If you are like me, there are times a little encouragement from friends or family can help to carry you through a rough time. One way to encourage someone is sending them a card.

Join me and hop along for Courtney Kreeber, Mary Polanco and Jenn from Scrapbena Creations Encourgement Hop. I know you will be inspired to create your own cards of encouragement.

Encouragement comes to many of us through God’s Word. I chose Divinity Designs’ Grace’s Strength for the scripture encouragement (click here to check out their website).

Paper Nest Dolls’, Avery with Cross added the cuteness factor. (click here to see their adorable stamps).

I chose FSJ Turbo Teal for the card base. I die cut a rectangle out of the front panel of the card base and a rectangle out of a piece of 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ Turbo Teal cardstock. I layered a 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ piece of acetate between the front panel and the additional piece of Turbo Teal cardstock and glued the panels together. This created a finished look on the backside.

This is the view from the backside of the panel. The extra pieces of cardstock as a frame and the extra white pieces of cardstock on the back of the colored image give the card a clean and finished look.

Next, I die-cut a frilly rectangle frame out of Whip Cream cardstock with Spellbinder’s Shapeabilities Tallulah Frill Layering Frame Small Etched Rectangle die (that’s a long name, wouldn’t you say?). I used the same stitched rectangle die to cut out the middle portion of the frilly frame.

I stamped the sentiment on the right-hand side of the cut-out piece of cardstock. The grassy hill was die cut with a Divinity Designs grass border die and the bottom and sides were die-cut with the stitched rectangle die I used earlier.

I added two candy dots to the top portion and adhered the rectangle onto the inside back flap.

I die cut a adhered the frilly frame to the front panel. Now, to color Avery. It was so much fun to pull out my Spectrum Noir markers and color this sweet girl.

Skin: FS2, FS3, FS4 SN Illustrator FS9 and FS2 (cheeks) and a touch of TN4
Hair: TN2, TN4, TN5, BO2, BO3
Roses: BP1, BP2, BP3
Cross: TN1, TN2, TN3, TN4
Dress: AB1, AB2, AB3
Hair and Dress Shading: FSJ Color Burst Pencils

I fussy-cut Avery leaving a small white border. To create a finished back (it can be seen when the front of the card is opened), I traced around her and cut out two more outlines of her using scrap white cardstock. I glued all the layers together and then adhered her to the front acetate panel using glue dots (you can see them but it’s not too noticeable).

Here is the finished card.

Next on the Hop is Christine Marino.

FSJ + Spellbinders: