Island Hopping for Mother’s Day!

Aloha, all!

And welcome to the first Island Hopping Blog Hop for Spring 2020. While there has been something of a damper put on Spring celebrations in this year of the virus, there are many celebrations that will still happen. One of those is Mother’s Day. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s mothers all over the world who are keeping millions safe and healthy while we deal with a pandemic. So today we’re going to give you some ideas for making Mother’s Day cards.

A quick and easy card for starters

When I make Mother’s Day Cards, I like to make them fussy. So I spend a lot of time on them. But this year, with all of the other cards that you may be making to send as “Happy Mail” to friends or helpful members of your community, you may want something quick and easy to make for your mothers, aunts, daughters, daughters-in-law and others. I think that this card fits the bill.

I even have the measurements for all the layers at the end of this post if you’re interested!

For this project, I chose Petal Pink and Soft Seafoam as my Spring colors. The card base and the mat for both the stamped flowers and the sentiment are Petal Pink Cardstock. And the inks that I used to stamp the images from the Abstract Impressions Stamp Set (which will retire, by the way) are Petal Pink and Soft Seafoam.  I also used Soft Seafoam to stamp the sentiment, which is from the Tea Together Stamp Set (it will retire, too). Continuing with the “retiring” sub-theme for this post, the 1-1/8″ and 1-3/8″ Scalloped Circle Punches I used here will also retire.

Adding just a bit of texture

While I like the layout of the first card just fine – and I could make a lot of those in a hurry! – I thought I might try to jazz it up just a little bit to give it a bit more interest. So this version has a textured background, that I made with the Tufted Embossing Folder. Then I added some of the Petal Pink Metallic Edge Ribbon under the sentiment element. Finally, I placed several Petal Pink sequins from the Basic Adhesive Sequins Pack on both main layers of the card. Need I say that all of these products are retiring?

I finally got a little fussy

This last card demonstrates the kinds of things I would never include in a card for which I have to make multiples. I don’t even want to start counting the number of times I’d have to run papers through a die-cutting machine, not to mention punching each sentiment not once, but three times. But once I do enjoy!

I die-cut the two middle layers using dies from the Stitched So Sweetly dies that were in the January – June 2020 Mini Catalog. Yay, they’re NOT retiring! And I used the same sentiment as the first two cards. But this time I punched it with the Label Me Fancy Punch, added slits to either side (from the punch itself) and ran the beautiful Petal Pink Organdy Striped Ribbon (NOT retiring) through it. I finished it with a full out bow.

My basic message for this blog post is that you can make a beautiful card that anyone would be happy to receive in the mail with just some stamps, ink and paper, and maybe a punch or two. Little fuss at all. But if you want to dress up a card a bit more, and that’s what you enjoy, go for it. And go for it in a bigger way, too!

Do what you enjoy doing. Just do it as well as you can and everyone will love what you do.

Now hop on over to Cheryl Hamilton’s Blog to see what she’s up to with her Mother’s Day theme. I’m sure it will be as wonderful as her work always is. Do you see anything similar in our projects?

Happy stamping!

 

Measurements: Card Base, 5-1/2″w x 8-1/2″h, folded on top; layer 1: 5″ x 3-3/4″; mat for stamped layer: 4″ x 2-3/4″; stamped layer: 3-3/4″ x 2-1/2″. You’ll need scraps for punching.