Mahalo cards - Maui vacation

 Just returned from a week in Maui!!!!!!  What a wonderful trip and a great winter vacation - our very first!!  If you have never been to the Islands - I would highly recommend going - warm temperatures, no bugs, beautiful scenery, great food and friendly people!!
I needed a few cards for people who have helped us make this vacation happen so I created this Mahalo (Hawaiin for Thank you) digital greeting stamp.  I used a public domain font from Open Font Library and added the lines inside the letters to create our ocean view from the beach behind the hotel.  I laser printed and watercoloured the greetings.  Love how it turned out.  My second digital stamp this year.  Here is my first!!
I used a digital image of a hibiscus (they grow everywhere outdoors in Hawaii) which I acquired from Island Paperie - a paper/scrapbooking store in Maui.  I bought Volume II of their digital Clipart collection.  They have a wonderful store - rubber stamps, paper, etc, etc!!  Great place to visit!!

I laser printed the images, watercoloured and then fussy cut them for my cards. I used some Hawaiin scrapbook paper which I just acquired from my daughter which she received in a lot along with other items and thought I could use after our trip. Thanks, Suzanne!!  The label is from a set of Sizzix Framelits I also bought while on vacation at Ben Franklin's in the Queen Ka'ahumanu Mall in Kahului in Maui.  It has three labels and two ovals which nest which I think will layer very nicely.

So you can see that I made my cards all different using the same basic supplies - green cardstock, 4" x 5.25" decorative paper, a red label die cut, a fussy cut hibiscus, a coloured greeting and some ribbon.

Here are some of the techniques I used:  different orientation - portrait and landscape, background paper - whole or cut up into strips or rectangles, greeting - trimmed with decorative scissors or distressed, label - embossed with two different embossing folders, ribbon - long pieces, short pieces and a flag. One card has no ribbon because I could not seem to incorporate it in the design.
I am happy with all my cards and some will be on their way shortly.  I will be using a couple for my card exchange as well.

Therese

Love cards

 Managed to get my Valentine's card made while I was rushing around getting ready to go on vacation!!  I created this cool little cityscape digital stamp for my card!!  I have been toying with the idea of creating my own digital images for a while and decided to start with something I could manage.  I have seen quite a few cityscape images used on cards and thought I could manage the lines involved in creating one of these for myself.  It required a few basic tools - smooth white cardstock, a pencil, an eraser and a black fine tip sharpie.  Using my pencil I started sketching buildings at the left and just kept going.

 Once I was happy with the buildings I went over them with my black fine tip sharpie then erased the pencil lines.  I scanned the original, cleaned up any stray pixels digitally in PSElements, gave it a transparent background and saved it as a PNG.  I laser printed one image for my Valentine's card and layered several for my other two cards.  I love it!!!!
For my Valentines' card I added faux stitching to the edges of my quarter sheet.  I stamped LOVE in red pigment ink and embossed it in red embossing powder.  Die cut a U from silver cardstock to place next to it.  I added a black ribbon as a base for my letters and a little red heart rhinestone!!  Done!!

For the other two cards which I will be using for a card exchange I added faux stitching to my printed quarter sheets using a black sharpie and used a red gel pen to add hearts in the windows of my buildings.  I stamped and embossed my LOVE word, wrote the rest of the quote in black marker by hand, layered it on black and added it to the front of my cards using 3D foam tape.
On hind sight I could have used more height variance in my buildings but I am happy with my first attempt.  I am very happy to have art of my own to use in my card making!!
Therese