S T A M P A R T I S T R Y

This is another of the many cards I've made for the kiddies at church.  Their ages range anywhere from two to teenagers.  So I try and make some for each age.  I just make them and drop them off at church and let them decide which card to send to which child.  
The water in this card is a free-online image.  I hand made the boat and then cut from the edge of the water and then slipped the boat in.  I added a little saying, some clouds, and a bling bling for the top of the mast.  It was a fun card to make.  Here's the site where I found the wave image: 

http://www.123freevectors.com/realistic-water-illustration/#.Ug5oHtJsyeN

This too was a fun little card to make.
I started out with white card stock.  At this point I typed the saying into my card program and printed it out on the blank card stock.  I cut a big hole in it with a large Spellbinder's circle die, Then I embossed it with the Cuddlebug Happy Birthday embossing folder.  In my card program I typed "Happy Birthday" many times and printed it onto computer paper and then slipped that behind the hole.  I used a red crayon to color in some of the raised areas on the white card stock, and then I found a cute little bird that was a free image online and added him to the outside and the inside of the card.
Another cute little card for church.

BACKGROUND TECHNIQUE #2

The background on this card is a technique I've never tried before.  I'm always trying to think of something different to do on my cards.
Underneath the layered square in the middle of the background is a smaller square that I glued down onto a piece of white card stock.  Then I proceeded to take strips of three different kinds of background paper and glued them down in four different directions.  Below this card you will find a sample of what I drew on a piece of paper before I made this card.  I wasn't sure if I was going to make it look like a quilted card or not and that's why I drew in the little doodles on the paper.  But, from this sample you can see much easier what I was trying to explain here.
After the placement of my background strips I added the layered square with the leaf image on it and the Happy Birthday layer also.
The giraffe is a stamp from a company called Validated.  On the stamp itself it says: "Validated ©1997 Santa Rosa, Ca 95403 707-579-5443".  They make a lot of really nice stamps and if you like animal stamps, they make quite a few of them.  I actually stamped the giraffe on a piece of the giraffe background paper and then cut him out, went around the edges with a black marking pen, and raised him up with mounting tape.

FREEBIE:

This is my sample I was talking about.
Note how the direction of each group of papers starts out in a corner of the square.  Also, you don't have to have the square in the center of the paper...it can be placed anywhere on the paper you would like.  On my card above I placed it a little above the center and to the right as I knew I was going to add the giraffe on the left side of the square and I wanted to allow myself the space for it.
Please feel free to copy my sample and use it to make yourself a card also.  I would love to see what you do with it...please post a sample of your card if you use it and refer people to my blog for the sample.  Thank you so much!