Bloom with Hope in Real Red

Today's card is just a simple sweet little thing. I used a few flowers I coloured in my "remote office" that I had set up in our car when I joined the Culinary Consultant for a day out on Saturday for his wheelie course I got him for his birthday. It was quite a dramatic day as one of the participants ended up falling off his bike, dislocating his shoulder and breaking his humerus. Luckily it wasn't anything worse, as the fall looked quite bad and the bike ended up rolling over him. In the end he had to be taken away in an ambulance.

So back to today's card. I had prepared for a day in my makeshift car office by stamping lots of images, and I took my stash of Copics with me. So there I sat in the car, with the Great British Bakeoff Masterclass on the iPad, a cooler bag full of sandwiches, some yummy Finnish biscuits and a whole lot of images to colour and cut. Among those were these gorgeous flowers from the Stampin' Up Bloom with Hope hostess set. I used the lovely colours from this week's Color Throwdown. I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch for inspiration for the layout. 

In addition to the flowers I used a notecard from a Stampin' Up DSP called Fan Fair. The sentiment stamp is from a set called Vintage Verses and I also added a die cut border. I added the same flower and scalloped border inside the card. 

Card: Leonardo Stationery 300 gsm white card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card

DSP: Stampin' Up Fan Fair, Summer Smooches

Stamps: Stampin' Up Bloom with Hope, Vintage Verses

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Up Real Red

Colouring: Copics R02, R24, R46, Y13, YR00 

Other: Tim Holtz Alterations Vintage Lace

Father's Day card

I'm trying to keep on track with the various Mother's and Father's days. Mother's day in the UK this year was on March 30th, and Father's day is Sunday June 15th. Finnish Mother's day falls in between the two, this year on May 11th and Finnish Fathers's day doesn't take place until November 11th. The good thing of course is that this means there's lots of cards that need to be made all through the year! As I've already managed to tackle both Mother's day cards this year (on the UK date for the Culinary Consultant's mother and on the Finnish date for my Mum) it was now time to start thinking about Father's day cards. I will try to post both Mother's day cards at some point, as they turned out rather nice even if I say so myself.

This Father's day card is inspired by two challenges, the Muse challenge (below) as well as one of the themes for the Friday Mashup, which was ombre. I used a stamp set from Stampin' Up called The Open Sea. I actually bought the stamp set specifically for the Culinary Consultant's Dad as he likes boats and has one himself. As all card makers know, it's always so hard to make cards for men, so if they have some special interest you can use as a theme, that makes things so much easier. I also deliberately didn't use all stamps from the stamp set, only the sailing boat as I thought I can use the world map and the anchor for another card, maybe a birthday card and in that way get more use out of the stamp set. You know how making several cards to the same recipient using the same stamps is kind of like showing up in the same dress to party after party...

I used Tim Holtz distress inks to create the ombre background for the ship, and stamped it in Hobbycraft black pigment ink. I matted it onto matching Tim Holtz core'dinations cardstock and added some Tim Holtz paper string. I made banners out of the leftover scraps of the matting cardstock, and printed the sentiment onto the DSP.

Card: Craft UK kraft card, Hobbycraft 160 gsm ivory card, Tim Holtz ColorCore Cardstock in Faded Jeans and Barn Door
Paper: Stampin' Up DSP Fan Fair
Stamps: Stampin' Up The Open Sea
Inks: Tim Holtz distress inks Broken China, Faded Jeans, Peacock Feathers and Salty Ocean, Hobbycraft Black Pigment Ink 
Other: Tim Holtz Paper String