a springtime hello

Hi, everyone! Hope it's been a great week and the weekend is off to a wonderful start.

I've spent a good part of the week making Father's Day cards to send to one of the Send a Smile 4 Kids shippers. These are cards for the kids to give to dads/special guys. So far my box to Anne has dinosaurs, astronauts, headphones, pirates, airplanes, food trucks, mustaches, derbies, and baby bunnies. By my calendar, I have about 5-6 more days before I have to pack up the cards. Sounds like just enough time to add some super heroes. gym shoes, and trucks. LOL

But, for the time being, I needed a testosterone time out... and decided to play along with the current CAS-ual Fridays Challenge. Thought I'd try my hand at a shabby chic bouquet of flowers.

Stampin' Up crumb cake and early espresso cardstock; Distress Ink dusty concord core paper
Paper Smooches botanicals 2 stamp and coordinating die
image stamped in broken china and worn lipstick Distress Oxides
Hero Arts birds and blossoms sentiment, heat embossed with Versamark ink and SU white powder
sentiment strip: MFT label die and SU tiny banner punch
Ranger embossing powder and SU brick wall decorative mask
frame: MFT STAX rectangle die
Recollections adhesive pearls

It's kind of hard to show, but the stenciled wall is inlaid inside a popped-up two-tone frame.

• After cutting out a frame from crumb cake, I inked up the frame with Versamark embossing ink... to create a darker shade of brown from the card base. 
• This frame was attached to the card using SU foam adhesive strips. 
• I then cut a narrower frame from early espresso and glued this to the inner edges of the popped crumb cake frame.

The flowering shrub was first stamped in worn lipstick. Then, I cut-out twenty-two flower masks -- yep, I counted them... and really need to buy some masking fluid --- before stamping the image in broken china. After adding the pearl centers, I was pretty pleased with the way this little shrub turned out.

I'm also really pleased with the stenciled wall and sentiment. Both have the feel of casual elegance that I was hoping to achieve.

Parting Thoughts

A new Words 2 Craft By Challenge starts on Wednesday. Hope you'll be able to join us.

Have a great weekend. As for me, I'm going to be inking up a cute little super hero.

Until next time, thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!