Heaven-sent friends

Yay for rainy days in July!!
Hehehe...I bet you'd never imagine that being said.
However, what a perfect excuse to stay cozy inside and color up a new image/card.

Here is the card I created as my entry for the July FTHS Challenge:
A thank you for a special friend...







Faith has a progressive "Stamp of the Month" challenge each month on the From the Heart blog (participation earns you a free stamp for the next month's challenge).

This featured digi stamp for July is Winter Friends .



If you missed participating in the June challenge,  head over to Faith's "From the Heart Stamps" Shop and purchase this adorable snowman for yourself.


You even have a few days left to enter the July SOTM challenge.
(Shocker, I know...I'm posting this a few days before the deadline).  :)



Don't you just love this stamp...It's perfect for so many types of cards: Christmas, Thinking of you, friendship, Thanks, etc.

Using the Print-n-cut feature in my Silhouette Cameo's software, I traced and offset the image and then the Cameo did all the cutting work. :)
The sentiment is also by Faith, but I can't recall which digi it came with originally...as I've put them all into one big "From the Heart sentiments" file on my computer.

 Besides the stamps, I got inspiration from this week's FTHS' I {heart} Sketches- sketch074 challenge.
Have I mentioned how much I enjoy using sketches?!


I used both the sketch and the great "twist" this week. The Twist was to use PAINT...yikes...

Seriously, this did scare me a little.



 And my first attempt with my kiddo's watercolors was just an ugly mess.  But I do like this version. Both the sentiment tag and the snowman were colored with a plain brush and kid's watercolor set.

The bottom "snow" field was "finger-painted" with MS multi-surface glitter paint from Michaels. It was sitting on my desk, leftover from another project, so I decide to use it. I tried brushing it on first, but I didn't like the results. So I started over and just swirled it on the paper with my fingers. After it dried, I embossed it to give it some texture (Sizzix Polka Daisies plate).

You'll notice that I rotated and flipped the sketch...It just worked better for me that way.  :)

The top part of the card is embossed card stock using a folder by the Paper Studios (Hobby Lobby).

Now, I just need to stick this card in the mail. Have a great week!

Challenges Entered:
From the Heart July SOTM challenge
FTH I heart sketches #74 challenge