Looks Like Spring, Martha

Last year I made a card similar to this for my mom for her birthday and it turned out to be one of my most viewed and commented on cards on SCS and was created with the now discontinued Cool Caribbean cardstock. I've been wanting to create it again in some new colors, so here's what I came up with. I am drawn to the Martha Stewart craft section when I go to Michael's, but usually just look. This time, I bought some of the ribbon, and designed the rest of the card around it. The envelopes and prefolded cards match Stampin' Up's Soft Sky perfectly.

• Ink: Chocolate Chip, Soft Sky
• Paper: Simply Paper 6.5" x 4.5" Envelopes, Simply Paper Cards, Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White
• Stamps: Looks Like Spring, Print Pattern, French Script
• Embellishments: Martha Stewart Piped Nylon 3/8" Cloud Ribbon, Coke can tab, Pop-Up Dot to adhere tab securely, Crystal Stickers Pearl by http://www.markrichardsusa.com/ from Archiver's
• Tools: Spring Floral Bouquet Punch, Scoring Tool

If there was an inexpensive and easy way to buy about 100 of these hardware pieces at a time, not in a kit with other things, I'd be happy to get some. So in the meantime, when I'm mass producing, I'll just use my cheap Diet Coke can pull-tabs.

Birthday card for my mom

Happy birthday, Mom! Good thing she doesn't look at my blog. The color challenge on SCS this week was to use these colors: Cool Caribbean, Whisper White, and Basic Black, so I came up with this design, featuring the flower from Stampin' Up's Looks Like Spring and the flower punch and word window punch. For the background, I used two awesome classic stamps that it's hard to go wrong when paring these two, Print Pattern and French Script, both by Stampin' Up. The tiny, hard to see sentiment, "to my mom" is from Stampin' Up's All Year Cheer III. The handy cutter kit tool roughs up the edges easily on the featured stamp image papers.

This was my first time to use the velvet ribbon from my Flirty ribbon pack. These ribbons are so gorgeous that it's sometimes a challenge to use them because you want them to last forever. So my special occasion to break open the "good stuff" is for my mom, and I know she'll love it.

Received my first RAK

A big *THANK YOU* to Simply Pink's Melissa, aka Princessmsk on splitcoaststampers, for being so thoughtful, and surprising me with two of her lovely cards! This was my first ever random act of kindness from anyone on SCS! What a gem--from an otherwise complete stranger! I'm touched by sweet Melissa's kindness. Again, thank you.