Hello my crafty friends, is anyone as excited for Friday as I am? As the weekend approaches I get excited about all the extra time I have to work on crafty projects but then end up spending most of my time with my kids or cleaning up after them. Although, my daughter who is 6, loves to be in the office with me creating. She is also a big fan of Kindred Stamps. She often borrows them to make cards of her own. I’m ok with that, kinda.

As I have mentioned before, most often when I am making cards I have a person in mind they will be sent to or my intentions are for them to be given away. And as we all know, sometimes our original intentions do not produce our final outcomes. Such was the case with these two card designs.

Again, I was trying to push myself and decided to play with some stencils and blending. My original plan was to make a birthday card for my friend Maureen who shares my snark and sarcasm. You will notice most of the people in my life that I am close to, share those same characteristics. Needless to say, it had to be something from Kindred, my favorite when it comes to snark and puns. I chose one of Kindred Stamps Naughty sets, “I Like Your Beaver.”

I made this card using Catherine Pooler inks (obsessed–I need them all), Life Changing blender brushes from Picket Fence Studios and masking. First I placed down a square mask made from scraps and placed the Petals stencil from Pink & Main on top. I blended the petals with Mardi Gras ink. I lifted the Petals stencil and blended on Garden Party ink to fill the negative space and blended out towards the edges. I also blended some color around the outer edges. Then I lifted the stencil and square and masked around the outside of the square using purple tape. Inside the square I used the Mini Cloud Edges stencil from MFT and blended with Suede Shoes and It’s a Boy inks. I stamped the beaver and sentiment with Over Coffee ink from Catherine Pooler. Stamping with other colors besides black is something I have been trying to do more of lately. Sometimes depending on the color palette, I think it works better than black. I colored the Beaver with SU alcohol markers and highlighted him with a white pen. All the paper is SU. The flowers were given to me by daughter from one of her slime kits. They seemed to go nicely with the colors and theme.

Once I finished this guy, I loved it but knew right away there was someone better to receive this. This was not Maureen’s card. It belonged to my father in law who’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks. Perfect. I set it aside but still had to make something for Maureen.

It just so happened that the brand new Banana Box was sitting on my desk filled with fun. Perfect! There was so much goodness inside, I spent quite some time playing around and mixing and matching all the items. If you ever get the opportunity to purchase a limited special edition box form Kindred Stamps – DO IT. You won’t be sorry. In all honesty, I’m not a die hard fan of banana potatoes, but the items in this box were so much fun to play with and well worth the purchase. Everything used on the card was from Kindred except blue & yellow SU cardstock, yellow SU embossing powder and black ink. Patterned paper, denim paper google eyes, and so much more I haven’t even used yet were included. There will definitely be more little yellow guys showing up in future cards!