A Blessing to Me

Hello, again!  I hope you've had a good week and are ready for a pleasant weekend.

Let's get started!  I made this masculine looking card for my sister's birthday, not because she likes masculine things, but I wanted to let her know what she means to me, and to include one of my favorite old hymns--"Jesus Savior, Pilot Me" by Edward Hopper. The rest seemed to just go along with the words. If you get a chance, look up the hymn--it is lovely!

Taken outdoors--same ink colors-different paper-makes a big difference, especially in natural light.

Taken indoors--colors don't look too "off".

Starting with the background, I did some stamping on my base card with a stamp from CI Stamping in Archival Ink.  I colored with Distress Inks, and gave a silver lining to the clouds with Distress stain, except it did not turn out silver, like it did on my test paper.  Oh well!  Thought that counts! Lesson learned here: let well enough alone!

The focal panel is done on watercolor paper, and the background here is done with Distress Inks, stains and markers.  Images and sentiment are by Stampin' Up, again stamped in Archival ink, and the lower sentiment touched up with marker to be seen better against the dark background. I used a home made stencil for the two "clouds" in the upper left corner. I used a brass Christmas tree stencil masked off to make the "waves", and added "foam" using Picket Fence Distress Marker and Tim's spritzer tool. Black and silver molding paste by Momenta was used with a TCW stencil, and while the paste was still wet, I added blue, black and silver micro beads and allowed this to dry.  I edged this panel with Walnut Distress Ink. Now I know why it's been so long since I've used micro beads! They are all over the place!

Sorry for the blurries-wanted to show the "foam" and the spritzer tool splats!

More "foam" and spritzed Picket Fence details

Threatening "clouds" made with my home made cloud stencil.

 I added the focal panel to the background base card without any matting, as I wanted to tie it directly to the background, and the use of a mat gave it too much separation.

Next came the inside of the card.  I printed out my hymn in part on my computer and printed it out on cardstock.  I purposely left room at the bottom to write a personal message. I inked my embossing folder (Tim's Sizzix Texture Fade) with Walnut Distress ink, placed my printed cardstock in to deboss it.  Then I used Tim's burlap stencil with Distress Ink. I distressed the edges with Tim's distressing tool, and inked the exposed areas with Walnut ink. The first time I tried to make this, I was able to achieve more of a wood grain look to the ink applied to the embossing folder, but I found out I couldn't send an embossed card through my printer, or it would no longer be embossed! So I'll save this pretty piece for another project.

Oops!  Forgot to rotate!

In the background, I've stamped a chart from Stamper's Anonymous, colored with DI.

I made two embellishments with stamped images from Stampin' Up and 7 Gypsies, colored the compass rose with watercolor pen, fussy cut with scissors,  and covered with Crackle Accents.  The ship's wheel is heat embossed on some scrap woodgrain stamped paper from my junk pile (which is growing quite large).  I fussy cut using an X-acto knife and added Glossy Accents. I attached this with a brad. I added  the compass to my card using dimensional foam adhesive.

Again, blurry, and it's hard to see the crackle, but it's there!

You can see how pretty those beads are on the black molding paste.

Because of the nautical subject matter, I'm entering this into Country View's September Challenge "Nautical", and because I've used so many rootin' tootin' stamps and stencils, I'm joining in at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge "Stencils and Stamps", too!

Inside of the card, photographed outside.

Photographed indoors.

I thank you for sitting through another one of my long, detailed postings.  I'm really trying to change, but I think progress is slow in that department!  Have a great weekend, and thank you so much for leaving your lovely comments on my blog.  They are truly a joy to read, and I try to respond to each and everyone of them, eventually.