Patriotic Thank You for AHSC #272

Hello again, crafty friends!  We have another fun and fabulous sketch to work with this week at the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge.  To make things twice as nice, we have partnered with the folks at the Double Trouble Paper Crafting Challenge Blog for their 3-2-1 recipe and sketch challenge.  How fun is that?!?!  We at AHSC always love to have you play along, but I sincerely hope you take time to also play along, or at least check out, the Double Trouble challenge as well as this is just their 4th challenge and they are already off to a fabulous start!

details:  I started with this awesome fireworks-themed designer paper I've had for ages (and cannot identify, sorry).  After going through all my color swatches, I decided that Sapphire and Cranberry were the best matches so those are the colors I went with.  I ran the Sapphire cardstock through the confetti stars embossing folder, the Cranberry cardstock through the stripes embossing folder, and then I sanded both to get the white core to show through.

I used Sapphire and Cranberry ink with the retired Vintage USA stamp set to get those distressed star images.  I used the basic stars Thin Cuts to cut the smallest star from white glitter paper.  I also used the glitter paper to frame the stars and to add those three stars in the lower left corner per the sketch.

For the banner, I used Sapphire with the Thank You (M1185) stamp, Cranberry ink with this banner image from the retired Hello Lovely stamp set, and finally ran that through the coordinating Thin Cut die.

This is one of those sketches that has endless possibilities, and we would love to see your take on it.  As always, you have until 10:55 pm Eastern/9:55 pm Central on Sunday, 7/15/18, to enter your creations HERE.  And don't forget to stop by and check out, and hopefully play along, with the Double Trouble Paper Crafting Challenge Blog.

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!  ~~  Annette

patriotic card for "Less Is More" challenge

Hello!  I have had such a lazy and relaxing day reading and napping, and I have to admit this little break was greatly needed.  I had planned to do a little reorganizing in my craft area after I finished reading my book but then inspiration struck so I have had a little fun creating first.  This card was inspired by a friend's family; she is an Army wife and she and her husband just went on a trip to DC as he was the recipient of a prestigious (and no doubt well deserved) leadership award.  I have always admired this family as they are such a great example of service, values, and teamwork so I wanted to do a little something to say "thanks" and help them celebrate this achievement.  As I used multiple stamps, I will also be entering this in this week's "Less Is More" challenge.

details:  All products used were from Close To My Heart.  I used a spare piece of CS and made my own striped background using the backside of one of the border stamps from the Stitch Wonder set in Cranberry and the stars background is from a retired set called Vintage USA in Outdoor Denim.  I then used the USA outline border stamp from the Adventure USA set (also retired) in black and then fussy cut the image and adhered it to the center of a 6 x 6" card base.  The sentiments "Land of the Free" and "of the Brave" are from one of last year's promotional sets called "Home of the Brave."  The second sentiment actually reads "Home of the Brave" but I used decorative tape to mask off "home" and the used the Keyboard Uppercase alpha to spell "because."  On the inside of the card is a sentiment that reads, "Thank you for your dedication and sacrifice." which is from the "Courage" stamp set that was also part of last's summer's promotion.  By my count, that's 6 stamp sets so I think that will qualify for the challenge.  :-)

Happy crafting!  Annette