fresh & fun

Today’s Way to Use it challenge is called Don’t Hide. We are supposed to use leather or a leather look in our card.

Well, I have no leather pieces laying around. I also don’t have brown liquid applique to make faux leather paper and I didn’t feel like getting my masking tape out.

I decided to try the Faux Suede look with a technique that is also called Faux Flannel.  It’s really easy. Take your cardstock and rub it over the edge of your table several times to break the fibers in it. Then take your fingernail, split the cardstock and carefully pull it apart. You will now have two pieces of cardstock.

My card base is a 4 1/4″ x 8 1/2″ piece of Shimmery White card stock folded in half.

It’s layered first with a 4″ square of Chocolate Chip, then with a 3 3/4″ square of Groovy Guava.

 I used the Faux Suede technique explained above on it to get the fuzzy look.

The Chocolate Chip and Groovy Guava squares were taped together and faux stitched with chocolate chip and All in a Row.

The Shimmery White horizontal stip is 3/4″ wide and was stamped with a stamp from All in a Row.  The width of the Cutie Pie Designer paper is 5/8″.

The Certainly Celery Designer paper strip measures 1 1/4″ x 3 3/4″. Scallops were added to the small white strip with the corner rounder. The right side of the strip was paper pierced.

For the flowers I used two stamps from the Ginormous Flower set. The big one was inked up with Chocolate Chip craft. It had some white spots in it so I went over the flower petals with craft refill and a Fantastix to fill it in. That’s why it looks a bit streaky. I embossed the flower twice with Clear embossing powder and layered a felt flower from the Flower Fusion Accents & Element Tin on top of it. I used a Fire Circle Rhinestone brad to connect the flowers to the card.

I inked up the smaller flower first with VersaMark, then without stamping it I inked it with Purely Pomegranate classic ink. I stamped the flower on Shimmery White cardstock and embossed it with clear embossing powder as well. After cutting it out, I added first a large Antique Brass Eyelet, then an Ice Circle Rhinestone brad in it’s center.

A double photo corner  with silver brads was added to the bottom right side. The greeting is from Fundamental Phrases and is stamped in Chocolate Chip ink.

This morning Patty Bennett showed off her gorgeous new ribbon and a sneak peak of projects she is working on. I thought it would be fun to do the same.

The UPS man came early! Wohoo!

 Well…he came at 3 p.m., but that’s very early for him.

I am still unpacking, but here is a shot of the gorgeous felt flowers with our new striped ribbon.

Here is part of a card I was working on when Mr. Brown came.

I had smaller embossed flower with a big eyelet going through the big flower.

I ripped the smaller flower and eyelet off so I could try one of the felt flowers right away.

I think I am in LOVE!

Jenn Balcer is simply the best.

The card says I make her smile….when in fact she brought a big smile on MY face when I received her beautiful card in the mail.

What can I say? She is the best friend a woman can have (I almost typed girl, but since the big 4 0 is only a year away, maybe I should start calling myself a woman. LOL).

I am sure you all know that Jenn has a blog. Just for the off chance you don’t have her blog on your favorite list yet, go check it out!

I need to run some errands this morning on the base. I am not sure when I will be posting!

Later today I will be stalking my UPS man. I couldn’t help myself and second day aired my first order from the new Stampin’ Up! catalog! I can’t wait to get my goodies. You might hear my squeal of delight all the way to your house when I open my box. LOL