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Posts Tagged ‘Handmade Birthday Card’
Aloha to My Favorites!
Aloha, all!
Aloha mean many things, including the "Hello" greeting I give you each time I write a post on this blog, and often including a "fond farewell and good wishes" as we say, "Goodbye." So then, I send an Aloha along with a goodbye to my absolute favorite Stampin' Up! Stamp Sets ever. The two sets are my favorite Two-Step Stamping set, Flower Fancy, and my favorite "go-to" greeting stamp set, Sincere Salutations.
My recollection is that Flower Fancy was the very first Two-Step Stamping set that I ever had. Yes, it's that old! And I just loved that it looked like I'd skillfully watercolored in the deftly sketched flowers. I'm still amazed at how much I like the whole effect of the casual elegance of the set. These are but two of the flowers in the set. As the next month goes on, perhaps I'll have a chance to use the set again. But there are so many retiring sets that I love, I really want to share as many of them as possible with you!
I also love the the font that is used in the Sincere Salutations stamp set, and the unique way that the words are arranged – and how they fit on my greeting cards so well! Sigh, I truly will miss having that set available for so many occasions!
Now that I look closely at this card, I find that everything in it – except for the Basic Black stamp set used for the words and outlines and the Whisper White Card Stock – will retire at the end of May also! The two colors that I used for this card – Pear Pizzazz and Poppy Parade are in the 2010-2012 set of "In Colors" and they'll be replaced by new colors in June. We'll find out all about those new colors fairly soon, but I'm going to miss these lovely colors for sure. (Did you notice that two of the flowers are a lighter color? It's still Poppy Parade, but I stamped the image off on a piece of scrap paper before I then stamped it on the card!) Oh, and the Pear Pizzazz Stitched Poly Ribbon - so easy to use in greeting cards! – is also on the retired list.
If you see anything in this card that you might want to buy, you would do well to purchase it as soon as possible, especially the accessories. While the stamps will be available until the 2011-2012 Catalog expires on May 31st, accessories are only available while supplies last! You can shop any time day or night on my website. So just click here if there's something you'd like to order while there's still time!
I don't have a sketch for today's card because it uses the same sketch as the one I used last Tuesday. But I did as I suggested you might do, and made the background card stock for the 1" squares just slightly bigger, and also adjusted the size of the layers of the larger motif to fit the stamp set I used. It really is a lot of fun fussing around with all these measurements! But if you'd like the exact measurements for this card, just let me know in a comment below and I'll take care of it!
Subscribe to the comments for this postSome Fun New Stampin’ Up! Products!
Aloha, all!
Here we are at the beginning of April, and what a month it will be in Stampin' Up! land!! To begin, we are now able to order some products that will be in the 2012-2013 Idea Book & Catalog. The line of products is called "Summer Smooches." But I'm not having any problem in using it right now and right here, in the middle of Spring and with Easter and Spring Birthdays coming up!
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Doesn't this look as bright and cheerful as those daffodils and crocuses popping their heads up this time of the year? I do miss having that experience living out here in the tropics (but I don't miss the snow that precedes them!).
I just love all the colors that make up the set of Designer Series Papers called (as you might imagine) Summer Smooches. There is a stamp set that goes with this product line called Bright Blossoms, and the little leaves that are stamped beneath the brad is one of the stamps. The Summer Smooches Button Brads, however, while they're available now – and during the entire month of April – will ONLY be offered during April. Yes, it goes wonderfully with the new papers and stamps and so forth. But it's a special JUST for this promotion during April. You can see a list and pictures of all the items in this month-long promotion by clicking the link at the top of the right column on this page.
And, yes, there is ribbon and I'm sure you'll be seeing it here at some point during the month. I have used it in a project that I'm going to highlight in my next newsletter as part of my upcoming classes (and yes, finally, I have figured out how I'm going to be doing my Newsletters going forward – so you won't have to wait another 3 months for one!).
Now off to make a few Easter cards! I'm definitely NOT missing Easter cards this year because I just love Stampin' Up!'s Easter Sets! I hope to be able to post quite a few during the week!
Making a Difficult Project Easy!
Aloha, all!
I made this project originally for a blog hop that featured Stampin' Up!'s digital papercrafting product, My Digital Studio. Even though the blog hop is over, I still enjoy showing off this fun Stampin' Up! product, and hope you enjoy this blog post!
My project for today is one that I would absolutely never have considered undertaking with paper! I saw an ad in a magazine that caught my eye in an instant – big bold colors and a graphic design that really appealed to me. I immediately wanted to try to make a greeting card inspired by the ad. While I do this a lot, I just could not see myself cutting out all those little strips of paper, let alone lining them up and gluing them to a card without pulling my hair out!
My Digital Studio to the rescue! With My Digital Studio, I could start laying out strips of digital paper and resizing them – longer, shorter, wider, thinner – with no trouble – and no wasted paper!
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I began by opening a blank 12" x 12" page, and making some horizontal digital strips that looked to me like they would be a good approximation of the pattern in the model's shorts. For this picture, I used Pacific Point, Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, Whisper White, and Peach Parfait.
The next step was to make the same pattern in vertical strips, and then arrange them all together into a pattern that would be the basis for my diagonal design. I then "grouped" all the strips together, rotated the group 45 degrees and exported that page to a .jpeg file.
Working on another page of the My Digital Studio document, I located my new .jpeg picture file (using the browse feature), created a photo box; dragged the diagonal picture into it; and cropped the picture to make a neat square.
Now that I had the basic design, I made three copies of it and arranged them into the large square that you see in my finished project – and it was just what I wanted for my bright and cheerful Birthday Card!
There just isn't enough space in one little blog post to make this a full tutorial. But the great thing about My Digital Studio is that there is a whole online community that is dedicated to helping all of us learn all the ins and outs of this fun – and powerful! – program. It's called "MyDigitalStudio.net" and is open to anyone who wants to learn more about My Digital Studio and share projects with the rest of the community. And there's always your own Stampin' Up! Demonstrator who's there to help you, too, especially if he or she is certified in My Digital Studio.
If you have any questions about My Digital Studio, please let me know! I've received Stampin' Up!'s certification and I do work with it a lot. If you've got a puzzle, it will be a lot of fun for me to try to solve it – if I don't know the answer already!
A Good Time in the Craft Room!
Aloha, all!
Boy, did I have a great time in my Craft Room today! There's been so much to catch up on in terms of household chores that didn't get done while I was out of commission for a couple of weeks that I've just not given myself much play time. But the chores are done and I'm in for a weekend of playing!
One of my fun projects today was a challenge from SUDSOL, the online Stampin' Up! Demonstrators group to which I belong. The challenge was to CASE (copy and share everything) something of my own. Now, I do have a stash of cards in a box on my work table, so it was no problem to go through the box and find something that I wish I'd done a bit better the first time around.
The little card at the left was one I made back during the Thanksgiving season using products from the Stampin' Up! 2011 Holiday Mini Catalog. I actually made it as part of a challenge program that I was running back in November. What I ended up not liking so much about this card was that there were those big pieces of card stock with absolutely nothing stamped on them and no texturizing. So, for today's card, I worked at fixing that.
The layout for the new card is identical to the original card. The big difference was that I texturized both pieces of card stock on the front of the card. The Peach Parfait vertical layer was texturized with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder, and the So Saffron horizontal layer was texturized with the Stripes Embossing Folder. Of course, I had to change the greeting, too. For this card, I used two different stamps from the Hostess Set, Tagtastic. The frame – sized for and punched with the Curly Label Punch – is a stamp in itself. The greeting is part of another stamp in the same set. I just used my Wild Wasabi Stampin' Write Marker to color in the greeting, and I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to center it on the other stamp.
The Designer Series Paper in the background is Just Add Cake, and I just love this particular design for a background. And here I am again tying a project together with some ribbon – this time with the Peach Parfait 1/2" Stitched-Poly Ribbon.
I hope you're going to have as much fun this weekend with your crafting as I'm planning to do! I already have a couple of other cards made to show off this weekend and into the next week. So I may be blogging away all week – for a delightful change!
Oh, and a quick aside – no sketch layout for this card because I've done one before! And you'll find it in my 2011 Greeting Card Layout eBook, available on CD and on Amazon for Kindle! Just click up on the right for more information about the eBook!
A Bright and Colorful ‘Happy Birthday’!
Aloha, all!
I spent most of last week working on projects that really needed to have subtle colors for them to feel right to me. So, this week when it was time for the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge biweekly project, I decided that I just had to have some bright primary colors to work with! And one of the newest stamp sets – in the Stampin' Up! 2012 Occasions Mini Catalog – gave me just the canvas on which to work with those bright colors!
Does this wake you up when you look at it! For sure "Celebrate" is definitely the word that comes to mind with all those wonderful Birthday Party images that are in the stamp, Packed for Birthday. My favorite image is the Pinata and I started off coloring her in and then used the same colors to color in all the rest of the images.
Can you tell that I couldn't make up my mind what color should be in the background? So I just put them all together and used the Patterns Designer Series Papers in Real, Red, Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise, and Pumpkin Pie. Oh, there is a bit of Garden Green and Pacific Point in the stamp colors. But you can only put so many papers in the background of a card, no matter how colorful you want it to be!
As most of you know, I really like tying up my greeting cards with a bit of ribbon to finish them off. But, again, I couldn't decide on which color to use. So I pulled out a bunch and wrapped them all around the card and used the Real Red 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon to tie the bunch together. I didn't let any of the ribbon go to waste as I used the trimmings to accent the card when I took its picture!
So finally I'm feeling like I'm over whatever it was that laid me up most of the month of February, and this card made me feel even perkier! Even if you don't feel the need to be perked up by something as bright as I made, we'd still like to have you join in the challenge over at the SU Only Challenges Blog! All you have to do is make a card, park it in a gallery online somewhere, and link it to the SUO Challenge Blog with the link tool at the end of the blog post. I'd love to see some more of my regular readers join us!
Happy Birthday, Morgan!
Aloha, all!
Not only is this my card for the Create with Connie and Mary Occasions Edition Challenge, it's a birthday card for my granddaughter, Morgan, who will turn 9 tomorrow! She is such the little lady now, and I just know that she'll love all the fun stuff from the Stampin' Up! 2012 Sale-a-bration Catalog! I can remember being so excited when the Build-a-Bear Workshop images came out and I was excited to be using those. Somehow I figured that they would be good for her for years. Not so! She's into the feminine, now!
And are these colors not just perfect for that "Celebrate" greeting?! The stamp set is called Outlined Occasions, and I just love outlined stamps so that I can color them in. Can you tell that I'm really a 9-year old at heart myself? Give me markers, and I'll use them just like I used my crayons back in grammar school (oh, can you tell my real age? It's "elementary" school these days, isn't it?). I'm even critical of myself when I color outside the lines! Oh, for heaven's sake, I can't just let go of Mrs. Matson's pointing out when I did that in 3rd grade!
But enough of the reminiscences. The colors in the Sale-a-brations products this year are just fabulous! And the Create with Connie and Mary challenge picked up my favorites among them for this color challenge: Lucky Limeade, Pool Party, Peach Parfait and Calypso Coral. The Limeade and Coral Colors are featured in the ribbons – they're 1/8" wide Organdy Ribbon, and they tie like a dream. And they're oh so frilly, perfect for this card for a little girl!
Now my little "secret" about this card. It's been put together and pulled apart again. (Boy, have I learned to do that well!) I originally had the layers with the greetings down a little bit on the card. But when I stood back and looked at it, I realized that the Poppy Parade brad (also from the Sale-a-bration Catalog) would look oh so much better if I placed it as if it were the center of the flower. So I broke out the bone folder and pried that layer off (it was adhered with Stampin' Dimensionals, so not much to pry off) and moved it up a skosh. Much better.
Kind of like coloring outside the lines – gotta have those layers lined up just right. I have GOT to get a life!
Speaking of getting a life – I have been ooohing and aaahing over all the projects at the Create with Connie and Mary Occasions Edition, and I have just got to make the time go DO something with them! They are truly fabulous, from simple to complex and with so many styles. It's not to late for you, too, to register! We're only just finishing Week 2 and you'll have access to everything since the beginning – and all the rest of the next 4 weeks of projects – for a full year! Plenty of time to have fun with all those projects yourself!
But no matter what you do this week, have fun with it – and don't worry about coloring outside the lines.
A Follow Up to the Dino Birthday Card!
Aloha, all!
I just had to share this photo of grandson, Jadon, when he opened the card that I featured in my last blog post. You just can't get a more delightful "Thank You" than that kind of a smile from a child when he opens one of your cards!
Happy Birthday Carson and Jadon!
Aloha, all!
You know you are a lucky paper-crafting grandma when two of your grandsons with birthdays within weeks of each other are both really into the same childhood interest! In my case, my grandsons Jadon and Carson are both REALLY into dinosaurs! One lives on the west coast (Washington) and one on the East Coast (North Carolina) and they're 4 years apart in age. But both are really going to like this special card that I made for them this year!
The stamp set from which these happy looking guys came is called Dinoroar, and I think it is one of the cutest Stampin' Up! sets to come out for little boys in a long time. I wish I could take credit for the color job on the two critters, but that credit has to go to fellow Stampin' Up! Demonstrator Cindy Elam, one of my fellow design team members on the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog. Not only did she reveal the colors that she used, but she also shared that she used Shimmery White Card Stock. Wow does that card stock make it easy to blend in colors!
I colored each of the dinosaurs using a different technique. I wanted to see how it would work if I used the Stampin' Write Markers themselves to color them in as opposed to how Cindy did it using Blender Pens with classic ink pads. The guy on the right is colored with the markers and the one on the left with the blender pens. My conclusion is that you can use either, but using the markers is going to create a deeper image than using the blender pens.
The colors that I used are the same colors that Cindy used. The dinosaurs are Garden Green, with Peach Parfait accents. I added a bit of So Saffron to blend in the Peach Parfait. I painted their little toenails with the Peach Parfait, too (bet no real dino ever had a pedicure!). The mouth of the dino on the right is colored in with Calypso Coral. Nice touch that, Cindy!
Cindy made her card with papers that are no longer available, and she had only one of the cute dinos on the front of her card. So my sketch is a bit different from hers – but not so much that I can claim credit for that either!
All that has to be known about this card is for Jadon and Carson to know that Grandma Robin made it! I'm going to have fun giving them these cards in person this week (yes, we're traveling AGAIN!) along with a dinosaur gift for each. A bit of grandmotherly heaven for me! I can't imagine that you can have as good a week as I'm going to have!
But just in case you'd like to try your hand at this card, here's the sketch I worked with:
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Falling Leaves
Aloha, all!
This week's challenge from the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog was to have leaves as a main feature in our project. I originally thought about using these leaves in my project for the Fall Colors challenge last time around. But when I started to add them to that card, I decided that I'd rather use it for THIS card and do something else with the fall colors. Still Fall colors here, though – for sure! I just LOVE the colors of leaves in the Fall. I also love that, here in Hawaii, I don't have to rake them after they turn brown and "fall" to the ground!
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The leaf for this card is a stamp in one of this year's Hostess sets called Faith in Nature. And the leaf, along with the other two images in the set, have words running through them that give them a sort of vintage look. As I'm not too bad at reading French, I determined that the words SEEM to be in French, though some of the longer ones have their letters interrupted with the leaf lines. But they sure do look nice, especially when you do as I do and sponge them up and wrinkle their edges a bit. At first I considered just layering these stamps using a masking technique. But once I started cutting into the first stamped image to make the mask, I realized how relaxing that effort was and I really like the end result.
The colors in the leaves are More Mustard, Lucky Limeade, Pumpkin Pie, Cherry Cobbler and Cajun Craze. All Fall colors where I grew up on the east coast of the United States! The card stock colors that I used as a backdrop for the leaves are Lucky Limeade, More Mustard and Cajun Craze. I finished the card off with a variety of colors of brads – Cherry Cobbler, More Mustard and Old Olive. The Old Olive seemed to match the Lucky Limeade well enough to carry that color combo off.
And, of course, "tying" it all together is some of the fun new Lucky Limeade 3/8" Ruffled Ribbon.
It's been awhile since I've had a sketch for you in one of my blog posts. So I "leave" you today with this one! Have fun with whatever you do with this sketch!
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Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
Aloha, all!
My favorite niece's birthday is this week. Well, actually she is my ONLY niece. But she's still my favorite! As her mother is also one of my downline, I always try to make something extra special when I make a card for Margie. So when this year's birthday came around, I was ever so glad to have the luscious new paper from Stampin' Up! – Spice Cake.
I love it when Stampin' Up! provides both multicolored stripes and multicolored floral patterns in a set of Designer Series Paper! As I'm sure I've mentioned before, putting some of the stripes on the bottom of a card and flowers on the top reminds me so much of my grandparents' home decor with all the wonderful wall papers and chair moldings in between that everyone had back then. It's still popular in many parts of the United States, but it's been awhile since I've been in a home decorated like that.
The colors in the Spice Cake papers that I'm highlighting today are Pool Party, Pear Pizzazz and Soft Suede. Imagine that – they are the colors in this week's Color Challenge over at Create with Connie and Mary! And, yes, the Holiday Edition of their wonderful subscription program is still going on. And it's only in its second week! The projects have been fabulous and oh so different! There's something for everyone! It's not too late to subscribe. The entire 6-week program is included in every subscription – and available for A YEAR afterwards for all the subscribers to reference!
This is the first card I've made with one of the accordion fold medallions that Stampin' Up! has displayed not only in the Holiday Mini, but also in a few places in the Idea Book and Catalog. They're so easy to make with the new Stampin' Up! scoring tool, Simply Scored! I made mine with a 1-1/2" strip of a 12" length of the striped paper. Easy since Stampin' Up!'s paper comes in a 12" square size! There are lots of different ways to make this medallion, but I used the simple way shown by fellow demonstrator Gretchen Barron over at Inspiration in Action. She scored her paper every 1/4" and then sealed the edges together. To keep the medallion in place, punch a piece of card stock with the 1-1/4" Circle Punch and adhere one to each side of the medallion. Then decorate as you wish. I used the Fancy Flower and Five-Point Flower punches to cover the medallion and added some Pool Party and Pear Pizzazz card stock and a piece of Pool Party 3/8" Ruffled Ribbon to the card to complete the design.
Now to get the card in the mail! It will fit inside a Stampin' Up! Medium Square Envelope, though this one might get crushed in the mail. So it will go into a box with a little gift!
Birthdays come around all year – even during the holidays! I hope you have someone fun for whom to make a birthday card this holiday season! That paper is so easy to use!
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