A Little Comfort

All Stampin’ Up: Thoughts and Prayers stamp set; Very Vanilla and Early Espresso Cardstock;
More Mustard, Pear Pizzazz, and Early Espresso inks;Pear Pizzazz Seam Tape; Spice Cake DSP;
Large Oval, XL Oval, Corner Rounder, and Eyelet Border punches; Gold Glow Smooch Spritz

Sadly, my husband and I have found ourselves in need of several sympathy cards in the past few weeks. I made unique cards for each case, since it’s such a personal kind of card. As with any card, however, you could change the sentiment to fit your own needs.

I used the baby wipe technique for this. You just take a couple of baby wipes, folded, and drop some ink from a refill onto them, vaguely as you would like your image to appear. The ink spreads throughout the wipe and blends together. Then just use it like a stamp pad. You probably want to clean your stamp between each use, though, to keep the colors clean on the wipe.

Although I don’t have babies anymore, I still keep wipes around, since they’re so handy. Did you know they remove almost any stain, if you use them immediately? They also can be used to clean your stamps, since they have a bit of oil in them to condition stamps (well, it’s really to condition baby bottoms, but it serves a dual function!). I use my Stampin’ Up! Stampin’ Scrub for most of my stamp cleaning, but wipes are good for craft ink that you don’t want on your Stampin’ Scrub.

Anyway, back to the card. For the ribbon, I wrapper a straight piece around the sides and adhered with glue dots, then used bakers’ twine to tie another small piece as a bow. Lastly, I spritzed the tree portion with Gold Glow Smooch. I really like these spritzes…they can jazz up a card to make it more elegant or more rustic, whatever look you want. And it’s not just a plain cardstock background.

There you have it. I was inspired by the gorgeous sunrise to be productive today…

I was planning to make pumpkin butter and cranberry chutney today and blog about it, with recipes. I went to the basement (we actually have a small room there called the root cellar for canned goods) and discovered I have no jelly jars. Since I don’t really want to make quarts of preserves, I guess Princess Thundercloud and I will have to change out of our PJ’s after all and go to town. You’ll just have to wait until next week for canning inspiration.

Enjoy your weekend, if you are able to without pumpkin butter or cranberry chutney!