Stamp of Approval Happy Holidays Card with Color Bursts

Do you ever come up with a card design that you are just so happy with that you have to make it again? That’s a rare occasion for me, but I was so happy with this card design that I had to make it again. I will be adding a video of making this card when I have time to edit it.

The dies and stamps I used to make this card were included in the Holiday Magic Stamp of Approval box by Catherine Pooler. These are curated boxes that are released every 3 months. They are $97.00 and contain products from smaller companies such as CAS-ual Fridays, Winne & Walter, and Neat & Tangled. The boxes only have stamps and dies, which I LOVE. I considered some of the other subscription boxes, but didn’t like some of the filler products. I love supporting small companies and exploring new products. These boxes sell out QUICK, so make sure to get on the notification list here. I paid for this box with my own money, but like I said, I like supporting small businesses and I wanted to spread the word!

Onto the card!

I used the snowflake stamps from the CAS-ual Fridays sets that were included in the box. Placing them randomly and then inking with Versamark and embossing with embossing powder will allow you to create a resist when working with the Ken Oliver Color Bursts. I finally caved in and bought 3 Color Bursts and I’m in love with these! In fact, we’ll be carrying them in the store soon! I used Ultramarine Blue and Pthalo Green for the first card.  I cut out the “happy holidays” using a die by Neat & Tangled which you can purchase here. I added a die cut snowflake to tie in the shimmery background paper. Then glue all of that down to some vellum and secured it with some green brads to accent the green in the background.

Below is the card my Mom made:
I made up this card design while I was crafting with my Mom and she played along with me. She used her own stamps and a paper punch along with the Color Bursts and the Happy Holidays Die. So, if you want to make this card and didn’t get the Stamp of Approval box, you certainly could! I love how her card came out and it’s always fun to make her move out of her normal style of card making and try new techniques she probably wouldn’t have on her own. It makes me laugh when she gets inky because she’s used to pretty clean crafting LOL.

Below you will see my second rendition of this card: This time I decided to use the Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue Color Bursts. I also used black brads to match the color of the sentiment. I threw on a couple sequins and used Glossy Accents all over the happy holidays die cut. That really made it pop! Since I added the Glossy Accents after I already adhered the die cut, it actually started to warp the vellum and I had to tuck a few glue dots in strategic places to get it to stay down a little better. I decided to use glitter cardstock this time instead of shimmer cardstock too. 

Here they are side by side. I LOVE how these came out and I’m proud of my design, which happens rarely!

Do you like this design? Do you own Color Bursts? What do you think about the Stamp of Approval Box?

Thanks for stopping by!

Masculine Birthday Card Tips!

I think I finally did it! I made a masculine Birthday card that is actually masculine looking! It seemed impossible, but I think this one qualifies. Most of us struggle with masculine cards because it goes against our femininity, but I think I found something that works. It’s a pretty simple formula and I’ll make sure to use it next time I need a masculine card. Here’s the formula:

1. Find a card sketch online. Any sketch will do, just make sure it’s somewhat geometric, not too busy, and obviously you don’t want flowers drawn in the sketch (well, actually you could just substitute flowers for cogs or gears if that’s the sketch you want)!

2. Pick a simple theme consisting of 3 main ideas and 2 colors, and STICK TO IT! I picked metal, gears, and stenciling. My two colors were silver and black with a white card base. You must keep this simple! It will help you to not over embellish or make the card too busy looking. Feminine cards look great with tons of layers. Just give men one main thing to be impressed with. My card design had a focal image which I decided would be the gears. That is enough.

3. Follow your card sketch. If you finish your card and you think it looks too plain or it needs “this there” or “that over there”, walk away from the card! When you come back in an hour or the next day, if you still think it doesn’t look good, add one thing to fix the problem spot. Not all card sketches are perfect, so you may be right and it needs something extra.

4. You can incorporate multiple techniques, just make sure they work together. I had to use embossing powder to make all of my gears the same color, so I used the same embossing powder on my stenciling. I decided to brush black ink on the edges of the card in a motion that matched the brushed metal on my tape.

5. Use more plain and simple sentiments. I mean both the style of the sentiment and the actual saying itself. If you have anything else you want to say, write it inside the card. The sentiments I used on this card were designed by me and I laser cut stencils so I could use them. I don’t know if I will post these for sale, but if you’re interested, just let me know and I will sell them.

I think those 5 tips should be pretty helpful the next time you need to make a masculine card. If I think of anymore, I will come back here and post them.

Here’s the card that I made:

I hope you found those tips helpful! Thank you for stopping by!

New Lawn Fawn Stamps with Exclusive Laser Cuts!

I’m so excited to have the new release Lawn Fawn Stamps in stock. I don’t always order all of the new releases and I am inevitably kicking myself for not. I just posted up 13 new listings of Lawn Fawn product and we now have 27 different Lawn Fawn items to choose from in the store! Two of the new listings are Lawn Cuts Dies. To make it even more exciting, I have designed laser cuts that coordinate with each set and they are available exclusively with a purchase of the stamp set from us. There are six different sets that include these special laser cuts. In addition to that little bonus, these new release stamp sets are discounted 10%!  Without further ado, here are the stamp sets that include exclusive laser cuts! (Remember: Just click on the picture to get to the listing and purchase!)

Bugs & Kisses $13.50

Bugs & Kisses comes with a laser cut thick plastic mason jar and a mdf wood twig! 

Next up is Flirty Frames

Flirty Frames $13.50

Flirty Frames comes with a “love ya” sentiment which fits into the larger rectangle frame perfectly!

Then we have Critters in the Jungle.

Critters in the Jungle $13.50

Critters in the Jungle comes with a laser cut MDF wood palm tree!

Next Up is Baked with Love

Baked with Love $13.50

Baked with Love comes with an adorable wooden mixing spoon and a rolling pin!

Here’s one of my favorites, Gleeful Gardens.

Gleeful Gardens $13.50

Gleeful Gardens comes with a cute flower.

Here’s the last one that comes with a free laser cut. It’s called Let’s Play.

Let’s Play $13.50

Let’s Play comes with a rectangle sentiment.

Those are all the stamp sets that come with free laser cuts, but they aren’t all the sets we have! One of my very favorite sets is called “Scripty Sayings” .

Scripty Sayings $13.50

There’s also some super cute small sets that we sell for just $7.20 and even one that’s only $3.60! CLICK HERE to see all of our 27 different Lawn Fawn listings! 

I hope you saw something that excites you. Thank you for stopping by!

Hello Friend Card

I used quite a few ” new to me” techniques on this card. The “hello” was a stamp I carved myself out of silicone. I was curious of how silicone would work as a stamp. It wasn’t great and I had to go back in with a paint brush to make the image solid. I also used one of my hexagon masks with glitter acrylic paint and watercolors for the background.  I made a tone gradient with the paint and the stencil and a color fade with the water colors. I’ve had a twilling tool for a while and I wanted to use it so I used the scraps I had left from cutting down the card to make the whimsical flowers. This card was fun to make , but if I did it again, I think I would use a different sentiment. I took some pictures with the flash hoping the glitter would show up. 

Above is a picture of me testing the silicone stamp I carved. It does seem like silicone would be a good choice for making texture in UTEE, so I plan on trying that some day!

Thanks for stopping by!

Making a 3D Paper Rose

I recently purchased the McGill Paper Blossoms tool set at the Scrapbook Convention I went to. Last night I tried out the tools with some paper flowers I die cut using my Donna Salazar Rose Creations Die by Spellbinders  . Click the highlited link to find the die template set at my store. I also have the Donna Salazar video in the item description. After I made these flowers I went on YouTube and found a video by Donna Salazar herself showing a couple of ways you can use her die. I’m telling you, this is a die you are going to want! It even comes with 3 different sized leaves. I have a tutorial below, but read the whole thing first! I tell you a couple of things that I would improve and do different the next time I make one of these.

Here are the supplies I used:

•McGill Paper Blossoms Tool Set
•Foam Pad to shape the flower on ( I folded a piece of kid craft foam in half. Worked just fine)
•Spellbinders Rose Creation Die Set
•Big Shot or other die cutting machine that works with Spellbinders wafer-thin dies.
•Patterned Paper (mine was from a Recollections Paper Pad)
•Distress Inks (one in a color to match the flower part and another to match the leaves)
•Cosmetic Sponge or Ink Blending Tool
•Paper Piercer ( You will need this to pop the pieces out of the dies and poke the little hole out of the middle when it is stuck in the die)
•Glossy Accents (or other quick drying clear glue)
•Non-Stick Craft Mat (or work on a space you don’t mind getting inky)
•Metal Brad and Alcohol Ink (Or a brad that you like and don’t need to color with Alcohol Inks)

Ok! That looks like a ton of supplies, but hopefully you already have a lot of that stuff.

Wait…where did those come from?! LOL. I walked in my craft room the other day and found these beautiful flowers and two bags of my favorite chocolate truffles. He gave them to me for no reason! I couldn’t believe it and I was so blown away. It made me feel so special. I had to share!

Ok back to the project haha!

Here are some of the supplies I started with. I  ended up only die cutting less than half of this paper out. Running that die through the machine time and time again gets a little boring. Besides, I started to get a neck ache! You actually just need to run the full set through once to be able to make a flower. I just kept running it through with different colors since I plan to make a ton of these to put on Mother’s Day Cards.

I cut down the papers and ran them through the Big Shot.

Here are the piles I ended up with when I was done with all the cutting. I haven’t tried the vellum yet, but I definitely plan to! After I die cut all of these out I inked up the edges with a distress ink that closely matched the color using half of a cosmetic sponge. I did that to the leaves too. The next step was forming.

This is the part that would probably be easier to follow on a video. There actually is a video by McGill on YouTube showing how to make the paper flowers using their punches. I used a few of the techniques I learned from the video, but I had to modify them to use my dies instead. Basically what I am showing here is that I took the tip and swirled it around in a circle around the hole in the middle. I also swirled it around in circles on each petal. This apparently breaks up the fibers, but it also makes it start to shape and lift.

I repeated this with each size flower and slowly moved down the size of the ball point from 8mm to 6mm to 5mm to 3mm as I was getting to the smaller flowers. The picture below shows what it looks like at this point.

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If you like this look , you can actually just stop here and put a brad through it. If I was to stop here and use the flower just like this I would, however, add another one of the largest flower layers and curl up a small one for the middle. I would also still add the leaves to it. If you want it to be even more dimensional, you can add glue to the bases of each part and glue them together. That will force them to be tighter and more 3D. Donna Salazar shows that in her video about this die set.

The next step involves taking the tweezers out of the tool set and putting it through the hole to clamp on to the middle of each petal. You then take your thumb and forefinger and form the petal around the tweezers. Do this to each and every petal if you want to get this different look I will show in the end. You also take the tweezers and bend each side of the petal down. This part is really easy and doesn’t take that long.

This picture shows what the flower looked like after I completed the bending. The leaves were done the same way I did the petals. I first swirled around on them with the 8mm ball point then I bent the ends. One the leaves I also took a very small pointed tool and made a line down the middle. I am not sure if you can really see that though.

Next, I just put a little Glossy Accents on the bottoms of each flower piece and stacked them up. Pretty Simple. You could use hot glue for this part instead if you want.

Here is what it looked like after gluing was done.

I decided that I didn’t like how wide the opening was so I used another one of the smallest flowers. The paper I used was not double-sided so I had to use a mixture of my pigment inks and distress inks to try imitating the patterned paper. When I make these again I will either make sure I can imitate the paper well or just use double-sided paper. I overlapped and glued the petals together to get a tight bud for the middle. I did not glue the last petal to the first just because I wanted it to look like that. It is up to you how you decide to glue it together though. I glued the small bud to the middle of the flower using Glossy Accents again.

I wanted my middle metal brad to kind of match the flower so I took a silver brad and dyed it with Adirondack Alcohol Inks. It didn’t take too long to dry. Be careful though because I didn’t realize that I should have dabbed out the ink stuck under the bottom of the top part of the brad. There was some in there and it got on my flower as I was lowering it in. Oops!

Finished!

All the pictures just above are of the finished flower . Hopefully you were able to follow my odd instructions. If you need or want a video, just let me know! I wasn’t comfortable with doing a video the first time since I didn’t know at all what I was doing, but now I think I could do it.

Next time I make these flowers I will use more layers  like 2-3 of some of the same sizes for more fullness. I will also probably use double-sided paper.

Thanks for stopping by! Don’t forget to comment 🙂

Go to Blitsy NOW. Why I bought Tim Holtz’ New Book.

Ok, first click on this link, http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/26945/ , (yes, I get a referer bonus )
and reserve “Compendium of Curiosities II”, then finish reading the post below. (Don’t worry, Blitsy holds it in your cart for one hour so no one else can snatch it up while you finish shopping. ) After you read my post you can decide whether you want to go ahead and buy the book or just have Blitsy drop it out of your cart. I’d hate for you to read the post and go to buy it just to find out they were already “Blitsed”.
You would think that promoting Blitsy would be a bad idea for me. However, when I find good deals that I am not yet capable of offering, I get much more enjoyment out of sharing those deals than getting frustrated that I can not yet offer them.

So…if you have been waiting to buy Tim Holtz’ new Book “Compendium of Curiosities II”, now is the time! I just got an e-mail from Blitsy that it was in and I didn’t hesitate for a minute. Tim Holtz has such amazing ideas. Yeah, I know there are YouTube videos with awesome techniques up the wazoo and he is doing his new “Creative Chemistry 101” class online. BUT to me there is nothing quite like having a hard copy to be able to refer to. When I first got into stamping, inking, paper crafting (not scrapbooking, which started when I was 12), etc, the very first book I bought was “Ink Essentials” which was also put out by Ranger Industries. Of course when I found out that some of these techniques were available for free on YouTube I got a little frustrated that I just dropped about $18 on a rather skinny book. However, I was cleaning my room the other day and ran across the Ink Essentials book. I started fanning through the pages and realized that I still haven’t tried many of the techniques in this book! Besides, if you don’t know the name of the technique or that it even exists, then how would you search for it on YouTube? Hmm, tricky! lol.

Ok, now go back to Blitsy and decide for yourself if you want that book!

Paper Technique: Iris Folding

I’m gonna keep this post short n’ sweet, because quite frankly I should have been sleeping by now.

I ordered a book called ” Compendium of Cardmaking Techniques”  and received it last week. I finally got my craft room more organized and felt like I could take on a new technique from this book.

I chose to try Iris Folding. This technique uses a tiny amount of paper ( 15.5″ x 5/8″ in 4 colors, glue, something to cut and score with, a template ( I traced mine out of the book with acetate and a Sharpie ), and a ton of patience !

I found this technique to be more calming than monotonous. I do have an odd trait that allows me to be very patient if I know it is necessary to achieve the outcome I want. Otherwise, I’m extremely impatient ( I’ve left stores without buying an item before just because lines were too long).

I’m going to share my first one with you , but I’m only going to do a tutorial if I’m asked for it 🙂 . I am considering using this technique to make a cool looking pupil for an eye to use on a mixed-media project. See, the ideas are already flowing! Haha .

Here are the pics :

Let me know what you think about this technique . Old news? Cool, but you have a new spin on it ? Fun to try, but not enough patience to do multiples ?

Remember… If you want a tutorial I’ll do it, you just have to tell Me ! Thanks for stopping by .