Guest Designer for So Suzy Stamps!

I am so excited to be one of the Guest Designers for So Suzy Stamps this month!  Suzy's stamps are available in a wide range of categories and are very crisp and many of them are quite elegant.

Speaking of elegant, I selected, as my theme this month, to do a wedding card and since I obviously love shaker cards, I couldn't resist.  The stamps I used are the Wedding Dress stamp, with corresponding SVG file and the This Day Forward sentiment stamp.

I started out by using the cutting file on my Silhouette Portrait machine to cut out the background for my stamp with Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Cardstock.

I cut out several copies in case I made a mistake.  Once I had those ready, I mixed some Perfect Pearls in the shade Perfect Pearl, with some water and painted all of my dress cutouts.

I followed that with some heat embossing using Versamark and Sparkle 'N Sprinkle's Velvet Sparkle embossing powder.

I followed that same process using different colored embossing powders from my stash, a pink sparkle shade and blue sparkle shade (I have no idea just where those came from) and I'll make something with those another time.  I did notice, as you can see in this picture, that the embossing powder just didn't show up enough on top of the Perfect Pearls watercolor, so I used my Zig glue pen to trace the lines in the stamp and covered that with some Reflection Velvet Glitter from Sparkle 'N Sprinkle.

To assemble my card, I used some Neenah Solar White cardstock cut to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" for a top folding card.  I used the other half of the cardstock to cut out my panel and my circular window.

I used the A2 stitched rectangle from the Stitched Bundle and the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Circle Dies for the center shaker window.  I used washi tape to hold the two dies together and ran them on the white cardstock and two pieces of fun foam.  I cut some transparency paper to make my little window.  I pulled some floral paper from my stash (My Mind's Eye "Fancy That" double-sided paper) and adhered my dress and some pearl embellishments, stacked my fun foam and adhered it to my card front and dropped in some marshmallow sequins, sparkling clear and silver shimmer seed beads from Pretty Pink Posh.

I stamped the sentiment on some of my paperstash (same as above), cut it in a strip and stuck it to the front of my card and added a small rose embellishment.

I played around with another card, but I thought it turned out too "pinky" for me, I'm showing it here anyway, just without a tutorial.

I can post a tutorial for the above card if anyone is interested in seeing it.

Until then, Keep Crafting Real!

UGH Birthday card

Sure did say lots of bad words last night while putting together my daughter's birthday card.  NOTHING turned out the way I wanted it to!

Anyway, she is turning 20 today and when she was little, I used to call her Manda Panda Monkey Bear - don't understand that at all, but it was something cute that started when she was very little.  I found this adorable set from My Favorite Things in their June release and it was PERFECT.


My Favorite Things HAPPY PANDAS Clear Stamps MFT MSTN10 - $17.99
from: Simon Says Stamp

Those little pandas are just SO adorable!

So I started out stamping the little pandas, a balloon (had to do that one twice), the banner and sentiment on some smooth white cardstock.  I colored the images with my Spectrum Noir markers.  I loaded them on to my PixScan mat, traced the images and added a .080 offset to get a small white border.

This is where it all went wrong.  After loading the images to cut them, I didn't move my Portrait out from the wall far enough and the pixscan had trouble loading all the way, reading the reference marks.  All of the work I had put in coloring and stamping was chopped up.  After a few CHOICE words, I decided to just cut the images out of cardstock without any coloring, stamp and color them afterwards.

Thank goodness for my MISTI tool...

I cut the white images and laid them out on the MISTI tool, carefully placing a piece of acetate over the pieces since they would definitely move and lose their positions.

After some sweating, the stamping came out beautifully - so I got my Spectrum Noir markers out AGAIN and re-colored the images.

To assembly my scene, I used some Ranger Watercolor cardstock and watercolored a background using my Color Theory stamps from Studio Calico.  I cut some grassy pieces from my Silhouette.  Once I had the pandas where I wanted them, I added some foam tape to the climbing panda.  I added some adorable little Enamel accents from
Doodlebug SUMMER SHAPES Sprinkles Enamel Assortment 4579 to complete my card.

I also added some clear Wink of Stella to the balloon and the banner to give it a little shimmer, trimmed down the watercolor piece and adhered it to some light blue cardstock.

You can see, I had some coloring issues with the markers bleeding outside of the lines on my balloon and banner but after two attempts, I was just DONE.  I tried using the Spectrum Noir blender marker but it seemed to have just made things worse.  Oh well...not everything turns out the way we plan.

I'll be back this weekend with some more projects and stay tuned to see what I create for So Suzy Stamps as I am a guest designer for June 28th!

Until then...keep crafting real!

Neglectful

Well, I have totally neglected my blog lately.  I have been so busy at home, you wouldn't believe.  I am so sorry for all my adoring fans - oh wait...what fans?  LOL

However, I keep persevering and hoping that I will eventually earn a fan base.  I feverishly put together 3 cards last night because I was pressed down to the wire with a birthday today, a graduation this weekend and a colleague's retirement next week when I will be on vacation.  I never captured one single photo or one single step and the birthday one would have been awesome because I screwed it up about 3 times before finally just trying to rescue the 3rd disastrous attempt so I'd not have to start over for a 4th time!

I do have a birthday card yet to make for my niece so I will try to be much more diligent with my posting - how else do I ever expect to be famous?!?  :)

Design Team Call for Tiddly Inks!

Happy Saturday everyone!

This week, I have created a simple card for submission to the Tiddly Inks Design Team Call.  I started with the Super Pup digital stamp from Tiddly Inks.

I started by printing several sizes of the Super Pup and coloring him with my Spectrum Noir markers.  I loaded him onto my Silhouette PixScan mat to trace and cut all three out.  You can see a great tutorial for this technique here.

Once he was all cut out, I set him aside and loaded some cardstock and cut some stitched clouds.

I used some cloud cut files from the Silhouette Design Store, created a small offset and set the offset cut line to perforated to give the illusion of stitched clouds.  After pulling up the paper, I ran the sheet through my Sizzix BigShot using the Rectangle from the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Bundle die.


To assemble the shaker portion of the card, I cut some clear acetate and adhered it to my card face.   I cut some strips of 3M Mounting Foam Tape and doubled it up to make deeper wells for my shaker components and added some sequins from Pretty Pink Posh and So Suzy Stamps.






 



I peeled off all of the paper from the mounting tape and added a backing sheet to the shaker.  I added my Super Pup popping him up with some foam tape, my sentiment from Avery Elle's Furry Friends stamp set and added a little bit of Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Brush Pen to my pup and added the whole thing to some light blue cardstock cut to 4 1/4 x 5 1/2.

The supplies I used are listed below or linked in the blog post.  Thanks for stopping by and Keep Crafting Real!

Silhouette Portrait	Silhouette PixScan Cutting Mat for use with Portrait	Simon Says Stamp BUNDLE OF STITCHED SHAPES Wafer Dies sssd111412 Cold Hands Warm Heart	*Sizzix BIG SHOT MACHINE Powder Blue & Teal 657900
Sizzix 657900 Big Shot Cutting/Embossing Machine with Extended Multipurpose Platform, Powder Blue/Te	3M Scotch DOUBLE-SIDED FOAM TAPE Permanent	3M Scotch 1/2-Inch by 36-Yard Double-Sided Foam Tape	Avery Elle Clear Stamp FURRY FRIENDS Set 022485
Memento TUXEDO BLACK INK PAD Full Size me-900	Pretty Pink Posh MARSHMALLOW Seed Beads	Pretty Pink Posh SILVER SHIMMER Seed Beads	Pretty Pink Posh 4MM MARSHMALLOW Cupped Sequins
ZIG Wink of Stella Glitter Brush Marker Pen 999 Clear

InLinkz.com

Simon Says Stamp April 2015 Card Kit

Happy Saturday!

I finally sat down today and started working on my crafting.  I had some great inspiration from the Simon Says Stamp April Card Kit.

This month's card kit revolves around the Big Birthday Wishes Stamp set.

The kit includes Pinkfresh Studios Rub-Ons (Up In The Clouds and an exclusive design for SSS) and Washi Tape, a beautiful iridescent green, pink and gold color.

Also included were these beautiful foiled craft papers.  I am already envisioning my next project using these!

Several pieces of cardstock in colors coordinating with the washi tape and rub-ons finished out the contents of the kit.

For my project, I started with some standard white cardstock and used a technique for ink embossing using a Darice embossing folder and Color Theory inks Going Green and Yes Peas.

I then colored the inside of the embossing folder, on the flat side with valleys and ran it through my BigShot.

I screwed up the first time, running the paper through left only half of the paper covered in ink so I had to change my platform on my BigShot to make it just a tad thicker.  The embossing folder didn't want to go through when I did that, but I kept pushing it through and got better but not perfect coverage.

 

I tried to use a paintbrush to color in some of the areas that weren't covered but quickly realized I'd not finish by the end of the weekend if I did it that way, so I opted to leave it.  I took the Yes Peas darker green and VERY LIGHTLY rubbed the ink pad over the raised parts of the paper.  I got some of the ink inside the valleys but forged on.

So I totally forgot to shoot pictures of the next phase.  I used a We R Memory Keepers Magnetic Twist Trimmer Combo to cut a scalloped edge about 3/4 of the way down the paper.  I decided to add it to a mint cardbase, cut to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2".  I used my MISTI tool to line up the paper and my sentiment.

I attached the paper to the cardbase after stamping and then I cut a piece of vellum to 3" x 4" and stamped another sentiment using VersaMark ink and then added Recollections embossing powder to the sentiment and heat set it.

At this point,  I was a little dissatisfied with the vellum, I thought it was too plain, so I ran the vellum edges along the VersaMark pad, added the same embossing powder and heatset that to add some dimension.

I added washi tape to the top and bottom of the piece of vellum and then I adhered the vellum to my card using Tombow Mono Adhesive behind the words and my tape runner along the back following the washi tape.  I like to put my adhesives behind other elements on my vellum sheets so the adhesive doesn't show through.  My completed project appears below.

Not my favorite card, but it's not terrible.  LOL

Stay tuned for another project coming soon!

Until then, keep crafting real!

Finished up the Paper Issues Crop entries this weekend.  I didn't get to do all of them, but I did get most of them finished that weren't specific calls for scrapping or Project Life.  These are the entries from this weekend:

 

Keep Crafting Real!!