Combining Digi and Stamping

Love & Friendship Card

My friend Lindsay is a designer on a site called www.mygrafico.com so I purchased some of her sets and a couple others to play with along with my other crafting and stamping supplies. I had some baby cards, birthday and valentine’s cards to make so I got busy doing some hybrid and digital creations. Here is a peek at some of those cards. I especially love the uptown houndstooth set of papers. I have used the black background and altered the brown in Photoshop to match the elements of Cocoa Studios Mod Nature set. The Baby Bingo set is a free download and I had fun changing up the colors to use the sweet bingo card on a variety of cards. I will post more cards this week. Wait ’til you see the cards I made with the Love Grows Here set. Too cute!

Your Family Has Grown (Baby Card)

Inside Detail (see coordinating gift card from Toys R Us)

A Little Birdie Told Me (congrats for new grandma card!)

(inside the card - plenty of space to write my message)

Houndstooth Hugs & Kisses Card ...Tri-fold card with heart tied into bow

Birthday Boy Bingo Card

So you ask how do you work with digi stamps/art? You can use the jpegs or png files to place directly in Word, Photoshop or a layout program. Print them as is, color them in, change their color, combine art, etc. You can scale them, edit them and have fun creating! Sign up on the site. It is free. Ooh, and they are having a 20% off Valentine's weekend sale! Don’t you just love sales?

Layers of Love

Today, my heart is a bit heavy after finding out that one of my former CCD students, a 14 yr. old friend of my daughter Kylie, has a cancerous tumor in her lung. Sometimes life just seems so unfair for someone so young and active to be dealing with something so difficult. But here is where those layers of love come in to play. Saturday night, I stayed up til the wee hours of almost Sunday wake up time to prep some ready to assemble cards at Confirmation classes. The girls and guys assembled their selected card and wrote messages to Kayla. It really warmed my heart to see teens reaching out and writing words to comfort and uplift a friend in a time of need. Who needs sleep anyway...it is overrated! (Actually, I caught an hour or two nap before Super Bowl commercials aired.) And some of the kids delivered the cards in person while visiting with Kayla.

Our church community has gone into their prayer warrior and super outreach mode to see that the family is equally supported with meals and an outpouring of love. Sometimes it is difficult to hear stories like this, but they do remind us how important LOVE and friendship is not only on Valentine's day, but every day. Today's scripture readings talked all about God's healing powers, which we all will be praying he bestows upon this beautiful young girl, and that is a great comfort at this time.

This card is called layers of love, and is one I am sending it to my SIL and BIL...oops, hope I didn't spoil the surprise. Beth is a talented jewelry designer and is always so supportive of my craftiness so I wanted to share a little bit of love with them. If you need a unique Valentine's gift, be sure and check out her site. The color combination is Cameo Coral and Melon Mambo. The Love stamp is from Rubber Stampede, and one that I haven't used very much. The outline flowers are from SU's 5th Avenue Flowers set. The technique used on the ribbon is so simple. I heated it with my embossing heat tool to create the vintage crinkles. Be inspired today to layer someone with your love!