love at first sip

We all know I love crafty coffee goodies, right?  We also know that I have a love affair with May Arts ribbon, right?  Well, since I made the first cut to stay on the May Arts Design Team, I needed to create a project for the second round... and when my sister asked me to create a gift/card for her friend's upcoming wedding (where the invite is a faux chalkboard card), I figured, that I'd better get crafty.

I often craft in the early hours of the day, so I started the day (we'll skip the hour), with a bunch of yummy May Arts ribbon, a cup of coffee and played till inspiration hit me.  I knew I wanted to use kraft and black and coffee and burlap seem to go hand in hand..  and I was also super inspired by this recent post by Amber over at Damask Love.

To start with this project I had a bag of coffee beans.  My first step was to die cut out Mat Stack One from black card stock, use my fabulous embossing buddy and then stamp the frame and heat emboss with Stampendous white embossing powder.  Once the frame was sorted I added the sentiment from Verve "Better With You" (b/c really could this sentiment be more perfect for a wedding gift?).  To give the extra chalkboard effect I added some white ink to the edges and then colored it in with a white colored pencil and added a little glitter pen to the border.  I wanted to add a stiffer layer to back, so I reached for my stack of upcycled coffee holders and die out the Mat Stack One Layerz die, but the coffee holder was just a tad too small, so I cut out two pieces, adhered them together and added a layer of May Arts Velvet Crochet ribbon.  

Next up I wrapped the coffee bag in a 4 inch piece of burlap, added a layer of black velvet corduroy ribbon and then added a loop of the grosgrain ivory stripe and added my label to the top, with a Studio Calico wood heart to finish it off.

Then I set about making a card, being a CAS girl, I wanted something simple, so I started with a piece of black card stock, cut out with Lil Inker Stitched Mat die and then stamped the PTI sentiment "to love and be loved is everything" and then heat embossed with while embossing powder.  For the lower frame I stamped the Craft's Meow Holiday Foundations frame, heat embossed and then accented with white ink.  For the natural feel I took a piece of May Arts burlap ribbon, cut it and then frayed the top and bottom layers.  I wanted to include some of the ribbons from the coffee bag, but wanted to keep the simple feel, so I added a ribbon tab on the right hand side of grosgrain stripes, velvet corduroy and a small piece sheer ruffle ribbon.  I tied a piece of May Arts burlap string around the base and added a wood veneer heart and distressed the edges of the kraft card stock, presto.  My sister was happy (especially since she gave me like 2 days to create the project and I somehow managed to make it happen).

Being on the May Arts team has been such an amazing experience, the Ribbon Lady is one of the nicest people to work for, my love affair for ribbon has grown over the last year and while I'd be honored to stay on the team and continued to create, I can't exactly say I'm going to run out of ribbon any time soon.