Hello there. I had the need for quite a few ‘thank you’ cards. Having recently retired from the NHS after over 40 years, I had a small leaving meal last Saturday. There was the nurse practitioner team I first started 26 years ago – now a team of 8 people. There were consultants there who I did clinics with up until my final day – who actually paid for the whole thing…….to say I was emotional is putting it lightly. Such a lovely gesture….

Anyhoo – I wanted to batch make some thank you cards for them, and decided to go down the route of complicated. These cards actually took me over 3 hours to make – why did I go with heat embossing and ink blending? Well – I enjoyed the process – but I don’t usually like to make the same card more than once. Here are the cards:

The stamp, die, and stencil set called ‘Chirpy Mithu‘, is from Pinkfresh Studio, and was part of their Create & Connect event in February this year. I hadn’t played with them yet, so I though it was time to bring them out.

I began by stamping and heat embossing the image in gold, then colouring with the provided layering stencils. Pinkfresh Studio inks were used for this. As there were seven images, and there were 6 stencil layers – this took quite a while, especially as I used different ink colours on some of the stencils.

Once coloured, I then used the die to cut them out, cutting out an extra white layer to make the image a little more sturdy.

I then used a couple of the sentiments from that same event, heat embossed those in gold, then die cut them, also adding an extra white layer.

For the background, I used a over plate to create the stitch details in two colours of card stock – just for a little variety.

The background was adhered directly onto the card base, after cutting down slightly to create a white edge. The image was added with 3D foam – another fiddly job of cutting pieces to fit – and then the sentiment was glued down.

The final touch was to add some gold gems.

I shall probably pop in and give them out one day this week.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Ally’s Angels – anything goes

Make My Monday – add texture with dry or het embossing

Love To Craft – anything goes

Ellibelle’s Corner Garden Party – anything in or from the garden

Allsorts – anything goes from the garden

Triple B – birds and/or butterflies and/or blooms

Stencil Fun – use stencils – option of butterflies not taken