With Gratitude

I have one of the most amazing friends, more like a sister, really.  She and her husband have adopted our children as their own nieces, spent their holidays and money traveling across the ocean to visit us, and are always available with words of encouragement and a vote of confidence.  About a month ago I emailed my friend and told her I started this blog, so guess what I got in the mail!  A package full of card making goodies!  She doesn't even make cards.  I was blown away with this thoughtful gift.  It's a collection from Anna Griffin called Engraved Botanica and it was filled with beautiful papers, base cards, sentiments, embellishments, and ribbons.  It also has an entire sheet of wonderful sentiment stamps for inside the cards.  My first card using this bit of treasure is for my dear sweet friend with deepest gratitude and much love.

The papers, of course, are Anna Griffin along with the sentiment, banner, and ribbon.  I cut the bird from one of the other papers in the pack.  It was light blue, but I used green and pink Ranger Distress Ink, a bit of brown Copic and a Zig Writer gold marker to make it fit my color scheme.  The fence, green flourishes, and roses were cut on my Silhouette.  I distressed the fence by spraying it with water, bunching it, opening it back up, and rubbing it through distress inks sprayed with water.  Does that make sense?  You know the technique I'm talking about.  The roses were made with six five-petal flowers shaped, glued together, and inked a bit.  I used some Distress ink on the green flourishes too, but that's not easy to see. 

I was inspired by the photo challenge at The Shabby Tea Room. The challenge is to use the colors from the photo and include dimensional flower(s). 

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a great day!
Kara Lynne