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Posts Tagged ‘Greeting Cards’
Stampin’ Up! Convention – Day 1
Aloha, all!
As you read this, I'm at the 2011 Stampin' Up! Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. As I write this, I'm still back in Hawaii getting ready to leave, so I'm not yet sure how hot it is (I expect HOT!). But I am sure that I'm having a great time meeting lots of people and seeing lots of new Stampin' Up! goodies in the sales area called, "Memento Mall."
One of my first-day activities is a swap with one of my online groups of Stampin' Up! friends. Not all the people in the group are Stampin' Up! demonstrators, but those who are here at convention are. This is a small swap so I'm sure to have plenty of time to visit with each of them and get to know them a little better.
This is the card I made for this swap – and I only had to make 15 of them. This is such a nice and simple design that I wish I'd thought of it for some of my swaps with larger groups.
The Designer Series Paper Set that I used for this is one from the brand new Stampin' Up! 2011-2012 Idea Book & Catalog called, Cheerful Treat. This particular set of papers is available only as a Hostess Gift. But it's wonderfully priced at $8 for a set of 12 double-sided sheets that are 12" square. Even if you only have a $150 party or order, you get $25 in hostess dollars to spend, so you'll still have $17 left for other purchases!
The colors that I pulled from this set to use as my solid colors are Lucky Limeade and Concord Crush. The Melon Mambo print at the bottom of the card is the other side of the multi-colored print that is at the top of the card. This is what made this card so easy to put together multiple times. What I did was cut one 12" square sheet of the Cheerful Treat paper in three 4" strips Then I cut each strip into six 2" pieces. So from each strip I got three sets of both pieces of the paper I needed for this card. Here's another benefit of doing it this way: I stamped the bottom strip before I adhered either piece to the Concord Crush card base. If, by chance, I stamped the greeting badly (crooked or smeared, for example) I could just flip that over and use it for the top piece and stamp again on the back of the piece that was originally going to be the top piece. No one will ever see those badly-stamped areas that are glued onto the card. Read "smiley face" here!
The middle piece of Lucky Limeade card stock overlaps both the bottom and the top pieces of paper by 1/2". I tied the ribbons – a 20" piece of Bashful Blue 5/8" Satin Ribbon and a 6" piece of Concord Crush Stitched-Poly Ribbon – onto the Lucky Limeade card stock and then adhered the whole group onto the card front. The final piece of card stock is 2-1/4" high by 4" wide; but I started with a piece that was 2-3/8" high and then punched it with the Scallop Trim Border Punch, which removes about 1/8" from the punched side.
Here's the sketch for this card. I'm showing it with the middle section moved off to the side so you can see the overlapped areas. I considered whether I might just cut the top and bottom pieces 1-1/2" high and the middle piece 2-1/4" and just have the edges meet. But I don't really like to do this unless I'm covering the edges that meet with a piece of ribbon. So that's another way you could use this same basic layout, by moving the two pieces of ribbon to cover the edges and not bothering with the scalloped edge. See?! Another design in the making! I so love doing this kind of "work." I hope you do, too, and will be having as much fun with your crafting this week as I'm having at the Stampin' Up! convention!
Subscribe to the comments for this postA Bright Birthday!
Aloha, all!
This past week one of the leaders of an online group to which I belong had a birthday and she challenged the group to make a Birthday Card using the Brights Colors from Stampin' Up! As it had been awhile since I'd focused on the colors in that group, I decided to accept the challenge.
There was also a discussion going on in yet another group about the value of the Circle Scissors Plus, which is also sold as a Stampin' Up! product. Add to that my wish to use up some of my Stampin' Up! retiring accessories, and this is the card that resulted!
Let's start with the colors. The Brights Colors that I used for this card are Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, and Pacific Point. I do think that they make a very cheerful birthday card, and I should try to use them more for birthdays.
Then there are the retiring products. Rats! I love so many of them! First there's that luscious Daffodil Delight 5/8" Satin Ribbon. Satin Ribbon will still be around, but not in the Daffodil Delight color. Then there are two of my favorite Designer Series Paper sets, Sweet and Sour and Blueberry Crisp. The Sweet and Sour is a specialty paper that has some shiny swirls on one side of the double-sided printed paper. There will not be any specialty paper in the new catalog that has this feature (though there will be one set with some metallic highlights). The Blueberry Crisp has several blues in it, but this particular piece is all Pacific Point, so nice and, well, bright!
Both stamp sets that I used in this set will continue into the new Stampin' Up! 2011-2012 Idea Book and Catalog: Crazy for Cupcakes and Teeny Tiny Wishes. I colored in the "cupcake papers" with Pacific Point, but I used a Blender Pen instead of a Stampin' Write Marker to lighten the ink up a bit. Nice touch, I think!
Finally the circles: For the top (stamped) circle and the back (Daffodil Delight) circle, I used the Sizzix 3" and 3-1/2" circle dies, respectively. But I don't like that large 1/4" space between layers. Since there is neither a Sizzix Die nor a punch that's 3-1/4" round, I needed to turn to my Circle Scissors Plus. (The "plus" in this product is that you can use this for drawing circles as well as cutting them; more about that another time). I set the cutting blade for a 3-1/4" circle and, voila! There you have it.
Here is the sketch for this card. I've been having fun lately making square cards, and I'm going to have to order more Stampin' Up! Medium Square Envelopes (they're 5-1/2" square) so I can start sending some of these cards out! I hope that you don't just hoard your cards, and have fun sending them out to your friends, too!
If it’s April is it Easter Yet?
Aloha,all!
Very few people have been impressed with my research about how late Easter is this year (see my last post) and some have suggested that I stick to stamping (none of you, though; those people would be in my family!). So stick to stamping I shall!
I almost didn't post this card today because I'd promised cutesy later in the month. But even this little bunny, from the Stamp Set, Forest Friends, while cute still has a bit of "pretty" in her. Oh, yes, my Easter Bunnies are all ladies! I just try to imagine any of the men in my life "hopping down the bunny trail" and my brain shouts, "No!"
So here is my little lady and a greeting from the Stamp Set, All Holidays, stamped in Perfect Plum, layered with some Old Olive and some more perfect plum. I adhered this group to a layer of Blushing Bride prints from the Designer Series Paper Stack that is a hostess gift this year. I haven't used this nearly enough, and I'm leaving the pack out on my work table to see if I can't start pulling some papers out of it to show you how lovely it is. The card front is also layered on Perfect Plum, with a card base of Old Olive.
I've also not been using my 1-1/4" Striped Grosgrain Ribbon enough, either. My ribbons are always out on my work table, so I'm not sure what the excuse is for that. Maybe their size just intimidates me? The Old Olive Striped Ribbon I've used here certainly doesn't overwhelm this card, though my initial thought was that it would. To "tie" the bow, I used Mary Brown's bow instructions, with one of the Whisper White 5/8" Jumbo Designer Brads to hold it together. I tried a couple of different ways to decorate that brad, but ended up simply stamping the butterfly image from the Stamp Set, Itty Bitty Bits and punched it out using one of the punches from the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack. I then adhered it to the brad using a Mini Glue Dot.
This feels like a nice and airy card that I'll be happy to send off as an Easter Greeting this year! It felt good to make it, too, which means I'm probably recovering from whatever bug has been keeping me down a bit this week. Nothing serious, just a few aches and pains and wanting to sleep all the time. It's a good thing as my monthly paper crafting class is tomorrow and I've got to get ready!
I hope you're ready for a relaxing weekend and will have some fun stamping – maybe even getting some of those Easter cards made!
Here's the sketch for today's card.
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Valentine with a Fun Technique!
Aloha, all!
Those of you who are on my newsletter mailing list or who attended my Valentine class last week have already seen this card. But, for those of you who haven't, this card is made using what some call (and I prefer to call) inlaid embossing. The "inlaid" part really is NOT inlaid. Those hearts in this photo just look like they're inlaid because of the way that the card front is embossed.
What I've actually done here is just to adhere some punched hearts to the top layer (a piece of Real Red Cardstock) and then just run the entire layer through the Sizzix Big Shot with one of Stampin' Up!'s embossing folders, in this case the Square Lattice Embossing Folder. Here is a summary of the process for this project, though I have prepared a one-page tutorial with more photographs.
- Punch some hearts of varying sizes with a variety of Designer Series Papers. For this project, I used some Pretty in Pink and Real Red Patterns Papers and the Heart to Heart and Full Heart Punches.
- Arrange the hearts on the Real Red Layer (which for this card is 5" wide x 3-3/4" high. Be sure to have some hanging over the edges to give the whole picture a bit of an artistic look to it.
- Once you have the hearts laid out as you'd like them, adhere them to the Real Red layer with the adhesive of your choice. For this project, I chose to use Stampin' Up!'s Anywhere Glue Stick, because I could apply the adhesive up to all the edges and points. However, my class participants used SNAIL adhesive, and their projects turned out just fine.
- Once your adhesive has dried, use your paper trimmer to even up the edges of this layer by trimming off the pieces of the overlapping hearts.
- Place the card front into the Embossing Folder of your choice. One of my class participants used the Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder, and that was very lovely.
- Layer up your card and trim with embellishments of your choice. For this card, I tied a piece of Pretty in Pink 3/8" Taffeta Ribbon around the embossed layer that had been adhered to a 5-1/4" x 4" Pretty in Pink Cardstock layer, before adhering the whole element to a 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" card made with Real Red Cardstock.
A quick note: Steps 4 and 5 can easily be reversed.
Here is a close up of one of those embossed hearts and the bow that I made using fellow Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, Mary Brown's, tutorial, all held in place with a Stampin' Up! Antique Brad.
And here's a shot of the ladies in my class concentrating really, really hard on getting those hearts laid out the way they wanted them!
Overall, this is a really simple technique that looks oh so pretty. Think about using other punches or images cut with Sizzix or Sizzlit dies. Flowers, butterflies – even just circles and squares! All it takes is your own taste to make a card that is uniquely yours!
Whatever you decide to use on YOUR card, have fun with it!
Another Class Project – a Valentine, of course!
Aloha, all!
I mentioned my Stamp-A-Stack class in yesterday's blog post in which I showed off one of the projects. Today's featured card was the other project.
This card is based on a design featured on Stampin' Up!'s website. I really like Stampin' Up!'s design, but I wanted to have my group make a card that would be a bit easier to put together in a Stamp-A-Stack setting, and this seemed to fit the bill.
What's really fun about this card is that all of the products featured in the Filled With Love Bundle promotion are included in this card. The Real Red and Pretty in Pink Patterns Papers are in this bundle, as is the stamp set, Filled with Love and the Bitty Buttons set from which the little clear heart-shaped button comes.
The stamping is a lot easier that it might look. The large word, "Love," doesn't have any texture to it at all and it stamps up so evenly every time. I didn't have one instance of stamping this where it didn't come out perfectly. With that stamped in Real Red, then I stamped the heart flower, with its leaves, using Old Olive. Again it stamps beautifully. Then I punched out a heart using the same paper as the Real Red Patterns Paper that's used as the first layer on the card, and adhered it with a Mini Glue Dot to the top of the "flower." Finally, I tied a piece of Linen Thread through the holes in the heart shaped button and adhered it on top of the punched heart, again with a Mini Glue Dot.
The strip of Real Red card stock below the stamped layer is punched with the Scallop Edge Border Punch, and then that whole layer is tied together with some Old Olive 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon, tied in a knot and trimmed a bit.
Fun card, and here is the sketch – yet another one for next year's card layout eBook! For this years Card Layout eBook, just click here for more information about it and how to buy it.
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I hope you're well on your way to making a TON of Valentine cards, and that you're having as much fun with this year's Stampin' Up! products as I am!
A Fun Class Project!
Aloha, all!
Today and tomorrow I'm going to share the greeting cards that we made at my Stamp-A-Stack class session last week. For this class, we all made 6 copies of each of the cards, and got them done in record time!
My group had asked for some Valentine Cards and also for some Thank You cards (very much needed after the holiday gift-giving season!). I decided that this card could serve as a card for many different occasions, not just as a Thank You card. So everyone stamped quite a few different greetings, and put them in a baggie to have available when a card is needed. All you have to do is add a bit of adhesive and you've got yourself a birthday card, get well card, thank you card, or even just a "thinking of you" card!
The papers that I used for this card are both from the Designer Paper Set, Springtime Vintage, in the Stampin' Up! 2011 Occasions Mini Catalog. They remind me of the papers on my grandmother's dining room wall – really a very vintage look! There's plenty of different designs in this paper set, and plenty to make up a lot of this particular design. The ribbon is the Rose Red 1/2" Seam Binding, which is a new Seam Binding color featured in the Occasions Mini Catalog, and the bow is another effort at making the design perfected by Mary Brown, a fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator who shared a tutorial on how to make these non-tied bows.
The one element on this card that I've not shared with you in a very long time is the Build-A-Brad which holds the bow and the ribbon together. This is a great little embellishment, and allows you to make a brad out of anything that you can punch out with a 1/2" Punch. In this case, I took a small flower from another piece of paper in this designer paper set and made that the center of the brad. As the class needed all the Pewter colored brads for their projects, I only had a brass colored one available to use for the card pictured, and that color is no longer available. I much prefer the pewter colored brads, and have more on order!
The stamp set that I used for the greetings is the oldie-but-goodie set, Sincere Salutations. All the greetings in this set are easily punched with the Oval Extra-Large Punch.
This card has a very common card layout, and one that I featured in my 2010 Greeting Card Layout eBook, and which I first published in my June 30, 2010, blog post – and here it is again!
If you haven't used this layout, it really does help you make a quick and easy card! And I always have fun with quick and easy – hope you do, too!
Countdown to Christmas! Day 5: Sending Money? Quick Card!
Aloha, all!
As my children and niece and nephews have grown up, I've been sending fewer and fewer gifts and more and more checks and cash for special occasions – like Christmas, of course! And now I have grandchildren, all of whom live far away, and whose interests change quite a bit more often than I see them. So money works for them now, too!
But as I slip a check or some money inside one of my handmade cards, it seems as if I should be more creative than just folding a piece of paper up and putting it in a card. I looked around and found some money holder cards that people have made. But all of them either require folding the money anyway or are too large to fit in one of Stampin' Up!'s envelopes. So I finally decided last week to make my own special money card. It was a bit on the tricky side, but it's worked wonderfully.
The tricky part is one that I solved, so you won't have to struggle with it. To keep this card short enough lengthwise to fit in a Stampin' Up! envelope, I had to use just a sliver of adhesive on either side of the slit where the bill/check fits in. For the card shown, I cut a piece of Sticky Strip in half lengthwise.
The important thing is that this card, including its "belly band" closer, fits just perfectly inside one of Stampin' Up!'s Small Open End envelopes. And that envelope meets the length and width requirements for mailing in the United States. Important if you live in the U. S.!
Of course I've written a one-page tutorial for this gem of a gift card and it's on my blog as of today! I quickly whipped out a half dozen of these for a craft fair I did today, and they looked lovely on the display table. The ones I have left will look even more lovely when someone in my family opens them on Christmas Day!
I hope you enjoy making these as much as I do. Whatever you end up doing this weekend, I hope you have a lot of fun with it!
A Challenge to Help with Thank You Notes!
Aloha, all!
We're finally back from a whirlwind trip to visit all our kids and grandkids (one set on the east coast, one on the west), two cousins (one for me, one for my darling husband), one great aunt (husband's), and several couples whom we've not seen in quite some time. Whew!!!
Of course, with all the wonderful hospitality we were offered throughout our trip, there will be Thank You cards to be sent. And, when you're a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, the cards must always be handmade. Now that's not a chore – it's fun to get into my Craft Room and start playing around with paper and ink and ribbons and whatever else happens to catch my fancy on any particular day.
Today, though, is also a Divas Coffee Break Design Team color challenge, so this first Thank You note was definitely going to be different from anything else I've ever made. The color challenge included one brand new color (Concord Crush), one color that's kind of new, though not this year (Tangerine Tango), and one that's been around for awhile (Old Olive). This is how it was presented to the design team:
These colors really aren't too bad when it comes to colors I probably wouldn't have ever put together myself. I especially liked having one of the colors – Tangerine Tango – be light enough on which to write a note. So that became the color for the card base. After that, I went looking in the closet to which I have banished all non-holiday stamp sets and came up with Eastern Blooms, and everything else fell nicely into place.
This is a fairly quick layered card to make, as you can see in the sketch, below. I added some interest by punching out one of the small flowers from the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack and adding the flowers and some Old Olive Brads to the center of three of the flowers that I stamped using the Eastern Blooms Stamp Set. Before I attached the small matted strip to the large piece of Concord Crush, I stamped the sentiment from the Heard from the Heart Stamp Set using Versamark and then embossing using White Stampin' Emboss Powder. I punched the bottom edge of the Concord Crush layer with the Scallop Trim Border Punch, and texturized the front of the Tangerine Tango card using the Square Lattice Embossing Folder. The final touch was some Old Olive 5/8" Satin Ribbon.
OK – I'm still a bit jet-lagged. But I'll be back later in the week and show off some more new projects, some of which will be from the class I'm holding tomorrow. Hmmmm. Hope I'm not too jet-lagged for that!!
Oh, and here's the sketch for today's card. Have fun with it!
A Birthday Celebration!
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Aloha, all!
October 2008 is Stampin’ Up!’s 20th Birthday!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY STAMPIN’ UP!!!!
To celebrate its birthday, Stampin’ Up! is offering SEVEN birthday-related stamp sets at 20% off during the entire month of October.
If you’d like to look at them in your catalog (or online using the online ordering link at upper right), here are the stamps that are on sale:
- Big Bold Birthday (109439), p. 62. This set is also available in our Spanish supplement.
- Party Hearty (111532), p. 63
- Bitty Birthday (110994), p. 64
- Crazy for Cupcakes (111618), p. 64
- Simple Birthday Thanks (111546), p. 65
- Time to Party (111702), p. 65
- Crab & Company (108559), p. 68
I’m going to place my own order for some of these stamp sets today! If you’d like to just include your order with mine, call or e-mail me and let me know!
What Fun! Card Making with Hilo Council FCE
A short while ago, I mentioned that I was going to hold a class for our local Family and Community Education Council in Hilo, Hawaii. This was part of the Council’s annual R&R weekend at Volcano National Park. .jpg)
What fun we all had! All of the cards were great! They ranged from those that tried to meticulously reproduce the sample cards to, well VERY creative!! And the most creative one was my absolute favorite.
Imagine, if you will, nine novice paper crafters with scissors and paper cutters and punches and stamps–mistakes were bound to be made! Well, actually, I really tried to convince all that there are no mistakes–there are just "design modifications"! But whether they were mistakes or design modifications, there were trimmings and scraps all over the place.
Enter the lady with absolutely no desire to be a copycat! Suddenly she had a card with so many scallops and ribbons that everyone was just fascinated with what she made! What fun–and how creative!! And that is, after all, what R&R weekends are made of.
Don’t forget that, any time you want me to recreate this atmosphere for you, I am here to do it! Get some friends together and have me over to demonstrate some cards or scrapbook pages. I’m available for pretty much any schedule (but not 24/7–that would be our ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM–Have you tried it out yet?). And I am able to design a program for just about any theme in which you might be interested. So call or e-mail me today!
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Click for information about purchasing the CD by Paypal or ordering the Kindle eBook from Amazon.com.
