Monday, June 30, 2014

Simon Says Stamp July 2014 Card Kit

I've mentioned before that I bought the Simon Says Stamp July 2014 Card Kit.  I started by making the sample cards on the sheet that comes in the kit.  None of these are my design and I followed the pictures pretty faithfully (with only small deviations) and none (except maybe the watercolor one) required much experience to replicate (the only reason the watercolor might be difficult is that a new card maker may not understand that you can use the ink in the kit to do the watercoloring and the ink splatter or feel comfortable with watercoloring or splattering ink at all).  I decided to use this kit as if I'm brand new to the hobby as I'm trying to decide if this kit would be a good choice for a relative beginning.  My boss' daughter has only recently taken up card making and since she too is fighting breast cancer (seems like I know a lot of people fighting it lately), I was looking for a kit that might be a good gift for her to play with when she's feeling up to playing with paper. My verdict?  I personally love the kit.  The stamp set is very versatile and stamps well.  There's good value in the kit and I think it's something anyone from a newcomer with only basic skills and tool to an advanced card marker could enjoy.  Honestly, I went from just trying it to see if I would recommend it for a new card maker to seriously considering a subscription myself.  I've bought a couple of their kits in the past, but haven't played with them as just the kit itself.  This is the first time I've spent a lot of time playing with just the kit and I think I'm hooked.

Anyhow, here are the cards I made from the samples:






Sunday, June 29, 2014

Hello using Simon Says Stamp's July 2014 Card Kit

Today's card is more of what I had in mind when I started playing in my craft room last night.  For this card, I used some watercolor paper I had sitting on the side of my craft table that I die cut with that same Paper Smooches notepaper die.  I watercolored it using the Lipstick Red ink pad that comes with the kit and the Soft Navy pad I bought back around Father's Day.  I then inlayed the hello cut out of the watercolor paper using a Lawn Fawn die.  I then just cut down a blue card base from the card stock in the kit, added a mat of red from some card stock left over from another project and a smaller mat cut from some of the paper in the kit.  A few pop dots for notepaper along with a few of the red stars that come in the kit finished it off.  Or at least I thought so until I pulled out my Wink of Stella and Glossy Accents that were sitting on my craft desk to give the hello a little pop. 





Saturday, June 28, 2014

Sending Happy Thoughts Using the Simon Says Stamp July 2014 Card Kit

Last weekend I played with the Simon Says Stamp July 2014 card kit.  I made my own copy of each of the samples because I wasn't quite feeling any crafty mojo.  Even after all the card samples were made, I had lots (and I do mean lots) left of the kit.  Hubby and I have a long weekend together and have been pretty busy, but tonight I slipped into my craft room after our date and just started re-arranging the papers on my desk.  I had planned to do a inlayed die cut since I've seen so many cute examples lately, but then something else took root and I'm pretty happy it did.

In addition to the card kit, I used a Paper Smooches die of the notebook paper, the white paper I cut the notebook paper from, a small piece of ribbon, some Versamark ink, some black Archival ink and the clear embossing powder, a little clear Wink of Stella on the Sending and a heart on one of the envelopes then a little Glossy Accents on the heart on the envelope.  Sure, it's more than just the card kit, but, other than perhaps the die, it's staples most of us have in our stash.  Love this kit and the stamp set with it is amazing.  If you want one, head over to Simon Says Stamp before this kit sells out.  


Sunday, June 22, 2014

Missing U

I made this card before I left for DC, but I wasn't really sure about it because it didn't turn out exactly like I had envisioned.  But, it's grown on me.   I made it using the dies from Lawn Fawn's Quinn's Capitals dies.  I die cut the white panel then backed it with some cute paper form the Park Bench 6x6 set from Fancy Pants.  I used another sheet from that pad to cover the entire front of the card base.

But what I really love about this card is the inside:

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Thinking of You - Inspired by Kristina Werner

I spent the first part of the week in DC.  I never really sleep well when I'm away from home, especially if I'm on my own.  So I watched a lot, I do mean a lot, of crafting videos and couldn't wait to get home to get into my craft room.  But, jet lag, work and life just got in the way until today.  It turned out that was okay because I also got to open some new goodies, including the new round blending tools, so I was super excited to play with them.

One of the videos I watched was a fabulous one-layer card made by the equally fabulous Kristina Werner.  You can find her blog post and the video here.  I encourage you to subscribe to her You Tube channel and blog.  They are amazing.

So for today's card, I made my own version into a thinking of you card.  I used a Heidi Swapp heart stencil I picked up at the Creating Keepsakes Convention, some Worn Lipstick Distress Ink and the new round blending tool.  Can I just tell you how much I love, love, LOVE the round tool?  It's so much easier to use.  I can see a lot more blending with Distress Ink in my future.

After I had my hearts down, I shifted the stencil and used a black pen to outline the hearts on the shadow and added Wink of Stella to the hearts.  Then I added a sentiment from the Fiskars All Year Greetings set with some Versafine Ink.  Then I matted it on some black card stock and popped it onto a white top folding card base.  But I didn't like how the sentiment looked.

 So on to version #2.  I did all the same, except I masked off the place for my sentiment and made the panel slightly larger.  I made the mat a little smaller too.  I liked this version a lot better. 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

I Love You to the Stars and Back

I've had this idea percolating in my head since Sunday and I finally had some time to get my fingers inky.  I used two Lawn Fawn stamps sets:  Happy Trails and Lucky Stars.  I inked the sentiment and stars using Versamark and heat embossed them with clear power.  Then it was time for some inky fingers.  I used Scattered Straw, Seedless Preserves, a little bit of Dusty Concord and a whole lot of Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink to make my night sky.  I really need to get those round blending tools, but I made the rectangle ones and some Tsukineko dabbers work.  After stamping out my trees, car and trailer in Momento ink, I colored them pretty simply with my copic markers.  Then I cut them out with the matching dies.  I decided they needed some grass, so I cut out some green card stock with my Lawn Fawn grassy border die and added a little Mowed Lawn Distress Ink to the edges.  Then it was just a matter of building the background with some tape and pop dots. 

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Project Life: May Citrus Twist Kit

Since I switched to doing one month of Project Life at a time, I just needed to get through the end of May to get caught up.  So here are the pages from May using Citrus Twist Kits.  (Secretly, I'm thrilled to have Project Life caught up because I have some card ideas floating around that I want to try out and I told myself I couldn't go back to card making until Project Life was caught up). 

 

 
 
 

 



Monday, June 9, 2014

More Project Life

Here's another installment of Project Life featuring products from Citrus Twist Kits (love them).

 

 

 


 


Sunday, June 8, 2014

Catching Up with Project Life

I got a bit behind with Project Life last year when I did the big 50 year anniversary project to give to my parents.  One of these days, I'll post those layouts, but I think I'm still in recovery.  I think I did something like 50 layouts in 30 days.  For some people that might not be a big deal, but, for me, that's like doing a whole year's worth of layouts in a month.  Craaazzzyyyy!  So I spent the beginning of the year catching up Project Life.

Part of what made it easier to catch up was that I joined the Project Life kit club at Citrus Twist Kits.  It's fun to open the kit every month and it seems faster and easier to put my weekly layouts together when I stick to using the papers and embellishments in the kits plus my stamps and die cuts. I was so happy to get all those months finished up in and in my book, but as I was putting away pages this weekend, I realized I hadn't shared anything recently.  So today I'm sharing some of my recent pages.  (Yes, I know there is a blank pocket in the first page below, it isn't blank in my book, just in this picture).
 
 
 
 
 


 
 

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Looking for My Mojo

I just don't get it.  I have the whole day to myself because hubby has catering to do today.  I've been looking forward all week to a whole day to play in my craft room without feeling guilty about taking away from time we could spend together.  Now that it's here, apparently my mojo took the day off just when I had planned to make a handful of cards to have ready to encourage my friend as she goes through her upcoming surgery and chemo and reconstruction.  I could be in my craft room, but I've been folding clothes, changing sheets on the bed, trying to fix a slow drain...  When cleaning the house appeals more than playing with paper, something is wrong.  Does this ever happen to you?  If so, what do you do about it? 

I've got my usual tricks:  reading blogs, watching YouTube videos, surfing Pinterest and remaking something someone else has done.  But I think my favorite is shopping.  I just love shopping for new supplies (as evidenced by my craft room), but there's a pretty limited selection here in town so I'm forced to look online for a lot of my supplies. So today, when I couldn't really find my mojo, I noticed that Simon Says Stamp was running a 20% off sale on their branded products (use code "Twenty" through 11:59 EST on 6/8). I found some things I like and have wanted for a while, put them in my cart, got all the way to the checkout and stopped.  I still don't know why.  I know that each of things I picked out are things I will love to play with and am excited to play with, but I just stopped.  So weird.

But, maybe just the act of shopping did the trick.  I started playing with my Art Impression watercolor stamps and Distress Markers.  Just as I finished a panel, I heard the buzz of the dryer.  So I set the panel aside and headed off to fold some more laundry. When I got back, I discovered that I must have set the panel on a slight angle because some of the water ran and pooled, ruining part of the design.  Grrrrrr.....  After thinking about tossing the whole thing, I decided I would try to save it by covering the puddled ink with a banner with a sentiment stamped from the Inkadinkado All Occasions set on some watercolor paper.  I then matted it with a pop of red and then used a pre-made card base in a swirl pattern.  I'm not sure it's totally successful, but maybe it will grow on me and hopefully my mojo will return.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Take Two

Remember this card that I wasn't quite sure about?
Well, I pulled it apart and played with it some more.  I used the dashed line stamp from Lawn Fawn's Winter Gifts to add a little something to the banners.  I used the tag stamp to stamp the tag background to give it more definition.  I pulled apart the baker's twine and substituted one length of Silver Sparkle hemp cord from Lawn Fawn in with the Hemptique baker's twine.  Then I added a few Studio Calico wood veneer stars that I brushed with Wink of Stella and topped with Glossy Accents to give them a bit more flash.  I like it a lot better.  It's certainly not my favorite card I've ever made, but I like it lot better now.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Withholding Judgment

So I'm not so sure about today's card.  I had this idea but it didn't quite translate the way I had it in my mind.  So I'm not in love with this card.  I keep looking at it thinking that it needs something, but I'm not sure just quite what.  So I'm going to sleep on it and take another look at it tomorrow.  In the meantime, what got me started tonight was the newest sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches, another challenge block that I stalk read every week, but haven't participated in for a while.  I really liked Rita's sketch this week and I've had this Happy Trails set from Lawn Fawn that I picked up at CKC about two months ago, but haven't broken out yet.  But now that I've played with the set, I really, really want to go camping, but the RV is in the shop.  Boo.

I had stamped the stars from the Lawn Fawn Lucky Stars set, heat embossed the stars with some Versamark and clear embossing powder, stamped the car and trailer from Lawn Fawn's Happy Trails set, inked the starry night background and grass with some colors of Distress Ink, and had the car and trailer pretty much colored with Copics when my husband came in my craft room.  He immediately commented on how cute it was (which he rarely does when something is in progress).  So I felt like I was on the right track, especially when I added Wink of Stella to the starry night, but it just fell apart after that. I love the starry background embossed with the Darice Stars folder using paper from the Lemon Lush 6x6 pad from Studio Calico.  I wasn't sure on the banners because I couldn't find a paper I liked, so I just colored them with a marker to match.  Basically I like each of the elements by itself, but they just don't really come together right...  So you just may see this card again soon when I figure out what's not quite right.  Do you ever have that happen to you? 

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Loads of Thanks

I wasn't sure I would make it into my craft room tonight.  I'm fighting a bit of a sinus headache and I really just thought about crawling in bed, but it's Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs!  How could I sleep through that?  In fact, I have to thank those guys because in between periods (and overtime!) I played around in my craft room because I needed a thank you card.  I pulled out a Newton's Nook stamp set called Wagon of Wishes that I think is just adorable and stamped out the wagon with the apples.  I played with my copics trying to color the apples to match the apples that grow on the tree in our backyard.  It was kind of hard to get that green, yellow with a little red combo, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I was a little stumped for a layout for the card, but then I remembered that I loved the Mojo Monday layout and I haven't participated in that for a while so it seemed like the perfect time to try my hand at it.  I've also been playing around with trying the current Inky Paws challenge which was to use wood, metal or cork on a card.  So I started by breaking out the Hardwood stamp I bought during the Stampin' Up free shipping promotion a while back.  I used Vintage Photo Distress Ink on some watercolor paper then used a damp brush to spread the color a little.  To be honest, I wasn't sure I liked it and I really wasn't sure I liked it with the image I had colored, but I kept plugging along.  I broke out my Lawn Fawn Circle Stackables and Scalloped Circle Stackables to set off the cute sentiment from the Newton's Nook set and then remembered how much I liked the tag stamp and die from the Lawn Fawn Winter Gifts that I used on a card a week or so ago.  So the last piece I wasn't sure about was the strip on the right.  I knew that a red strip would help tie it all together, but plain red wasn't working for me.  I pulled out a couple of embossing folders.  Wood grain didn't look quite right and I ended up debating between a dotted texture and this Quick Kutz Zig Zag folder.  Fortunately, I have a great resource when I can't decide:  my husband!  So then it was just some glue, a couple of chomps of the corners of some pieces and a few wood veneer hearts to balance what seemed to be a bit of a plain spot in the corner and it was done.  I actually walked back out to the family room and commented to my husband that I wasn't really sure about the pieces going together but I loved how it turned out in the end.   I'll be linking this up to both challenges, but come play with me because it's always more fun if everyone plays.  You have until Friday, June 6th for the Inky Paws challenge and until Sunday, June 8th for the Mojo Monday challenge.


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Welcome Baby

It's been a rough couple of weeks at work so I have been too drained in the evenings to play in my craft room. Last week, I literally came home, crawled in bed, went to sleep, got up, went to work, repeat until the weekend.... Last weekend, I was busy finishing up April's Project Life layouts and prepping photos for May, so I didn't even make a single card.  Today was another rough day at work where I feel so brain-dead that I just wasn't sure I could come up with anything creative, but I figured I could clean the craft room even as a zombie.  But a funny thing happened... there was this first blip in an otherwise flat line of brain activity as I started putting away the remnants of a 6x6 Studio Calico Lemon Lush paper pad from my April Citrus Twist Project Life kit, I was drawn to a piece of the green paper that I had die cut with the grass border die from Lawn Fawn.    I set it aside thinking it would work well on a card with some critters or something.  Then a second blip when I saw the cute Polaroid-like die from Amy Tangerine's Plus One collection for American Crafts as I was putting away the dies on my desk.  Then ... blip ... these cloud cut-outs would work as a mask for the background ... blip... these Distress Inks are the right color for a sky ... blip ... this red glitter paper would be cute inlayed in the heart cut out ... blip... oh yeah, I need a baby card for my co-worker (oh, and Mom do you have any sweaters made up?) ...blip... I have that new set from Newton's Nook called Wild Child that would work for a cute baby card ... blip ... blip ... blip... and ta-da!  It's all made from scraps on my desk and the Newton's Nook set I got the other day but told myself I couldn't use until I finish up Project Life for April.
So don't look to closely at the coloring.  It's a little blotchy because I got caught up watching tonight's episode of True Tori while I was cleaning (okay so I was talking back to the screen telling her that she's chickening out by not asking Dean if this is the only affair he's had, plus I really want to know and I'm bummed that she's going to handle it in "private" - you signed up to have the cameras follow you, now I want the dirt and you're denying me that) and my ink dried before I got to finish blending it and, honestly, in person, it doesn't look nearly as blotchy as it does with all that light on it so I'm leaving it alone.