Dear Sister

Greetings!  Perhaps like some of you, it has been a pretty stressful week of life! It is such a blessing to just sit down and lose myself in this wonderful world of art, don't you agree?!  My post today is for the new challenge over at Bloggers Challenge. This week, Lisa inspires us to create with Die Cuts.  Although I have a manual die cut machine, I must confess that I do not use it as much as I probably should, so I am always delighted when a challenge encourages me.  For my card, I wanted to continue experimenting with Dylusions Ink Sprays and even tried adding some stenciling.  Now there must be a knack to it that I have not learned yet, because when I tried spraying ink over the stencil, it oozed underneath even when I quickly tried sopping up the ink with paper towel.  If anyone has tips, I'd love to hear them!  I dipped a cap into my StazOn ink repeatedly to make some circles and doodled with  black marker to make faux stitching.  The focal image is from one of my go to stamp images from Artistic Outpost's Lovely Day plate and is colored in with Distress Markers (also trying to get the hang of them) and the edges were distressed with Milled Lavender DI. As for die cuts, the metallic hearts are from Tim Holtz Alterations and the spool was a gift from my Design Team sister at FSC, Brenda.  Final embellishments include ChitChat Stickers, beads from my stash, a chipboard bird painted with Picket Fence Distress Stain and some vintage seam binding.  I have not seen my sister in a long while, so I plan to drop her a line in this card that I made for her.  I hope she likes it.  I'll also be submitting this card to Artistic Outpost's July Referral Program.  I hope wherever you are, you are having a wonderful weekend.  Hugs, Yvonne