For Mom & Audrey

My sister's birthday is coming up, so I wanted to make a special card for her. She loves horses... has one of her own even. She also loves turquoise and wears a turquoise ring. So that's where I started. I knew I'd use the Wanted stamp set for the horse. Then I turned to the Earth Elements colors on the Color Coach and when I hit Creamy Caramel, BINGO! Would you ever believe that Tempting Turquoise is a complimentary color to Creamy Caramel? What a strange thought... but once again I trusted my Color Coach and received dynamite results!

The thin Tempting Turquoise layer behind the main Creamy Caramel panel just makes it all pop, don't you think?! The base is Chocolate Chip, and the sentiments are from Wonderful Favorites and are stamped on Confetti Cream with Really Rust ink. The main panel was randomly stamped with different images from Wanted using Creamy Caramel and Really Rust ink. After I did that, I sponged the edges and the surface with Chocolate Chip to give it a rustic feel. Let me show you something... take a look at the difference between these two Creamy Caramel panels:

Which panel are your eyes drawn to? The one on the left has just been stamped with the En Francais background stamp using Creamy Caramel ink. Nice, but pretty plain, don't you agree? The one on the right is what it looks like after you sponge the edges with Chocolate Chip and lightly dab on the surface as well. It gives the panel more character and is much more interesting to look at.

Okay, back to my sister's card. After I distressed the panel, I embossed the beautiful horse with Chocolate Chip craft ink and clear powder. I dabbed the sentiments with Chocolate Chip ink too, so they would carry on the rustic look. I attached the "Wonderful" with dimensionals and used some Hodgepodge Hardware to show off the "Sister". A couple more brads help balance it out, making a triangle between them, the horse, and the sister. The ribbon is the fun new Chocolate Chip Twill that's in the current Mini Catalog (good through June 30th). Overall, I'm very pleased with this card and I am positive my sister will know it was made JUST for her.

Moving on... I liked this color combination so well that I thought I would use it for my mom's Mother's Day card! If you are a regular reader of my blog, you probably know that my mom's favorite color is red. So for her card, I just swapped out the Turquoise and used Real Red instead.

My parents have recently moved out to the country and my mom enjoys watching the birds and seeing the trees all around. So her card uses the beautiful bird in the Always stamp set with the elegant En Francais background stamp (as shown in the distressing example above). The card was made basically the same way as my sister's birthday card, so I won't repeat it here. But for the berries across the top, they were done with Chocolate Chip ink and some were stamped full strength and some were stamped off to give a look of depth. The sentiment came from Short & Sweet and is also attached with Hodgepodge Hardware.

EDITED TO ADD: I used the Aged Copper Hodgepodge Hardware on both of these cards, which happens to be my favorite finish. If you like this look, you'll want to scoop some up in the next month or so as we've just been informed that the Aged Copper, Antique Brass, and Pewter finishes of Hodgepodge Hardware will be retiring at the end of this catalog period (late July). And keep in mind that one great way to get one of these finishes for FREE is to join Stampin' Up! this month as they're GIVING IT AWAY! I'll talk more about it later, but you can view this flyer if you can't wait. :o)

I sure hope neither of them visit my blog before I get these mailed to them! But if they do... I love you Mom & Audrey!