step back and decided that I was doing a good deed and needed to keep plugging along, regardless! We had a flood on Thursday (which I will share the details of later) which meant that I had a TON of stuff crammed into my downstairs family room. Thank heavens there was a strip of fabric in a sack right where I could find it that worked perfectly to stitch up a simple bag to put the wrapped cookies in. I decided to leave the selvage edge at the top for a homespun look and I really like how the white strip looks against the plaid. It also eliminated the need to sew the top or pink the edges! 

I got the tag put together and I was really happy with how it turned out! I love the green, pink and red paired together this time of year...Valentine-y, but not! I was so excited to use the new Farmer's Market Florals for this design. When the Made With Love stamp set and the Made with Love: Tags 2 were released, I paired it with Gran's Garden, which I LOVED. You can see a few projects that I made HERE using it. Dawn is at it again with these BEAUTIFUL new florals! They complemented my project PERFECTLY!

Well, after I plugged through the tag and sewn bag, I decided to leave the project for the time being. I ended up snuggled in my bed reading " Orphan Train", which is the book I picked for Book Club that I am hosting in a week!  Needless to say, the butter went back into the fridge and the project remained halted! LOL! I got to work this morning on the card. It was easy to pull together since I used a lot of the same elements from the tag. The house, fence, topiaries, and sentiment are all from the Boards and Beams stamp set. I die cut and stamped everything and then used Copic markers for the coloring.

I adhered a piece of Chicken Scratch pattern paper to the top of an A2 White topfolding card base. The house, flowers and the rest of the design elements are added onto a die cut piece of Limeade Ice cardstock using the MIx and Mat: Scallops Die. I used the outside scalloped edge and stitched border piece first and then ran it through my Cuttlebug a second time with the lace portion with my tan embossing mat. I wanted a hint of detail that the embossing gave the piece. 

The tag is stamped in Pure Poppy Ink and the "baked" portion is stamped using Simply Chartreuse Ink. I experimented  A LOT with different shades of ink for the 4 step flowers. That is one of the reasons that things were taking so long. I wanted to find a good combination. I plan on experimenting with these a lot so hopefully I can come up with some pretty combinations.

I used the same scalloped piece for the background, but didn't do the lace embossing like I did on the card. I added some red and white striped twill ribbon and a bow of Gunne Sax lace all tied up with a Sweet Blush Button threaded with Rustic Jute Ribbon Twine. I hope this makes the new family feel welcome! Thanks for fluttering by!

P.S. I'll be up on the SugarPea Designs blog tomorrow, so stay tuned for a fun Valentine's Day project!