CTMH June Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Did you have a fabulous Memorial Day weekend? How about some stamping inspiration? We're blog hopping again already with the June stamp of the month, Wonderful Friend. It is such a great set of masculine images! If you're coming from Misty's blog then you're following the hop. Click on the link to Lori's to see what's next!

My card is based on the Wishes pattern "Simple Expression" on page 40. The cool thing about all of Close To My Heart's how-to guides is that they are guides that you can copy exactly or you can change them up a bit. I altered some of the measurements and flipped the layout horizontally to achieve the look I wanted. I hope my Dad likes it, as this will be his Father's Day card.

Here are the instructions:
I began with a 4.25"x5.5" piece of Brown Bag cardstock. I stamped the houndstooth pattern in the upper left corner and then distressed the edges of this piece (which I later moutned on a top-fold Colonial White standard card). I cut a piece of Colonial White slightly "taller" than the argyle stamp, and then stamped it three times with Brown Bag ink. CTMH's clear acrylix make it sooooo easy to line up and repeat a pattern like this! The next step was to mount that piece onto a piece of Barn Red B&T from the Passages paper pack and then top that piece with the thin Cocoa strip. For both of the sentiment rectangles, I used my stamps as my measuring guide: the cardstock pieces are slightly larger than the stamps themselves. Truly faster, simpler, easier! "Dad" was stamped in Cocoa on edge-distressed Barn Red cardstock and then attached to the card front with Antique Copper brads. For the other sentiment, I inked up the frame stamp in Brown Bag and then rolled it in the Barn Red ink. The rock 'n roll technique really gives this one some dimension! I stamped the sentiment inside the frame with Cocoa ink, mounted it on a piece of Cocoa B&T (also from the Passages collection) and attached it my card.

If you've made it this far, leave me a little lovin' and then hop on over to Lori's blog next! Thanks for looking!