Hi friends, welcome back to the blog!

After my uncle had a medical emergency a few months ago, I found myself in desperate need for a get well card for my uncle, and a supportive card for my aunt. My aunt and uncle are some of the most important people to me, and all I wanted to do was pour my heart and soul into these cards so they felt like the biggest paper hugs from 1900 miles away. Both of these cards are not original ideas of mine (I’ll be linking the inspirations for both), but I did tweak the designs a little bit. Luckily my uncle is doing much better now, and there’s only room for more progress from here!

Get Well Soon card:

I had so much fun recreating this get well card! This card was inspired by one of JJ Bolton’s beautiful creations using the Band-aid wishes die set from Papertrey Ink (linked here jj bolton {handmade cards}: Papertrey Ink January 2022 Release Countdown Day 3: Pattern Party & Band-aid Wishes). I loved the cheerfulness of the colorful band-aids, so I recreated it using almost all Concord & 9th cardstock colors (with the exception of the light purple, which was from an assorted cardstock pack). The only downside is that cutting out a big number of band-aids did take a bit of time, but I thought it was worth it. After cutting out my rainbow assortment, I laid them out on the card base as best as I could (my inner perfectionist was screaming haha) and slowly and carefully glued each one. If you recreate this card, I would highly suggest buying Glad Press’n Seal, which would allow you to pick up all the band-aids at one time with a single piece of Press’n Seal, apply glue to them, and place them with ease.

The other nice thing about this die set is that it does have a coordinating stamp set which allows you to stamp patterns on the die cuts. I had originally thought about making the background band-aids be randomly stamped with a few of the patterns, but I decided not to in case it would be too busy. To finish this card up, I die cut the band-aid box out of white cardstock, and the band-aids in it out of craft cardstock. The die set included three word dies so I used the ‘get well’ one and the cross die to inlay a cross cut out of Cranberry cardstock from Concord & 9th. I centered and glued the band-aid box on the card panel and added some sequins from Trinity Stamps to brighten it up. I love how this card turned out.

Thinking of You card:

I sent this card to my sweet auntie who I felt needed the biggest hug in the world…I absolutely adored this card, and it definitely is one of my favorites that I’ve ever made. I think the color story in this card and the dreamy feeling of it is what made me love it so much. This card was inspired by the OG Crafty Queen, Jennifer McGuire. If you haven’t heard of Jennifer or seen any of her videos, check her out! She made a beautiful card (linked here Dimensional Die Cuts Video - Jennifer McGuire Ink) that I had fallen in love with. I didn’t end up buying the stamps and dies used in this video until this past winter, and I felt making this card was the perfect time to bust these supplies out.

I started off by stamping and clear heat embossing the Sun Ray Bold Prints background stamp from Hero Arts on a light blue cardstock from Recollections. I love the way the clear heat embossing looks on this paper, and it’s become one of my favorite techniques to add subtle patterns/textures. Next, I started to die cut out my rainbow pieces from the Hero Arts Rainbow Infinity Dies die set. I used Concord & 9th cardstock for this starting with Sorbet, Grapefruit, Buttercup, Sprout and Oceanside. I absolutely love these colors together. I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from the Rainbow Heroscape stamp set, which coordinates with the die set, to add a little bit of interest to the rainbow. I love the variety of sentiments Hero Arts includes in this stamp set and that they fit so well on the different sized rainbow arches.

I followed Jennifer’s lead again and decided to add some dimension to the rainbow and cut additional arches out of Sorbet, Buttercup and Oceanside. Before I glued the rainbow down. I die cut some clouds out of white cardstock to place alongside the rainbow and then glued the rainbow on top of it. After the rainbow was glued down, I die cut the larger clouds out of white cardstock and vellum as well as a few of the smaller clouds. I ended up layering the vellum clouds over white cloud die cuts to hide the glue marks that would be visible with just the vellum alone. For the cloud layer, I ended up gluing two large clouds and three smaller clouds to fill the area out. I die cut the Big Hugs greeting (also from Hero Arts) out of two layers of white cardstock and one layer of a beautiful champagne colored glitter paper.

To finish the card off, I die cut two hearts from Cranberry cardstock, as well as a die cut sun that I stamped in Buttercup ink on Buttercup cardstock. After doing this, I decided I wanted some raindrops coming from the clouds on the side of the card. I raided my stash and used the raindrops die from Concord & 9th’s Rain or Shine die set and cut them out from Sea Glass cardstock.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the cards I made that were inspired by JJ Bolton and Jennifer McGuire! Be sure to check out their blogs for more amazing card inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by!