April 30, 2016

National Scrapbook Day Observance 2016

National Scrapbook Day is the first Saturday in May. This year that falls on the day before Mother's Day. In celebration of National Scrapbook Day, I joined my friend Maggie at an all day scrapbooking/crafting event on April 30.

Here we are having a blast at attempting a selfie (No, I don't take them often and am just now learning to look at the right spot while taking them):


I was not as productive as I would have liked, but I made a few cards, experimented with new embossing powder, troubleshot a Cricut issue I was having, became more comfortable with using my new Cricut Explore Air, and, of course, made new friends.

Toward the end of the day, I made a Cricut free card design for mother's day. I whipped up that card on Mother's Day and gave it to my boyfriend's mom. It was rather pretty, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

I also decided on using some patterned paper from my stash.
My daddy's birthday is coming up and I chose to make him a birthday card. This will be posted at a later time so that he doesn't come across it before I give it to him.

The second card I made is for my man. I make cards for him randomly.
I didn't even use a sketch for this one. I found the stamps I wanted to use and put the pieces together. I have determined that this layout could easily be turned so that the shape surrounding the camera resembles a Polaroid picture.
The cross-stitched lines is an image from the CTMH Typeset stamp set.
The camera image and sentiment stamps are from the Captured my Heart set by Unity.
The blue papers are from Recollections.
On the camera image, there is a tiny heart. I colored that with a borrowed red pen, just for a little pop of a different color.


Maggie had some new embossing powder so I had to open it and give it a try. I had this wonderful new stamp from Unity that I was dying to try and I thought it would be beautiful heat embossed. I was right. :)
I used kraft paper from Recollections.
I stamped the Dream Tree image by Unity in Versa Mark ink, sprinkled the embossing powder over the image, and then hit it with my heat gun.

This is what came out:





I added that to a cream card base. This card was give to a previous teammate for her supervisor who had the same surgery I did. The team was going to each individually sign the card so I left the inside blank.

I have several of the embossed trees to use on other cards. I think they would be great for many occasions! 

April 16, 2016

Dashwood Wedding Invitations

My boyfriend and I have a couple of friends that are getting married this summer. We both are part of the wedding and my main gift to them is to make their wedding invitations. I always make a few extra since it's easy to make them while mass-producing than to make them individually if needed later. I made a total of 75 invitations.

I do not have pictures of the inside, but the invitation wording was printed directly onto the cardstock in the inside.
Here is the final product:


The card base is cream cardstock from Recollections by Michaels.
The background piece is kraft cardstock, the dark brown pieces are from an Earth tones collection, both from Recollections. All three pieces were dry embossed through my Cuttlebug using the Darice Wood Grain embossing folder.
The tag was cut from the same cream cardstock as the base using the Darice Bookplate Dies. The tree image is from the Always Grateful stamp set by Close to my Heart. It was stamped in Sweet Leaf ink also from Close to my Heart.
The extras are twine and eyelets.

I presented a ton of card ideas to them and they chose three that they liked the best. I then made three prototypes based on those ideas.
The final product was inspired by this card created by Linda Aarhus:


Here are the other three prototypes and their inspiration:

Inspiration
Embossed and inked clouds, birds on wire embossing on vellum overlay
 

Inspiration, found on Pinterest
Dark brown base, white top layer, jute/nylon ribbon, tree image cut from the Sweethearts Cricut cartridge

April 4, 2016

White on Kraft - Inspired Anniversary Card

The wonderfully talented Heather from Houses Built of Cards created this beautiful card that I just had to attempt:





My supervisor at work asked for an anniversary card for her husband. I had this picture saved for a while and decided I wanted to attempt something similar. By the time I did the white coloring, it was late into the night and I skipped the vellum or any of the fun shaped mats. I kept it simple.

For the front:
 
I used Versafine Black Onyx ink to stamp the Unity image.
I used a white Crayola colored pencil for the accents.
The kraft paper is from Recollections by Michaels.
The card base is white cardstock from Walmart (found in the printer paper aisle).



For the inside:

I used the same kraft paper from Michaels.
I ran the kraft paper through my Cuttlebug using the Darice Bookplate Dies. On white cardstock, I traced around the outer part of the die and cut it out by hand. This gave me the white border. I wanted it to pop against the white card base so I inked the edges with black ink. Unfortunately, some of this ink smeared a little.
The sentiment is from the Another Reason to say Thank You set by Unity.


This is the supervisor that, as you may recall, requested that I put something in the inside of the cards because she never knew what to write. I didn't know their relationship at all, but I thought this sentiment is perfect for any successful relationship.

Notes to self:
 
Be sure to have a pencil sharpener near me when attempting to do more white on kraft (or use a white gel pen).
Work on a better card inside (strip of paper, mat with writing area).

April 3, 2016

Positive Chemistry cards

I was very excited to order this set of stamps!

Positive Chemistry set from Close to my Heart

The Basic Grey paper I used was in the back of my mind when I ordered the stamp set.
The paper is Authentic from the Origins collection of Basic Grey.
The red paper was from my friend's paper stash.
I stamped the atom image with Close to my Heart White Daisy ink. It wasn't quite as crisp as I wanted it to be so I went over each one carefully with a white gel pen.
I used a sketch I found on Facebook:

This sentiment is perfect for so many occasions:


This one I made a duplicate of, but the original intent was to make it for my boyfriend. He loved it! I used the little heart stamp in red and then decided to add the red mat for that extra pop of color.