Having lots of fun trying to decide what to do for Christmas cards this year. Thought I’d step out of the box and go with different ideas.
Idea #1 has some fun layering stamps I got from Hero Arts.
I’m loving this one. However, cutting out each of the red and green shrimp, and adding a bit of sparkle to them, was quite the chore.
Thanks for spending some of your time with me today. What do you think of this as a Christmas card?
Sometimes layers are wonderful. Other times, you need a pretty flat card. Here is a simple walk through of how to do a flat card that looks like it has layers.
To start, you need to tear the edges of a piece of scrap paper.
I used some removable tape on the back of my strip of scrap paper. You can use some regular adhesive, if you press it onto your skin and pull it off several times. You want it to come off cleanly, at the end.
After my strip was placed, I used the different inks to ink around the edges. I started with the lightest colors and the edges of the card and the darkest closest to my strip. Granted, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference in the inks and I did blend them together, somewhat.
Next, I left the scrap paper strip on the card and stamped my flowers using a different color. I did overlap the edges, so they were partially stamped onto the strip. This adds to the faux layered look. I also added some leaves. Then, I removed the strip.
It almost looks like a torn white strip is placed on top of a detailed background. The last step was to stamp my sentiment. After I stamped it, I decided to add a couple of stick on embellishments. These are quite tall, so not good for mailing. However, if you wanted to stamp something in the blank space, or adhere something smaller, or even just leave it blank, it all depends on what look you want.
The finished card.
Here’s another one that I did with 2 torn pieces at the edges, rather than 1 in the center.
The colored, stamped flowers, were popped up with pop dots.
This really is a fun technique. Try it and see what you come up with. Have fun with the inking!
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Last weekend, I was trying to think of some Christmas Card ideas, as it is, already, September and I don’t have many done. So, I thought about butterflies and glitter. Here’s what I did, for a few.
Actually, what I did first, was put some 2-1/2″ double sided adhesive tape on some white card stock. I just used the cheap kind of card stock. Then, I took this wonderful die I got at Simon Says Stamp called Butterfly Drift, put it on top of the adhesive backer, which I had left on the top, then ran it through as a regular cut. I didn’t add any shims, as I didn’t want it to cut all the way through.
You can kind of see the cut lines in the above picture.
Next, I pulled up the “frame” edge. I used a paper piercer to start that, though an edge of a paperclip, or something else small and sharp would have worked, too. I grabbed that and slowly pulled it up, to get all of it. Then, I opened up my dark green micro-fine glitter. (This has to be MICRO fine glitter, or it doesn’t work well.)
I dabbed my finger in and using just what was on my finger, started rubbing firmly over the adhesive that was now showing.
As you can see, there’s not much extra glitter left on the top of the adhesive liner.
Then I used that little piece of Swiffer Sweeper cloth, that I had cut off and wiped up the excess glitter. There wasn’t much. Quick and easy cleanup, that way.
Next, I pulled the liner off the butterflies and rubbed on gold micro-fine glitter. Cleaned up the bit of excess glitter with another small piece of Swiffer Sweeper cloth. I decided I didn’t want the whole piece of adhesive, as that would take too much room, so I just used my scissors and cut around the butterflies. I used a craft knife to get that one small center piece out, too.
On the side of my card base, I used gold embossing powder and embossed my “Merry Christmas” greeting. It didn’t show up very well against my stamped background, so I found a piece of similar green paper, embossed it on there, and adhered that.
Done. Fairly quick and easy. And, the glitter doesn’t fall off, as it is quite well adhered. Also, when I was wiping off the little bit of excess glitter, I went over my piece, as well, which picked up any extra.
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
This is a challenge on the We Craft Cards forum. This week we are having a card crop, with 2 challenges per day, Wednesday through Saturday, as well as a game. Join in the fun and play along. You do need to register for the site, but it’s free and is full of fun inspiration and soon-to-be-friends.
My challenge is to make a card with an animal not acting like an animal. Here are some examples:
So, a pretty easy challenge, but fun. Come check out all the fun.
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
I needed to make 3 cards that are pretty much the same, as invites. Needed to get it done on Tuesday, to get them in Wednesday’s mail, but I failed. Didn’t actually get them done until today, when I found a sheet of paper that I thought would work.
I could have made 6 plus cards from this one sheet of 12×12 paper, but I only needed 3, so I have some left.
I cut off the fun scalloped edge and figured I would use that on the cards, but wound up not using it. So, I cut three pieces of the dotted card at 4″ x 5-1/4″. Put that on my 3 pieces of 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″, scored at 4-1/4″ bases.
I also found some brown and yellow flowers that seemed to go well with the patterned card. Added 2 on the outside and a small one inside each card. Also cut out “hello” from a bit of scrap, white card.
Simple cards, that went together fairly quickly, after I found the paper to use.
Here’s another one I made this week, that was a back-to-school card. Had a lot of fun with it, though it was a ton of work. So, just wanted to show it to you and give you a brief description.
Cut 2 circles, 1 in white and 1 in brown light weight card (or heavy weight paper). Cut a bunch of 2 different colors of twine. Untwisted all of the twine, then glued (liquid adhesive) the ends to the white circle. Then glued the brown circle on top of that. Now, when I gathered the “hair” into the pony and tied the bow on it, I found that the circles were just too big, so I cut it down to more of an oval. Before I adhered the “head” piece to the base card, I stamped flowers in different shades of pink and stamped my sentiment in black. Then, adhered the “head” and trimmed my “hair” even with the bottom of the card. After that, I stamped some pencils and colored those with colored pencils. After cutting them out, I tucked them into the “hair”, like you sometimes see little kids do with pencils (or their teachers). This one is definitely fun, but oh so messy. The twine made a huge mess, as well as being itchy.
Thanks for spending some time with me today! Go have a marvelous rest of the day.
This week I had some fun with an embossing stencil, some ink and patterned paper.
Products Used:
To start, I taped my stencil to a piece of white card with removable tape.
When you flip it over and turn the light table on, you can see right through to trace it with the round embossing tool seen on the table. Before embossing, rub the card stock with wax paper (it makes it much easier to trace). Just a hint, if you use really heavy weight card stock, or dark colored card, it is very difficult to see through to trace.
Then I found the papers I wanted to use from my paper pack, chose my ink colors to go with the papers, and started inking my design, with the stencil still attached. Ink through the stencil.
I did use a touch of red ink for the tongue. I also used a fine point black pen to color the eyes. When you remove the stencil, make sure you rinse it with water to clean it off, then dry it well.
After cutting around my embossed image, I cut a strip of the green for behind it. In the finished card, I layered the green on a strip of white card to offset it a bit, as the 2 patterned papers together was too busy looking. I did cut close to my embossed and inked image, so you could see the green through around the tail and legs.
I figured out where I wanted the ribbon behind the image piece, then put it on the background patterned paper, before adhering that to the base card. I stamped the sentiment onto a die cut piece of vellum, then traced it with a teal Stardust Pen to give it a bit more color and some sparkle. Adhered that to the ribbon with Vellum Adhesive by Therm-o-web.
Inside, I put a small strip of the background patterned paper, crossed by a small piece of the green patterned paper. The inside sentiment is stamped with Blue Lagoon ink (same as the outside) in the center.
I have embossed and inked this dragon with many colors, but I don’t think any have been as fun as this with the bright colors. Try doing things a bit different than expected and you might really like what you achieve.
Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, go out and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
So, there was a challenge at We Craft Cards to make a “character”, but not a people type character card. I was trying to figure out what to do by looking at Pokemon characters and movie characters. Wound up with Monster’s Inc. As I couldn’t just print and fussy cut my characters, as that is against copy right laws, I went with Mike W., figuring he was the easiest to figure out. However, there were parts that were difficult to come up with.
Here’s what I did:
First, I used some circle and oval dies to do his body, eye and mouth. Then, used a branch die I have to make his arms and legs. To do that, I had to cut on one side of the paper, then flip the paper over and do it from the back for the other. There was a bit of trimming involved, but they were fairly close.
To make his mouth, I cut out the same oval as the white of his eye and used some edgers to make his teeth, then trimmed the oval to make it more mouth shaped. Probably should have put a small pink oval behind for the inside of his mouth, but I didn’t. (Hindsight and all.)
I wanted to include Sully, so used a light blue card stock for my card base, then used a paintbrush with a bit of a fanned head and some ink pads to get the darker blues and the bit of purple so it looked like his body.
It’s certainly not perfect, but the cut out pieces at the bottom show what I was going off of. Those are the pieces I figured it would not be legal/ethical for me to use. They were good inspiration.
I just cut out some little triangles from white card and inked the tips for his horns.
When you are trying to make something specific, think about other things you can adapt to make it work.
Thanks for spending some of your valuable time with me today. Have a great weekend!
