Hello! Another day, another design team contribution. This is my creation for the Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes Birthday challenge and I once again have been delving into the pouches of half used supplies. Now this one uses flowers cut from the True Love dsp, a strip of Expressions in Ink dsp and a card from an old Memories and More pack. A bit of an eclectic mix … but I think it works well together … along with die cuts and the sentiment of course!
Those flowers are of course fabulous and although you can colour them, I decided black and white was just fine against the background of the card and with the strip of gold foiled stripes.
I did raise them up to give dimension and underneath I slid in some of the Splendid Stems die cut from black.
I decided to die cut the Happy and stack it three times for dimension and then added back in the pink from the background with the Biggest Wish birthday stamp.
I finished off with the black gems from my stash to keep with the drama of the black and pink.
Played with some blending onto white cardstock and then added some stencilling with iridescent modelling paste.
Then I went to town with Forever Fern stamps and a few different coloured inks. I decided to make it into a card for my friend’s who recently got engaged (I unfortunately couldn’t go to their party 😔).
So I then cut a few of the bowl shapes from the Splendid Stems dies set and created a bowl of foliage.
I added a little organza bow and some pearls to finish off.
Not 100% sure about the placement of stencilling, think it might have looked better more central under the bowl of foliage, but love the final card.
So I made a card that involved lots of ink on a stencil, so I put the ink to use by spritzing with water placing the stencil onto card and running it through my Big Shot to transfer the ink.
Of course this is glorious and required using!
I decided to use some die cuts I already had cut from scraps choosing a rainbow of colours and different shapes and placed them in a circle cluster… but then decided what I needed to use was a black and white flower from True Love dsp (I’ve nearly used all of this up now and not sure what I will do without these trusty flowers to turn to!)
So fussy cut a few flowers and stuck them in the middle with the rainbow of leaf die cuts coming out from underneath.
Because I hadn’t used blue for the leaves I decided that should be the mount for the sentiment that was the tiny sentiment from Happy Moments.
A few little gems and that was a perfectly pretty rainbow themed bonus card!
Yesterday was my Mum’s birthday and I wanted to share the labour of love that was her birthday card with you.
I had the idea that I wanted to do a wreath design as the main part of the card so I started by stamping lots of leaves from different sets in all the greens. I kept to mainly lighter coloured greens rather than very dark ones after all it is August not winter and wanted it to be bright!
I decided, even though these could be die cut, to fussy cut instead…. after all that is more relaxing and cam be done sat on the sofa…
Then I put together some on a circle to decide if the different styles and types of leaves went OK together… and decided as there were so many types and styles it did…. oh I also coloured in the images from Splendid Thoughts as they were outline images so used stampin blends to colour them.
I decided I wanted more but this time the die cuts from Splendid Stems as something to break up the images…
I decided this was a good mix of the delicate die cuts in solid colour and the stamped or coloured images.
Next to decide how to finish the card and I had a couple of ideas I tried out. By this time I had stuck the leaves together onto a thin ring of scrap paper so that was complete but all other elements are just placed in half finished form to give me an idea of how they look.
I was torn between keeping it green and white and adding in bright colours… bit went for the yellow as it is my Mum’s favourite colour.
So I found some yellow ribbon in the stash for a bow, fussy cut the Stampendous sentiment that I had stamped with blended yellow and coral inks, cut some more Playful Alphabets and coloured them with So Saffron stampin blends and added the little flowers I had bought in a pack from Hobbycraft many years ago.
Then to decide on the background … I went with a Kraft card base in 8×8 as I had one in my stash and the originally planned white 7×7 was a bit too small … but actually I think it frames it nicely.
Then I added a mount of the So Saffron cardstock.
The white base I decided to blend some So Saffron on and do some splatters of green and coral ink to complement the colours in the rest of the card.
I added a foam panel behind this to raise it off the So Saffron and then put foam behind the wreath and a double layer under the middle of the sentiment to support it.
This gives the whole card so much dimension. I love it!
Inside I added a panel of whisper white with some more blending and splatters with a panel of So Saffron on the edge. Then I added a little cluster of the leaves I had left over and added the little sentiment strip.
I decided to add wink of Stella to the mum letters to give them some sparkle and then called it finished!
Was beginning to wonder if I would get round to making a tag or not for this months UK stampers forum tag swap … but then inspiration struck whilst playing with this months Creative Stamping magazine which I treated myself to this past weekend.
I stamped the floral image which was the reason I bought the magazine in the first place and decided to colour them in using soft yellows and greens and then fussy cut the image.
The magazine came with a stencil and so decided to ink through the stencil with versamark and then I was going to get a pearl embossing powder but spotted the Seth Apter Baked Texture rust powder and grabbed that instead … and wo was I happy with the result. I forgot how cool these powders were to play with.
I then grabbed some of the die cuts I spent an hour cutting from scraps the other day and layered those under the floral image.
I decided to grab the baked texture embossing powder and a scrap to make a little strip … but this time multiple layers of versamark and the powder to get the different effect and this went across the tag and under the sentiment.
Finished off with ribbon, twine and some pearls.
Love how easily this came together once the stencilling was done … it was like all the pieces were there and waiting! Nice to get a new stamp set to play with too … been a while since I bought a magazine and must admit I have a real thing about floral images at the moment.
Entering this into the Summer Flowers challenge at Sir Stampalot
Is it just me? Whenever I set myself a task of clearing the desk and the piles of “stuff” that have accumulated I end up finding a “treasure” and making something! And the tidying up concept disappears! 😆
So this card is one of those creations!
I found another gelliprint ATCs that I had started and not finished and decided it worked perfectly with those Memories and More cards that I have been whittling my way through!
A scrap of the Pretty Peacock cardstock, a die cut and Forever gold laser cut and a few Artistically Inked flowers to embellish… with a cute little sentiment … and jobs a good’un … on the cardmaking front that is… the desk tidying… not so much!
Today I’m sharing a card made with bits and pieces off the desk. Does anyone else end up accumulating lots of bits from random projects and then feel you have to leave them in sight otherwise they will ‘go to waste’?
So I have a coaster on my desk on which stamped images and die cuts and random embellishments live…
I just can’t bring myself to either file away or throw out these little bits and pieces. And for good reason… sometimes the perfect project comes along that needs these pieces. This card is one such project and absolutely every part of this was sat on my desk waiting to be used!
Firstly … Memories and More cards … they do most of the hard work! Cute birds cut from one card, the Happy is another card cut down as is the floral piece and the dark green background.
The sentiment is one of the prestamped ones from another project. The die cut leaves are either in Pretty Peacock and die cuts from the Splendid Stems set, or the white side of the Forever gold laser cuts.
The gem is from the stash and then the linen thread is the last from the spool that I had on the desk … I’m now in a major panic to get another SU order in as I can’t live without this in my craftroom!
Even the card blank was just sitting on the desk waiting to be used!
This came together in about 10 mins and I am really happy with it!
Grabbed some more of those Memories and More cards I have kept on the desk to try and get some use out of them and made up this cute birthday card.
I added in a panel of the Pale Papaya which I had run through the alphabet embossing folder.
I then added the gorgeous image from the Splendid Thoughts set which I blended the green and blue inks over. I then added the little die cut in the Pale Papaya vellum as a sparkly accent.
I stamped the sentiment onto a strip cut off another one of the cards and cut a little bird out of the middle of the card I had put at the back as the accent embellishment.
Then I decided to grab the little flowers from the stash and add those too.
Really cute card. And I do love these Memories and More packs for providing everything you need to make colourful card toppers … I know they are meant to be for memory keeping really, but as I’ve fallen out of the habit of that at the moment, this is a really good use for them.
Well I attempted another Sheet load of cards using the template by Call me Crafty Al but I messed up the cutting … still i managed four cards, and have plenty of leftovers for other projects, but absolutely not really following the template and not as many cards as it should have been… but you know what I am happy with the results so don’t care that it took a different turn!
I decided to use three sheets of the Expressions in Ink dsp but didn’t quite follow the template on one and also my cutting into triangles went squiffy so ended up giving up on the real template and just winging it. To be honest that’s more my thing anyway otherwise I would have ended up with cards that were all too similar and that’s not really me.
Once I had done the cutting I then set to on all the stamping I thought I might use for embellishment….
As the papers were a mix of Pale Papaya and Polished Pink and I don’t own those inks I did a mix of Calpyso Coral, Melon Mambo, Crisp Canteloupe and More Mustard to get some colours that would compliment the Pale Papaya in the dsp.
Most of the leaves were Old Olive but I did do a few in Pear Pizazz to give some variation.
Then I did all the die cutting and fussy cutting needed (fussy cutting the sentiments mainly). And then started to put together the cards. I did end up die cutting some of the standalone elements from the set too and that added some different finishes to some of the cards. I did assemble most as card toppers and then added them to card bases rather than straight onto card bases as I went along.
I also varied on one card and used Splendid Thoughts and Splendid Stems to embellish … just like to mix things up occasionally!
I didn’t however get round to doing much more than putting four cards together properly … these ones where black became the base!
As you can see most of the stanping I did wasn’t used on these… but I’ve die cut everything and put it in a pouch for coming back to … you never know I might get to it soon but I lost inspiration a little after these ones.
I love the drama of the black and the gold … and that Polished Pink alcohol ink effect is everything!
Entering these into the Anything Goes challenge at Crafty Katz
Next time will definitely make an effort to do more with the Pale Papaya … which is gorgeous but I just don’t have the inspiration right now!
A few days ago I shared some cards I made using the Jennifer Maguire ink lift technique I had seen on her YouTube video. Well I had a little panel leftover that was a second pull of ink.
This one was far paler and I wasn’t sure if I would use it but it was pretty so didn’t want to throw it away … so here it is in use and I wanted to play and just grabbed bits and pieces that were on my desk.
I mounted the panel onto Polished Pink and then decided to grab a Memories and More card that was pink based to use as a background. I didn’t want the focal image to show … but fortunately the mounted strip covered it up but I decided I wanted it to look less clean… so I added some blending and some ink splatters … I also added some splattered gesso for the white.
Next to choose a focal point. Well I decided to die cut a leaf shape from the Splendid Stems set and then stamp in Night of Navy and die cut the larger leaf image too from the coordinating Splendid Thoughts stamps. I also added some So Saffron colour by using the background leaf stamp over lapping a couple of times…. this creates an interesting texture to the added colour.
I decided to turn this into a birthday card (I’m starting to build up a stash for the next year of 17th birthdays for the princess’ friends) and so heat embossed the birthday from Biggest Wish and Happy from Cottage Rose onto the polished pink and Pretty Peacock scraps I had on the desk.
After fussy cutting the birthday and then matting and layering the Happy it was time to assemble… with dimension and foam in-between the layers!
I ended up curving the birthday sentiment a little as the middle dimension is bigger than the sides … but I think it looks cute.
Inkyfingeredcat 