Variations on a Theme

I wanted to pack light for this month's crop on Saturday, so I chose one of my Pins - original pin here - and took along various stamps to make variations on the idea.  I die-cut the cardstock to size in white and then some ivory when I ran out of white LOL.  I didn't pack coloured cardstock for mats, but cut those on Sunday and assembled the cards. 

I used silhouette stamps from Lavinia (seedheads), Nellie Snellen (stylised flower stems) and Hot off the Press (feather).  The splats are from Stampin Up and the sentiments from Visible Image.

I do like silhouette stamping :-) 

Buy it - Try it: Tie dye thank you card

I recently bought the new Tie dyed stamp set from SU. 

After a little play with the three different spiral motifs, I stamped them in three colours, six times, then matted the images in two each of the same three different colours and put them onto 3" card blanks.  Only three shown in the photo!  A nice little set of six thank you cards :-)

Out of the Drawer - Art Deco Thank You card - and Blogtober announcement

I love both Arts Nouveau and Deco, so when Spellbinders brought out some very Deco dies, I had to have them .....  But they were bigger than I had thought and it put me off a bit, so in the drawer they went :-)
Fast forward to a sudden need for a thank you card .... the recipient had mentioned that she liked both styles too, so these dies came to mind immediately.  I didn't use the biggest one of the set, but cut the smaller mat, frame, and deco flower in a combination of white and gold.

The sentiment is stamped and embossed.  With hindsight, I think I could have rounded the four corners of the card blank for a better look - but I had to get it in the post :-)

Now ... fanfare ... Blogtober 2016 is imminent!  Last year, the idea was to blog every day for the whole of October.  I managed it, but it was hard and I already know that the combination of work, committing to exercising more (I now walk to work three times a week), and the rest of Real Life are going to make it even more difficult.  So Sy over at KarmaCraft has come up with a cunning plan for this year.  Set your own goal for Blogtober!  Every day, three times a week, once a week, whatever you want to do, but the challenge is to stick to your goal :-)  To register your interest, hop over to KarmaCraft and link up as per Sy's post.  I haven't quite decided how many times a week for me yet, but I do know it's going to be very, very Christmassy......

Pin-spired: white embossing & colouring on kraft cardstock

I made two cards inspired by this Pin - though I stamped the flowers from memory and then had a look to see how the card was assembled and realised I hadn't stamped them close enough together!  That'll teach me to look at the Pin first, next time!

The flowers, cardstock, sentiment and pen are all SU.  I stamped/embossed the flowers in white on Crumb Cake cardstock, then coloured with Real Red pen.  The card on the left is a more or less direct card-lift from the Pin, but I then tried something different with the rest of the cardstock I had stamped.  I cut three panels, they didn't quite line up due to the way I had cut the first square (didn't think that one through!) but I covered the non-aligned bit with a punched band (Martha Stewart) and a punched flower.
I am not keen on the cardstock, I know kraft is supposed to be bland and used as a background, but ...... it is a bit blah ...... maybe I do need to stamp the flowers closer so there is less background coming through!
I definitely must do more panel cards, simple yet effective... my favourite kind of card :-)

Purple and green cards

Here are some more of the cards I made a couple of weekends ago.  I decided to play with stamping and masking, using a mix of old and new stamps, and went with a combination of purple and green inks.

The first card is done with Stampin' Up stamps and punches - Gorgeous Grunge, Papillon and the sentiment from the Lotus Blossom set.  I used the matching butterfly punch to mask off the butterfly before stamping the background.  The mats are Nesties.
The second card was a little tricky as the flourish is an old Hero Arts (?) stamp, which is wood mounted, so placing it over the masked butterfly needs a bit of guesswork and luck!  I then used the splotches from Glorious Grunge and a Hobby Art sentiment.
The third card uses the same stamps, but I mis-stamped the flourish, so punched a circle from the whole image and placed it in the centre of a die-cut lattice mat (Tonic), with two scalloped circle mats (also Tonic). This still left a wider border than I liked, so at Sy's suggestion I over-stamped the whole central circle with the GG splotches and it works perfectly.  I decided not to have a sentiment on this one.

Very pleased with these cards :-)

BiTi Monday

This weekend Sy came down, to bring the new tote she had picked up for me - We R Memory Keepers rolling tote, she ordered three, for herself, Karen and me!
So we had a lovely craft day, I got eight cards made, would have been nine if my Herma dispenser hadn't broken mid-use :-(
For the thank you cards below, I used a new stamp, a new die and some new card blanks, so they definitely qualify for my Buy it - Try it this week :-)

The stamp is from Stampin Up, a three stage stamping process to get the different layers and colours on the lotus blossom, the sentiment is from the same set.  I had been a bit hesitant about using it, as I didn't quite 'get' how it worked, but Sy has a great example here, so she talked me through it, it's not actually difficult once you try it LOL.  I used a Tonic Studios scalloped circle die, this is a great set, 14 dies I think, and they don't have too much of a border if you use the next size up for a mat.  Not that I could have fitted a mat on these tiny cards - they are 3" square, just right for little thank you cards.

Update on The Wedding Card - she loved it :-)

New challenge for 2015 - Buy it Try it Mondays

BiTi is going weekly!  I haven't yet learned how to add a linky tool, but that will come soon :-)  The idea is that you take something 'new' and use it to make ...... well, anything: a card, a layout, a decorated object and so forth.  For the purposes of this challenge, 'new' means anything bought (or gifted) during the previous four weeks.

Here is mine for this week:

It is a simple card, but having chosen the Nestie die to work with, I was a bit stuck for ideas.  The die is actually wider than I had realised, almost the full width of the card blank, so my original plan of putting it onto a panel wasn't as easy as I had thought.  So I have made an interrupted frame to connect both the butterfly and sentiment dies, then added a few flowers from the same Nestie set.  The sentiment is also new, it's a Poppystamps die.

Since this is my first post for this year - Happy New Year! - I had better mention resolutions ..... my word for 2015 is MORE. 
MORE using stash
MORE blogging
MORE entering challenges
MORE new techniques

not forgetting of course ....
MORE weight to be lost
MORE using money wisely LOL

I think the first four might be easier than the last two.......:-)

Variations on a theme - resist embossing technique

I was late setting off to the ATDML retreat a couple of weeks ago, even though I had been very organised with everything packed the previous evening.  But on the Friday morning, I decided I wanted to stamp/emboss some images in white to take with me and play around with distress inking them.  This of course took far longer than I had thought it would and so I was late :-)

Having inked and over-stamped the images at the retreat, they have been on my desk crying out to be made up into cards.  Here are three I did using an old Stampendous agapanthus stamp.

I am not quite so happy with the last card, I think it would have been better if I had found a toning background mat.  But it's OK :-)

I have some more images to make up yet, so watch this space!!

Buy it & Use It - Birthday and Thank you text dies

Last week, I shared this card, made using the Memory Box Christmas text die.  I have now bought the Happy Birthday and Thank You dies from the same range, they arrived in the post yesterday.  There is also a Best Wishes available, but that's something I would hardly use (if at all!), so I will refrain from getting that one :-)

The papers are from two different Authentique 6" paper pads.  I ran the Thank You through the Bigshot using a spotty embossing folder to see how it would turn out, but I left the Happy Birthday plain.
I really like these dies, I can see them being very useful :-)

thank you card

I found some stamped and cut out flowers in my 'useful bits' drawer and thought I had better do something with them :-)  My card box has mainly birthday cards in and I am trying to round it out a little with some other types - so this one became a thank you card!

I stamped and embossed the SU sentiment in chocolate brown and positioned the flowers, sticking the middle one down only as this is the one which is flat to the card.  This enabled me to determine the position of the score lines.  After scoring, I attached the remaining two flowers - one using 1mm foam tape and the other using 2mm.  Now it was going to be left like that, bit I felt that there was something missing ..... so I punched out some fronds (Martha Stewart) and placed between the flowers, then added some pearls at the corners.  Now it's done :-)

52CC - week 18

A photo prompt for week 18 over at Kool Kitty Musings.  I chose to use the colours to make these two cards.

I made two everyday cards rather than a Christmas one.  My card box has mostly birthday cards in it, so I thought I should have some different cards in stock as well :-)  I stamped and embossed the flower (Hero Arts) and sentiments (Stampin' Up), then coloured the flower with Kuretake alcohol pens.  I cut a mat from the background paper, making it long enough to be able to punch a border at the base (Martha Stewart), then I tied a ribbon around the mat and assembled everything onto a deckle edge card blank.
A word on the Kuretake pens .....they are the first pens I have ever got on with, I have tried Promarkers and Flexmarkers, but never really did well with them.  Now I am building up a my collection of the Kuretakes, a few every month - it does work out to be quite expensive as I buy a replacement brush tip for each pen as well, to go in the broad tip end, but I do like them!  I get mine from Cult Pens, who have a wonderful selection of any pen you could ever need!!