Monthly Archives: July 2016

Vertical Greetings

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Vertical Greetings is one of my favourites in the new catalog. It’s so neat and tidy, so clean. I guess I’m showing my penchant for Clean and Simple cards again. I started this card by stamping five of the trees in old olive. I actually started at the left and stamped the tree and then used my stamp-a-ma-jig to guide me by putting the edge of the plastic onto the edge of the tree to help with the spacing. I also used a horizontal pencil line to help ensure that my trees were lined up. Note – if you use a pencil line, please ensure that you allow time for the ink to dry before erasing the pencil line. You are bound to smudge something if you don’t allow some drying time.

Stampin' Up! Vertical Greetings

After I’d stamped the trees, I stamped the pots in various colours and fussy cut them out. The ones that survived are in crushed curry and pumpkin pie. The cherry cobbler pot just didn’t make the cut. I glued the pots over the already stamped old olive ones. Next I cut out the sentiment, also from old olive. It’s from a retired set (Greetings thinlits) actually, and I’d forgotten that. It’s a really useful set, so that’s a little sad, however we have many new sets with words to diecut. And I suspect that I overused these so it’s time to move on!

To finish off my Vertical Greetings card, I added some of the new enamel shapes in crushed curry. They look a little like Christmas baubles although I’m trying to pretend that Christmas isn’t looming. At least from a card making perspective. The way I see it, it’s time to start making some Christmas cards or it will be a mad dash come December…

 

By the way, there’s a promotion currently going on that’s quite exciting. For every $50 you spend this month, you get a $5 to spend next month

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and next month is when you can buy the limited edition set, Thoughtful Branches. If you buy the stamp set and the dies, it earns you a coupon.

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See you tomorrow,

Liz

Designer Tin of Cards with Washi

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I mentioned recently that I wanted to use more washi and so this card started with the washi tape. In this case, it was from two suites – I have the floral boutique designer washi tape and the Pop of Pink designer washi tape. And I also wanted to use my Designer Tin of Cards set which so far hadn’t been inked up.

Stampin' Up! Designer Tin of Cards

I read on Pootles’ site recently that on the incentive trip, Pam Morgan demoed the Floral Boutique DSP and suggested treating the navy as a neutral – “navy and white and a pop of bright” and I thought that was an excellent idea. So after I’d put down a piece of the Floral Boutique DWT (Designer Washi Tape), I added a strip of the Pop of Pink DWT. I made both pieces long enough to wrap around the whisper white top layer. Well actually, the first piece wasn’t and I reclaimed that and used it on the envelope. Waste not, want not!

Next I stamped out the beautifully written sentiment from the Designer Tin of Cards set in night of navy on a piece of scrap which I cropped with a circle framelit. I cut another same sized circle from night of navy cardstock so that I could layer them.The night of navy one is glued to the card whereas the whisper white circle is popped up with dimensionals. To continue the pop of pink, I added three enamel shapes in melon mambo to coordinate with the washi tape.

To continue the idea of a pop of bright, I used melon mambo for the sentiment inside the card – this is from one of my favourite sets, Watercolor Wishes.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Designer Tin of Cards

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What’s a Designer Tin of Cards? Well I’m glad that you asked!  It’s a project kit that Stampin’ Up! sells which contains the consumables to create 16 cards and a tin to store them in with organising tabs. But it doesn’t include the stamp set, ink or adhesive. I bought the designer tin of cards and also the stamp set of the same name to complete the set.  But the sentiments are fun and definitely aren’t confined to the 16 cards in the kit. As you can see here:

Stampin' Up! Baby Bear and Designer Tin of Cards

Here’s an image showing the project kit. It’s only $27 and if you gather with your friends or demo, you only need one stamp set.

Designer Tin of Cards Project Kit

The sentiment is actually bigger than just Thanks, but I coloured just the Thanks in with my Stampin’ Write marker in cherry cobbler. For the bear, I used Baby Bear and intended this to be the start of a recent design card at CAS Colours & Sketches. I stamped the first image in soft suede, stamped off twice, then the second image in the same ink, stamped off once. The final image is stamped, would you believe, in elegant eggplant. There was a colour challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches but the cucumber crush just didn’t want to play with this as a starting point. But I didn’t want to waste the bear. I love the elegant eggplant with the soft suede, it works really well. After getting a smear of ink on the card, I decided to rescue my bear and fussy cut him out. After adding the cherry cobbler sentiment, I popped up the bear on dimensionals. Then I noticed a little cherry cobbler dot but I “fixed” that by putting a cherry cobbler enamel shape over it.

This works well because this card is for a 4 year old. One of my friends at work signed up for Paper Pumpkin’s special offer last month and her sons had a lot of fun playing with it. They both made me a card so I wanted to make cards for them too. This one seems perfect. I dry embossed the envelope with Lucky Stars to match the enamel shape.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies Box

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I love the Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies and have already made four cards with them in the short time that I’ve had the dies. Today I decided it was time that I made something three dimensional since it’s been a while and it’s such fun. I get so focused on making cards that I neglect the 3D space, I’ll try to remedy that going forward. So here is a box made with the Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies which I designed before I had any clear idea of what I was going to use it for!

Stampin' Up! Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

The box dimensions are set by the width of the die so it’s quite large. I think that a video might help to demonstrate this – this could well be my first video! But until that happens, here are the written instructions:

You need 4 1/8 inch wide by close to 11 inches. So I cut 1/4 inch off an entire piece of cardstock giving me 8 1/4 by 11 inches. I then cut it into two so that I had 4 1/8 by 11 inches. Next score at 3 3/8 inches and 7 1/2 inches and fold on the score lines.

Then you take one of your strips and use the larger piece of the detailed floral thinlits dies and position it with the straight edge close to one of the score lines and the top of the die towards the edge of the strip. Put it so that the space between the bottom of the die and the score line is about the same as the gaps at the edges – just eyeball it. Add the border piece to the top of the die – don’t be too worried about the positioning because the top of the box isn’t straight. This makes it so much easier! Cut out your die and remove all the little pieces. All you have to do is repeat this three more times at each end of both of the strips. Then use either fast fuse or tear & tape to fix the two strips together.

There isn’t any overlap to glue the edges together and you can’t make one because it would be seen, so I grabbed some twine (it’s actually retired from the Holiday catalog but any twine you have handy is obviously fine) and threaded it through and tied bows.

As I may have mentioned a few times, my stamping supplies spread like lava over the table. I found that I have three rolls of glue dots started and countless pages of dimensionals so I gathered them all together and they fit nicely in this box. And they look beautiful at the same time.

Stampin' Up! Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

But I also like the idea of putting some biscotti or cookies in a food safe bag, tying it up with a bow and adding it to the box. Or maybe a candle. The possibilities are endless but whatever you put in it, this is a great presentation. I can see that I will be making more of these!

I showed the box to my sister Caro, and she loved it, but wasn’t so excited about the silver bows although she could see why I had them. So I came up with an alternative. I created four tiny strips of mint macaron card, maybe half an inch by 1/6 inch and folded them in half. Then I glued half to one side of the box and the other half to the neighbouring side. I had to pinch it together for a few seconds to ensure it would stick, but it holds the box together without spoiling the look. Here’s a close up of the little strip in action:

Stampin' Up! Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

And the finished box without bows:

Stampin' Up! Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

I’ve already thought of another variation, but I’ll save that for another day.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Fabulous Flora for CAS C&S

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It’s Thursday and time for the first challenge in July at CAS Colours & Sketches which means it’s a colour challenge. We’re doing things a little differently for July and August; the 8 members of the design team are each taking a single week and first up is my sister, Caro. I decided to use the hostess set, Fabulous Flora for my card.

Stampin' Up! Fabulous Flora and Teeny Tiny Wishes

And here’s the banner which inspired my card:

Unfortunately I have need of a couple of sympathy cards and this colour combo worked perfectly. I stamped the flower image in archival basic black onto watercolour paper. After giving it a minute or two for drying, I coloured it in with my aquapainter. I had a fairly dry aquapainter so that I could more easily control the amount of water added to the ink pad top (you just squeeze the pad to get some ink on the top and then use that as your palette). The stalk is soft suede, the leaves are cucumber crush and the flower is in elegant eggplant with the centre of the flower being almost undiluted. I then added the sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes in elegant eggplant.

I played around with all three colours to decide on the mat and cardbase but in the end, I decided that a skinny basic black mat was the best onto the elegant eggplant. The cucumber crush was too bright and didn’t look at all sympathetic!

I’d definitely suggest that Fabulous Flora is a set to consider the next time you have some Stampin’ Rewards – it’s only $11 for clear mount and $15 for wood so it’s great value. I’d also suggest popping over to CAS Colours & Sketches to see what the rest of the team have for your inspiration.

See you tomorrow,

Liz