Shabby Chic Wedding Card for AHSC #176

Hello and welcome back, crafty friends!  Here in the USA we just celebrated Labor Day, which is the unofficial end of summer which is fine with me as I have always been a big fan of autumn.  While some people get inspired when spring rolls around, whether it's to clean, redecorate, or get crafty in other ways, I feel my best in the fall.  Maybe that's why I felt brave enough to use this latest sketch by Michelle Stewart for Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge #176 to venture into unknown territory...  I made my first attempt at a shabby chic card!  It's not as fabulous as the more experienced shabby-chic'ers that always inspire me, but I'm pretty tickled with it for my first try so let's get started!

details:   Later this month we will attend the wedding of a Young woman whose family and ours have known each other forever, and the bride and groom have planned a very country, somewhat rustic themed wedding with their colors being brown (barnwood), white, and mint.  So when I decided to use this sketch to make their wedding card, the first thing I did was to get out this lovely chevron barn board-patterned paper by The Paper Studio, which I cut to 5 x 7".  I cut a 3 3/4" panel of white CS and used Sea Glass ink and the heart stamp from the retired Charming Cascades set to stamp the background pattern and then I used my edge distresser to give that piece a rough, worn looking edge.  I then used CTMH's retired Art Philosophy cartridge to cut the 3 1/2" frame from Sea Glass glitter paper plus a solid shape in the same size in white CS to back the frame.  On that piece, I created a light watercolor background by pressing the closed Sea Glass stamp pad together so that ink was deposited in the lid and then "picking up" the ink using the medium flat waterbrush.  Then I used Saddle ink to stamp the ampersand image from a retired set called Mr. & Mrs., and Sea Glass ink to stamp the words and adhered those three layers to the card.  I used heat embossing and white embossing powder to stamp the congrats sentiment from another retired set called The Happy Couple.  Then came the really fun part:  the embellishments.  I dug out all kinds of things to try but ended up using a variety of retired (and some previously unused) CTMH products:  I hand cut leaves from a wide burlap ribbon, I layered 3 paper blooms and sponged one with Saddle and another with Sea Glass to make the body of the flower with the middle toned Mocha Opaques faux pearl in the center.  My rustic flower felt like it was lacking something so back to the stash I went and after several ribbons failed to impress me, I remembered seeing a recent post that had a pretty little clutch of string behind a focal point image, so I opened up a package of white waxy flax and that did the trick.  I finished the card off by adding a trio of pearls in the bottom corner:  the largest was another of those mocha opaques, the smallest was one of the white ones, and the middle sized was another white one which I colored with my turquoise blue ShinHan alcohol marker.

So, that's how  I created my first shabby chic wedding card.  I hope you will take time to check out all the projects our design team and participants have come up with this week, and hopefully you will find time to create and share your own project based on this sketch from AHSC and share it with us.  As always, you have until 11:55 p.m. Eastern/10:55 p.m. Central on Sunday, 9/11/16 to link up.

Happy crafting!  ~~  Annette

Happy Times for AHSC #158

I am so excited to share this project with you today!  Not only has Michelle Stewart outdone herself with this fabulous and versatile sketch to challenge us with for Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge #158, but I got to use CTMH's new kit "Happy Times" in honor of May being National Scrapbooking Month.  And finally the icing on the cake was that this paper helped me put together this card I've had in mind for a dear and lovely couple's upcoming wedding, which is barn themed with mint as the primary color.  This card was especially important to me as the young couple have been together since they were in high school plus the bride's mother was a childhood friend of mine, a high school friend of my husband's, and she was one of the witnesses when my husband and I eloped and got married by a Justice of the Peace.

details:  As stated, I used  mostly the Happy Times kit.  I planned to use the piece that looks like whitewashed wood but there wasn't enough contrast when I actually paired it with the mint striped and white-with-mint outlined flowers.  Luckily I have just a bit of a paper stash (ha ha) and after comparing several pieces, the one I liked best was this gray-based barn board looking paper from the long discontinued Dakota kit.  I used gold embossing powder and Versamark to heat emboss all the sentiments on the cover from the Mr. and Mrs. stamp set.  I used a bit of my favorite white and gold ribbon and the (retired) Gold Puffies for the heart.

For the inside, I again used gold heat embossing for this sentiment from The Happy Couple stamp set set on the same mint striped panel from the four squares on the front.  I backed that with a bit from the gold and white striped paper in the Happy Times kit and fussy cut the dovetails.  I am super happy with the way this one turned out but it is so hard to get a good photo of shiny embossing or metallics, I just don't feel like my photo does the card justice.  Don't forget to pick up a pack of this Happy Times paper during the month of May, it is so lovely and versatile it's sure to be a big hit.  I also invite you to play along with us at AHSC where there is never a shortage of inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting,  Annette