Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

texture paste

Man Card Monday, a day late!

Hi there! This month’s Man Card Monday comes on a Tuesday, sorry about that. I didn’t want to distract from the Pinkfresh Studios release yesterday! (You can check out that blog post and enter to win the entire new release here.) Today’s Man Card Monday is an ocean-themed Father’s Day card using some fabulous supplies from Hero Arts, so let’s get started with the details!

This Man Card Monday was inspired by this fabulous seahorse die set from the My Monthly Hero Add-Ons from a few months ago. Male seahorses actually carry and give birth to the baby seahorses, so I thought they would be a perfect focal point for a Father’s Day card! I began by die cutting some of the Paper Layering Seahorses from some Adriatic card stock. My husband and I have twins (though he most certainly didn’t carry and birth them haha!), so I die cut an extra little baby seahorse to give the daddy seahorse his own set of twins!

For the background, I created a swirling alcohol ink panel using teals and gold, then added some gold glitter paste using the Starry Night stencil. While that was drying, I die cut the “happy” 4x from the Happy Stamp and Cut using gold vellum, then adhered them all together to make a dimensional die cut. I also heat embossed the “father’s day” onto a strip of white card stock using gold embossing powder.

Once the glitter paste was dry, I used foam tape to adhere the die cuts and greeting to the card front in a cluster. I know, it’s a little more glitter than you would normally think of for a “man card,” but I couldn’t resist adding that extra bit of texture to the alcohol ink background! Texture paste, to me, is a bit messy, and so of course that works on a guy card. (ha!)

Well, that’s all for April’s Man Card Monday. I hope you’re enjoying the series and finding some inspiration for those forever-difficult “man cards.” Thanks so much for dropping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Honey Bee Stamps- World Kindness Day!

Good morning! Today is World Kindness Day. Isn’t that a fantastic “day” to celebrate? Much better (and by better, I mean worth celebrating) than some of the silly ones that have been floating about recently…. Anyway, the Honey Bee Stamps design team is here with some “kindness” inspiration for you!

For my project, I wanted to create a wintry scene focusing on a chilly little birdie that someone gave a nice warm hat and scarf. 🙂 To start, I blended some blue inks on an A2 panel of Bristol card stock. (Bristol gives you lighter blend, because the ink just kinda sits on top instead of completely saturating the card stock!) Next, I used the fabulous Outdoor Scene Builder stencils and some Nuvo Mousse in Pure Platinum to add some pretty birch trees to the backdrop.

After I had created the backdrop, I die cut some snowy hills using the new Hill Border dies from both silver glitter and white card stock and popped them up using dimensional foam adhesive.

For the sweet little birdie, I wanted to tell the “story” that some kind soul had given him some warmth on this cold day with a warm hat and scarf. I started by using the coordinating dies from Snowbirds to die cut the little guy from plain white card stock, then, because I wanted to do some no-line coloring, used very pale gray ink to stamp the bird. I colored him using my Prismacolor pencils. No-line coloring is fairly easy with colored pencils; you don’t have to worry about ink bleeding with pencils like you do with watercolors! 😉 I also added some snowflakes from Snowbirds to the backdrop, stamping some of them full strength, others stamped off once.

The final step was to add the greeting from Honey Bee’s beautiful Kindness stamp and the coordinating die set. I die cut the kindness from superfine black glitter paper, then adhered it to the card front and stamped the coordinating greeting.

Well, I hope this project and our blog hop will inspire you to do something kind today! The world always needs kindness, and now more than ever in this sometimes-terrifying world in which we live.

Now, for some fun extras to celebrate this lovely holiday! Melissa is giving away 4 $25 gift certificates to the Honey Bee Stamps store (check the blog for all of the details), and the fantastic Kindness stamp and die set are on sale 25% off! Be sure to go get your own set quickly. It’s such a versatile, lovely set!

Have a marvelous day!