Apple Inchie Stationery

Edit: The size of the finished stationery notecard is 4.25" x 5.5", a regular A2 size card. No folds, the base card is a 1/4 sheet of cardstock. These fit into A2 size envies.

Hey everyone, how about a little Saturday night stationery to liven things up!!?? We had a garage sale this weekend and we are DONE! $800 bucks later, we are rich! There's stormy weather in Kansas and we're just kind of hangin' out tonight. Josey and I sorted all of the 47 state quarters she has, they are NEAT! Just had a Lean Cuisine turkey dinner and some fresh strawberries with Cool Whip and now I'm settling in to do a little blog hopping. Eric's putting tomatoe cages on our new plants so the deer don't eat them all. It will be good sleeping weather tonight..nice and cool!

Ohhh, how I'm loving the no fold stationery! For today's little ensemble, I decided to use Karen Lockhart's Itty Bitty Apple, some Inchie Art Squares, Papertrey Spring Moss cardstock, Papertrey Simple Alphabet, Copic Sketch markers, a 1" square punch, Momento black ink teardrop and K and Company patterned paper.
I wanted to make four notecards so I stamped and punched out four Itty Bitty Apple images with my 1" square punch. You can color right on the Inchie Art Squares too but I prefer to work on cardstock then adhere the colored square to the inchie. I took a photo of four inchies below to show you the progression of my coloring. I first started out by adding the lighter pink highlight first. This is where the highlight will be on the finished apple. Second, I colored the rest of the apple with my red color...I did not go over the pink. Third, I blended the two colors together with the pink color again and added my light yellowish green leaf color. Last, I shaded the apple with the red some more, did a final blending with the pink, added a darker green.....then took my Colorless Blender and removed some of the lightest pink color to make even more of a highlight on the apple. I also used a blue color to outline the apple to make it pop off the page.
Then I adhered my coloring pieces to the Inchie artboard squares, matted them with a Spellbinder's scalloped square piece of red cardstock, added two green sequins...and then as a final touch I added some Ranger Glossy Accents to the apples. If you'll notice the patterned paper strip, you can see that the apples and cherries are glossy embossed, the paper comes that way. By making my apples glossy I was able to tie the stationery card together by matching up elements. It's all about the little details! These apples are so shiny, they remind me of candied cinnamon apples, YUMMO I want one.
To finish off my stationery, I used Papertrey's Simple Alphabet to spell out the sentiment *Apple of my Eye* and then stamped it with red ink onto each card. Are they just not delicious???? I have decided to add a section to my stamp basket stash just for these stationery notecards. My friends just LOVE these!! There are no folds...so you just write a short note on the front of the card. I think these would be perfect to hand out to customers for thank you notes.........or how about teacher gifts, these apples would be perfect!!! These particular cards are going in my own little stash basket so that the girls and I can use them this summer.

As a little girl, I can remember having little stationery sets that opened up with the stationery on one side and the envelopes and maybe a few stickers on the other side...in little plastic flaps. Anyone have that kind? I hoarded it because back then, supplies like we have now did not exist. These whimsical papers from K and Company totally remind me of those stationery designs I remember as a kid. Who knew I'd grow up to be a card maker!!

Here's my tip of the day: Teach your kids to address an envelope properly and put on postage stamps......and encourage them to hand write thank you notes. I think this is a lost art, however my kids ALWAYS send thank you notes that are in their own handwriting, envelope and all. I rarely receive thank you notes anymore but when I do, I sure remember it...and think, wow what a nice thing to do! Take it one step further and let your child stamp their own set of stationery. Perhaps they could make the inchies and you could assemble the cards. This would be a FUN, FUN project to do weekly this summer. I'm adding it to my list right now!! Woohoo, who knew a Saturday night could be so much fun!! Sooomebody stop me! (Am I totally whacko to think that making stationery on a Saturday night is a complete BLAST?!)