My wonderful mother

I've been sitting on this card ever since my last club meeting, since I'd decided to send it to my own mom and didn't want her to see it too soon! I had a lot of fun with this card - I didn't necessarily intend to add all of this stuff to it but once I started, I just kept going, and I was really pleased with the result. The layout and ribbon treatment were inspired by this card by Laurie Schmidlin - isn't it gorgeous?

The whole card started because I wanted to do a different coloring technique with my club. I chose the marker technique demonstrated by Julie Buhler in this video tutorial. The basics are to stamp with Stazon on watercolor paper, color with your lighter marker color, then color over where you want to shade the image with a darker marker and blend with an Aqua Painter. I used this technique on the dogwood stamp from Soft Summer in the mini catalog, using pink pirouette reinker and regal rose, close to cocoa, old olive and always artichoke markers. I didn't blend the cocoa marker with another color, just colored on the image and then softened it with the Aqua Painter.

Now for all the extras. I used my fingernail to distress all the edges and added cocoa ink with a paper towel. The cocoa and pink pirouette DP come from Candy Lane - it's not just for Valentine's Day! I created my own sentiment and printed it on pink pirouette cardstock, then I punched it out and pierced the cocoa scalloped circle. I added a little more piercing on two of the corners. I added a strip of regal rose grosgrain ribbon. Then I got out my Pretties Kit and dyed one of the flowers with the pink pirouette reinker. Tip of the day: It took a long time, and a lot of ink from the reinker, until I thought the flowers looked pink at all. I think I let them sit in the water for at least 24 hours! This was my first time trying this technique - maybe it was just because this is such a pale color.

For final touches I used a hatpin and a couple more of the Pretties, and then I added one of the Latte buttons with a bit of hemp twine in the center. As I was making this card I remembered how much I love making shabby chic cards - it's really a style that speaks to me. I hope my mom loves this card as much as I loved making it, and as much as I love her. Thanks for everything, Mom!