(Looking of for my Hero Arts post? It’s the post right below this one, or click here to get to it quicker!)
Hi, guys!
Super happy to be joining some of my favorite stampers today in celebrating Paper Smooches. Kim, the smarty pants stamper behind Paper Smooches stamp line, recently retired her brand after 9 wonderful years.
With that, this card is for you, Kim!
I hope you like it!
I had the best time being part of Kim’s design team these past 9 years. Time really does fly! I remember when she was about to launch Paper Smooches and asked me to be part of the team. We had been Go-to-Gals for Paper Crafts magazine. She left the team to launch her company. I was sad, only because she was my friend and I was going to miss her in that role. When she asked, there was no hesitation on my part! I was so happy to support her.
Going back to the card, I used Kim’s Vegtastic stamp set to make it. I think it is one of her early sets. The little happy faces on the fruit still crack me up.
Nothing much more to say, other than THANK YOU to Kim! Thanks for letting me be part of your crafty journey.
For a complete list of folks taking part in this, be sure to check out the Paper Smooches blog.
Hi, all! Super happy to be joining some of my favorite crafters in celebrating the latest release from Hero Arts. The Winter release is amazing, and I’m just tickled to be sharing a few cards made with the new goods.
First, if you are hopping along, you should have arrived here from Nina-Marie’s blog. (Thenext stopafter mine is the blog of the lovely Wanda Guess!) If you just happened to have stopped by, welcome! Please join the hop! Lots of inspiration to be found, plus the chance to win one of three Hero Arts gift cards by leaving comments during the hop. Enter by leaving a comment between now and Sunday, September 6th at 11:59pm Pacific on this post or any of the other hop posts, and the winner will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week.
So let’s get to it. I have four (!!!) projects to share with you, plus quite a lot to say! (Wink, wink!)
Each of my projects use the new Love Ornament Fancy Die. Hero Arts included several cool ornament dies in the new release. I picked one for today’s post and challenged myself to show several ways to use it. (Pressure. Is. On.Let’s do this.)
The Traditional Ornament Cards
Meet card no. 1.
For this card, I created a simple shaker with the die. I paired it with a circle die to cut a window from a transparency, as well as the white background of the shaker.
I was kinda fancy with the shaker’s beads, only putting green seed beads above the word and red ones below it.
And meet card no. 2.
I once again created a shaker card. This time, though, you can see the inside of the card. Say what? How...
Here’s what I did. I created the background with the Circle Pattern stamp and then I temporarily adhered it to my card. I opened the card up, set a circle die on it and then ran it through my die-cutting machine, which created a circle window. I removed the stamped panel. I placed vellum on the card and permanently adhered the circle panel to the card. Easy peasy, although looking back at what I just wrote, it sounds way more (way, way, way more) complicated than it was.
Then I built the ornament shaker, using the vellum window opening as the shaker base. Again, it’s really cool to see the inside of the card with this one.
Even though these cards were made different, they have a similar feel about them. They look pretty cool next to each other too.
A Stamped Card Made With the Die
Ok, so let’s just jump to card no. 3.
I really wanted to stamp something under the “love” word so that’s what I did here. I stamped the images with the new Cozy Town set (plus a few hearts and a “sending” word from the previously released Acts of Kindness set) on a circle of cardstock.
Now, let’s just slow down for a minute and be real, real as can be. I could have just used the circle as it was and stacked several love words on top. No, friends. Why do it the easy way, Teri? Get ready for this. I got all complicated and die-cut the image with the love word and then did some tedious inlaid die-cutting/assembly work. Learn from me. Maybe do it the easy way.
I felt like this card could easily be used as a holiday card or a “just thinking of you” kind of card so I purposely did not use the ornament hanger with the “love” ornament. I wanted to have the option to send this card whenever I felt like it…. late November, December or February or March… or whenever!
A Thinking of You Card
Moving on. We’ve made it to card no. 4. Hope you are still with me.
I wanted to simply make a card with the Love Ornament die that had no holiday or winter feel to it at all. None! So I made this quick “thinking of you” card.
I simply cut the ornament from cardstock and then used my markers to add color.
This design was really easy to pull off and would be easy to recreate. I could see changing up the coloring scheme and adding some hearts to the design to mass produce some Valentine’s Day cards.
Alright! So that is it for this stop on the blog hop! I hope you have enjoyed the cards. Don’t forget that the next stop on the hop is the blog ofWanda Guess. Plus you’ll find all the blog hoppers on the Hero Arts blog.
Hi, guys! Back with another card to share. I’m a little late in posting this to link it up to the challenge that inspired it, but I wanted to share it.
Ta-da! Meet today’s card.
I was inspired by last week’s Wednesday Challenge on the Simon Says Stamp! blog to make this little guy. The penguins, fish, hearts and words are from the new Penguin Pals set from Sunny Studio. It’s so cute and makes such sweet little scenes.
I added a few stamped and die-cut stars from another Sunny Studio set to round out the scene. I guess you could say my scene is Christmas-y, but I really think this card is pretty good to send anytime of the year to a lover of cute stuff, of course!
I created the background with an inking stencil I made for myself, simply by taking a piece of stencil and cutting five circles into it. You can find stencil material pretty easily online to make your own stencils. You can even find sheets at some craft stores. (Hint: If you have any dies you just love, this is a fun, fun way to use them. I did a tip a long time ago for Paper Crafts and Scrapbooking magazine, showing this. It works pretty good with stencils that are a little less intricate and a little more not-intricate, I’ve found… but it’s worth experimenting for the best results.)
Anyway, that’s kinda all I have for you when it comes to this card. I think it turned out fun and cute… and a little out of my crafty box.
Alrighty! I hope you like the card. I’ll be back again later, gators. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll be back tomorrow with some fun stuff. Here’s a hint: LOTS of cards. 🙂 I can’t wait. See you again soon!
This was a fun card to make! A good challenge too! The Fusion Card Challenge features a sketch and a photo. You can draw inspiration from the sketch or the photo… or both. It’s really up to you.
For my card, I drew a little inspiration from both the sketch and the photo. I used the sketch as the basis for my design. I did rotate it, making it vertical rather than horizontal. The photo inspiration was there, although I guess one could argue was a bit weak, but I did purposely use critters with watermelon (from the Sealiously Sweet stamp set from Sunny Studio) because of the photo.
To make the little fussy cut critters stand out, I sponged a little black ink underneath them. I also added a few stamped hearts (stamped with a heart from the Beach Babies set) and white dots.
The rest of the card features a dry embossed background (created with a folder from Sunny Studio), as well as a few patterned paper scraps and a sentiment strip (stamped with the Fabulous Flamingos set, which really is fabulous, in my personal opinion)!
So that’s what I have for you. A big thanks to the Fusion Card Challenge crew for the challenge. It was a really nice way to get to my creative juices flowing today. Thanks, guys!
My friend, Ashley, and I vowed to each other to attempt the challenges way more often as we both dig Lawn Fawn and each have a hefty stash of LF goods. So, in full disclosure mode, let me confess that this card is not my best.
The good thing about challenges is trying something out of your creative comfort zone. The bad thing? Sometimes, you try too hard to make it work and find yourself just going with it. So, yeah, that’s the story of today’s card and this challenge card.
Let’s start with what went wrong for me. It was the color combo. I found myself stressing way too much on the color scheme of the challenge and spent way too much time, trying to create the perfect background with Lawn Fawn’s Cloudy stencil.
And things kinda fell about from there as I messed up my inking (this is actually the third background I did, friends) and then got fixated on trying to cover it up. Way more fixated on trying to cover it up than the actual cute birthday scene with the Hay There critters.
So rather than talk about it falling apart and not coming together perfectly, let’s just say I trudged on, trying to make the best of it and ended up with this card. Not the best for me, but not the worst. Just not what I really planned on. And that really is how it goes sometimes.
Onto the next challenge. 😉
Thanks for stopping by, friends. I’ll be back again later.
A bit of this. A bit of that. 