Tag Archives: Lucky Stars TIEF

My first brad!

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One of the things that my secret pal (now revealed to be Jill – thanks, Jill) gave me over the crop weekend was some antique brads. Brads, for those of you who don’t know (like me a few months ago) are embellishments that are attached to the card by making a hole and pushing the two prongs through and opening them out behind the card to hold them in place. The Stampin’ Up! antique brads are really pretty and I’ve admired them on my sister’s cards but haven’t quite mustered up the courage to use them. Once I had received them I set myself a challenge to make a card with them. I figured that the Stampin’ Up! Bright and Beautiful stamp set would be the perfect setting.

I may possibly have mentioned previously that I love heat embossing! I decided to emboss the second largest star from the Bright and Beautiful stamp set in silver on night of navy and then I cut it out with the matching star framelit. I then cut out the next biggest size star in the brushed silver cardstock. Adhering these together looked really good. Next I heat embossed the sentiment (also from Bright and Beautiful) in silver on the night of navy base. After I attached the star to the base I punched a hole in the stars using my piercing tool and attached a brad. Caro gave me advice here, I think I was going to add one that was a bit too big. I really liked how this came together and Jen My Upline was so happy to see that I’d progressed! I think there’s even a picture on facebook of me proudly holding my First Brad Card!

Stampin' Up! Bright and Beautiful star on night of navy

Since I had stars on this card, it made sense to decorate the envelope with stars also. I dry embossed the envelope flap with the Lucky Stars embossing folder.

Stampin' Up! Bright and Beautiful with Envelope dry embossed with Lucky Stars TIEF

The advice is to get a Stampin’ Up! piercing mat for paper piercing and attaching brads. I haven’t tried paper piercing but I’ve found another method for making the hole to attach the brads. Admittedly the piercing mat is only $4.95 so it’s not a big deal, but I bought the clear block caddy a while ago so that I could transport my blocks to the crop. The caddy came with the spaces for the blocks filled with foam which appeared very much like the piercing mat. So I used the insert for the largest block as my piercing mat. It worked very well.

 

Continuing Christmas cards

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Here’s another easy to mass produce card if you’re panicking about Christmas looming. It’s very similar to yesterday’s in design, but different in result.

star embossed noel real red

I used real red for the base and mat. The mat went through the big shot in the Stampin’ Up! Lucky Stars embossing folder. I thought that the stars didn’t stand out much, although they seem to in this photo, so I coloured in a few random stars using my gold Stampin’ dazzle marker. After a trip to Home Depot returning via Staples, my brother picked me up some metallic sharpies since I’d been lamenting the lack of a silver marker (it was on my Stampin’ Up! wish list but hadn’t made it to the big time). I found that the gold sharpie was a brighter colour and have been preferring it to the dazzle marker ever since.

I used the gold glimmer paper and the Wonderful Wreath framelits to cut out the Noel – using wax paper in between the paper and die to make it easier to get the paper and die apart. I carefully dotted tombow glue onto the back of the word in order to stick it onto the card.

Merry Christmas – only ten weeks

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If you’re planning on making your own Christmas cards, you need to get started. You have ten weeks from today. But there’s no need to panic – there are plenty of products from Stampin’ Up! that make your cards easy to produce. Here’s one example that you can easily mass produce.

merry night of navy embossed stars

Details:

Base: 8.5″ by 5.5″ Night of Navy

Top layer: 4″ by 5.25″ Night of Navy

Other: Stampin’ Up! Lucky Stars TIEF, Expressions Thinlits Dies (retired), Silver foil sheets, silver sharpie, Backgrounds DSP

You can easily make a mass of these. Cut your A4 paper in two and score and fold it. Make your smaller mat and run it through the big shot in the Lucky Stars TIEF. Then you cut the Merry out of the silver foil sheet. Don’t forget to use waxed paper in between the silver foil and the die to cut the Merry – it makes it so much easier to release the foil from the die. If you don’t have the thinlits dies – go directly to the Clearance Rack, do not pass go, and buy this set! At $14.99 for three dies saying Merry, Love and Thankful, it’s a great buy. After you adhere the Merry to the card, colour some stars in silver. I finished it off in the usual way by lining the envelope using the Stampin’ Up! envelope framelit dies and the Background DSP in Night of Navy.

Double Emboss

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I have a pile of cardstock stacked up for later. It consists of partial ideas or leftover pieces from other projects that in the end, weren’t needed. Sometimes I go through the pile to let my subconscious have something to noodle on. I was feeling a bit blocked on Saturday and my autumn card that I’m working on just wasn’t feeling right so I picked up the pile and this card just fell together. When I was making Matt’s congratulations card last month, I’d planned to start with the lucky stars embossing folder but in the end, went in another direction. I’d also silver heat embossed the sentiment on a scrap and that was sitting in the pile. I thought that I could pull out my brushed silver cardstock for the first time and create a mat for the sentiment and it would work on the embossed stars. And it did.

congratulations night of navy embossed stars

Base: 8.5″ by 5.5″ night of navy

Mat: 4″ by 5.25″ night of navy

Small mat: 4 5/8″ by 2 1/8″ brushed silver (the odd size was because I trimmed the card stock around the sentiment until it looked “right” and then added 1/4 inch for the mat)

Top layer: 4 3/8″ by 1 7/8″ night of navy

Stamp set: Bravo

Ink: Versamark

This is a fun and easy card to put together and, if you needed a load of congratulations cards, simple to mass produce. I cranked the large navy mat through the big shot in the lucky stars embossing folder. I love the embossing folders – the texture that they create is wonderful.  I then stamped the sentiment onto the smaller piece of navy in versamark, sprinkled over the silver embossing powder and used the heat gun. All that was left was assembling all of the layers – rather more layers than normal!