Mother’s Day is in less than a week. Now, my mom is one of my favorite people, so coming up with a card that isn’t too schmaltzy but still adequately says what I’m thinking is always hard to come by. Not so when you can make your own!

I love having an alphabet set with a fantastic font that is chic yet very legible, and the Vogue Alpha sets fit that bill perfectly. I used the Vogue Alpha Upper set to customize the sentiment from It’s Cray Cray and created my own Mother’s Day sentiment. I wanted to let the flowers overlap the sentiment a bit to “frame” the sentiment, so I stamped everything in Versarmark and heat embossed it in clear. I used the smaller peony image from Sending Peonies, then filled in some of the space around it with foliage images from Mini Wild Florals.

I think I must have been a florist in a past life, because I just love building bouquets. The images from Mini Wild Florals are perfectly proportioned to that gorgeous smaller peony image, and I love the effect mixing the two sets has. I colored the outline images in with my Zig Clean Color Markers and a wet paintbrush, then went around the edge of the stamped images with a pale minty Zig marker and blended out the color with a wet paintbrush to create a halo effect. So simple, but it really adds something to the card. The last step was to die cut my panel using the largest rectangle from the Stitched Rectangle dies to give that nice stitched border.

My next project was inspired by the cover of a calendar I saw in Hobby Lobby. There is something so beautifully classic about pink flowers and black and white stripes… Just gorgeous. I stamped all of the floral images from Happiest of Peonies and Loose Peonies (LOVE that they coordinate so perfectly!) using Versafine and clear embossing powder onto a sheet of Strathmore 500 Series Cold Press watercolor paper. I then used my Zig markers in three shades of a rosy pink and a wet paintbrush to color them in and add shading. Now, the least fun part: fussy cutting all of those gorgeous flowers. As much as I grumbled about it, it really didn’t take that much time and it was totally worth it.

After stamping my Haute Stripes onto a piece of 4×5.5 inch card stock (I wanted it to look slightly tall and thin, so I shaved that 1/4 inch off of the side) using Noir ink, I arranged my peonies cascading down the side and used Press ‘n Seal to pick them up before adding adhesive, then while still stuck to the Press ‘n Seal, reapplying them to the striped card stock. (That tip is seriously so fantastic. I have wasted so much time in the past trying to perfectly arrange my bouquet according to the picture I took with my phone, and this is such a time saver. If you don’t have any Press ‘n Seal in your craft room, get some ASAP!)

I heat embossed the sentiment from Happiest of Peonies using Platinum embossing powder, then added just a few sequins from the Don’t Make Me Blush Couture Mix.

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you have a fantastic week and, for the moms out there, a wonderfully happy Mother’s Day!