I was inspired by Stamp Buddies Lisa and her beautiful hot air balloon cards so I pulled out an older Serendipity Stamps Hot Air Balloons reverse die.  I created a background with distress inks then on a plain white piece of cardstock I embossed the die using my Big Shot.  I then ran the sponged background through my Big Shot cutting out the die.  Very carefully I placed all of die cut pieces on the embossed white card and glued them in place and addded some red glitter paper behind the die cut version.  Serendipity Stamps in now owned by Impression Obsession according to the website.

So two cards — one for our son and the other for our son-in-law.

I seem to have a little extra time on my hands since my retirement the beginning of May and what better way to fill in that time but to create some cards.  I did receive some thoughtful gifts from work and friends so here are the cards that I came up with as Thanks.

The first group of cards I created uses the Dahlia Stem die from Simon Says Stamp.  I created different backgrounds with either my blending brush or direct to paper.

My next set of thank you card used the Pretty Pink Posh  “Beautiful Butterflies” stamp and coordinating die set.  I stamped the butterflies with versamark, embossed on vellum and popped up over the colored butterflies.

And my last group of thank you cards I went back to Pretty Pink Posh and the Spring Frame Die, vellum strip and embossing powder to complete this simple but elegant card.

Card stock was all Gina K Designs and inks were a combination of Distress Oxide Inks and GKD.  Thanks for looking.