For My Valentine

I made this card for my DH on Valentine's Day. I needed it to be relatively simple as I started it that morning and wanted to finish before he woke up. I had to do a do-over with the buckle chipboard once, because I bent it and smudged the ink...the joys of working with the slower drying craft ink!

I used the Kraft paper for the base. The chipboard buckle and heart are from Stampin' Up's On Board chipboard. I started by using Whisper White craft ink to cover the buckle. I did it a couple times, heat setting it with my heat gun in between coats (it still doesn't completely set this way, but it helps reduce mess, oh, and it smoked just a little bit...hehe). Once I was satisfied that it wouldn't get any whiter, I used my Real Red craft ink and the hearts stamp from the hostess set "A Little Bit of Happiness" to apply over the white ink, then I clear embossed over that so that the red inked image became raised and shiny (hard to see in this photo). The heart was inked thoroughly with the real red craft ink and clear embossed twice to give a glossy finish. This changes the true red color a bit, so I opted for the Bravo Burgandy 1/4" grosgrain ribbon to attach the buckle to the card (I also secured the buckle to the paper with some Sticky Strip). The heart was attached to the cardstock with a couple Stampin' Dimensionals. I used a favorite retired stamp inside the card with the sentiment: "I love you more today than yesterday, but less today than I will tomorrow".

A Simple Kid's Card

I haven't been doing very much stamping lately. Not feeling terribly creative, I'm afraid. Here's a simple card I put together for my nephew's 7th birthday. I used Garden Green for my base color, then used Summer Sun to mat the birdie image. The Whisper White cardstock is edged with Garden Green ink using a Marvelous Marker. I also coloured the image (from the stamp set "Pun Fun") using my Stampin' Up! (SU) Marvelous Markers and a blender pen to pull the colour around a bit to give a simple water coloured look. The ribbon is SU's More Mustard 1/4" grosgrain ribbon. And to give a bit more pop, I used my handy dandy Stampin' Dimensionals to adhere the matted image to the green cardstock.

I would be much more impressed with myself if I not only managed to make a card, but actually got it in the mail before his birthday!

Cards, cards, cards

I haven't done much lately. These cards I made a couple weeks ago at an all day stamp event. I was there for 8 hours and managed to make 4 cards!! Oh well, I do like how they turned out.

This first card is a baby card using Stampin' Up! craft paper for the base, Ruby Red and Groovy Guava. I used the Kraft taffeta ribbon and did some faux stitching on the strip of Groovy Guava near the bottom. This is done by piercing a row of holes, then connecting the dots with a white gel pen (Stampin' Up! has a very nice one). I used this technique on all of these cards...I guess I was a little stitch happy. I used Stampin' dimensionals to raise the large rectangle as well as the smaller rectangle on top of it. The image is embossed with black embossing powder and the stamp is from "Sweet Thing" stamp set. Finally, I used my corner rounder punch to add the scalloped edge at the bottom of the card. Oh, and the patterned paper is Groovy Guava Prints Designer paper.




This card is clearly similar to the one above. I just used Wild Wasabi, Certainly Celery, and Garden Green instead of the pink combo above. The ribbon is the Wild Wasabi double stitched ribbon. I think that the striped Wild Wasabi (it's new in the catalogue this season) would have looked good with this as well.




This card is similar to the first. I needed to swap the Kraft ribbon for the Guava double stitched ribbon when I used the white cardstock for the stamped image as the Kraft ribbon just looked dingy next to the white paper. The stamped image is from the "It's All Good" stamp set, which, after stamping with Ruby Red classic ink, I quickly embossed it with clear embossing powder. I heard from Beate Johns that you can make a smoother look if you quickly add more embossing powder when your image is still warm and heat emboss it again. I must agree, it does look more finished that way. I punched out the image with my circle punch (1-1/4", I think) and adhered it with Stampin' Dimensionals to the Ruby Red scallop circle (used my scallop punch).




This last card is a similar layout to one I posted not very long ago. The stamp set is, again, from the "It's All Good" set and I double embossed it with clear embossing powder over Old Olive ink. I used my 1-1/4" square punch to cut it out and my 1-3/8" square punch to frame it in Old Olive paper. The background is Kraft cardstock and I used Summer Sun and Real Rust cardstock, which I sponged the edges of with a slighly darker ink to give a sort of antiqued look. The Kraft cardstock is also sponged around the edges. The ribbon is Chocolate 15/16th" Satin Ribbon which you can find in Stampin' Up!'s Ribbon Original Theatre set. And I used a piece of hodgepodge aged copper hardware to embellish the ribbon using the technique I showed you in one of my earliest posts. Stampin' Dimensionals once again add depth to my card by slightly raising up the stamped image.

Hope you like these cards. Thanks for visiting!