Last of the Christmas cards

This is probably the last Christmas card I will make since Christmas is nearly upon us.I finally used a Hero Arts card for the base. I should have used one sooner because it's nice and white on the inside to write a message. This year I have been reading along with Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas and in the video, he was demonstrating a neat way to ink the embossed image with ink directly on the embossing folder. Except I didn't visualize it correctly and actually inked the back of the Cuttlebug snowflake folder, oops! Luckily the ink wasn't too dark and I could just turn it over to use the other side for my card. I also tried the distress ink as embossing ink with clear embossing powder for the sentiment which I also saw on a Tim Holtz video somewhere. The candy cane is a Sizzlit, don't look too closely, the leaves and berries were hard to cut out nicely for layering. I colored the candy cane stripes with a "cherry" marker, I didn't realize it was going to be such a dark red.

And now I will leave you with gratuitous Santa pictures from our Polar Express train ride experience.It was fun! I told my son that I think that bell is his Santa present for this year. He wasn't impressed, saying he didn't even write that on his list! Well, hope everyone has a nice Christmas holiday! Long weekend, yay!

Christmas Snowflake Cards

So I made a few more quick Christmas cards. I don't usually buy too many Christmas themed things because I don't typically make things to give away at this time of year. Even all those well intentioned Christmas layouts are still in the "photos have been downloaded but not printed" stage. Maybe one of these years I will try a December Daily album... that I should probably start preparing in January. But for now, this is about all I can do.Last year I bought some clearance Sizzix dies (which I almost forgot about until I was cleaning my craft area) and now I have some Hero Arts Christmas stamps. The huge snowflakes are supposed to be ornaments, but since they were so huge, there wasn't much more to add to decorate a card.

The green paper is from a Christmas paper pad from We R Memory Keepers that I got during their Black Friday sale. I inked the edges of that and the snowflake with some distress ink, it might have been Frayed Burlap. Then I added a "ho ho ho" gromlet which happened to conveniently fit the hole in the snowflake. The sentiment was embossed with white embossing powder.

Same idea for this one, except that star cut out in the middle was kind of huge so instead of a gromlet I used some stickles. Which wasn't very easy to apply neatly to such a large area. I even used my finger to try to spread it around and flatten it out which made it messier. Again sentiment embossed with white embossing powder. I also stamped the little snowflakes with the watermark embossing ink. Now that I'm looking at the photo, it looks like I might have forgotten to ink this green paper, oops! I hope I haven't forgotten to do anything else before Christmas. Or a birthday, our family celebrates 3 birthdays in the space of 2-3 weeks together with Christmas and New Years, crazy times.

Well, that's about it for now, bye!

Have a Joyous Holiday!

I actually made another holiday card! Kind of the same idea as the other one, pretty much using the same things. I used the same snowflake stamp set from Hero Arts. However, this time I used white embossing powder on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock. Again, it was a little messy, hopefully the little specks of white, aren't too obvious in the photo. Again, same Sizzlit die cut set for the sentiment. This is the one I initially tried to emboss in black but it came out way too spotty with black embossing powder all over the place so I just stamped it in black ink. The sentiment also came in the Hero Arts prize package.
I just noticed Jennifer McGuire's blog entry about a powder tool that she said she uses prior to embossing. Maybe I'll just try more baby powder next time.

The snowflake is a chipboard piece from Maya Road that I pressed into the versamark ink then sprinkled with white embossing powder. I think the embossed layer wasn't thick enough, but I covered the whole thing up with some Stickles. Then there's a button from PTI and some sheer white ribbon tied on. I guess the whole snowflake looks a little white, but oh well, I didn't have any red buttons and I didn't look too hard for red ribbon since the white one looked easy to thread through the button.

Gee, where has November gone? Now I have to remember to buy our Christmas tree at some point soon since Eva reminded me with her already nicely decorated tree!

Enjoy the Season

Finally, I started on some Christmas cards! Which is unusual in itself because I pretty much send only Christmas photo cards...just have to make one, then print out multiple copies. Again, reminds me that we haven't even taken our family photo for this year yet. But I thought I should make something because I actually won the Hero Arts prize from Kristina Werner's blog! I couldn't believe that, that was totally shocking. I randomly enter things like that here and there, but I don't really expect to win anything. So here's a card using the snowflake set, "Enjoy the Season." It is just PTI cardstock in Aqua Mist and Hibiscus Burst. (I should have used the Hero Arts cards that I also received, but I thought if I messed up, at least I have relatively more sheets of cardstock than wasting the real cards). I was mostly playing around with embossing powders, which got a little messy. I don't know how people keep their powder from sticking to the cardstock. It came with instructions to dust cornstarch over the paper prior to using the powder, but maybe I didn't use enough. I was being a little stingy with the baby powder since I have a cute little mini bottle which I don't think is refillable. Whatever the case, the sentiment is in a distressed type font so most of those extra specks of white are actually supposed to be there, I realized afterward. Not so much for another sentiment I tried to emboss in black, but that's another story for another day.

The snowflakes were stamped in Versamark ink, then I used Ranger embossing powder in Holographic. It's hard to get a photo of it, but it's kind of a cool effect. It's glittery and when you angle it in the light a certain way, it does indeed look shiny and holographic! So of course I didn't want to cover up my cool snowflakes too much (not, actually I didn't know what else to put on the card). But I figured a sentiment might be nice, and then remembering Eva's cute pink gingerbread matchbook, I picked pink. The die cut is from a Sizzix Sizzlit set that I got from Michael's on Thanksgiving Day. Yes, Michael's was open for about 4 hours in the evening and I was crazy enough to go shopping with my 30% off (mostly) everything coupon. Plus who am I to pass up an opportunity to go shopping without the kids! When I got to the Sizzix section, there were signs that said 40% off, so I'm thinking wow, plus an extra 30% off. But then when I got home, I realized they only gave me the 30% off. So on Friday, I thought I might as well return it and possibly use my 50% off coupon. But then I thought maybe I should ask if the Sizzix's were supposed to be on sale the day prior. Which the cashier didn't know so the manager or whoever that was actually there on Thursday had to come over and said the signs were mistakenly up...but they actually gave me both discounts! Maybe I should have bought more stuff then! Although I think they gave me the discount because I only bought that one Sizzix. I'm so bad, I'm a crazy shopaholic!

Anyhow, I'm going to try and make another card (while the hubby is home and at least one kid is napping). Bye!

On Your 81st Birthday

Hello.  I'm actually making a seasonal card, before the season is over, or technically even before it begins since it still feels like summer weather around here.

Anyhow, I was wanting to make a fall birthday card, and found this Hero Arts leaves stamp set that I won last winter from a blog giveaway.  So I searched online to get some ideas of what people have done with this set, and I found this card by Nichol Magouirk.  I thought she did some neat things with the background stamping, so here is my version, the simplified version.  This was quite a bit of stamping for me though.

First off, this is a larger card than usual, I just folded the letter size cardstock (Summer Sunrise from PTI) in half.  I used Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge distress ink for the leaves, and Scattered Straw for the text.  The text is rather faint, which turned out to be a good thing since I stamped one half upside down!  It's one of those really slanty old style handwriting fonts from a Studio 490 background stamp.  I actually wasn't really paying attention until after I stamped it as I was more concerned with positioning the card over the stamp since I didn't have a huge acrylic block for it.

The brown piece was embossed with a woodgrain folder, then I added walnut stain distress ink to the raised areas trying to make them stand out more, but it didn't really make an obvious difference.  I cut the numbers on my Craft Robo, using a thick chunky font, Nobility Casual. I thought my little machine wouldn't be able to handle Papertrey ink cardstock, but I just cut it twice (there is actually a double cut function which I didn't notice at first) and it turned out OK.  Then I stamped the numbers with a background stamp from Studio 490, again, like I've seen Nichol Magouirk do with her die cuts.

The Big Birthday Wishes words were embossed with black embossing powder.  That was a bit of a mistake as the ink was a little too dry, so the powder didn't stick too well to the actual stamped images but decided to stick everywhere else on the cardstock.  Then finally I added the 2 little Tiny Tags in Terracotta Tile.  It feels a bit empty on the right, but oh well, that's what happens when I don't use a sketch.  Maybe I will slide the string and tags over to the right a little more.

 Then I put another Spellbinders label on the inside with the birthday sentiment.  I was actually going to use this size label initially for the cover, but since the card was so huge, I changed it to the largest label instead.

Card Positioning Systems Sketch 232

Hello...I'm back with some cards.  Finally got a chance for some "me" time this past weekend.  And I actually made some random card this time without really thinking of an occasion.  I mostly wanted to use my new stamp, thanks Eva!

I thought the sketch this week at CPS kind of went with a zen, minimalist, Japanese style :-)

Anyhow, pretty basic, just Papertrey Ink cardstock and stamps.  The stamp is Kiyomi from Sister Stamps, so cute!  I forgot where Eva got it from, but sounds like they only sell it locally in Hawaii.  Kiyomi is colored with pencils, (still debating about going the marker route, especially now that I see Promarkers all over the place and Copics at Hobby Lobby and Aaron Brothers).  But at least pencils seem pretty forgiving, just blend away or layer another color over.  I ended up cutting the antennae off the butterfly.  Anyhow, I also wanted to use my Spellbinder Lattice rectangles, finally got that from Hobby Lobby after using my previous coupon on gel pens for my kid's school supplies.  I stamped the backgrounds from the only 2 Asian stamp sets that I own, the stem is from a Stampin Up set and the flowers on the Rustic Cream cardstock are from a Hero Arts Asian girl set.  I tried to find relatively matching distress ink, I think I used old paper and bundled sage.

happy birthday

Hello.  I was thinking Eva would post something soon, but she must be having a busy summer...

Here's a birthday card that I made for the latest Farm Fresh Friday challenge, using ribbon.  And based on the Saturday Sketch on Splitcoaststampers.

It's a little strange that all the cards I've made recently end up at Eva's house!

You might be wondering where the ribbon is, but I read "twine" somewhere in the challenge description and went with that instead since I wanted to tie some tags on.  Anyhow, this was my first time coloring up Logan, usually I try to pick characters that sort of look like or remind me of the recipient, but don't really know many boys with curly hair.  Tried to color the hair strands straighter, but oh well.  Used Papertrey Ink cardstock in kraft, aqua mist, ocean tides, dark chocolate, and vintage cream, plus their patterned paper, happy birthday stamp and tiny tags die.  The background woodgrain stamp is from Hero Arts stamped in vintage photo distress ink.  I stamped the character in brown ink instead of black, and was almost tempted to not color him at all...which maybe would have been smarter since my blue pencil was kind of bright for the card. Hmm, I stuck on all the little stars thinking the rectangle was a little bare, but maybe that was overkill...

Anyhow, hope everyone is having a good summer, it's getting way too hot around here.

Hoot! Hoot!

Hi!  I would've started writing this post earlier but I'm a little addicted to watching The Voice so I had to watch that first and I even washed all the dinner dishes in 30 minutes so I could just sit on the couch.  But I'm slightly disappointed.  Nothing really stood out tonight.  Last week I really loved Pink's Perfect.  I mean Javier was good tonight but we kind of already knew that.  Anyway, on to my project.

A couple of days ago or so I got my Lion Brand e-newsletter and they had this cute grad owl amigurumi (pattern number 80282AD) so I had to check out the site.  But then I found an even cuter owl (pattern number L0256AD) so decided to go with that one instead.  Plus it was smaller so I thought it would be faster for me to make.  Then I thought I'd make a matching card for TGF's Farm Fresh Friday Challenge to make a Congrats card.

Here's a pic of the owl.  Isn't she the cutest?!  She's just 3 inches tall without the grad cap.  I added the cap and tassel and put a little cell phone clip (with a lobster claw clasp) so you can put it on something.  I had those things in my jewelry making stash.  Her nose is just a triangle piece of felt that I glued on.  Well, my kids love her and I may have to make 3 more just for them and all in different colors.  Reminds me of the Owl Babies book.  Cute story too.

Here she is hanging out.

Here's the card I made inspired by the crocheted owl.  I decided to go with the sliding pop-up card which was highlighted by SCS not too long ago.  The tutorial is HERE.  My dimensions are just a bit larger.  I used the owl from TGF's Forest Friends and borrowed Grad Anya's cap.  I also broke down and bought a couple of Hero Arts background stamps.  (Totally inspired by Donna Mikasa--I love how she uses the background stamps on her cards).  I used the large canvas one on the kraft cardstock.

So when you slide out the bottom piece, it says Congrats.  And then it stands on its own.  I added some butterflies (MS) and a daisy (MFT dienamics).  The letters are cut from one of the Hello Kitty sizzlits.

Side view.  Owl on the brown pops up.

Together.  Cute? 

Thanks for reading! 

Happy Mother's Day

Hello, just popping in with 2 quick Mother's Day cards before I send them off to the grandmas.  Can't believe it's May already and I actually made something.  I wasn't really planning on making anything, but sometimes it's fun to just sit around and make cards.  Maybe I was procrastinating, didn't want to get around to doing the not so fun chores and what not.

Anyhow, I used the sketch from CPS #262, unfortunately it took me so long to make the card that I didn't have time to do a post, so the deadline for that week's challenge has come and gone...

But here's my card anyhow.

I can't keep track of all the names of my stamps anymore and I'm too lazy to go look them up, but this is a Milton stamp colored with pencils.  I tried to do that partial die cutting thing with the image sticking out of the circle.  Made my own text and polka background paper using background stamps from Papertrey Ink.  I like the idea of those background stamps but I have to practice a lot more with lining them up nicely.  The sentiment is from a PTI tag-its.  I thought those little butterflies Eva had on some previous cards were cute so I used my Michael's coupon to buy the Martha Stewart punch a while ago.

This was actually the first card that I made...without following a sketch.  Then I decided I better go find one for my second card.  Again Papertrey ink cardstock.  Stamped the music background stamp from Hero Arts in Spun Sugar distress ink, it faded quite a bit when it dried, maybe I could use the brighter pink next time.  Anyhow, that's it for me.  Have a good rest of the week/month!