Hi guys, I am sorry for my sudden absence. Health emergency with my mom made me pack my bags and head out to India for a visit after 6.5 years! And (not really surprising) I got Covid on day 2 of my being back. I had never had it before, but I have taken 3 doses of the vaccine. Covid also decided to bring in some of his friends like the ear infection and all the cooties partied in my body for almost a week. It was terrible. But fear not, some fantastic antibiotics, with lots of hot water and chai and I am back to normal. Yes, fatigue and some body pain remains, but nothing I can't handle. So, here I am with some cute Thank You cards - yes, I had created these way back when, but getting around to posting only now. I guess, it fits the thanks-giving-season theme, so I thought why not? :) Here are the cards. All of these use Spellbinders August LDOM - Strawberry Patch dies. I also combined these with several other supplies from Spellbinders: August DOM - Outlined Sentiments, Be Bold uppercase alphabets, Little Chickadee, Sweet Birdie, and Yana's Special Sentiments glimmer set. I also pulled an older Simon Says Stamp Fruit From The Heart stamp set for all my stamped sentiments today. With the same die set, I created 3 distinctly different looks for these strawberries: 1. regular strawberries 2. Half cut / eaten strawberry 3. Chocolate covered strawberry - with frosting squiggles on top :D For the how-to, I better show than tell :) I hope you like these ideas and give them a try. I hope you know that I most sincerely appreciate your support. When life puts me in a rough patch, I make deliberate attempts to find reasons for being grateful and always, always, always you guys come at the top of my list! So, thank you so very much!! SUPPLIES LIST I am sharing links to the supplies I’ve used or the ones you can use for making similar cards – click on the picture or link to go directly to the product. Wherever available, I have used affiliate links, which means when you make a purchase, I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) which I use to run this blog. I truly appreciate your support! Hugs! ~Varada

Hi friends, I have a fun project to share with you today - it's a shaped card that looks like a cat's house - yup, it's a meowy Christmas time ;-) I started by doing all the die cutting - the white paper is regular 100 lb cardstock and the patterned paper is from DCWV Rose Quartz 12x12 pack. The rose gold metallic one is also one of the papers in there. I added some dark green from Paper Accents and white glitter paper. I assembled the house and the cat first, but did not attach them to each other. To add a little more interest, I added poinsettias and greenery from Nov20-APG club of the month. To assemble the flowers I used a brad in the middle. For the sentiment, I cut apart the word Christmas from one of the rubber stamps from Charming Tag sentiments (also designed by Becca Feeken of Amazing Paper Grace). I used Delicata Rose Gold ink to stamp it and cut out a banner using one of the older dies from Spellbinders. For the word meowy, I used alphabets from Be Bold Lowercase Alphabets and Numbers set. Cutting them out several times and layering them helped me get dimension. After the front panel was completely assembled, I cut out the base part of pet house two more times. On the back panel, I added a score line and assembled it to be a shaped card. There are two easy ways to create shaped cards with any shape. You can check out a quick tutorial here. Also, do check out this die set. It has a cat and a dog with multiple sentiments, a food bowl, and also a cute bone die. Definitely worth it for making projects for all your pet-loving friends. Combine these with some alphabet dies and you can make projects for even more occasions that the sentiments already part of the die set. :) SUPPLIES LIST For your convenience, I am sharing links to the supplies I’ve used or the ones you can use for making similar cards – click on the picture or link to go directly to the product. Wherever available, I have used affiliate links, which means when you make a purchase, I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) which I use to run this blog. I truly appreciate your support! The Nov20-APG is no longer available, but I think the poinsettias and foliage from the Christmas Blooms set will work equally well, so I am linking that one for you. That's all for today's project. I hope you like it. :-) Big hugs! ~Varada

Hi everyone! Hope you are having a great week so far. And, we are here to make it even better - with Instagram hop and prizes to be won celebrating our latest release ‘Fun Times’ for October 2022 :-) If you don’t follow me on Instagram, please do so here. I would love to welcome you in our little tribe. We do share lots more inspiration (and entertainment) over there, than we do here on the blog alone. It’s a fun place to be and yes, every month we have giveaways too :) I created a diwali card for this hop with our Water Lilies stamp set: Key Ingredients: Water Lilies (on VaradaSharma.com | on Etsy.com) Decofoil Gold Oro foil Copic markers - yellows (Y15, Y19, Y35), pinks (RV02, RV04, RV09, RV11), and greens(G07, G12, G24). Spellbinders Picot Petite Rectangles Etched Dies Distress inks Chipped Sapphire and Black Soot Steps: Use MS PowerPoint to arrange a design that can be sized within 3x6 inches. Print with a laser printer on Hammermill paper. Foil using a laminator with decofoil Gold Oro foil and color with Copics. Die cut with the second largest rectangle from Picot Petite Rectangle dies from Spellbinders. Create an A2 cardbase with textured blue cardstock and add ink on the edges with Chipped Sapphire and Black Soot inks. Mount the rectangle with craft foam, add a sentiment and finish off with some bling. Done :) Instagram Hop We are hoping along starting from my feed @VaradaSharma. Do drop by to check out the full list of participants. We will pick 3 winners to receive $10 store credit each, from comments across all the stops. So, what are you waiting for? SUPPLIES LIST For your convenience, I am sharing links to the supplies I’ve used or the ones you can use for making similar cards – click on the picture or link to go directly to the product. Wherever available, I have used affiliate links, which means when you make a purchase, I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) which I use to run this blog. I truly appreciate your support! Enjoy! ~Varada

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