Monthly Archives: December 2014

More mini butterfly cards, minus the rainbow

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I hope that you thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s celebrations and that the enjoyment is still continuing. I’ve spent the morning clearing up my rather messy stamping area (I was making a lot of tags for people to add to presents on Wednesday), cooking eggs benedict for brunch and browsing through a new cookery book.

Last week I showed some cards that I made for my mother, little 3 by 3 inch squares with butterflies and rainbows. I also made her a set with a gold embossed butterfly inspired by the fact that she loved my Christmas card of a gold embossed tree on white. See it here. So there are no rainbows on this one, but she was really happy with the design.

Stampin' Up! Papillon Potpourri

I again scored around the four sides of the card 1/4 inch from the edge; I did it on the inside so that the scoring would stand proud from the card. Then after a swipe with the embossing buddy, I stamped the large butterfly from the Stampin’ Up! Papillon Potpourri set in versamark and sprinkled on the gold embossing powder. I was making a dozen and this design really worked well for mass production because it’s good to start doing your embossing with a heat tool that has had a chance to heat up. And after the first one, it was definitely heated! I stamped the smaller version of this butterfly in soft sky on the back of the envelope – Mum has decided that it’s her signature!

Merry Christmas from My Elegant Cards

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Merry Christmas – I hope that you are all having a wonderfully happy and peace filled joyous day.

A number of my friends follow my blog (thank you) and I wanted to send them a card that they wouldn’t have already seen here. By now, they should all have received their cards so I can share it.

Stampin' Up! Festival of Trees

I struggled in the beginning with the Stampin’ Up! Festival of Trees set – I tried to put too many trees on a card I think. I am really pleased with how this card is simple but supremely elegant. I think it’s one of my best CAS (clean and simple) cards actually. Let me know if you agree!

To reproduce it, it’s simple. But here are the details. Stamp the tree in versamark on whisper white (don’t forget the embossing buddy) and sprinkle on the gold embossing powder and heat. Then using the Stampin’ Up! Endless Wishes set position the two lines of text on a clear block and check that they are lined up with each other. I find the grid paper invaluable for this. I stamped the sentiment in cherry cobbler. The whisper white was then mounted on a base of cherry cobbler.

I tried to do this card in island indigo because Jen loves teal but it wasn’t as effective. Garden green was fairly good as was perfect plum but the cherry cobbler really sang. I think I should try it with a silver tree and night of navy. Anyway, this was one of the designs of which I personally sent quite a lot.

Stampin' Up! Festival of Trees envelope embossed with lucky stars

The envelope was fairly simple – I used the Lucky Stars embossing folder on the envelope flap. It really is effective in my opinion.

A card from my surrogate mother

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As you probably know, when you sign up with Stampin’ Up! you sign up under someone. Sometimes you are told about Stampin’ Up! by someone and you sign up under them and sometimes you go looking for someone to sign under. These relationships are officially upline and downline but are often referred to in my familial ways. My sister told me all about Stampin’ Up! earlier this year after she’d signed up and was having so much fun with it that I decided to sign up too. Since we’re in different countries, I couldn’t sign up under Caro and I had to look for a US based demo – and I’ve been having a lot of fun going to Jen’s classes and so on. But my sister and her upline, Eimear, regard me as part of their family which is really nice. I’ve even been to a team meeting in the UK where I had a rattling good time. So here’s the card that I got from Eimear:

Stampin' Up! holiday home Eimear

I did laugh out loud at the cherry cobbler blendability coloured rhinestone on Rudolph’s nose – I think it is an awesome touch. The card is a standard sized UK card (the paper there is slightly different to in the US) in lost lagoon with some great sponging around the moon. The sleigh and reindeer are from the Stampin’ Up! Holiday Home set and are stamped in lost lagoon. The sentiment comes from the Good Greeting set which, as I mentioned the other day, is on the clearance rack and a definite must have in my opinion.

I really like this card and so wanted to share it – with Eimear’s permission of course. Eimear has her own blog so do stop over and check out her work.

Christmas cards from my sister

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My sister is doing Christmas with the “other side” of her family this year as well as attending her husband’s brother’s wedding yesterday. This means that she’s staying in the UK whilst the rest of the family is in the US so she sent us Christmas cards. I had had a preview of them, or similar ones, on skype but it’s not the same as seeing the cards in person. She was happy for me to share her cards on my blog – she has a blog too (although life has been getting in the way a bit lately including making 90 or so Christmas cards!) so do stop over and check out her work.

Stampin' Up! ornament punch

The card is 8.5″ by 3″ which makes me realise that almost every card I make is the same size. I’ll have to take a tip from my sister and try some other sizes. The base is real red with a matting of garden green. She used the wreath hanger from Wondrous Wreath with gold encore ink to create the hangers for the ornaments. Then she used the (sadly retired) ornament punch to cut out a variety of festive papers. These are all retired ones too – when we were at the weekend crop last month there were little packets of a few sheets of DSP and we both couldn’t resist. I think this is a great use of the papers. The sentiment is from the Good Greetings set which was added to the clearance rack today. I’m sad that it’s being discontinued because it’s an incredibly useful set and probably worth snapping up if you don’t already have it.

Caro also sent a card here for our parents and I’m impressed to see that she’s managed to create a card with – as well as part with – the snowflake ornaments (also now on the clearance rack). Mine get taken out of the container, looked at and put back!

Stampin' Up! All is Calm card with snowflake ornament

I would never think to use early espresso as a base for a Christmas card but I think it works beautifully. Yet another tip to take from Caro. 🙂 This is another “odd” sized card; it’s a 4 inch square. The background is the All is Calm DSP which is a fabulous collection of papers. She’s threaded the All is Calm snowflake embellishment onto the lost lagoon silky taffeta ribbon – apparently this was quite a feat, cutting the ribbon on an angle helps, but it’s not a quick thing to do.

 

More goodies from the upcoming catalogue

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I was working on a challenge card for the nacho average challenge blog but the link was closing today and I’d have needed to publish this post around midnight and then link it up. Instead of writing the post, I watched My Fellow Americans with my father and some chardonnay for me and brandy for him. I love that movie and have seen it many many times and it is still incredibly funny. Jack Lemmon and James Garner are wonderful. So here’s my card for the pear pizzazz, lost lagoon and silver challenge even though it isn’t being entered.

Stampin' Up! Crazy about You

The flower is from an upcoming set, the Stampin’ Up! Crazy about You set. It’s 30 stamps of words and three images. There is a coordinating new punch for this flower – the Flower Medallion but I don’t have it. Yet. So I snipped the flower out after stamping it in lost lagoon. Then I decided to stamp it again in pear pizzazz and snip out the centre of the flower. My mother watched in horror as I snipped away, declaring that it would drive her crazy to do that kind of thing (even though she does dress making as a hobby) but it’s strangely relaxing. I glued the flower together with the tombow glue.

The strip of DSP is from the All is Calm DSP and it’s the first time that I’ve used it. I love this pattern and have never wanted to cut into it previously. But I have to do something with my growing mountain of DSP other than just look at it from time to time! I used stampin’ dimensionals to pop the flower up.

After this I used the silver glimmer paper and the new Hello You thinlits dies to cut out the thanks. The set also has “hello”, “you” and “happy”. The instructions suggest that by running it through the big shot 3 times, you’ll get a cleaner cut. That definitely helped – especially as my waxed paper had migrated down to the workshop in the basement. Next time I will be interested to see how it works with wax paper and the three times through the big shot – I’ve “liberated” a roll of wax paper from the basement.