"Ice Cream Dream" is the Featured Stamp of the Month

Summer, officially at least, is right around the corner though here in the Philadelphia area, we've already had our first heat wave of the season, with temperatures skyrocketing into the 90's for four consecutive days. School is out soon, and a favorite activity in our neighborhoods is the arrival of the ice cream truck. Does your ice cream truck play that incessant, irritating song too? 

To celebrate the happiness of ice cream and summer, Close To My Heart's June Stamp of the Month features a vintage ice cream truck and ice cream cones. Isn't it just fun?  You can get your SOTM for only $5 with a qualifying $50 purchase on my CTMH website, www.cardmonkey.ctmh.com.  Here are two of the cards I recently made using this cute stamp set:

This card (above) features the funfetti of CTMH's "Confetti Wishes" paper pack and embellishments. The panel that I stamped and then colored with ShinHan Touch Twin markers was die cut using Dual Stitched Rectangle Dies from Lil' Inker Designs.

My ice cream cone banner on this card combines CTMH's "You're Da Bomb" Operation Smile stamp set with its "Totally Irresistible" sentiment with five delish ice cream cones,twine and brads.

Painted Butterflies for Mom

Good morning, CardMonkey friends and followers.

First, let me apologize for my inactivity on my blog. It seems I have gotten wrapped up in the work of creating and the joys of sending -- along with babysitting and caring for family -- that I've neglected my dear friends here.  Forgive me?

Just after my last post (in May, egads), hubby and I traveled to Florida to visit my parents.

It is so wonderful to see them aging in place, as well as can be at 85 and 87. This spring, Dad completed a 9-week course of daily radiation to treat aggressive Prostate Cancer, which thankfully was fully encapsulated within the prostate and hadn't metastasized at all.  Mom has neck/back disc compression issues that have left her feeling a bit dizzy and imbalanced, so she has been taking physical therapy. Neither Mom nor Dad had been in their gorgeous pool in 2015, "life got in the way."  I'm glad to say our visit was good, and John and I got my parents in the pool every day of our extended weekend.

Mom's birthday was not long after our visit, and I knew that I wanted to break out some new techniques to make her a card she'd love. (Who am I fooling? She loves anything we kids make for her, always has!)

Here is Mom's card:

 

To make this card, I used the pretty stamp set from Altenew called Painted Butterfly. This is a multi-layer stamp set where you can use any/all layers to create lovely artistic butterflies.  Look here:

 

First I stamped the outlines of the butterfly (highlighted here with light blue circles), stamping them in Versamark watermarking glue/ink and sprinkling them with Ranger fine black embossing powder, available from Close To My Heart. I stamped the images onto watercolor paper from Canson.  I then heat-set the powder with a craft heater. This stabilizes the impression and makes it able to accept water or alcohol inks without smearing. 

 

I then took the first layer stamp (highlighted here in pink), laid it on my acrylic block and literally painted the stamp with watercolor paints onto the stamp, and stamped the paint atop of the embossed outlines.  Where needed, I filled in the color by pushing the paint with a water pen. When the image was dry, I cut the image into a card-sized rectangle, using a Lil' Inker Dual Stitched Rectangle die.

 

I created the inside of the card using the same method, and stamped both the front and inside of the card with a birthday sentiment from the "Card Chatter - Birthday" collection from Close To My Heart.  I added a few sparkle gems from CTMH, mounted the images on a vertical A2 card I created from Gypsy-colored cardstock from CTMH, and voila, happy birthday, Mom!