Card Deconstruction

After getting the photos for my sister, I pulled apart the entire card and played with the pieces to make something totally different.  This card just came together from nothing but I love it.  I started with a Heidi Swapp stencil to add my falling snow.  Before my embossing paste was dry, I added some Judikins Embossing Powder for a little sparkle.  I then added a night sky with about six (!) colors of Distress Ink (Scattered Straw, Seedless Preserves, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire, Tumbled Glass and Black Soot).  I cut out the rolling snow hills with my Mama Elephant Landscape Trio dies.  To the two in white card stock, I added some Versamark Dazzle and the same sparkling embossing powder.  I stamped the sentiment from the Hero Arts set with the houses in some Simon Says Stamp Soft Navy ink and fishtailed the banner.  Love this card, even though it not mass production friendly.

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. 

Thinking of You

The inspiration from this card came from a mash-up of two sources:  the card Kristina Werner made with Ferro and some heat embossing on vellum that Nichol Magouirk did in a recent video.  But for my card, I didn't use Ferro this time.  Instead, I used two products that have been sitting in my stash for a couple of weeks from some recent sale shopping I've done:  Claudine Hellmuth Studio Multi-Medium Matte and some Distress Stickles dry glitter.  I used the Heidi Swapp dotted stencil, brushed on a layer of medium, lifted my stencil, cleaned it and sprinkled on the glitter.  Once it dried, I trimmed the piece to fit my card base with a small mat.  Then I stamped the tag from Lawn Fawn's Winter Gifts set with Versamark and heat embossed it with white embossing powder.  Then I added the sentiment from Inkadinkado's Expressions and Frames set following the same method.  To finish it off, I decided on a red poppy when scrolling through my cut files in my Cameo library.  I loved this one and I think it was just the right finishing piece (with a little Wink of Stella in the center of course).

Birthday Wishes...

Wow there are a lot of birthdays this week.  For instance, my boss celebrates a milestone tomorrow.  So tonight I looked for a great card for him and loved the inspiration I found in this card pinned from somewhere on the Paper Crafts Connection blog.  It was a fun way to use some washi tape from my growing collection, a favorite Diamonds and Dots embossing folder from Quick Kutz, my new StazOn ink in Timber Brown and whole host of random stamps including the "today" stamp from Heidi Swapp's Memory File, the "celebrate" stamp from TPC Studio's Graduation set, a "is" and "about" built from the Ginger alphabet set from American Crafts and the "you" from the "Hugs to you" stamp in the Sympathy4U set from The Stamps of Life.  Lots of different products came together into one colorful birthday card.

One of Those Projects

So often I make things as gifts for others that I can't share on the blog because, well, they would find out before I'm ready. One of "those" gifts last year was for my hubby for our anniversary. We are blessed that both our parents are still with us, but it's been a long, long time since we had good pictures taken of either set. I know better than to ask my mother because she would far rather be behind the camera than in front of it, but I thought I might be successful with his parents, and I was. I lucked out with a great Groupon for photos and sent my in-laws, with the caveat that I get the photos and they had to keep a surprise until our anniversary. Armed with great photos of them together, I tried to set up time to work on the book, but things seemed to conspire against me. A whole day of crafting to myself during a camping trip turned into a hot mess. The time had planned for myself during another crafting trip was interrupted too. Every time I tried to work on it my craft room, dear hubby seemed to wander in and I had to scramble to make sure everything was hidden. But, despite the interruptions and changes to my plans, I still managed to get it finished and it remained a surprise until our anniversary. But I still couldn't share it because my in-laws wanted to use the pictures at Christmas. But now, all the surprises are over and I wanted to share some of my favorites. The album is one that fits inside it's own box. I bought the whole thing (including all the paper and stuff inside) for only $6 at the CKC Convention a couple of years ago. It's been sitting on the shelf waiting for the right project to come along, but the outside is pretty plain. I pulled out all my love, wedding and family stamps for this project and found that my favorite was a Heidi Swapp stamp of the word "love" that I picked up on clearance at Target in Minneapolis, MN several years ago on a work trip. I scanned the stamp for a page that I'll show you later and then decided to see if could cut it out of vinyl. I enlarged the image in SCAL and, sure enough, it cut pretty darn well with the Cricut. This shot is not my absolute favorite, but it's definitely close to it. They just look so happy together. I love the vellum on this one. I punched out the heart strip with my EK Success punch. Then I laid the punched strip over the vellum and traced the edges. I love the way the cut-outs show through the vellum on the final page. This next picture is probably one of the better shots of my father-in-law smiling.

The only thing different on the page was the hearts on the picture. I needed something in that corner to balance the picture and I just thought I would use a little white Staz-On ink, but that just didn't look right when it was done so I colored it in with red ink. It turned out perfect. It's unfortunate that this next picture turned out so dark because I really did love it, but unfortunately there wasn't much I could do to lighten it given the restrictions on the CD that the pictures came on. (After the fact I realized that I should have printed it, scanned it and then tried lightening the scanned version, but I didn't think of that at the time). But what I did love was the effect of the stitching and the chipboard flower. The stitching was a piece of cake to do using my Stampin' Up paper piercer. I had nice straight, perfectly placed holes to run my DMC floss through. The chipboard flower was easy to cut from a cereal box using SCAL. I love getting to recycle packaging in my scrapbooking. This next one is certainly not my favorite picture. But I love the "love" embellishment. I scanned the Heidi Swapp Love stamp, turned it into a SVG and using SCAL and my Cricut, I cut it out just a bit larger for a shadow effect. It's a fun technique.

Last but not least is this page, which is probably my favorite of all of them. First, I just love this picture. I think it's probably my favorite of all of them. But also because I love the background paper. I've read about this technique many times, but I had never tried it myself until this page. It's the technique where you stamp your own background, which I did using the Heidi Swapp Love stamp in Versamark then embossed with a clear embossing powder. It's quite subtle but very beautiful. A few Perfect Pearls in the shape of heart on the mat along with more clear embossing to finish it off.