Well howdy, folks! I hope you enjoyed your summer while we took a break from Bashing our Stash of crafty supplies these last couple months. For those of you who have no idea what the heck I’m talking about, my friends (affectionately called the Squirrel Sisters) formed this group to encourage and challenge each other to use the supplies we have squirreled away 😉 and neglected. We pick a theme for the month and then either a technique or supply type as further inspiration. For September we’re doing Anniversary cards and the supply is embossing folders! Now, we took a couple months off to enjoy all the things that summer brings but are itching to get back to it. So have a look at what I came up with:

True story: My hubby and I were dating 6 years before we married, and we intentionally got married on the anniversary of our first date so that it’d be easy to remember our anniversary! I’m happy to say that we’ve been together 30 years, and married 24 of that 💓. So of course I had my hubby in mind when making this card…. up til it started to look more feminine that I had planned. *sigh* 🙄 Hubby is a nature loving guy and I knew I had a coordinating cover plate and embossing folder with ferns that would be perfect. I received both Gina Marie Designs products (Fern embossing folder and Pinpoint Fern cover plate) last Christmas and had yet to use either. Now in my head, I also had a matching fern die but alas I didn’t, and that is where this card took a turn. Wanting to make the embossed panel pop off the background, I added a mat in gold foil and when I realized I didn’t have a matching fern die I looked through my stash and found this flower and fern die made by Momenta and I cut it from the same gold foil paper. It felt like the flower needed definition, so I cut a piece of vellum to go behind that part of the die and it did the trick. The sentiment came out of an old Papertrey Ink set called Embroidered Blooms which I gold heat embossed and I used a banner die from Cutter Bee to cut it out. Aside from just feeling rusty, this card came together quickly. I have my bestie to thank for that because for the first time in a very long time we had a crafty date on a video call! We used to spend HOURS scrapbooking and cardmaking together, but life got busy. So glad we carved out some time to craft together!!!

Now, I had another idea for the theme that is… unconventional. Many of you know I use Evernote to inventory my stash, and when I did a search for “anniversary”, a birthday stamp set from Simon Says Stamp called Stop Drop Party came up. What do you think… does this count as an anniversary card??? (Please ignore the crummy heat embossing… this was the 3rd attempt and I gave up trying to get good results.)

This uses a very old, never used embossing folder from Darice called Star Border. It has that embossed rectangle as part of the pattern, and it was the perfect size for the sentiment! I pulled out my metallic Gansai Tambi paints and quickly added color to the raise impressions. The pattern is not quite A2, so I trimmed it to fit the pattern, which left a border on the top and bottom of the card front. I simply used the watercolor paint again to dress up the border. The embossing isn’t clean, the painting isn’t clean… but you know who won’t notice or care? My almost 86 year old father who has questionable vision anyway 😆 He’ll be like, even with my magnifying glass the words are blurry. I need to go back to the eye doctor! 😅 Anyway, I love the rainbow colors! Oh, and I inked the embossed panel in silver ink to match the sentiment and tiny stars. Would have been done in 10 minutes had I not fought with the embossing for an hour 🙄 And yes, I tried to scratch off the errant specs of embossing powder but it either wouldn’t budge or it would tear the paper. I think the embossing powder is just old and not giving good results anymore. Its a Wow! powder but the jar is almost empty and I am pretty sure its gotta be around 12 years old.

Well, that’s it for me, but not for you!!! No, you can hop on to see what the other Squirrels have made for the theme! There’s just a handful of us, so it isn’t a huge time suck. Here is the hop list:

• Marie Bingaman
• Karen Page – YOU ARE HERE
• Lounon Riviere
• Anna Mahtani
• V Fairchild – taking this month off

So be sure to head over to the talented Lounon of Craft Me Craft Moi for her interpretation of the theme! You won’t regret it because her blog is just FULL of amazing cards and projects! Most of the Squirrels post a lot more than I do, so consider subbing to them to see all the pretty things they make all month long. With that, I will see you this time next month and hopefully there will be a brisk Fall chill in the air cause I’ve had enough summer already! Thanks for dropping by and I always appreciate when you take time to leave a comment!