National Card-making day (belatedly...)

I know, I know, National Card-making Day was Oct. 6th... So, I'm a little late with this post, but I have a good excuse - Thanksgiving day (Mon. Oct. 8th). We had the whole family home, plus my dad. We had a wonderful time celebrating God's goodness to us through the past year*; we shed a few tears remembering that mom was with us last year, and we heard about our son's recent mission trip to Malawi, Africa. With Thanksgiving comes a lot of house cleaning, cooking fancy food and all the rest of the "prep" that goes with a feast-day. I did make a point of sneaking out on Saturday to visit my "local" stamping store - I made a cute gift tag, which I can't share here, because one of the people that reads my blog will be getting it. But, I went home and made a few cards to celebrate, and here they are, thanks to Pinterest:

For the birthday card, I took an embossed panel I had in my stash; it needed to be trimmed down a bit, and then was glued to the card front panel. I added a bit of ribbon from the dollar bin at Michael's, a punched flower with a brad to keep it attached to the card. A sentiment (again from Michael's), stamped across the bottom completed that card. The sympathy card was also a Pinterest inspiration - I embossed a panel and brayered it with Sahara Sand ink. I punched out a section, and emphasized it with a scalloped edge - I didn't use the brayer here to make it stand out a bit. Then I stamped the hummingbird (from Pretty Amazing) onto the card; I stamped the accompanying flower, cut it out and popped it up. These cards are ready to go out in the mail tomorrow. * I'm so thankful for my family, my quilting, blogging, and card-making friends, and my relationship with the greatest gift I've ever been given - Jesus!