Inspired Friendship

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday we celebrated Bill's Uncle G's 80th birthday! We had a fantastic lunch at Opa! restaurant in Vernon Hills. The food was terrific, the company was better, and as you can tell from this photo, age has got nothin' on uncle G. He still has it going on!

Of course, stamping geek that I am, even in the midst of such an important celebration I got inspired by stuff I saw around me. But really, can you blame me? Just look at the shirt Aunt D. is wearing! Remind you of anything? Take a closer look:

When I saw this pattern I immediately thought of the Friendship Blooms sale-a- bration set. It's like the Stampin' Up! artists were moonlighting for the clothing manufacturer! I just couldn't wait to get home to work on this card, but didn't actually have a chance to until this morning. Truth be told, after the party last night we went to see the movie "In Bruges." I mean, seeing as how we had just been in Bruges a few months ago, we could not pass it up, especially since it got some really good write ups. The verdict -- we loved it! We really loved the fact that it was very obviously really filmed in Bruges (and not in Prague, as we half feared) an the movie itself, while rather quirky and dark, was actually quite good and a nice change of pace from the standard Hollywood fare. Now, if you don't care for movies with a lot of violence and offensive language and other subject matter which is not geared towards young audiences, this may not be the film for you, but otherwise I'd say check it out. But I digress. I'm sure by now you really wan tot see the card.

Well, here it is. It turned out really well, didn't it? It looks just like that darned shirt! How fun!

I do have a confession to make. Since I didn't have a stamp that would give me the right black and white texture, I did use one flower rub-on from the Anchored pack and Another flower from the Love & Happiness Sale-A-bration Rub-ons. But I think the card would have worked well even without those additions, so you could make it using just the Friendship Blooms set.

To make the card I started with a basic black base, which I dusted with the embossing buddy to make sure I didn't have a lot of stray powder on the card. The embossing buddy takes away the static and prevents the embossing powder to sticking to anything on the card but the stamped surfaces.

I then used my versamark pad to stamp the various flowers, leaves and the sentiment. I used my white embossing powder to emboss this first layer. I continued to use the versamark pad with a piece of whisper white card stock to stamp one large flower and the three small flowers, which I embossed with black embossing powder and trimmed out by hand. I used my snail to adhere the trimmed out flowers to the card front and added the one rub-on. As a final touch, I wrapped a piece of black gingham ribbon around the whole card front.

I love the final result and can;t believe all I needed to make it was black and white card stock, black and white embossing powder, a versamark pad, some black gingham ribbon and a stamp set I earned for free with this month's purchases. That is just too cool!