Love You Forever

It's been crazy busy here, but I'm just popping in to share a card using some new Avery Elle.

I just adore this new Love die cut.  It's a great size and such a pretty font.

I die cut the sentiment from the white cardstock panel as well as in red and gold.  The red was inlaid into the negative die cut piece and then I adhered the gold die cut slightly offset over top.



So easy, but so elegant.

Hope that you are having a wonderful week.  Can you believe that Christmas is only a week away?!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  Avery Elle - Black, White and Cherry Cardstock; Recollections - Gold Mirrorboard
Stamps:  Avery Elle - Simply Said:  Love Clear Stamps
Ink:  Mama Elephant - Apple Inkpad
Other:  Avery Elle - Simply Said:  Love Elle-ments Die; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Kuretake - Glue Pen

Friends with Flair - Perfect Just the Way You Are

Thought I would play along with Friends with Flair again this week.  Another card featuring another one of my favorite Itty Bitty stamps (I have a lot of favorites).

You might remember this card that I posts for FWF a couple weeks ago featuring what I like to call reverse watercoloring.  

I did something similar here.  I inked up the tag (with Mowed Lawn on the bottom and Salty Ocean on the top, blending in the middle), stamped the image in Versamark and then removed color.  This time though, I went back in and re-watercolored some areas using those same colors as well as some Evergreen Bough.

For the more saturated sections, you will need to go over the area more than once, but I like that you have so much control over the process.

Another little cheat on this card.  It has the look of one of those folded banner dies, but it's not.  Instead, I cut two 'tails' and tucked them under the tag, slightly off set from the top piece that the sentiment is stamped on.  Really easy to do, and if you don't have a die cutting machine or a fancy die, this is a great way to achieve the same effect.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great Friday!

Supplies Used

Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - Colonial White Cardstock

Stamps:  Unity - Perfect Just the Way You Are Itty Bitty

Ink:  Versafine; Distress Inks - Mowed Lawn, Salty Ocean, Evergreen Bough

Other:  Ranger - Water Brush; May Arts - Black Burlap String; MossyMade - Black Button; CTMH - Dimensional Foam Tape; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Cricut - Art Philosophy Cartridge (for tag cuts)

Holiday Gift Boxes with Punky Sprouts

Hey everyone!  Today I am sharing some cute ways to dress up your gift boxes for Christmas using Punky Sprouts embellishments.

You can use ready made boxes, ones that you create with cut files/dies, or use your brand new Gift Box Board like I did.

I love the Punky Sprouts embellishments, and used a bunch here.  The doilies are a great way to add some softness to your box, and if you aren't a fan of the slits/perforations that you get with some die cutting machines/dies, this is a great way to cover them up.



For the tall box, the trees were made using each of the three sizes of Lil Blossoms.  Each one is folded into quarters.  Before I adhered those I tied a bit of Punky Sprouts twine around the center of the box.  The tree trunks were a bit of scrap paper that I stamped using Neat & Tangled's On the Strip stamp - the woodgrain strip.



For the little box I wanted more color.  I used some more Punky Sprouts doilies, cutting one in half and then trimming off a little excess to decorate the sides of the box.  Then I sprayed some Lil' Petals with Lindy's Mist.  A little red and white twine was tied around the centers and the dried petals were adhered over top.





I just love how these turned out, and they really were so easy to do.

Supplies Used
Punky Sprouts (http://getpunkysprouts.com/store/?page/63371/products) -Canvas Lil' Petals, Parchment and Lacey Lil' Blossoms, Funky Punky Fiber Pack; Lindy's - Cathedral Pines Green Starburst Mist; WRMK - Gift Box Punch Board; Echo Park - Season's Greetings Collection; CTMH - Kraft and Chocolate card stock, Chocolate Ink, Bonding Memories Adhesive; The Twinery - Maraschino Twine; Neat & Tangled - On the Strip; Helmar - Quick Dry 450

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Guest Designing for Ronda Palazzari

Ronda Palazzari is one of my favorite stencil designers, and I'm thrilled to be a guest on her blog today.  Ronda asked that I create some holiday themed projects for the blog.  I own a fair number of her stencils, but nothing that is actually 'holiday', so I challenged myself to think out of the box on this one.  I hope you like what I made!

First up, a card based on a song.  One of my favorite Christmas songs, that just reminds me of being a kid at Christmas, is Silver Bells.  I thought that the Urban Landscape stencil would be perfect for this card, and I wanted to incorporate it in a very subtle and elegant way.  This is such an easy process.  I used a Zig Emboss marker to trace the buildings, added some diagonal lines/shading to the left side of the buildings, and embossed.



You don't have to be an expert, or particularly neat or artistic to do this, and the effect when embossed is gorgeous.

I mounted the vellum panel on an older piece of silver patterned paper, added some gold glitter cardstock accents, embossed the sentiment in gold, and then die cut some silver bells and tied them together with red sparkle trim for a pop of color.

Next I thought I would take on some tags.  I love the look of white on kraft, but I just think that for the holidays things should have a little sparkle/shine.

For these I used one of the feathers from the Mini Fancy Feathers stencil.  I layered it on my tag pieces and colored it in using a Chalk Marker/PITT artist pen.  I actually did one using each of them, and they were so similar that I ended up not being able to tell them apart.



Once this was done, I again used the Emboss marker to add some 'gilding' to the feathers.  I actually did this twice as I didn't get the coverage I wanted the first time, and with the double embossing, you get a thicker, richer look.



And one more shot of the two tags:

Finally, another card.  For this one I thought way out of the box, pulling out my Mini Subway stencil.  All those little compartments remind me a bit of stained glass.  I used embossing paste kind of like you might use heat embossing, for a bit of resist, although I wasn't fussy about it if I accidentally colored on the lines.  You could certainly use the emboss marker for a cleaner look, but I like the extra dimension you get from the paste.



I colored in the sections using Mowed Lawn and Evergreen Bough distress inks with a water brush varying the intensity of color.  I added a light mist of Lindy's Starburst for a little shimmer and snow effect.



Then I mounted the sentiment, cut using my Silhouette and glitter cardstock, and popped the whole panel up from the card.  I added a little sparkle trim to frame the panel.

Hope you enjoyed my projects today and that they inspire you to look at your stencils, even those non-holiday ones, in a different light.  Thanks so much to Ronda for having me today!

Supplies Used
Christmastime in the City Card
Paper/Cardstock:  Avery Elle - White Cardstock; American Crafts - Jolly Days paper; Recollections - Gold Glitter Cardstock and Silver Mirrorboard
Stamps:  Lawn Fawn - Milo's ABCs
Ink:  Versamark; Zig - Emboss Marker
Other:  Crafter's Workshop - Mini Urban Landscape Stencil; Avery Elle - Fill in the Blanks Holiday Dies; CTMH - Gold Embossing Powder and Dimensional Foam Tape; May Arts - Red Sparkle Trim; Tombow - Mono and Mono Multi Adhesive.
Tags
Paper/Cardstock:  PTI - Kraft
Stamps:  Lawn Fawn - Milo's ABCs
Ink:  Versamark; Zig - Emboss Marker
Other:  Crafter's Workshop - Mini Fancy Feathers Stencil; CTMH - Gold and Silver Embossing Powders, Chalk Marker; Faber Castell - PITT White Artist Pen; Twinery - Gold Sparkle and Solid Stone twine; WRMK - Cropodile
Joy Card
Paper/Cardstock:  Crafter's Companion - White Cardstock; Coredinations - Glitter Silk Cardstock; Watercolor paper from Target (Kids Art pad)
Ink:  Distress Inks - Mowed Lawn, Evergreen Bough
Other:  Crafter's Workshop - Mini Subway Stencil; Liquitex - Embossing Paste; Ranger - Water Brush; Lindy's - Starburst Mist; May Arts - Red Sparkle Trim; Silhouette Portrait; Tombow - Power Tabs and Foam Squares

Ribbon Carousel Challenge - Anything Goes

Hey everyone!  It's Anything Goes this month at Ribbon Carousel, and I thought I would share with you the cards that we are sending out this year for Christmas.  I made two versions, dark/light mostly because my goal was to use what I had, and I only had so much of the two papers I used for the die cuts.

I wanted to make sure that the card was relatively easy to mass produce and mail friendly as well.  There are a fair number of steps in the card, but overall pretty easy to put together.  I stamped the backgrounds first and let them dry while I die cut the landscape pieces.  For the lighter version they had to dry overnight since I used Brilliance pigment ink.  Then came adhering the die cut piece, embossing the sentiment, and then tying on the twine and adhering the entire panel to the card.

When I'm in mass production mode, I generally produce over a few evenings. So the first evening was stamping the background, die cutting, prepping the card bases.  Second/third evenings were adhering the die cut, embossing the sentiment, and final card assembly.



What do you think?  Which version is your favorite?  I go back and forth, but haven't quite settled on which I like the best....depends on what mood I'm in.

And have you heard?  There is good news and bad news.  The bad news is that Corinna is shutting down the Ribbon Carousel store for a year.  She's got her priorities in the right place and needs to focus elsewhere for a little bit, but she is ALWAYS thinking, and I'm guessing that when she opens back up there will be fantastic stuff in store for us all.

The good news is that there is a HUGE sale going on, half off all carousels - this would be a GREAT time to get one as they are $45 and shipping is free in the US.  The other good news is that we're going to be continuing the challenge even during the store hiatus.

Hope you will link up this month...it's a no brainer...Anything Goes and the winner gets a free Carousel!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - Whisper Cardstock; Crafter's Companion - White Cardstock: Fancy Pants - Home For Christmas Papers (solids used for the die cuts)
Stamps:  Hero Arts - BasicGrey RSVP Tiny Star Background; Verve - Peace on Earth
Ink:  Tsukineko - Versamark, Brilliance Platinum Dew Drop; Hero Arts - Wet Cement Shadow Ink
Other:  Memory Box - Modern Landscape Die; The Twinery - Maraschino Twine; CTMH - Gold Embossing Powder; Tombow - Mono Adhesive and Mono Multi Adhesive

Joy for WPlus9 Mood Board

There's so much going on I haven't been able to play along in as many challenges as I'd like to these days, but I had a little extra time last night and decided to throw together a card for the current WPlus9 mood board.

I was inspired by the colors, the season, and the woodgrain (I would have inserted the mood board photo here, but we just got a mac, and I can't figure out how to save an image from a website to my desktop right now.....I miss the right click button!!!).  

For this card, I used the velveteen technique, stamping my large Hero Arts woodgrain background in white pigment ink onto white cardstock.  

Then I used one of the leaf stamps from Fresh Cut Florals to create a wreath (I traced a small circle onto the card to use as a guide).  I used the large berries from the Spring Tags set to decorate the wreath and stamped JOY using the smaller set of letters from the Monogrammed set.

Really simple and easy.

Hope that your weekend is going well!  We are doing our best to relax and enjoy this special season!

Supplies Used

Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - White Daisy; PTI - Kraft cardstock

Stamps:  WPlus9 - Fresh Cut Florals, Spring Tags, Monogrammed; Hero Arts - Woodgrain Background

Ink:  CTMH - White Daisy; Cranberry; Hero Arts - Field Greens Shadow Ink

Other:  Lawn Fawn - Peppermint Lawn Trimmings; Tombow - Mono Adhesive

In the mood to color, and some more birthday cards

I took a week off from my birthday card making duties, but I'm back at it again.  This week I was in the mood to color.  I have mostly Spectrum Noir markers, you really can't beat the price on those, but was fortunate enough to have received some Copics in my WCMD prize, so I wanted to give those a test run.

I love my Jane's Doodles stamps, and pulled out Garden Friends for this first set of cards.  The critters are so cute and you really don't need more more than the image and a sentiment - it would be easy to create a little gift set of cards using this stamp set.

This last card features one of the balloons from Mama Elephant's Good Times set.  I stamped three of the balloons on some wide Eclipse masking tape to use as masks and then created my cluster.  The tails are a bit uneven as I used a journaling pen that was a little too thin so had to go in and thicken the lines.  

Coloring cards and catching up on my shows - not a bad way to spend an evening!

Supplies Used

Paper/Cardstock:  Crafter's Companion - White Cardstock

Stamps:  Jane's Doodles - Garden Friends; Mama Elephant - Good Times; Paper Smooches - Birthday Sampler; A Muse Studio - Contemporary Greetings

Ink:  Memento - Tuxedo Black

Other:  Spectrum Noir markers; Copic markers