With the Pros Wednesday – An Irish Blessing

Susan Neal

Once upon a time, many years ago, instead of designing with paper, my creative medium was wood and paint. Cutting and painting wood in fun and whimsical shapes was all the rage! My decorative painting moniker was “Love Me Knots” which included four books and oodles of pattern packets and pin kits. 

Oddly, I don’t have any of my wood creations displayed – they are all in storage. Recently, I went through them and found one I decided to hang in my home – just one piece to remind me of all those years of hard work.

I pass by my “Irish Blessing” plaque every day on my way out of the house to perform my many chauffeuring duties. One day I took it off the wall and brought it into my craft room. Cricut had a new cartridge called “Wild Card” that had a house-shaped card and I thought it would be fun to try and transform my plaque into a card.

After a lot of experimentation I turned to one my favorite tools – Photoshop! 

I scanned my plaque in, isolated the angel and clovers, changed the hue (to update the colors somewhat), added new text and created an easy digital element that I could print off. I stitched the sentiment to the die-cut house card and added a roof.

I had so much fun with it, I just couldn’t stop. I created a super easy bookmark (you can print 8 of these per one 8 ½” x 11″ sheet) and then used the just the clover to create a circle element for my “Green for a Day” card.

I’m not Irish, but I will celebrate anything that wishes me luck and blesses me with good neighbors! If you do too, please download these free digital elements to create your own Irish paper creations! If you come up with something new, I would love to see them. Please visit my blog at www.sueneal.blogspot.com so I can share them with everyone.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Sue