Did you know that it is “National Send a Card to a Friend” Day?

Who knew?  I didn’t until I got an email this morning about it.  I looked it up because…really?  Another holiday?

But then I thought about how important it is to make every day a reason to celebrate.  If you are having a good health day, you need to celebrate.  If you are having a day of relaxation…yeah, right…that’s another reason to celebrate.  But I think that it’s important to consider things that should be valued…and celebrated.  This one speaks to our card makers’ hearts, as someone somewhere decided that we should remind all of us to send our love and care through the mail.

And why not?

So here is my contribution to this end. 

I saw a version of this card online and decided to CAS it.  I love that it uses a single stamp set…Stampin’ Up! Calming Camellias.  I love that it is monochromatic with a dash of white flourish accents.  It is also easy-peasy to make with very standard cuts:

I use the Stamparatus for almost all of my stamping, as I am not particularly talented with achieving good images with a block.  And I did most of the stamping on the card base prior to scoring and folding it.

I used a piece of low tack tape to adhere the Powder Pink smaller panel to its ultimate location on the base.  Then I stamped the large camellia image in the center of the panel and had the other images flow along the top left of the panel and across the lower right edge.  I used Powder Pink ink for the stamping.

Once the flowers were in place, I used the beautiful swirl that is included in the Calming Camellia set to add some sedate zhoozh to the card.  (Is zhoozh ever sedate?  Not sure…)  I originally stamped it in Stampin’ Up! Whisper White ink – but it didn’t stand out as well as I had hoped because the background color is so light.  (Use this ink on a dark cardstock and, wow, what an impact!) 

So, I added some Stampin’ Up! White Embossing Powder and heat set it.  Once that was complete, it was time to stamp the sentiment on the outside of the card and then on the inside panel.

You will notice that stamping on a double layer of cardstock leaves an unstamped margin.  But the genius of this design is that the thin Basic White mat will cover that margin so that the stamping looks continuous over the panel to the edge and around the back of the card.

I added some Stampin’ Up! Polished Dots to the card face for some more subtle zhoozh and created an envelope that was a preview of the pretty greeting to come!

As demonstrators, so many of us try to show you have versatile the products that Stampin’ Up! creates can be.  And it’s true! 

But it is just as true that these stunning designs create amazing cards out of the box – and with nominal input from us.  This card is a super example of that.  I just used those gorgeous Calming Camellia images, a little white embossing, the sentiments that were included with this exact set, and done!

I’ve entered this card into the Paper Players Challenge #577 and Just Us Girls Challenge # 618. These challenges are always fun – and really get those creative ideas going in new directions!

I truly appreciate all of the work that goes into creating these challenges – thank you to all of you who do this labor of love!! I know that I look forward to the announcements of all the new challenges to inspire my upcoming blog posts.

I think that, as card makers, we should promote this National “Send a Card to a Friend” Day – in fact, I think that we should be sending cards all year long.  Nothing is as delightful as getting something beautiful in the mail instead of just bills and ads! 

Create from the heart…and then pass it along!

Here’s what I used: