Cards to Retire By - 3 Ways

Oh dear, a whole week has flown by without me blogging. I do apologize. You may have read about Texas receiving a ton of rain and then flooding. While I am feeling very blessed that we remained high and dry from any floods, it has been a nightmare of pain for me with all of the humidity, and I am not very goal-oriented when this happens. More like take one minute at a time and try to forget reality, haha, sad but true. At any rate, I'm baaaack! Still hurting somewhat but at some point reality must be acknowledged.

This post features 3 retirement cards I have made and this is the first one. I made it for a work colleague of the Hubster's who loves to work on cars and plans to do just that. I stamped the Artistic Outpost truck and the Leave Memories sentiment onto Spellbinders die cuts and did some distressing and edge-inking. The grunge look is always good for guys in my book. ;-)

Next up is a card made for a childhood girlfriend who recently retired after 30 years of teaching. I used a Neat & Tangled background stamp in gold ink called Time Warp on a piece of stars patterned paper, then scribbled more gold ink with a gel pen until it stood out enough. This was my first time using this set and I was a bit hesitant about stamping the sentiments directly on the background. So I stamped sentiments from Neat & Tangled's A Long Time Ago set onto deli paper in the same gold ink, heat embossed in gold, and adhered.

Here is the inside. The Congratulations stamp is an N&T sentiment from same set as I used on the front, but the sentiment larger type is my own creation, stamped with Avery Elle's Elle's ABCs set.

My final retirement card was made for a girlfriend who has always joked about being a prisoner of her job and that at retirement she would finally be released without good behavior ha ha, so I used this opportunity to play on that. The window grid is a die from Sizzix. The Wooden Plank background is an Impression Obsession Cover-A-Card stamp, as is the Distressed Brick jail cell background. The inmate is a Techniques Junkie stamp, and the 2 sentiments are by My Sentiments Exactly and Avery Elle.

A shot of the back - the My Favorite Things Freshly Made stamp is layered onto various card stock scraps, and the bokeh circles is a scrap of 4x6 photo paper that I stamped dye inks onto with a finger sponge dauber a while ago (this is a good way to use those tons of leftover photo papers you are left with after your ink cartridge dries up, for you Epson Picturemate owners).

And the insides. I'll give it a go at naming the stamps used: Avery Elle, Sweet Shop Stamps and EKSuccess on the left; Stamplorations, Neat & Tangled, and Technique Junkies on the right.

Well, that's all for me this time. Thanks for stopping by and I appreciate any and all comments! Have a good arty time wherever you are! xoxo