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. 

Another 50th Anniversary Card

I guess I am very blessed to have many great role models for marriage as this weekend we attended another 50th wedding anniversary celebration.  I needed a card for the event.  I haven't really felt like being in my craft room this week so I thought I might just pull one from my stash like I have for every event the last week or so, but I sat in my craft room for a bit and found a card on Pinterest that I thought I might lift.  While I was sifting through my Lawn Fawn stamp sets, I saw the Cruisin' Through Life set in my stash and it inspired me to go a wholly different direction.  For this card, I used a mask to add two bouquets of flowers to the basket of the bicycle, all of which I stamped using Versafine Ink that I heat embossed with clear embossing powder. I added selectively stamped a bit of one of the sentiments from the Cruising Through Life set and then put together the word together using letters from Lawn Fawn's Harold's ABCs set.  I then colored the whole thing with Spectrum Noir markers and added a bit of sparkle with Wink of Stella.  I matted the colored piece with a piece of paper from the Southern Chicken Dumpling Soup 6x6 pad from Jillibean Soup.

For the inside of the card, I used a sentiment from Lawn Fawn's Sophie's Sentiments set, but cut apart so I could add the 50th from the Creative Imaginations Wedded Bliss set stamping the 50th in Tsunineko Galaxy Gold and the rest in Versafine ink.  I then just had to add this cute little strip of bicycles from the Blossom Soup 6x6 pad from Jillibean Soup to finish it off. 

Here's a shot of the sparkle from the Wink of Stella:

 

 Here's a shot of the inside:

Thank you cards

Even though I still have a few cards left in my stash, today I made a few specific thank you cards using some new techniques I either just learned or had never tried. Last night, when I was puttering in my scrapbooking room playing video games, surfing blogs and watching YouTube, I watched Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday video and was very inspired by the cute vintage newspaper card she made. Well, of course, I didn't have the newspaper stamp, the twine, the tiny tags die or stamp, but I figured I could still make it work. Hmmm... thinking about it now, that was a pretty strange assumption - I don't have anything she uses in the card except card stock and yet I still thought I could do it. Fortunately, I have Google. So I searched Google images to find a suitable newspaper image. I substituted embroidery thread for the twine. It isn't quite as cute, but it works:

A few months ago, I was shopping at Paper Zone and bought a little spray bottle of Tsukineko Sheer Shimmer Spritz in a shade called Sparkle. I've never really tried spraying on my layouts or cards but I've really liked when I've seen others using it or similar products. So the little spray bottle has languished in the top drawer of tool cart for probably about three months now. But today I decided it was time to give it a try. First I ran my background paper through the Sizzix with an embossing folder and then sprayed the background (I used my garbage can to contain the spray. It was surprisingly simply and dried quickly. I used some of my stash of flowers, some Irock gems and a little Offray ribbon to finish it off. Yeah for using my stash!

So after Christina's video ended, I started watching videos by 2stampis2b.com. I saw this wonderful video using embossing folders that left a void in the embossing so that you can stamp an image without having the texture where your image is. It's really hard to see, but in this picture, the card stock under the bunch of flowers is flat and all the rest has the texture from the embossing plate. It's a really amazing technique. The video demonstrating it is available here. I just had to try it. So I made my stamping void using a recycled part of an old box that held page protectors. It worked perfectly. Although next time I will probably make the void a little bit bigger. I then colored in the flowers with my Stampin' Up pens and sprayed the whole thing with Sheer Shimmer Spritz in Sparkle (and since that little bottle is running out quickly, I'm definitely going to try her spray that she shows how to make here). I then used Inkscape to make the ribbon slide and imported it into SCAL. I added the words "Thanks a bunch" and used my metallic Cri-kits pen to write it then cut it out. Then just layer the pieces and it was done. The picture shows the shimmer mist really well and the light really reflects off the writing much more in the picture. The shimmer mist is really much more subtle in person and the writing is in much starker contrast.

So now I just have to make a sympathy card and I can get back to my layouts. Oh, and I have to actually mail a whole bunch of cards that I'm behind in mailing out too... Oh well, better late than never I guess.