Banana Paper

My friend Deb and I brought back some banana paper from Costa Rica. It is a very interesting paper with little bits of stuff in it (note the little leaf). It's soft and smooth on one side and rough on the other. There is wonderful texture to this paper. I made this card using some of the new colors. The base is Early Espresso that I embossed with the Square Lattice Embossing Folder from the Stampin' Up! Summer Mini Catalog. The stamped image is from the Pocket Silhouettes stamp set and I framed it in Tangerine Tango and Crumb Cake. The sentiment is stamped on 3/4" twill tape (retired) and I finished it with a jumbo brad.

BUSY SUMMER

Wow, this is turning out to be a very busy summer. Spent a week in Costa Rica in June doing mission work along with 25 other folks from our church. What a great experience! This past week Russ and I spent a week with our daughter, Lori, helping her get settled in her new home...lots of cleaning to do! Russ built a really cool desk for our grandson, Blake. Later this month we will be heading up to Chicago to visit with family and I plan to attend the CHA Super Show with my sister, since I missed it when it was in Orlando last year. In August I'll be back at Lori's to watch the grand kids, since she returns to her teaching job before they start school.

In between the traveling I managed to have a masculine card class. We never seem to have enough cards for the guys in our lives. I had wanted to do this class before Father's Day, but couldn't manage it until the end of June. The monochromatic green card can work for guys or gals and the "tree" card uses Lovely as a Tree, one of my favorite sets and one that always works well for a masculine card. The "stars" card was made using the Felted Cardstock technique. Splitcoast Stampers has a tutorial that can be found HERE