Snowflakes Along the Edge

To me, a clean and simple card is more than clean lines and white space, it should be fairly quick to make.  One of my ways of making quick(er) cards that don't look thrown together is to keep a stash of backgrounds.  Whenever I am playing with a new technique, I make lots of backgrounds and keep them all including the ones I am not pleased with.  There is usually a part that can be used to back a cut out window or to die cut a shape or sentiment.  I didn't like the one I used for this card, but the part along one side was pretty which was fortuitous because the AAA Cards challenge is to create a clean and simple card with the design along one edge and an optional twist of snow.  

First I used the Hero Arts Snowflake Edge die to cut a border on the front of the card.  Then I attached the background in question that I made had by smooshing ink spritzed with Hero Arts White Iridescent  Shimmer Mist onto watercolor paper behind the front of the card.  I embossed a sentiment from the Ornamental Christmas set by CZ Design for Simon Says Stamp in silver and added a strip of silver foil  cardstock from my scraps to compliment it.  I figured I was pushing the limits of CAS with layers, so I resisted the urge to put clear sparkles in the centers of the snowflakes. I also plan to enter this in the CAS on Friday Christmas Challenge and Addicted to Stamps and More Die Cut or Stencils Challenge.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

A Cool "Burnt Wood" Technique

 

I had been pondering all week how I would use the Paper Players sketch below when I saw this video by Gina K Design. 

Essentially you score a piece of cardstock, lightly swipe ink over it, set up the sandwich for embossing a die on your die cut machine, place the panel face down on the rubber mat and the stencil on top, emboss the stencil (which actually debosses it), and then swipe more ink over it.  Being in full Christmas card mode, I used a snowflake stencil from Stampin' Up.  Rather than use the colored pencil and Gamsol technique Gina used, I lightly colored the snowflake impressions with a colored pencil.  I cut 1.5 x 3.75 inch panels, swiped more ink round the edges, and stacked each on two layers of heavy Very Vanilla cardstock for dimension.  I attached the outer two panels first and then lined up the middle panel evenly between them.  HINT:  Pay attention to how the design lines up.  I had to perform a card-ectomy because I attached the middle panel upside down.

I had sort of an antiqued brass embellishment I wanted to use to anchor the sentiment, but it did not show well.  I tried coating it in gold embossing powder, but it still didn't show, so I tried platinum powder from Ranger which worked, but I did have to sacrifice some of the detail.  I like to think it evokes the look of old worn hardware on a wooden cupboard.  I used the same powder to emboss the sentiment and gild the edges.

This technique would work well for any masculine card.  Thank you for stopping by!  Until nexy time, Hansi

Retro Christmas

 

This card was designed for the Aud Sentiments Christmas Sentiment, Christmas 24 Simply Snowflakes, and C.R.E.A.T.E. Christmas Non Traditional Colours Challenges.  I also plan to enter this into the Peace on Earth Christmas Challenge which is a new anything goes Christmas challenge that posts a mood board for inspiration if you choose to use it ,which I did for this card.

 

I started with a 9x12 sheet of bristol paper and sprayed it with Dina Wakely Ocean, Turquiose, and Night acrylic gloss sprays and Tim Holtz Brushed Pewter Distress spray until I liked the look.  Then I cut off a piece for this card and edged it with Majestic Violet Archival ink from Ranger.  I cut the sentiment from silver foil cardstock using the Tim Holtz Retro Merry Christmas die and the snowflakes from white and silver foil cardstocks using dies from Stampin' Up's Snowfall set.  I popped the panel up on a white card base and finished the card of with a purple sparkle.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

Moon Gazing Kitties

 

In my family of cat lovers Halloween cards must feature a cat or two or five...  You could say that this die cut from Penny Black is purrfect.  Actually the cats are in a horizontal frame which I cut off because I envisioned a nice big moon which wouldn't fit, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I started with a piece of Bristol and positioned a circle where I wanted the moon to be.  I used  blending brushes to apply areas of Bundled Sage, Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint, Antique Linen and Speckled Egg Distress inks.  Next I used a fan brush to flick mostly small drops of water on the panel, let them air dry, and reapplied more ink to soften the effect.  I brushed more Antique Linen around the moon and Shabby Shutters  around the edges of the panel.  Next I brushed Speckled Egg in random spots though the Starry Night stencil from Hero Arts to give some texture and spookiness to the sky.  I removed the circle mask, lightly brushed on Colonial White pigment ink from Close to my Heart and Antique Linen and Old Paper distress inks to give the moon some dimension, and then outlined it with a Stardust Gelly Roll pen.  I stamped a sentiment from Close to My Heart's Purrfect Halloween set, attached the die cut and then attached the completed panel to a Very Vanilla cardbase.

I plan to enter this card in the Two Old Bats Anything Halloween, Simply Create Too All Things Spooky, Scary, Etc, Cut It Up Trick or Treat, and My Time to Craft! Halloween or Fall Colours challenges.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

Kraft and Red Christmas Card

 

The C.R.A.F.T. challenge theme is Christmas Non Traditional Christmas Colors.  The current Color Hues challenge is to use red and kraft which are not traditional Christmas colors, so now that I had my color scheme it was time to get creating!  I started with a piece of kraft cardstock cut the tree using the Penny Black Christmas Elegance die which cuts openings in the paper so that the design is created by the negative space.  Next I heat embossed a sentiment from Close to My Heart's Holiday wishes set and a star from Stampin' Up's Star of Light set using Ranger's Princess Gold powder.  I pressed the edges of the panel perpendicularly into Versamark ink and then into Red Tinsel embossing powder from Range and heat embossed them for a sparkly, fine, red edge.  I backed the tree with white glitter paper and then stacked the panel on three red panels of the same size before attaching it to a slightly larger piece of kraft paper as a mat.  This provided dimension and interest because if you look at the card from an angle you see the red stacked red paper.  I finished the card by embellishing the tree with red and white glitter paper circles cut using a 1/8 inch hole punch. 

This reminds me of a vintage 1960's white artificial tree which back then were often decorated with round ornaments of one color.  I also plan to enter this in the Divas That Cut Paper October Anything Goes challenge.  Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

The Season to Sparkle

 

The sketch below from Freshly Made Sketches was the perfect one on which to test drive my new Penny Black die, Christmas Elegance.  It which cuts openings in the paper, so the design is formed by negative space.

I planned to use the technique I used on this card where you put wadded up plastic wrap on thickly applied watercolor, press it down and let it dry for a while.  I must not have applied enough watercolor because it did not end up with the cool texture I was looking for, so I went on to plan B.  I used the Crafters Workshop Lush Petals stencil with Rustic Wilderness and Pine Needles Distress Oxide Inks to put a pattern on the top half of the page, turned the stencil around, and repeated the process on the bottom half , so the petals would fan out towards both ends.  I repeated the process using ColorBox Gold Metallic ink after moving the stencil a little up and over to get a shadow effect.  I then masked off the ends that would show and applied some more Pine Needles in the middle and rubbed the excess gold ink off in spots so the color would show better through the tree openings cut into heavy white cardstock.  I gold embossed a sentiment from an old Close to My Heart set, Holiday Wishes.  I then pressed the edges of the inked, die cut, and sentiment pieces perpendicularly into a Versamark pad and then into gold embossing powder and melted it to gild all the edges.  I attached everything to a white card base and popped up the sentiment with foam tape.  I finished it off with bitty sparkles that  I had colored with an alcohol marker.

Here is the inside:

The sentiment is part of the same stamp set and the stars part of Stampin' Up's Star of Light set.  The gold embossing does not show up well in the photo.  I also plan on entering this card in a brand new challenge, the Peace on Earth Christmas Challenge.  It is an anything Christmas goes challenge with a mood board for inspiration if you would like some. 

This is an unusual card for me becuase I don't often used traditional Christmas colors.  Thank you for stopping by, Until next time, Hansi

A Cat Themed Anniversary Card

 

The festivity being celebrated at Festive Friday is National Cat Day which is confusing to Luna and Calli because, as any cat will tell you, EVERY day is National Cat Day, International Cat Day, AND World Cat Day.

To enter the challenge you do not have to make a card featuring a cat.  You just have to select three items from the inspiration list below:

I used a cat (two actually), heart, and love sentiment to make an anniversary card for my husband or, as Luna and Calli like to call him, Soft Touch.

I started by taping a piece of 4.25 x 5.50 inch watercolor paper to my glass mat to keep it from curling, taped a deckled edge rectangle stencil from A Colorful Life Designs over it, and placed a circle mask cut from Gina K Design Masking Magic where I wanted the moon to be.  I used blending brushes to apply various shades of pink, blue, and violet Distress inks, spattered it with water using a fan brush, and once dry, re-applied the inks lightly and not necessarily in the same places to tone down the splatters and allow layers of colors to show through.  Without using a block, I inked a small acrylic text stamp with Basic Gray ink from Stampin' Up, stamped some of the ink off onto scratch paper, and stamped different parts of it along the left side and in the lower right corner.  I used the flower bouquet stamp from Stampin' Up's Very Vintage set to stamp the flowers around the cats and the Grass and Borders stamp from Nellie's Choice to stamp along the bottom.  The thickness of the stencil kept the "meadow" from reaching the edges, so I used a small brush to apply some ink along those edges.  I also brushed a bit of Hero Arts' Unicorn pigment ink outward around the moon.  Now it was finally time to remove the stencil and mask.  I used a small brush to apply Colonial White pigment ink from Close to My Heart and Silver pigment ink from ColorBox to the moon to give it some texture and dimension.  I also outlined the moon with a Gelly Roll Stardust pen.  

With inking done it was time for die cutting.  I used Penny Black's Kitty Love die to cut the cats from black and silver foil cardstock.  This gave me a silver heart to use where the cats' tails meet and silver cats for my stash to use on another project.  The sentiment was cut from silver foil using a die from Gina K Design and embellished with clear bitty sparkles.  I attached the panel to a card base made from Stampin' Up Purple Posy cardstock.  Here is the inside:

The sentiment from Close to My Heart's The Happy Couple set is embossed in silver.  The cats were cut using a die from Impression Obsession.  

I am also entering this card in the Happy Little Stampers' October Anything Goes With Dies challenge and the Critter Crazies' Anything Goes With a Critter challenge.  Luna and Calli are not sure how they feel about being referred to as "critters" but, as well brought up Southern Ladycats, are too polite to say anything.  Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi 

Scrap Happy Snowflakes

 

I made this card for the ABC Christmas Challenge, V is for Vocabulary, Christmas 24 Challenge, Simply Snowflakes, and the Stinkin' Inkers Challenge, Scrap Happy, using one of the scraps that were left after making this card and others like it.  Please excuse the photo quality as it was taken with my phone under a strong overhead light.  It does, however, show the metallic shine that is not as obvious in the photos of the card taken in my usual set up with a bounce flash.  I used the other two scraps to make cards which I am not entering.   You can see them at the end of this post.

To make the backgrounds that I cut the ornaments from I put drops of Hero Arts Glimmer Metallic Inks on my craft sheet, misted them with water and smooshed them onto watercolor paper.  To get a second card from each scrap I placed a Hero Arts Snowflake Edge Fancy Die at a diagonal across a 4 x 5 inch piece of white cardstock, taped it in place, made my die cut sandwich with the edge of the top cutting plate so that the plate only covered the part of the paper I wanted cut and then ran it though the machine.  You can see this partial die cut technique in action in this Jennifer McGuire video.  Because the watercolor paper is so thick, if I backed the snowflakes with a scrap, you would see a ridge in the white cardstock, so I cut a 4 x 5.25 piece of printer paper to use as a backing, attached a 2.25 x 4 inch piece cut from scrap at the top edge to back the snowflakes and a 3 x 4 inch piece of watercolor paper below it to create a level surface and then put the white cardstock with the snowflake edge on top.

I used the die from the Hero Arts Stamp and Cut set  to cut the word Peace twice from white cardstock and once from Galvanized Metal cardstock from Stampin' Up and then stacked them.  I also cut a 1/8 inch strip and glued it along the bottom of the snow flakes.  I embossed a sentiment from the set in silver and underlined it with a very narrow strip cut from the scrap.  Lastly, I attached the panel to a white card base and embellished the center of each snowflake with a bitty sparkle.

Here are the other two cards which I am not entering.

And then I found the remaining scraps from the ornament cards which I need to use.  Plus, there are some small pieces leftover from the scraps above.  To be continued...

Thank You for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

A Pink Christmas Card

The first Jingle Belles challenge in October is always to create a pink Christmas card for breast cancer awareness.  The Belles, Stephanie and Lauren, each donate $2.00 for each entry to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  Although I am not a fan of all the October pink packaging that is essentially a marketing tool to sell more product, I can get behind this because the only entity that will profit financially from this challenge is the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  Also in honor of breast cancer awareness the Dragonfly Dreams challenge theme for October is In the Pink and the Cut It Up theme is pink.  I have quite a few friends and family members, including my mother, who are survivors thanks to early detection, so please make sure to do your monthly breast exams, and if you are of that age, go in annually for your mammogram or as I like to call it, The Big Squeeze.  In all seriousness, modern technology has made the process less uncomfortable than it was when I first started getting them, and a few minutes of discomfort is worth it if it saves your life.   The American Cancer Society has information about risk factors and lifestyle measures you can take to reduce reduce the odds of getting breast cancer.   Now enough of the preaching, let's get on to the card.

I started with this Freshly Made Sketch:

I used a layering die set from Birch Press Design, Frosty Flake, to cut one A and  two C layers from white cardstock and a B layer from pink foil from Stampin' Up's Love You Always  paper pack.   I used washi tape from a tube I bought at Michael's years ago to make the stripes, folding the ends under the panel, and filled the spaces in between with thin stripes of the pink foil.  I glued a bit of the washi tape behind some of the openings in the snowflake to tie it in to the stripes.  Knowing  that the snowflake would overlap the stripes, I filled the openings of the points of the bottom C layer with the negative pieces to keep the stripes from showing though and making it too busy.  The word joy, cut from a Spellbinders die, is in honor of a paper crafting friend who is the home stretch of her battle with breast cancer.  Her motto has been "Find the joy."  I attached the panel to a white card base and embellished the snowflake with a pink sparkle and some clear bitty sparkles.

Thank you for stopping by!  Now please make sure to do what you can to reduce your risk of breast cancer and to detect it early if you do get it.  Until Next time, Hansi

Out of My Comfort Zone for a Spooky Card

 

The theme for the current Paper Players Challenge is Spooky with this mood board for inspiration:

 

Anyone who knows me will know I zeroed in on the cat.  I was also attracted to the greenish sky and the moon.  This was my cue to leave my usually fairly clean, smoothly blended ink with die cuts style and go out of my comfort zone.  I love the look of layers and layers of ink and images but am intimidated by the idea of creating it, so I took a leap of faith!

I started with a piece of Tim Holtz watercolor paper, masked off a circle for the moon with masking paper and positioned a deckled rectangle stencil from A Colorful Life Designs over the smooth side.  I used a blending brush to apply areas of Bundled Sage, Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint, Antique Linen and Speckled Egg Distress inks.  Next I used a fan brush to flick mostly small drops of water on the panel, let them air dry, and reapplied more ink to soften the effect.  Next I brushed Speckled Egg in random spots though the Starry Night stencil from Hero Arts to give some subtle texture.  Then I used a small acrylic script stamp without a block, inked it with Vintage Photo Distress ink, stamped off on scratch paper, and then pressed parts of it randomly along the left side.  I stamped along the bottom with Frayed Burlap and Ground Espresso using a stamp from Stampin' Up's Timeless Textures set.  I removed the circle mask and lightly brushed on Antique Linen and Old Paper to give the moon some texture.  I used too heavy a hand and had to lighten it with a bit of Hero Arts Unicorn White pigment ink.  Now I could finally remove the stencil to admire my handiwork.  For a first attempt I was pretty pleased with it.  I stamped the Tree of Courage from Lavinia Stamps in Ground Espresso Archival ink from Ranger and Mooch the Cat from Lavinia Stamps and a Sentiment from Close to My Heart's Purr-fect Halloween set in Black Archival ink.  By the way, smooth is relative.  I had to stamp Mooch four times and the sentiment three to get a solid impression on the "smooth" side of the paper.  I used dark brown and black Prismacolor pencils to create a shadow under Mooch to ground him and a Gelly Roll #700 pen to outline the moon and add some reflected moonlight to Mooch's head and left side.  I used foam tape to attach the panel to a card base made with Always Artichoke cardstock from Stampin' Up.

Here is the inside using the same materials and techniques featuring Mooch's sister, Mimsey, from Lavinia.

I also plan to enter this in the Stamping Sensations October - Animals, Birds and Bugs, Watercooler Wednesday All About Occasions, and Show Us Your Pussy Cats Furrything Goes/Meowloween challenges.  Was there any question that I would use a cat for the Stamping Sensations challenge?

One thing I have learned about going out of my comfort zone with this is that the key is to apply lots of layers of ink using different methods.  I have a friend who does mixed media and is encouraging me to give it a try.  Hmmm.  Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time,  Hansi 

Freshly Made Sketch's 500th Challenge

 

Freshly Made Sketches is celebrating their 500th sketch!

I started by spraying Dina Wakely glossy acrylic sprays in Turquoise, Ocean, Fuchsia, and Night on 9x12 bristol and, once it was dry, cut out the focal panel.  I am sure y'all will see some of the rest in other cards...  Because the sprays are acrylic, regular dye and pigments inks will not adhere to the surface, so I rubbed some Archival ink in Majestic Violet along the edges of the panel to ground it.  For the backing panel I embossed a piece of Close to My Heart paper (I think it was Pansy) using the 3D Subtle embossing folder from Stampin' Up and sponged on a little Milled Lavender Distress Ink to make the texture a little less, well, subtle.  The snowflakes were cut with the Snowflake Edger die from Gina K Designs.  I cut the sentiment twice from white and once from Silver Foil cardstocks using a die from Spellbinders and stacked them.  I attached a thin piece of the Silver foil on the snowflake border to tie it in.  Lastly I finished it off with some sparkles.

I am also entering this card in the Christmas Craft Creations Challenge to use non-traditional colors and the Holly and Ivy anything Christmas goes challenge.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi