I really liked a Christmas card that my sister and I made at the fall crop last November. I decided to take the same layout and change things up a bit to create today’s card. It’s a simple card, but effective.
After using the embossing buddy (which I need to brush off the card before photographing it!) I stamped the upper sentiment in versamark on real red and sprinkled on the white embossing powder. It’s from the Yippee Skippee set. After heat embossing this, I stamped the sentiment from Good Greetings, also in versamark with white embossing powder. This top layer was a 4.75″ by 3.5″ piece of real red. The next layer is a piece of whisper white a quarter inch larger in both dimensions. This is all glued onto a base of real red in the usual half size of card stock which is a half inch bigger than the white and thus gives more interesting layers.
I haven’t done any challenges in a few weeks since I was in Spain without my carding supplies. So today I’ve created a card for this week’s Pals Paper Arts challenge and their colour inspiration.
It’s screaming for a Valentine’s card and for once, instead of being a rebel, I went for it. I’d been wanting to use my Stampin’ Up! Hearts border punch and this seemed the ideal time.
The pink pirouette is about 2 inches deep and I used the border punch for the top edge. I’d been expecting that it would punch the bottom edge and had a couple of cards designed with it but it looks as if I’ll have to redesign them! The sentiment is from the newly retired Good Greetings (hopefully most people snapped it up before its retirement, it’s a very useful set) and is stamped in rose red. I cut a 1/4 inch wide strip of basic grey and adhered that below the pink pirouette. I initially intended on adding another strip at the top, but it was too much. The base is rose red. Due to my dislike of grey, I would never have selected these colours but I actually like the grey with the rose red. That isn’t to say that there will be lots of grey and pink cards in the near future, but there may be one. Or two!
I decided to indulge my love of order and symmetry (somewhat) with today’s card. I have to fight myself quite a lot to stop myself making everything centred and symmetrical since I know it just doesn’t look as good. But it’s hard!
So this is a 4 inch square of whisper white paper with a 4.25″ square black mat and a 4.5″ square (well 4.5 by 9 to be technical) card base of real red. I had sort of planned this in my mind and then found that I don’t actually have any single heart stamps. Oops. But I do have the sweetheart punch so I punched out a number from a sheet of Back to Black DSP and one from real red card. I was originally going to have five hearts but it was too much and cut it back to three. Although my sense of order wanted the red heart in the middle, it was too predictable. I used my beloved metal rulers to get the heart bang in the centre of the card (one of those times when it’s really handy to have multiples) and then it was much easier to get the other two in the right places.
The change in direction on this card means that I have more hearts punched out and also a nice strip of DSP which might work for a negative heart kind of card. I seem to acquire oddments that “could” work on another card faster than I produce single cards! I assume (or rather hope) that I’m not alone in this!
I’m late posting again – I’d blame the jetlag but it’s been five days since I returned from Barcelona although it seems like months ago. Perhaps it’s the cold that I picked up on the plane that is slowing me down. Or having to actually make my own coffee and food again! I got very used to walking into the Bodegueta Provenca on the way to school and having a coffee put in front of me – if Jose was in the middle of a conversation with someone, it would happen without a word being exchanged. And in the afternoons I didn’t need to practice my Spanish for “a bottle of water and a glass of wine” much either. But the staff there took the time to let me slowly stumble through spanish sentences for which I’m very grateful and it made a huge difference to my understanding. I just wish I’d taken a photo of their famous smashed eggs so that I have a better chance getting somewhere close.
But to get back to carding, I’m going to another weekend crop in a couple of days and I signed up for two swaps. One is my favourite things and can be a drink, snack, tool or embellishment that you can’t craft without. That’s a pretty open category. I tried to come up with a tool that I can’t craft without and there are many. For most of them you only need one, however I have three 6 inch metal rulers and I use them all the time. They help me line up sentiments and ensure that when I’m adhering card, it’s centred.
For packaging, I pulled out the Pillow Box punch board from We R Memory Keepers. You need to add 2 inches to the length of the box to allow for the end. I used some Maritime DSP.
It became obvious fairly early on that I was going to need a method for storing and organizing my card stock. Having it piled up on my kitchen table wasn’t working too well! I’ve seen pictures of people’s craft rooms with wall mounted racks with a slot for each colour but I don’t have a dedicated craft room. Yet! And I’m not sure how such a system works for scraps. I want to have the scraps in the same place as the uncut card stock so that I don’t have to remember to first check the special scraps place. I took a trip to Staples and found two plastic crates which hold letter sized hanging folders, which of course Staples also sells. The crates have lids and they stack which is handy for when going to a carding weekend (as I’m doing this weekend). I’ve found that by moving some of the folders from one crate to the other it leaves sufficient room for my color caddy. It’s a very secure way of transporting it.
I decided to organize my card stock by family: regals, subtles, brights, neutrals and two in colors. Being a mathematician (or that’s what I’m blaming for it) they are ordered alphabetically within each family. I realise that might be overkill for most people! Here’s one of my two crates; I have one blue and one see through. This way, I know without thinking which crate has what I need. This is my subtles, regals and 2014-2016 in colours crate. I cut a scrap into 2 inches by 7/8″ for the tab label on each colour (I haven’t finished that yet as you can see). I might actually write the names of the colours on the labels one of these days, but I quite like how it looks with just the colour. Maybe I’ll write the colour name on the folder itself. Within each folder I have the uncut cardstock at the back with scraps at the front so it’s extremely simple to see if I have a scrap that will work for whatever I’m planning. I recently bought a carl paper trimmer which will cut multiple sheets at a time (and saves the blade on my stampin’ trimmer) so I’ve also got a stash in each folder of half sheets of each cardstock for my usual sized cards.
I’m really happy with my storage solution. It’s easy to move out of the way if we want to use the kitchen table, it gives me back quite a bit of real estate on the table itself, it’s easier to find the colour that I’m looking for than searching through piles and it also gives me a quick view into which colours are running a bit low.
