Hooray – it’s Friday!  What better way to kick-off the weekend with a project, a freebie, and some candy? Are you intrigues yet?  Well before we can get to that I have a little blatant advertising to do. Today is the LAST day for Jodiann’s Grand Opening Sale – 50% – and FABULOUS styles!!!!   Tomorrow, May 1, is inter-National Scrapbooking Day! Hooray!!! Here are some places you will want to visit (includes my store and templates too): Americo has joined DSV and he’s got some fabulous new goods releasing on May 1 for iNSD – calling all Digi-Stampers – you will love these… The fabulous girls at Kristine’s Store are having a blog hop May 1 – start at Kristine’s blog and hop from there – an uber cute mega kit awaits you!

Now for my projects – I showed you a card and card folio yesterday, but focused on the card – today it’s all about the folio or the folios!  I created 3 of them as Mother’s Day gifts by altering a fabulous template from Mirkwood Designs to make it digital paper/printable friendly and Randi Oh’s  Marche Aux Fleurs digital kit – the rest was Photoshop baby! The recipients of these folios are all very special ladies and I am truly blessed to have each of them in my life. Let’s take a closer look:  I printed all of the folios out on white CS using my inkjet printer.  To add dimension on this one, I printed the pots and butterfly a second time, trimmed them and used pop-dots to adhere them.  Before adding the butterfly, I used PVA glue and Flowersoft to add the flowers – once dry the butterfly was added too.  I inked the edges of the folio with Always Artichoke ink and Nadya added her special touch by “finger painting” with the glue – I tried to wipe it off, but since I printed the folio on an inkjet printer, some of the ink smeared – but it  actually created a cool worn look, so I didn’t stress it too much – and let it dry.  Nadya says this one is for Baba and that she was helping! I can’t complain there, so I just made sure I put the glue far out of reach the next time! For this folio and the one just like it, I printed the butterflies a second time and added Flowersoft flowers to the empty pots before attaching the butterflies. These two folios will be gifts from my Mom and my Nana. Now, you might be asking why folios – what is special about them? Well , each folio holds 4 A2 sized cards and envelopes!  So, of course, I had to make coordinating cards: And here are the close-ups: I didn’t add extra dimension since I’ll be mailing these tucked neatly inside their folios and I didn’t want them to stick together or get smashed. It would be easy to add dimension though – use a gelly roll clear pen over the stitching to raise it up, add some additional butterflies, use glossy glaze to add shine to the pots, stickles, spica pens – you get the idea – the sky is the limit!

Now for the fun part – Randi Oh and RuthAnn (Mirkwood Designs) have both agreed to let me share the folio with you – you can download it here (I’ve included a tutorial with photos as well).  But wait – it gets better – 4 lucky people, who leave comments on this post by midnight Sunday will get the printable cards too!  The card kit includes the card fronts as well as the inside/journaling/sentiment space. All you have to do is print them out and attach them to standard A2 sized cards.  How great is that?!?  If you’d like a 2nd entry, spread the word via your blogs, twitter, or facebook, and then come back and leave me a comment and tell me what you did.  I’ll use random numbers to pick the winners.

Have a great weekend!

Good Morning! Can you believe this is the last Thursday in April? It’s almost AC weather here – we’ve been pushing it off as long as possible!   With the changing weather, we’ve had lots of allergy “fun” here too – first Nadya and now me (plus a little cold thrown in for fun) – I tell you there’s nothing more exciting than sounding like Darth Vader while trying to breathe! LOL

With Mother’s Day in the US just a little over a week away, I wanted to get started on my projects a teensy bit early.  I designed a card folio that holds 4 A2 cards with envelopes and a matching card for the recipient too.  We’ll talk about the folio set tomorrow – today is all about the card.

My Mother-In-Law has a flower and herb garden so I went for a gardening theme.  I designed the card front and sentiment in Photoshop using digital papers and elements from Randi Oh. Then I opened up the Pretty Primitive digital stamp set from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff. The flower pot with gardening tools and gloves matched my theme perfectly!  I resized the pot and printed it twice to allow for layering. I wanted a kind of vintage earthy feel, so I used a blender pen and Distress Inks to color the flower pot, tool handles, and gloves, followed by Copic C3 and C5 on the metal part of the tools. I cut out the pot and the tools and layered them together with mono adhesive and pop dots. Then I trimmed and mounted my card front onto a white A2 card base so I could attach the pot and work on accent details. I wanted to bring the stitching out of the paper, so I went over it with my Clear Gelly Roll Glaze pen and added a vintage pearly button to tie the stitches together.The Love Grows WordArt in Randi Oh’s kit was perfect! I added some sparkle with my Spica pens.

That’s all I have for you today.  Check back tomorrow for a freebie (the folio) and the chance to win a set of printable cards to match the folio. If you didn’t arrive here from Lindsay’s Blog be sure to start there – she’s been known to have freebies as well as the links to the rest of the DT projects. Lots of fun and inspiration to be found!

Challenges I’m playing in:

• Paper Cutz Challenge #38 – Mother’s Day Card
• Paper Popsicles – Mother’s Day Project
• A Spoon Full of Sugar Challenge 101 – 3D
• Stamptacular Sunday – Sew Something

We’re enjoying the beauty of Mother Nature from inside today – we are being blessed with much needed rain!  I won’t even complain that my car wash lasted only a week!

Lindsay gave us the week off since last week was her uber fun Hop, Crop and Shop birthday party celebration.  However, I did want to let you know that My Grafico is having a 15% off sale in honor of Earth Day (Thursday only) – think of if this way – Digital Stamping is green – no trees used for mounting blocks and you only have to print what you need when you need it… Anyway, if you’ve been thinking about any of the fun goodies at My Grafico, save a little green and shop the sale.