Sending You Our Love and Support

 

The verse on this card reads “Sending You Our Love and Support”...a totally fitting sentiment and graphic for someone battling breast cancer. This hybrid card was creating using digital art, a digital diecut (svg art file) along with traditional stamping and floral diecuts from felt. Calling upon my favorite recipe for making cards, this card uses current digital art mixed with traditional card elements to add texture, interest and a customized card. The beauty of digi art is that you can size it down to fit exactly the size you want it. Nice, huh? Which is extra nice when you want to pair with an svg diecut frame, also sized to exactly the size I wanted. The flower diecuts are from Stampin' Up!®, Floral Fusion sizzlits die, paired with a small adhesive pearl and an SU stamped verse in pink ink. This makes for a clean, simple and cheery greeting for a friend battling a breast cancer diagnosis. 

Cancer comes in all forms and effects the lives of so many families. If you have been impacted by cancer or know someone who is beginning their journey, show your support for one of the many fundraising efforts out there. Our daughter Ashley's sorority is participating in Relay for Life in Boca Raton, FL. You can help her reach her personal fundraising goal by donating one day's lunch money, that Friday night pizza or weekend coffee or smoothie money. Every amount helps, and you can keep your donation anonymous. Click here for more information.

Project 365 Challenge - Days 136 - 146

Photos, Cards & Sketches ...these are just some of what I accomplished during days 136 - 146 of my Project 365 challenge. Some days are filled with multiple projects, others creativity is invaded by life. Here is an update of what happened, creatively speaking, between May 15 and May 25th.

Day 136 - Pictures with Family
Leading up to graduation, we were lucky enough to have her grandparents in town to celebrate with us Ashley's Baccalaureate mass. And I got to get a rare photo since someone else took some photos of us. This time, Dan unfortunately was left out of the photos since we were pushed for time.

Day 137 - Endeavor Launch Photos

Fortunately our house faces the right direction for watching the shuttle from right outside our front door. We can look over our neighbors roof once we hear the countdown on t.v. and watch to see it lift off. My favorite shuttle launch was on the 4th of July where we watched from a point on the beach.

Day 138 - Mod Linear Florals Collection & Project Sample

It is time to switch back to my design hat. I just love this new Mod Linear Florals collection!

Combine the shadows and linear overlays to create lots of fun, contemporary flowers.

Here is a digital card created using art created from this set.

A colorful sweet 16 card to have on hand for one of my daughter's friends who will be turning 16!

Day 139 - 12 x 12 MLF Paper Design (with copyright)

This is a digital paper design created using the Mod Linear Florals set.

You just may be seeing this in a new set in the future!

Day 140 - Graduation Photos

Ashley’s graduation brought our family to town for the special event, allowing for plenty of great photo opportunities starting with a celebratory dinner and the graduation ceremony.

Day 141 - Princess Grad Cards

Framed Grad Princess hybrid card created with art from my Grad Princess collection

Princess Grad Bling hybrid card using similar art printout created using this same set.

For those of you who don't know what a hybrid card is, it is one created using traditional and digital techniques. In this case, the art was created on computer, printed out, mounted onto cardstock with layers, embellishments and bling added to complete the finished cards.

Day 142 - Birthday Party Pics

While family was in town we celebrated a belated Sweet 16th birthday for our other daughter, Kylie. It was a fun event with a giant water slide. Great fun was had by all who ventured down the steep slide.

Here are a few of our candid photos.

Day 143 - More Princess Grad Cards

Girly Grad Hybrid Card

A simple pink and black theme. The circle graphic was printed and layered with punched CS and the cap with tassel is matted as the focal point. For a little sparkle, the verse was embossed in silver. I used the artwork from my Grad Princess collection.

Pop Princess Hybrid Card

Yes, you can tell there is a lot of grad action in this house. I have been busy making graduation cards for Ashley and her friends. For this design, I created a patterned design to print and mount on the left side of this card and matted the tiara on black as the main design element. The Grad Princess art was used as my verse on the card front. It is easy to print out multiple graphics and store in a folder for making cards on demand when you need them in a hurry. And as you can see, without even changing the colors, there are so many possibilities for creating different card designs. Scaling art allows you to be even more creative.

Day 144 - Wildcat Graduation Card Idea

Blue and silver was the theme for this card done in school colors. A pawprint wheeled stamp was used to create a pattern on the background. I drug the edges of the lighter blue cardstock over a versamark pad before pouring silver embossing powder on top. This creates a shimmery edge and makes it pop off the background. Also did the verse in silver emboss and finished with a silvery ribbon.

Day 145 - Rose Sketch for future set

Many of my illustrations and digi art collections begin in the form of a pencil sketch.

I started sketched this rose while waiting for Kylie to take her speak with a counselor about taking dual enrollment classes while in high school next fall. She will split her time between community college and high school. Now we have to look for a car so she can drive to both. Anyone need to hire a graphic designer or illustrator? I am for hire!!!

Day 146 - Joe & Ashley at the Beach

It was the perfect day of sunshine at the beach. Ashley and her boyfriend, Joe were full of smiles and surprises. Joe entertained us with his skimming and backflipping skills.

and this ends this session of Project 365 creative inspiration!

Project 365 Challenge/Days 49-51 What’s Swirly, Sweet & Lovely?

What’s Swirly? Day 49 brings swirly flourishes. This is a collection that I have been working on of flourish brushes and svg files. It always seems that I can never find the right flourish element when creating a card or scrapbook page, so why not create a set of my own where I can have lots of fun ones to choose from. I can’t wait to use these large scale diecut elements on layouts and smaller size on cards. I already have plans to use them on my Glue Arts design team project later this week so be sure to keep an eye on their blog.

The end result of my designing is one of my latest releases on www.mygrafico.com called Swirly QZ’s. Just imagine pairing the svg files with patterned papers, digital or traditional or using the brush art to create flourishes of any color, texture or pattern. Pair these with florals, buttons, brads and more to create your own fun card and page embellishments!

What is Sweet? On Day 50 I paired hand-cut flowers from Crate Paper’s Restoration collection CS along with one of their coordinating chipboard designs and Stampin’ Up’s 5 petal flower punch for leaves to create this Sweet Cup of Friendship card. I chose to use this background patterned paper from Stampin’ Up’s Springtime Vintage collection to compliment the florals and add a soft vintage look to this card. I distressed the edges and dragged old olive ink over them. The verse is an old favorite of mine from a retired SU set. I stamped it in the same color ink, tore the soft vanilla CS and layered over Pear Pizazz seam binding with thin pink ribbon tied over the bow. I used a small chipboard flower over top of the verse and ribbon and finished off this card with a little rhinestone bling added to some of the flowers. I used my Glue Glider Pro with high tac adhesive for adhering most of the layers and used raise 'ns to pop up and add dimension to some of the flower bouquet.



What is lovely? On day 51, I created this Whole Lotta Love Card using paper leftovers from my keepsake box project featuring Fancy Pants Designs Love Birds cardstock. I used some diecut circle leftovers to create the layered paper flower with button. You may recognize the twine I threaded though the button on top of this card. It is from the Twinery. I tied a bow, then snipped the loops and trimmed the ends to create this feathery, bow. For fast card creations, you can use patterned papers like this one to cut out verses, phrases or to use as an overall background. Easy to create in a few minutes and perfect for any occasion you want to send someone you love a card.

Project 365/ Days 35 & 36 - Digi Art & A Hybrid Card

What do you get when you combine a digi design with traditional cardmaking techniques? In this case, you get two days of creativity and one hybrid card! What I didn’t mention is that this Sweetie Gumball card uses a different digi stamp from the one I designed on day 35.

Some of you who are my facebook friends know that it is has been a rough month of January searching for answers to some health issues my daughter has been battling. They say that art can be healing, and for me, it has kept my mind focused on things other than being a worrying mother. After a rough night on Thursday and wondering which direction to turn next for answers, I woke up with a cheery little image in my mind of a bug peeking through some flowers. I know that God put that image there to help Kylie and I get through the day ahead. It was a long day at the doctors followed by barium shakes, a CT scan and some blood work. I told her I was so proud of her acing that test, as we got some fairly good news. Now we just sit back and wait on the labwork results to see if we will have more clues before going on to the next specialist. So as you view this snippet of the digi art (can't show the whole image just yet!), if you will please send up a prayer for answers and healing. We would greatly appreciate it. I spent the rest of Friday evening working late to turn my sketch into a new digi stamp. Hope you like this sneak peek.

Day 36’s project uses a couple paper and a cardstock sticker from Little Yellow Bicycle. I can't get enough of their fun collection of sweet papers and embellishments filled with hearts, cupcakes and yummylicious colors!

To create this card, I scaled the gumball machine to size I wanted to use on this standard size card. I colorized the heart in red with the I Luv You verse in black, then printed these out with some other images from the Sweetness Collection, one of my current digital collections on www.mygrafico.com. I love working with blender pens and markers which is how I colorized the heart gumball machine. Afterwards, I used some 2-way glue on top of the hearts with some iridescent glitter to sugarize them and add some sparkle. I also added some shiny framing around the heart and sweetie sticker by re-using some silver mylar cardstock that I saved from some perfume packaging. It made these two items stand out a little more. On my next card, I plan to do some silver embossing on the digi stamp to make the gumball machine extra metallic.

Project 365/ Day 11 - Sweetness Digi Collection

You saw my sketches, my project from a couple days ago. Well, today’s challenge was to scan, perfect and put together the set to post in my shop on mygrafico.com. I hope you are ready to start creating some cute Valentines. This Sweetness Collection set has some fun images to get you started! I know they will be used in some of my upcoming Project 365 challenge projects.