Father's Day craftiness

So, now that all of our father's day celebrations are done and the kiddos are sleeping... I can get on and blog about the cards and presents. :) He reads my blog so of course I couldn't do it earlier!

First I want to say that my hubby is such a wonderful daddy! Before we had kids he was a little nervous about being a dad and not doing it 'right'. (He did not have the greatest example growing up.) But he has blossomed into a dad who's not afraid to take on any parenting task, who is a true partner with me in everything, and who loves his kids to the moon and back and is demonstrative with that love.

I like to do father's day gifts that capture the specific place we're at right now as a family. Hand prints accomplish this goal nicely since they change so much from year to year. So last week while the grandparents were here and Bill was out of town, we all went to the pottery studio to create our gift for Daddy. Here's our lovely creation:

I also had a great time making cards for him in the past couple days.

The first card I created was from the boys and I did one of my favorite things to do when making cards...dug through my scraps to find something that inspired me. One of my all-time favorite things about using Close To My Heart products is the 60-color palette: things will always match! That means that accent colors in one paper pack often match a dominant color in another. It's so much fun to mix it up!! I love it when I can come up with a design that uses papers from several different paper packs. The creative challenge of combining papers in unique ways energizes me.

In this card I used a paper from You Rock, a paper from Blue Ribbon, accents from Back Country, and tied it all together with Indian Corn Blue cardstock and Outdoor denim ink. Fabulous results!

The next card I created was his card from me. I chose You Rock paper for this one...I must be channeling You Rock because I'm also currently working on my swap layouts for Convention and they use You Rock paper as well. I was also super-excited to try out a brand new technique that I just learned as I was catching up on episodes of CTMH TV. Wow! You want to learn some fun stuff? Go watch CTMH TV!!

The technique I wanted to try is called Embossed Resist and was featured on the February episode of CTMH TV entitled 'New! Oh baby!' You can view it from my website if you're interested. So, this technique involves embossing a design in clear on a piece of cardstock, then inking the cardstock to make it a different color. On my card, the purple star and the words at the bottom were done using this technique. Then, I inked the cardstock with Outdoor Denim and embossed the white star over top of that. SO much fun...and I think it came out great! I will definitely be using this technique again soon.

Happy Father's Day to my honey...I love making things for you, babe!!