A Set of All Occasion Cards

Aloha, all!

     A friend recently asked me to make a set of all occasion cards for her granddaughter, who loves to send cards just for the pleasure of it.  She wanted 20 cards, and nothing too fancy.  What a great opportunity to show off some simple one layer cards!  But I immediatley had a creative block, and needed something to get the creativity going again.

     Enter fellow demonstrator – and one of the top demonstrators in the USA! – Patty Bennett.  She shared a design using brand new 2013-2014 Catalog products on her blog last week, and that really got me going.  In no time at all I had half of the cards done!

     This card assortment uses one of the new Hostess Stamp Sets, Simply Sketched (the flower and the "Happy Birthday Wishes" and "Thanks So Much" stamps) and the "Thinking of You" sentiment stamp from the brand new Stamp Set, Wetlands.  Patty used one of the other stamps from Simply Sketched in her background.  But I could barely get the sponging of the background right without adding any thing more!

     The technique for this set of cards is called "Reverse Masking."  I cut a rectangle out of a piece of card stock (SOOOO easy with the Stampin' Up! Stampin' Trimmer!!) and then laid it over the Naturals White Card Stock on which I was going to stamp.  Then I sponged in two of the newest Stampin' Up! colors, Crisp Cantaloupe (the peachy color) and Pistachio Pudding (the green color).  Patty's instructions were to have a light touch with the sponge.  As you can see, sometimes I followed her instructions, and sometimes, well, I forgot.  But I really do like all of the cards that I made, darker and lighter both. I used both the Crisp Cantaloupe and Pistachio Pudding card stock for the card bases, mixing them up among the three sentiments.

     For my next set of cards, I'm going to continue with the reverse masking technique, but I think I'll use some of the Sizzix Framelits for my shapes.  I haven't decided which ones to use, but you can be sure I'll share the cards here!

     I'm really glad I finally got off the ground with this project – and I had fun with it, too!