Surgery, Stitches, 2 cards and my card Featured on SPS blog!

EDITED TO ADD: I was just made aware that my "with sympathy" card that I blogged about in May, has been featured on the Sweet Pea Stamps blog! It was customer submission week and I decided to go ahead and send it to them. I didn't think they would pick me, but they did!! WOOT WOOT!! I wish they would have included a link back to my blog though!! but oh well! at least they featured my card! :) I made a comment and gave my blog link. hehe

I have 2 cards to share with you today that I made last night, after fighting myself to get out of bed to make them! Last week I went in for surgery to have my gallbladder out. Healing was going quite well until yesterday, I REALLY wasn't feeling well, and then I realized somehow, I ripped 2 stitches. Hubby ended up taking me to the hospital and they said I did in fact rip 2 stitches, but after going over my daily activities (which were just laying in bed watching movies, and showering) they came to the conclusion that the stitches just dissolved, but  way too early, because I still have a huge hole in my side! To top that off, I have a pretty bad staph infection, so that explains why I've been feeling so sick the last few days. Infections are nothing new to me, having Lupus (sle) it's pretty much a guarantee that I will end up with some sort of infection after any surgery that I have because my body isn't able to fight off all the bad stuff on it's own. I took the antibiotics they gave me for the 7 days, but I guess they just weren't strong enough.

Anyhow, here are the 2 cards! Today is my dear hubby's b-day! I was so sore sitting up in my chair last night I was just rushing to make the card. I also made him this adorable father's day card from our "furbabies". :)
Here are 2 sneak peeks, click the link below for full pics!
B-day card sneak peek:

 Father's day card sneak peek:

for the B-day card for my hubby, I chose colors that he likes... though these are a tad "brighter" versions of the colors he likes, they are still the colors. lol this is actually a CASE (copy and slightly edit) card! I was browsing on splitcoaststampers and I came across THIS cute cupcake card... well that card was a little too girly for use for my hubby's card, so I said, well I have a few of these supplies and some birthday stamps so I could make a similar card. So here is the card and the supplies I used. it was simple and easy to put together once I had my paper color choices selected and of course, once I cut all the paper to the demensions I needed. It's no secret that I'm HORRIBLE with measuring and I ALWAYS end up wasting more paper and cs than I want to, because I always either cut something too short or too long and end up having to cut more. lol

So, here is the front of my card. It is an A2 size card, It's general layout and background is the same as the cupcake card in the link above, but the stamps and a few other extras are different.
All of the colored cardstock used is Bazzill and all of the white cardstock used is Georgia Pacific 110 lb. white cardstock.
I used the cuttlebug swiss dots embossing folder for the background cardstock, and the cuttlebug happy birthday embossing folder for the front cardstock.
The stamp I used is the Hero Arts "Birthday Party Border" rubber stamp. I just did a quick coloring job with my zig markers. I made his ice cream cone green like it has mint chocolate chip ice cream, LOL he loves that kind :)

 the clip is a "celebrate" clip from the Around the Block Clipper tool and Birthday Clips. Though I have to say, I usually don't even need the "tool' to put the clips on. If I don't have more than 2 pieces of cardstock layered on top of each other, I can usually very easily (AND CAREFULLY slip the clip right over the cardstock). the word "celebrate" was a tag difficult to read so I cut a tiny piece of white cardstock and slid it in behind the clip, that made the word much easier to see and read.
I didn't want to use brads, I wanted to use eyelets, and i thought that I had some BIG star eyelets, but I could only find about 5 of them, but not in white, and none of them were the same color. So, I went with some smaller star eyelets. I wish they wouldn't have flattened out so much when I crimped them!

 Here is the bottom left corner of the inside of the card. I wanted to bring the images from the front of the card to the inside, so I just stamped each image individually (using a mask of sticky note over the top of the others). a quick coloring job and that was done. I have to say, the coloring is quite sloppy. it isn't easy to color inside the lines when being dizzy from pain meds! LOL
the two sentiments are from the Stampin' Up! Occasional Quotes stamp set. I stamped the top sentiment in Stampin' Up Pumpkin Pie and the bottom sentiment in Tempting Turquoise. the white sheet is layered on green cardstock.

Well that is the birthday card. here is the Father's Day card to him from our furbabies!
This is the front of the card. this is "sorta" a CASE (copy and slightly edit) card, but NOT REALLY! LOL I know that doesn't make any sense. when I was browsing splitcoaststampers I came across THIS simple father's day card. I REALLY liked the "banners" that was on it. Well my card didn't turn out anything like that card, other than it having banners. LOL this card is pretty big it's 8.5 x 5.5. yes, I actually have HUGE card envies that fit this card! LOL
All of the colored cardstock is Bazzill and the white cardstock is Georgia Pacific 110 lb. white cardstock.
I think the cat and dog paper (on the left and right banners) are ATD paper, but don't quote me on that. i don't have the package the paper originally came in, and I did a massive search on google and ebay trying to find it, and I couldn't find it anywhere! So, I have a couple other sheets of "pet" paper that went with these and those are on ATD packaging so I think that is where these came from as well...

The dog and cat are from the BasicGrey Max and Whiskers set and are stamped on top of white cardstock that was cut out with the Stampin' Up! Top Note Die, with inked edges from my colorbox catseye queue "charcoal" pad. I stamped the Cat in Stampin' Up! Pumpkin pie (2 of our 3 cats are tan with light brown stripes, but of course, i didn't have any 'tan' ink, so orange it is. (they look sorta orange when they are out on the back porch in the sun. LOL) The dog is stamped in Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip. I stamped the hearts in Stampin' Up! Real Red from the Stampin' Up! So Happy For You set.

 here's a better close up of the card front... the background brown with the paws on it, I made that! I used black memento ink with the "paw" stamp from the Max and Whiskers set and stamped the paw in all different directions all over the cardstock. You can see a better pic here of the doggies and kitties on the deco paper as well. I added 2 Around the Block "pets" clips, one to each banner for kitties and doggies. the blue one on the kitty banner says "purr" and has a little fishy, and the dog one says "woof!" and has a bone.

 Here's the inside of the card. I layered some white cardstock on top of blue. I wanted to carry some more blue over from the front of the card. it doesn't really look like it in this pic, cause the lighting is so dark, but this blue matches the blue on the kitty paper.
I stamped the paw from this same set in the corner and then I used the fishy and the tennis ball from the same set (BasicGrey Max and Whiskers). The paw is stamped in black memento and the fishy is in Stampin' Up! Pumpkin Pie and the tennis ball is in Stampin' Up! Old Olive.
For the sentiment, I have a stamp from Impression Obsession called Friends Paws. the stamp says "FRIENDS make life PAWSitively WONDERFUL!" Well, I just used PART of that stamp, left off the "friends" and stamped the rest of the stamp in Stampin' Up! Real Red. I used the word "YOU" from  my "for you" studio G mini stamp set.

So, that's my father's day card for our furbabies "pupa" (papa--lol). of course, it didn't come out anything like the card I was trying to CASE but, that's ok. I did originally want the card to be "long" as opposed to the one I tried to CASE, being tall. BUT, I also wanted both banners on the left and the top note image on the right, but that didn't turn out so well because the dog and cat paper had to be cut so wide in order to see both dogs and both cats. I suppose I could have went with only seeing one of each, and then the banners would have been smaller, but eh, I do like how it turned out overall.

Well, those are my 2 cards! I hope you enjoyed looking!
Keep on Craftin' and please, be kind to one another!
~Melisa Marie

Supplies used:
Birthday Card:
Paper: Bazzill, Georgia Pacific. Embossing Folders: Cuttlebug Swiss Dots, Cuttlebug Happy Birthday. Embellishments: white star brads, Around the Block Clipper tool: Birthday. Stamps: Hero Arts Birthday Party Border. Ink Pads: Memento (tuxedo Black). Coloring Supplies: Zig Brushable Markers. Tools: Glue Glider Pro (Pink), glue glider pro Perma-Tac adhesive (permanent). Crop-A-Dile (purple), MS score board, cricut paper trimmer
Father's Day Card:
Paper: Bazzill, Georgia Pacific, ATD Pet Paper (I think!). Embellishments: Around the Block Clipper tool: pets. Stamps: BasicGrey "Max and Whiskers", SU! "Occasional Quotes", SU! "So Happy For You". Ink Pads: Memento (tuxedo black), SU! Pumpkin Pie, SU! Chocolate Chip, SU! Real Red, SU! Old Olive. Tools: glue glider pro (pink), glue glider pro Perma-Tac adhesive (permanent), Martha Stewart (MS) score board, cricut paper trimmer.