'Tis the Season

Here's my card for this week's sketch at Clean & Simple Stamping. I went with a gold holiday themed card. I started by using some older holiday paper. I used the colours in that to figure out the rest of my colour scheme. Once I had the circles adhered to my card base, I really wanted the greeting to pop out. I tried die-cutting a few things, but couldn't decide on a colour. So finally, I decided to add a vellum overlay and emboss a gold sentiment on that. I have to say, I'm glad I did! I added a few sequins to mirror the circle elements and that was that!

Supplies:
Stamps: Big and Bold Holiday Wishes
Paper: White, Retired Stampin' Up! DSP, Vellum
Accessories, etc.: Sequins, Gold EP

Wedding Cards

There were a few weddings on the agenda this September. So that meant making a few Congratulations/Wedding themed cards.

 

First up, I had the opportunity to play with Altenew's Painted Flowers. They are a bit tricky at first, but the more you play with them, the easier it gets. I used Soft Suede as my outline colour here. It kind of has a gold under tone, so I wanted to pair that with some metallic embossing. I stamped a greeting from Bigger Blooms and embossed that on vellum. I used clear foam tape (amazing stuff I tell you!) to pop up the greeting. I made the card so long away that I am totally guessing at colours. I think I used Mossy Meadow and Certainly Celery for the greens. The coral flowers are maybe Calypso Coral and Crisp Cantaloupe, and the yellow flowers are Daffodil Delight and Crushed Curry. Again, these are total guesses, and because the lighting is a bit dark in the photo, I really can't confirm.

 

 

Next up is a card using the soon to be mine (seriously, this set is out for delivery as I write this...) Spring Blooms. The wedding colours were purple, so I thought it'd be nice to incorporate those onto the card. I used Elegant Eggplant and Perfect Plum for the flowers and Pear Pizzazz for the leaves.

I added stickles into the flower centres and also added these pretty pearly sequins as an extra embellisment. The sentiments comes from this great $5 Keep it Simple set.

 

 

Next up, a silver medallion look of sorts. I made this during Stamp-A-Faire 2014. I didn't have any of the wax for making seals, so I did my own version of it. I covered a strip of paper with Versamark and then embossed at least 4 layers of silver embossing powder. To get the impressions, I inked up my medallion image with versamark, heated the embossing powder so that it was melty and then quickly stamped into the molten silver. I did that three times, then punched these out with a circle punch. Both the image and sentiment comes from Giga Guide Lines. It's a great set for making these sort of medallions out of embossing powder. I can always make a video if people want to see this in action. 

 

The last card features some rainbow butterflies. I really like the variety of shapes and sizes in Beautiful Butterflies and I also really like that sentiment. For this one, I stamped all of the butterflies on the white layer first. Then I die cut the larger four images and restamped those. I did this since the dies don't include the antennae. By stamping all of the butterflies on the base layer first, you know exactly where you will be placing the popped up dies and you still get to include the antennae!

 

That's all for now! A bit of a wordy post, I haven't listed the supplies at the end, as it is all listed throughout the post. I have linked to any stamp sets used :)

Starry Splatter

Hello!

 

I have a card to share today. I was very inspired by Jennifer's video. I loved the card then and always wanted to recreate it with my own spin. Let me tell you, I got quite messy doing this technique, but it was just so fun!

 

For inks, I used Night of Navy (Stampin' Up!), Broken China (Distress), and Salty Ocean (Distress). I blended the whole paper with the lightest colour and then splattered all three inks in stages. The next step was blending the edges with the navy ink. Finally, I mixed some Pearl Ex with water and splattered that all over. Once dry, I set the whole thing with some hairspray. The next step was adding some celestial features. The little stars are actually from this awesome die. I used the solid star peices and I also cut off a few of the outline stars. The moon was simply made using a 1-3/4 circle punch and a 1-1/8 circle punch.

 

Finally, I kind of liked the scene as it was, but I just have a hard time with sentiment-less cards. I decided to die cut this happy birthday die out. To add extra pop and strength to the die, I clear embossed it. I know it's a bit busy, but sometimes, you just want to go all out and make a mess!

 

Also, I just wanted to share that I was featured in yesterday's "Spotted" feature over that the Simon Says Stamp blog! This was a first for me!

Spring Blooms Two Ways

Here are a few more Spring Blooms card I made. They are both pretty simple, but they have slightly different styles.

 

For the first one, I wanted layered blooms and leaves. Once I had those stamped and cut out, I arranged them as a corner cluster. I didn't want just a plain background, so I used a hexagon embossing folder to jazz it up a bit. The last step was adding the greeting from Strictly Sentiments 5.

 

The next card features more of a distressed/painted look.. I stamped the leaves using distress inks and ran over top of the images with a slightly damp paint brush. Next I added some ink splatters. The final few steps were adding the bit of baker's twine and a sentiment. Easy peasy!

Supplies:
Paper: White, Terracotta Tile, So Safron, Cherry Cobbler, Daffodil Delight, Dark Chocolate
Stamps: Spring Blooms, Strictly Sentiments 1 and 5
Ink: Mowed Lawn, Fired Brick, Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed, Archival Black
Accessories, etc.: Hexagon Embossing Plate, Baker's Twine,