Easter

He is Risen! Alleluia!

Sunday’s here; hope has arrived — Happy Easter! What a blessing to know that we serve a God who walks with us every step of the way — from the highest mountains to the lowest valleys. He knows every joy, every victory, every tragedy, every defeat. And when we don’t have the strength to take another step, God is there to carry us through.

We’re finishing up our Easter-inspired card series this week with another version of the cross fun fold honoring Easter Sunday. We’re pairing the Splendid Autumn paper with the new Easter Joy ephemera to create this stunning Easter sunrise celebration.

To add some detail to the cross, I used the recently retired Distressed Tiles embossing folder. The floral ephemera is layered behind the cross to create a beautiful spray of color. And the sentiment from the Faith Collection stamp set is stamped on a banner cut with the Words for the Season dies.

We’re headed into the great outdoors this week as we explore some nifty new goodies in the crafty stash. I hope you’ll drop in and see where we go on our outdoorsy adventure.

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Easter

Hoppy Easter

Happy Monday, everyone! We survived our busy weekend of activities and birthday fun. The weather was beautiful and the company was superb. I would have loved a do-over. Anyone else?

But we’re back at it in this shiny new week, and it’s going to be a busy one in the life of this church musician. With rehearsals and services, Holy Week surpasses any other church holiday as the most time-consuming. But when you consider that Holy Week is the turning point of the Christian faith, then it truly makes sense.

So in honor of Holy Week this week, I’ll be bringing you some Easter-inspired designs in fits & spurts between rehearsals & services. Today we’re getting started with a super easy card using the Easter Joy paper and Easter Time ephemera.

We get started with a base of Berry Burst cardstock. I used one of the ready-made panels from the Easter Joy paper pack as the backdrop for our little Easter scene with the ephemera bunny and basket of colored eggs, which are colored with Wink of Stella and gold embossing powder. They’re adhered to the backdrop with dimensionals. The sentiment from the Saying Hey retired stamp set is a combination of two stamps from the set. I used Blackberry Bliss ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. We finish things off with a pink bow and some pink iridescent dots.

This one is so fun and so easy, making it a perfect design for a quick batch of Easter hello cards. I hope you’ll drop back by and see what else we get into this week.

Online Exclusives · Sketchy Fridays

Sketchy Fridays: Birthday Blossoms

Happy Friday! We have made it to the end of the week. And it was quite an exciting day for me. In the middle of a big work meeting today, we had a medical emergency. There’s nothing like someone crumpling in their chair to get the ol’ adrenaline pumping! Luckily, we could rouse the person and get them on their way for a medical evaluation pretty quickly. And on top of the excitement of the work day, it seems that the weather in our area is ramping up to make for an exciting evening. I hope it turns out to just be rain. I’m not sure my poor heart can handle anymore crazy adrenaline rushes today.

But on to our crafty fun for today. We are having another Sketchy Friday (even more appropriate than I originally intended!). For those of you who are new here, Sketchy Fridays is a weekly series where we use a card sketch to design our featured card.

This week’s card is based on the Freshly Made Sketches #722 sketch. A sketch like this one is the perfect way to use busy patterns and/or scraps. In our case, we’re doing both!

We get started on today’s card with a base of white cardstock. Since we’re using a lot of pattern, we want a nice neutral backdrop. A sheet of the Easter Joy pattern paper serves as our background. For the three diagonal corner strips, we combine the floral foil from the Pleasant Patterns pack, the pink sheet from Garden Textures, and the small floral foiled sheet from the Lovely & Beautiful pack. The two competing floral patterns are broken up with the solid textured sheet from Garden Textures. I wanted all of our fun patterns to show through, so the sentiment from the Fabulous Sayings set is stamped on vellum in Versamark and then heat embossed in gold. Before adhering our sentiment, we add a few floral bunches on either side from the Easter Time ephemera pack and then adhere the sentiment over them with glue dots. We finish things off with some pearlized faceted circles.

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Coming Soon · L2S Group Instahop · Online Exclusives

Purrrfect Day

Happy Thursday, friends! We are almost through this week and on to the weekend. I’m super excited to bring you today’s card design because we’re getting sneak peeks at several new Stampin’ Up! goodies coming your way next week with the new Online Exclusives release. This week, our design theme is all about our favorite critters and there are some adorable critters coming your way! We’re pairing up the brand NEW Cutest Crew stamp & die bundle with the Easter Joy foil papers to bring together this adorably cheerful card. Let’s see how it all comes together!

We get started with a nice neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. It works well to bring out the pastels in the patterned papers without competing with them. (And trust me, I tried all kinds of colors as the base layer and the neutral worked the best!). Our background layer is a fun multicolor cross pattern from the Easter Joy foiled paper pack. There’s just enough peeking out around the edges to add some interest and pizzazz without taking away from the focal panel scene.

And speaking of our focal panel. We get started with the focal panel mat which is a brand new patterned foil paper coming your way next week in the Garden Textures foil pack. This panel is cut with the largest arch in the Everyday Arches die set. I chose the Blueberry Bushel sheet to help our focal panel stand out against our patterned background, and it also works to help the pastels in our scene pop. Our focal panel on which we’re building our scene is one of the ready-made panels in the Easter Joy paper pack. I used the next-smallest die in the Everyday Arches set to cut it out.

And then we get started with our cute kitties who are enjoying a romp on the grassy hill chasing butterflies. These adorable felines are part of the new Cutest Crew stamp set & die bundle releasing next week. I stamped the kittens on white cardstock and then used a combination of Stampin’ Blends to color them before using the coordinating dies and paper snips to cut them out. They adhered to the scene with a combination of glue dots and dimensionals to give lots of depth of scene. The butterflies are cut from Lemon Lolly pastel shimmer paper and adhered with glue dots. The sentiment from the Unforgettable Times ephemera pack is adhered over Secret Sea bordered ribbon using dimensionals. A double layer helps the sentiment to really stand above everything else and catch the eye. We finish things off with some flowers from the new garden epoxy dots pack and some pops of twinkle with the pearlized faeted circles.

Isn’t this super fun? We’re going to get a peek at a few more critters tomorrow as we return to the lazy days of breezy summers. I hope you’ll drop in and see what cutie critters are up next!

Today’s card is a part of the Luv 2 Stamp Group Instagram Hop, which goes live at 9 AM Pacific Time (PST).  Click here to head over to my Instagram feed at 9 AM Pacific/11 AM Central and check out what the other demos in our L2S Group have created for you today! 

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Easter

Bunny Hunt

Welcome back, crafty friends, on this sunny Tuesday here in North Texas. I know that some of you may find yourselves under a significant snowfall and maybe aren’t seeing the sun just yet. And if that’s you, I’m wishing you some sunny days ahead really soon!

This week, we’re designing around the critters in our crafty stash. And today’s card is a no-stamp, no-sentiment design. We’re pairing up the super cute Easter Joy paper with the Easter Time ephemera.

We get started with a base of Pretty in Pink cardstock. Our focal panel starts with one of the ready-made scenes from the Easter Joy paper pack that has been cut down to size using the Textured Notes dies and adhered to our card front panel with dimensionals. We build our bunny hunting eggs scene using the Easter Time ephemera pack — a combination of bunny, flowers, and decorated egg. These are all adhered to the scene with dimensionals to give depth and interest to the scene. We finish things off with some Garden epoxy dots, which are NEW and will be releasing next week, and some of the pink foiled gems.

What do you think of this super simple card? It comes together in just minutes, which is nice when you’re in a hurry. But I’m always a little leery of designing one without a sentiment, even when the theme is obvious. What are your thoughts on that?

I hope you’ll tune in tomorrow to see where our critter theme takes us next!

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