Thanks, Teach!

First, the card. This is a rather large 5 1/2" square card for one of my son's teachers. Teachers are just amazing folk -- overworked and underpaid. There are few things on this earth more valuable than a good teacher. Janis is a great teacher! Janis taught my son Algebra almost 4 years ago but has remained a mentor and special person in my son's life. She met with me today (on her day off) to discuss which courses Andy should take in school next year. So, of course, a least a handmade card is called for! Note: the picture of the card is more true to life than the detail. However, sometimes seeing a close up of a portion of a card can be kind of fun, even if the color gets a bit twisted. Card details: I stamped the flower from Stampin Up's Heartfelt Greetings in Memories Chestnut Brown ink. Then, using my trusty Stamp Ma Jig, stamped the inside of the flowers with SU's Cranberry Crisp. I picked up my aquapainter and colored in the center of the flowers by just rubbing the brush on an SU More Mustard Classic ink pad, and swooshed the brush around the flowers as well. After they dried, I cut them out by hand and added a bit of golddust on the centers with a Sakura Stardust Gold Pen. The base of the card is SU's Blush Blossom, as is the strip directly under the flowers. That strip is stamped with SU's Aida Cloth background stamp inked with SU's Close to Cocoa Classic Ink. The strip looked awful so, I tried the aquapainter to spread some Cranberry ink on top of the strip. That one addition -- the Cranberry Crisp on the strip -- made all the difference in the card, and helped pull it together. Without it, the strip underneath the flowers just sort to sat there, not looking happy at all! If you look closely, you'll see a bit of rose ribbon under the flowers and the strip itself is mounted on a piece of striped paper that is part of the Basic Grey Blush collection. The "Thanks" is also from Heartfelt Greetings and was stamped with Cranberry Crisp on Blush Blossom, and then pressed onto the leftover ink on the Aida Cloth. I used the aquapainter again to move some of the Cranberry ink around the word and soften the look, and then mounted the word on some more of the Blush collection paper, used SU's ticket corner punch on both edges and adhered using SU's Copper Hodgepodge Hardware brads. The patterned paper covering most of the front of the card is also from the Blush Collection (if you peek really well, you'll see that I punched tiny holes in that paper so that some of the paper underneath would show through). Finally, I used the ticket corner punch on the patterned paper before adhering to more of the Blush collection paper. Second, about the blog and Feedblitz -- Whew! After I posted a message indicating that I could not fix it and would find another service, within moments, up popped a comment from someone at Feedblitz indicating that they had fixed the problem!! I guess someone's reading this blog -- LOL One final thought on the blog -- it is so fun watching folks read and comment and getting emails and messages about the blog. Makes me feel very connected to my fellow stampers. I encourage you to subscribe now that the Feedblitz problem appears to be fixed!