Monthly Archives: December 2014

Carding 101

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I couldn’t resist the title and a personal challenge to make a very simple card for my 101st post! I initially intended to design a card that I wouldn’t share until very close to Christmas so that it could be a surprise to those of my friends who read my blog. But, as we once saw on a notice in a hotel (and still laugh about) “sometimes things don’t always go as planned”. I ended up with 2 cards – one that seemed perfect for carding 101 and the other will be shown close to Christmas after I mail them out!

I decided on a winter night look using the Stampin’ Up! White Christmas set and of course started by embossing. Maybe that should be my next challenge, a Christmas card without embossing! I embossed the trees in white on night of navy and then added the snowman and put the star in his line of sight. At this point the card looked okay but not great so I put it to one side and started on another idea. Coming back later on, I played around with the idea of cutting the card down and matting it once or twice but that wouldn’t be my nice one layer card at which I was aiming. Both my mother and brother suggested doing something to the star to make it pop and that was key. I tested colouring in a star in gold and silver but it was a large rhinestone which added the wow factor and made the card work.

Stampin' Up! White Christmas

I think it’s proof that you don’t need to add layers or lots of colours to have an effective card. Although I have grown to love both layers and colours. I’m currently working on a challenge at FabFriday to produce a card with five which is a nice stretch.

My 100th post for another challenge

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Today marks my one hundredth post which I find to be quite amazing. I little thought that I’d ever write a blog, let alone post daily! Today’s card is for the Hand Stamped Sentiments challenge which is my favourite sort – a colour challenge. They are my favourite because I find the sketch ones to be very difficult, however looking at this colour combination, it’s not easy at all! Definitely a good challenge and a colour combination that I would never ever have tried.

I wasn’t thrilled with the colours together and when I started playing with whisper white and very vanilla, I saw why. The tempting turquoise and smoky slate looked best with white and the pool party with vanilla. So what do I do with 2 cool colours and one warm? I got out my embossing powders, happy to see that I had the powders for all three colours. I haven’t played much with the Stampin’ Up! Flower Patch set and decided to try to incorporate it. I had tried stamping the pool party over the smoky slate and it disappeared, but I thought that the embossing powders would work. And they did, rather well, I felt.

I stamped the sentiment first in tempting turquoise on whisper white and then started filling in the space (but not too much of it) with the grey flowers. Then, after using the embossing buddy, I stamped the centre of two of the flowers in versamark and embossed them in pool party. I was happy with this so I continued and embossed the other three centres in tempting turquoise. I tried the whisper white piece on all three base colours and tempting turquoise won.

Stampin' Up! Flower Patch

As I said earlier, I really wasn’t thrilled with this colour combination at first, but I am thrilled with this card. I’m very grateful to the challenge for pushing me to make this.

Get Your Santa On for the Pals’ challenge

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This week’s Pal’s Paper Arts challenge has a gorgeous combination of colours although I don’t think that I’d have put them together. I am very glad that the pals did though – the three warm colours are wonderful together.

http://stampinpretty.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54f95df92883401b7c7167251970b-pi

I decided to use some of the Stampin’ Up! Get Your Santa On set that has so far been unused – it’s too easy to keep using the same stamps. In fact, I overachieved and used two of them!

Stampin' Up! Get your santa on

I started by stamping the joy in cherry cobbler on a scrap of very vanilla and then started stamping the presents being careful not to do alternating colours since that is a little too predictable. Even though I’m a mathematician and I adore symmetry, it would appear that the eye isn’t so thrilled with it on cards – I have to fight myself on that sometimes! I cropped the top of the scrap so that the JOY garland appears to be fixed to the top of it and then cut out a piece of baked brown sugar 1/4″ bigger in both dimensions. The photograph gives the impression that the baked brown sugar piece is just slightly above middle, but it’s actually quite a lot above that (the photo shows the back of the card a little giving that impression I think). I liked the little presents so much that I repeated them inside the card too. The envelope was finished off by lining with the framelit envelope liners and using the backgrounds DSP in cherry cobbler.

Blue Christmas challenge

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Sorry to be so late with today’s post – I’ve been getting ready for my parents’ visit which should start in about an hour or so! A little more frantic tidying (of my carding supplies so that the kitchen table can be used) and I’ll be good. Once I write my post, that is. 🙂 The aaacards’ challenge this week is a blue Christmas card but also a CAS one. I decided to really enjoy the CAS part of this challenge and to leave a lot of white space. I decided to use the Stampin’ Up Merry Minis punch pack since it has a small ornament in order to keep the space that I wanted.

Stampin' Up! Merry Minis punch pack

Apologies for the photograph, I decided to move my camera set up from the dining table ready for the guests and I need to tweak it a bit more!

I took a piece of whisper white 5″ by 3.75″ and marked the centre. I then punched out an ornament right on the centre line. Then I moved the punch so that the left edge of the punch was at the right hand edge of the already punched ornament and punched again. I continued in this way until I’d punched five out. I put a strip of night of navy behind this piece of card. I debated about using dimensionals but decided that I wanted to pop the whole piece of whisper white from the base but not see any of the night of navy card in a side view. Next was the sentiment – I used Endless wishes and more night of navy. After stamping the sentiment I used the leftover edge pieces of the stampin’ dimensionals to pop up the piece of whisper white from the base card.

I had originally planned to have a mat of night of navy between the two whisper whites but this look seemed more CAS.

Merry Monday White Christmas challenge

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I returned home from vacation on Barcelona yesterday and went looking for a new challenge to do. I found the following at the Merry Monday challenge site:

I wasn’t sure that I could do this one due to not having any birds until I recalled that there are a couple in the Stampin’ Up! White Christmas set. The last time that I used the trees in this set, I used some pale blue to make the sky a bit less stark, although still looking rather chilly. This time I decided to use soft sky and pink pirouette to give the effect of a rather cool sunset. After sponging these colours onto the upper background, I stamped my trees in memento black. I was intending to add a snowman – although for a moment, the jetlag encouraged me to add just the christmas tree on the ground as if it had fallen off the car – but then pulled out my unused polar bear. I can hear the sighs of relief! I decided to perch one of the birds on the polar bear’s nose, as if he’s showing off for his mate. I coloured him using the medium cherry cobbler blendability and his mate in soft suede.

Stampin' Up! White Christmas

I matted the piece of whisper white with cherry cobbler before adhering it to the whisper white card base. I used the new (to me) vine street TIEF which I found on the clearance rack to decorate the envelope.

Stampin' Up! Vine Street TIEF