Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Gracias Por Todo card

So, I went to Mexico for the holidays and my wonderful novio's family took great care of us.
Here is a thank you card I made for his mom upon landing back in the States.



I used the Simon Says Stamp mum (the irony) flower die and a stitched square die I had from another set. First, I blended the background with distress inks. Then, I popped up the white paper on a silver square sheet of paper. I also inlaid the big silver piece to the left. I finished it off with some Swarovski crystals- they come in a ton of colors and you can actually find the small ones for pretty cheap. I enjoy how much they catch the light and for special occasions like this, I think it is put to good use. 


For the sentiment, I used Vellum and some good old fashioned WOW embossing powder. The stamp is from "Heartfelt Wishes" by Mama Elephant. Very handy. I grabbed a matching envelope and I was good to go!
Thanks for coming! Gracias por venir!

Challenges: 



Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Ariel, The Little Mermaid

A buddy of mine loves the Little Mermaid, so I decided to make a bday card for him.
The eels were fun critters to use, and I am happy with how it turned out.


I cut down some watercolor paper to a 4x4in square and liberally added water. Then, I added several different sprays of blue- the first few sprays were from a cheap blue from ACMoore that I had laying around and the top layers were from Lindy's Stamp Gang so the glitter and shine would sit on top. I added some darker blues and grays as well since it would better convey deep water. While messy, this was pretty fun, however, waiting for it to dry was not haha. 

I stamped and copic-colored the images of 2 stamps sets: The Greeting Farm's Little Mermaids set, and Lawn Fawn's You Are Sublime.

I also used a coral die since I had lots of scraps floating around and the shine on the paper was too nice to waste. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

I later added a birthday sentiment but gave it away before getting a pic... I need to get better at that!
Thanks for coming by and hope 2019 is starting off well for ya :D

Challenges:


Monday, January 7, 2019

Belated Xmas Cards x3

Belated Xmas Cards x3

I was out of the country and didn't get a chance to post these holiday cards! 
and a close up of the shaker and paper trees
                                 

My red card uses Simon Says Stamp's Stained Glass greetings. I heat embossed them using Lime Green Tinsel Embossing Powder from Ranger, along with a small "wishing you" in Alabaster White Embossing Powder from Brutus Monroe. 
The forest background stamp is from Impression Obsession and embossed in the same Lime Green powder. I will be using this again in different colors with a black background as it looks great.

My shaker card was a lot more time consuming.. First I prepared several sheets of green paper to cut with my tree dies (from Simon Says Stamp). I used some green sparkle felt, a sheet of metallic green paper, a sheet of green shine paper from ACMoore and lastly, a paper that I made myself using several sprays from Lindy's Stamp Gang. The spray adds a lot of glitter, and I used a few shades of green as I was cutting a bunch of trees from the paper and wanted them to be varied. 

I then worked on the shaker part. First, I cut the tree in the middle. I chose this shape because it was big enough where the parts could shake around, but also had some straight lines too- I would later surround the back with foam tape and the straight lines made it a bit easier to deal with. Anyway, after cutting the tree cutout, I used a snowflake embossing folder on the paper. Then, I glued a piece of acetate on the back of the paper. Then, I surrounded the perimeter with 2 layers of foam tape. Then, I filled the middle with shaker bits. Then, I added a layer of acetate on the back to seal it in. I prefer to do this so that I can then take the whole piece of paper, turn it upside down and stick it exactly where I want to on my card base. If you want to skip this step, you can lay the cardbase upside down on your foam tape, but it probably won't be lined up perfectly straight... Good luck though! I think the extra 2 inches of acetate is well worth it- I actually just used leftover wrapping from some packages I had laying around. 

The last step was some glitter stickle drops in the middle of the snowflakes. I made a few of these to hand out, so I varied them a bit, but they all followed these steps. 

Hope everyone had an awesome holiday!