Monthly Archives: July 2016

Seaside Shore Shaker Card

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I was inspired to make a shaker card – my first outside of a class I think – by the sketch at this week’s Freshly Made Sketches.

Stampin' Up! Seaside Shore - By the Shore DSP - Hello You Thinlits dies

Here’s the banner which inspired my card

I decided to change the orientation of the card because I wanted a die cut word for my sentiment since it would be going over the window sheet circle. The whole window sheet made me think of a fish bowl which is where the fish from Seaside Shore became a part of the card! I love the By The Shore DSP and this one looks so much like water, getting darker as you get further from the surface. So with all the decisions made, it was all about construction.

I used my circles dies to cut the aperture and then a larger one to cut a circle of the window sheet. This I glued to the back of my piece of very vanilla using fast fuse. Next I stamped the fish from Seaside Shore in archival basic black, coloured their stripes with a daffodil delight marker and then cut out them out. About this time, my friend Bilma stopped by and I learned that someone that I worked with about 15 years ago is about to retire. So this card was perfect and will go to Joe on his retirement.

I cut a piece of the By The Shore DSP that would fit under the top very vanilla layer, ensuring that it was big enough so that you don’t see any of the base of the card at the edges. I glued on the daffodil delight die cut congrats before positioning the fish since I didn’t want them under the word. Next I glued on the fish. After using the foam adhesive strips, I’m a firm believer in shaker cards. Previously it was hard to build the wall to keep the sequins in, but now with the bendable foam adhesive strips, it’s easy. I easily made a circular wall, used the embossing buddy to ensure the edges weren’t sticky (looks like I needed to do more of that) and then picked out the small sequins from a tin of two sizes and snowflakes from the holiday catalogue back in 2014. All that was left was to take the backing off the foam strips and fix the top layer to the rest of the card. In the event, I actually used dimensionals for the parts of the card not next to the opening and that was an error since they are about half the height of the foam strips. Next time, I’ll just use more of the strips for the rest of the card.

Here’s another view, with the card carefully propped up to show that there really are a lot of sequins in it!

Stampin' Up! Seaside Shore - By the Shore DSP - Hello You Thinlits dies

I added another fish to the envelope so that it coordinated with the card. I’m definitely going to be making some more shaker cards soon, they are really fun to make and they are fun to look at too.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Bunch of Blossoms for CAS on Sunday

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No, it’s not Sunday, the challenge blog is called CAS on Sunday and the current challenge is a Clean and Simple Thank You.

Stampin' Up! Tuscan Vineyard and Bunch of Blossoms

I recently bought Tuscan Vineyard and have really been enjoying playing with it. It was perfect for this challenge – I stamped the image in memento black ink and used some delightful dijon and an aquapainter to pull some of the black ink and merge with the yellow. I imagine I could’ve used one of the brown inks that we have, but I was having fun with this. I just wanted to add a touch of colour to the image and leave the rest as it was stamped. I then added the sentiment from Bunch of Blossoms in delightful dijon – what a great typeface, I can see that I’m going to use the sentiments from this set a lot. I think this was the first inking of the set and I’m surprised I waited this long. Oh yes, it was a large order, can’t use everything at once, right?

Since the basket-covered bottle looks quite brown, I used a mat of early espresso before mounting that onto my delightful dijon card base. It’s taken me a while to warm up to delightful dijon, but it really is a great colour.

Now I just have to decide whether to spend the afternoon crafting or trying to make my first video. I’ll finish my coffee first and then decide.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Moroccan DSP birthday

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Today I’m sharing a third card made with the Moroccan DSP to put in my matching box which I’ve yet to show you. The box holds up to eight cards and because I’ve decorated it with the Moroccan DSP, I’m making the cards all with paper from this stack.

Stampin' Up! Moroccan DSP and Watercolor Wishes

This is another fairly busy paper which would be overwhelming if it were covering the entire card front – well, it would be to me. So I cut a strip 1.5 inches wide (actually it started wider at 2 1/8 inches but I cut it back as I was designing the card) and decided to pull out the cajun craze from the pattern. The cajun craze strip is 1/8 inch wider than the DSP to get a lovely tiny border. Once you’ve got the liquid tombow glue on the DSP, use your trimmer or your table to ensure that you’ve got the edges perfect. This is why I use the liquid glue, you have a little time to wiggle the paper to make sure that the edges are lined up. I then mounted this on a very vanilla card base.

To continue featuring the cajun craze, I used that ink for the sentiment which is from Watercolor Wishes. I know that you knew that because I use it all the time! But I love the typeface, the sentiment and the way the sentiment is stacked together. It’s just perfect. I cropped it with an oval die and then popped it up on dimensionals.

In case you were wondering why I started with a strip of DSP at 2 1/8 inches, it’s because I’m lazy – actually, let’s call it efficient! It means that there’s less cutting for the envelope flap. Just get a 6 by 2 1/8 inch strip, put some tombow on the flap and add the DSP. Use an edge to ensure that the edge of the envelope and the edge of the DSP match and then trim the excess with your paper snips. Now you have a perfectly coordinating card and envelope.

Stampin' Up! Moroccan DSP and Watercolor Wishes

Yesterday demonstrators were able to see the new Holiday catalogue and we’ll be able to order next Tuesday. It will be generally released on September 1st. I can’t wait to start playing with some of the goodies. If you can’t wait either, just think about signing up as a demonstrator. For $99 with free shipping, you can select $125 worth of product (including from the new Holiday catalog) with no requirement to ever buy more. If you want to stay active and enjoy the 20% discount, you just need to sell/buy $300 per quarter, not including your first quarter. This means that you’d have until the end of September to sell/buy a total of $300 to stay active. And that’s not difficult, believe me! Just click on the tab over on the left for more information and the link that you need to join my team.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Tuscan Vineyard for CAS Colours & Sketches

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Happy Thursday which means that it’s time for a new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches, this time a sketch.

Stampin' Up! Tuscan Vineyard and Watercolor Wishes

Here’s the sketch which inspired my card:

At the weekend I broke out one of my new sets, Tuscan Vineyard and started watercolouring. I really miss the retired mossy meadow, but if it hadn’t have retired, I wouldn’t have pulled out Always Artichoke which worked really well here. Silver linings right? After watercolouring the leaves in always artichoke and adding more colour to the parts of the leaves which were more shaded (the designers of the stamps make life easier for those of us who really weren’t stars in art class!) I pulled out rich razzleberry and did the same to the grapes. I then carefully added the sentiment realising that I should have stamped it before I’d spent the time watercolouring but it was perfect.

I trimmed my watercolour paper to be smaller than the card front at the sides to be true to the sketch. Unusually I made the card with the fold at the top which I feel works well with the side panels.

The photo shows that the card is sitting on something bumpy but not much detail – it’s the new Petal Burst TIEF and I used it to emboss the envelope flap.

I hope that you’ll pop over to the challenge site to see what the rest of the Design Team have created and to have a go at the challenge yourself. You don’t need a blog to enter.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

More Moroccan DSP with Designer Tin of Cards

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Today I’m sharing another of the cards that I made at my weekend away with the Moroccan DSP to fit into a box that I made which I’ll be sharing soon. Did you also love the patterns in the Moroccan DSP but when it actually came to use it, feel that it’s rather busy? Yes, me too. So here’s another example of how to showcase the pattern without feeling overwhelmed.

Stampin' Up! Moroccan DSP and designer tin of cards

I took a strip of the DSP and added it to the left hand side of my very vanilla card base – I love that Stampin’ Up! has a couple of sets of DSP that include very vanilla this year. I decided to play up the emerald envy in the pattern and stamped my sentiment from the Designer Tin of Cards in that colour. I was obviously in need of a getaway since my brain wasn’t completely on top of things – I forgot my black ink, my stampin’ mist, my whole box of dies and a few other things. I was able to borrow a lot of items, but not all of the dies that I have were available. It’s actually a good in that it shows how essential that box of dies is!

So I borrowed the ovals dies and cut out my sentiment, cutting out a second oval in emerald envy and gluing that to my card front. I popped up the sentiment using dimensionals. For the envelope, I cut a strip at 6 inches by 2 1/8 (it reduces snipping), added the multipurpose glue to the flap and then carefully lined up the strip to the edge of the envelope. If you get it right you only have to trim around the curved edges of the flap.

See you tomorrow for another challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches (and therefore just before 8am),

Liz