hugs to you

Hi, everyone!

Hope your week has gone well. Sending thoughts and prayers go to those affected by the Roseburg shootings, and sending good thoughts to those in the flood watch areas.

Today's cards are made to send hope and encouragement to those in need of a hug. An inlaid, one-layer card technique that Jennifer McGuire shared in the Background Online Card Class was the inspiration for these cards



Recollection white and Canson watercolor
various Distress Inks applied with Ranger blending tools
blues: tumbled glass, peacock feathers, evergreen bough
browns: antique linen, vintage photo, walnut stain
pinks/reds: spun sugar, picked raspberry, fired brick
Winnie & Walter big, bold stamps and cutaways
sentiment heat embossed in black soot

In addition to the three cards shown, I made five other cards -- a few more monochromatic and several blending yellow to green to blue and yellow to orange to red.

• After making the background panels for the first seven cards, I measured the heights I wanted for each strip, and then cut the backgrounds according to those measures: 3", 1", 1/4", 1/2", 1/4", 1/4", and 1/4".
• Word to the wise, cut from the bottom up. It gets kind of tough to cut those narrow bottom strips if you start from the top down. Just saying.... not that I experienced anything like that for myself. LOL
• Then, I swapped out inked strips for the white strips.

Backgrounds were cut into strips.

White strips replaced three of the inked strips.
Then, strips were taped to the card base starting from the bottom up.

The brown monochromatic background used in the left-hand card shown in the first photo was my final background.

• After I inked up the background, I decided the strips needed to be a little less white. So, I went with watercolor paper, cutting out one 1" and two 1/4" strips, without any embossing.
• I love, love, LOVE this brown background. But, in hindsight, I would probably go with a 1/2" strip and add the embossed "for you" sentiment.

I'm going to link up the cards shown in the first photo to the following challenges:

• Simon Says Stamp Monday Blog Challenge (to use an ombre treatment),
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Blog Challenge (anything goes), and
• Word Art Wednesday (anything goes).

Parting Thoughts

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we launched a Fight-Like-a-Girl Challenge at Words 2 Scrap By yesterday. Hope you'll stop by to check our ladies' cards and return to play along. Challenge hostess -- and one-year cancer survivor! -- Penny is offering up some great Imagine Crafts goodies to the winner of our October challenge.

Hope you have a great weekend... a safe weekend. As always, thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!