Monthly Archives: November 2014

Hero Arts tree

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This is an unusual post for me – it’s using some non-Stampin’ Up! supplies. I am very impressed with the quality of the Stampin’ Up! supplies and also surprised, where they are available, that the prices are in line with or better than other vendors. Take, for example, the versamark ink pad. I happened to be in Michaels yesterday and noticed that they sell it for $9 something. Stampin’ Up! sells it for $7.50. Whilst I was in Michaels, I just had to look at the crafting goodies (being a left hander, I needed scissors since only the paper snips are for either hand) and I saw this stamp, made by Hero Arts and fell for it.

Hero Arts Tree stamp on garden green

I’ve stamped it on garden green card stock in versamark and then used the Stampin’ Up! gold embossing powder. I really like the total simplicity of this card. The envelope is lined using the backgrounds DSP in garden green.

Michaels also had the envelope punch board and the gift box board, both of which Stampin’ Up! offers, but they also had a gift bag punch board. I couldn’t resist. I expect that tomorrow’s post will feature the gift bags!

Fabulous Four Flower Patch

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As I’ve already mentioned, I’m attending a crop weekend soon. In fact it’s this coming weekend and my sister has flown over from the UK in order to attend. We’re working on our gifts for the secret pal swap including trying to figure out packaging – I’m getting quite fond of making little boxes. One of the suggestions regarding the secret pal is to send a card beforehand. I know that my recipient likes bright colours and green. So here’s what I came up with:

celebrate pear pizzazz, rich razzle, tempting turq

I figured that a weekend set aside for crafting really needs celebrating! My base is pear pizzazz with very vanilla on top. When I got my Fabulous Four set, I first stamped it with just the word “celebrate” and I was having to mask off the rest of the sentiment. It occurred to me that I’m likely to want just the “celebrate” more than with the rest of the words and decided to cut off the rest of it. The upside is that the two pieces fit perfectly together so that I can put them on a clear block any time I want the complete sentiment as Stampin’ Up! originally intended. The sentiment was also stamped in pear pizzazz.

I used one of the small flower innards from Flower Patch to decorate the rest of the card in pear pizzazz, tempting turquoise and rich razzleberry. The colour coach suggested this combination and I like how the colours work together. I added a rhinestone to the centre of each rich razzleberry stamp – for some reason two of them don’t look perfectly sparkly in the photo, but I can assure you that they are!

I used the backgrounds DSP in pear pizzazz to line my envelope.

 

Seasonally Scattered Thanks

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Stampin’ Up! have a set called Seasonally Scattered and it consists of three stamps where the words are defined by negative space – Love, Merry and Thanks. This one seems appropriate today because this weekend my friend Jen came to visit. That may not seem like such an extraordinary thing except that we’d never previously met! We’ve been working closely together for the past two years over email and instant messenger and through countless meetings but never actually in person. So she courageously came down this weekend and met not just me, but also my brother whom she’d also worked with and my sister who is visiting me. I guess she figured that she might as well get the whole trio in one go!  We had a great weekend – and my abs are in much better shape after all the laughter. So, thanks Jen.

thanks with sponges - pear pizzazz

This is a fairly simple card and is easy to mass produce as long as you’re careful about cross contamination of the colours. Taking a piece of very vanilla, I inked up the stamp in pear pizzazz and then, using a sponger, dabbed some island indigo on some of the stamp. I breathed heavily on the stamp and then stamped it onto the card stock. It’s matted in pear pizzazz on a very vanilla base. I finished the envelope using the largest envelope liner framelit and a piece of 6″ by 3″ background DSP in pear pizzazz. The background DSP packs seem pricey at $21.95 but since you can line 8 envelopes with a sheet and you get 40 sheets, it costs less than 7 cents per envelope.

Since it’s only 7.5 weeks to Christmas, I think I might get the Merry stamp out and play with that again…

 

Northern Flurry for Merry Monday

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I’ve been thinking about the Merry Monday challenge for a few days and after discussion with Jen, finally managed to figure it out. The challenge is snowflakes, dry embossing and neutral colours.

I was happy to use my Northern Flurry TIEF for double duty on the challenge requirements – that’s the dry embossing and the snowflakes checked off. I like to do clean and simple cards so often it’s quite tough to meet a challenge requirements as well as keeping the card as I like it. Here’s the end result:

northern flurry crumb cake coloured

I knew that using the dry embossing folder was a predictable route so tried to only emboss some of the snowflakes but that just wasn’t working out too well. So the next approach was to accent some of the embossing – I like how the Stampin’ Write marker in soft suede looks on the crumb cake card stock. The plan was to use gold as well but it just seemed to disappear into the crumb cake so a metallic bronze sharpie was used instead.

I used the sentiment from the Stampin’ Up! Wondrous Wreath set and heat embossed it in early espresso. I also lined the crumb cake envelope with the backgrounds DSP in early espresso. I would not think to use brown on Christmas cards (although my sister is currently creating some great ones in brown) so I’m glad that this challenge pushed me in this direction.

A traditional Happy Hanukkah

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I really loved the look of the menorah embossed in metallics that I did earlier in the week and decided to make another so that Dawn has a choice. Rather than doing my usual mat at 1/4 inch smaller than the card base,  I took a piece of night of navy 3.75″ by 3″ and embossed the image in silver. I then matted it on a piece of brushed silver card stock just 1/4 inch larger which left a much larger expanse of night of navy to frame it. I like the rather formal effect that this gives.

happy hanukkah night of navy

Apologies for the rather washed out photograph – it looks much better in person. I can see that I need to spend some time with the camera’s manual! Although it doesn’t look like it, the envelope liner really is Stampin’ Up!’s matching night of navy background DSP. I love that they do these in all colours so that I can be sure to find something the right colour.