Crafty Wednesday – more Blue Christmas

The crunch is on! I’ve been getting cards ready for the mail, writing letters about our year, and printing off pictures of the Grandson to send with the cards, which I hope to get to the post office today. I may already be too late getting the two across the sea to my cousins, but at least the thought was there! Anyway, I’ve got a couple more cards in blue to show you.

I found this cute penguin stamp at Michael’s and fell in love with it. I stamped/embossed it in black and filled in the image with markers, this time, to get the more vibrant colours I wanted. I glued on some cotton batting to the fluffy collar and hat trim areas, with mini pompoms on the hat ends. After cutting out the image, I placed them on a 3-1/2″ scalloped circle embossed with the D’vine Swirls plate & the Cuttlebug. I also embossed the base card, added some snowflake ribbon and tacked on the sentiment, stamped onto velum, with two white brads. Inside, I covered the brad backs with snowflakes, added the simple sentiment and stamped/embossed snowflakes (from a tnowflake stamp set byInkadinkado) directly onto the card using Versa Mark & white embossing powder with a bit of glitter.

I ordered the stamp for this card from Stampin’ Up at the end of the season, last year, and finally had the chance to use it. It’s a bit more complicated, needing a lot more painting than some of the other stamps I’ve used but I love the whimsy of all the children gathered around Santa and the sentiment that came with the set. I embossed the base card with the swirls, glued on some blue glitter and added a bit of ribbon. Inside, I stamped the sentiment (from the Polar Bear Holiday set from Close To My Heart) & cut it out using an oval stencil. I placed it on the oval die-cut I made, using the middle-sized Beaded Ovals (Nestibilities) by Spellbinders, which I sponged lightly with blue ink. I added a few stamped/embossed snowflakes, also from the Polar Bear Holiday set.

Next week, I should have a few more of my painted-silk card creations, so stay tuned! 🙂

Advertisement

Crafty Wednesday – Spellbinder Pendants

Welcome to the first Crafty Wednesday of the new month! Now, those of you who are really into fantasy realms, this is nothing like that! Spellbinders is a trademark name for a brand of die-cutting equipment, similar to the Cuttlebug devices put out by Provo Craft, or the Big Shot products by Sissix. The trick, if you don’t have a Spellbinders machine, is figuring out how to use the much thinner cutting blades on the other machines. I didn’t have a ‘C’ plate for my Cuttlebug, so added layers of corrugated cardboard until the blades cut all the way through the paper. For this anniversary card, I used the ‘Shapeabilities Pendant’ set of 4 cutters with an embossing feature.

I needed to add 4 pieces of corrugated cardboard to cut out the pieces and removed one piece of cardboard, so I could run it through my Cuttlebug again to emboss the piece.

To add a different colour to the embossed area, leave the paper piece attached to the cutting blade and sponge over the exposed section(s) with the desired colour, so it looks like this:

I cut out 2 different-coloured large pendants (above shape), 1 each of the two smaller pendants in different colours, and 2 of the curly accent pieces. I sponged the lighter coloured pieces in the same red, and the small accent pieces in a lighter pigment-based ink, like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used the dark red piece of card stock (5″ x 3-3/4″) from which I cut the accent pieces as the main background for my card. For the base of the card, I used plain white card stock (8-1/2″ x 5-1/2″ folded in half). I sponged the edges of the card front and the inside with the same dark red ink.

I centered the dark red card stock onto the card base and placed the large pendant at the top. In the center of the large pendant I added the consecutively smaller pendant pieces, like this:

At the bottom where I had cut out the accent pieces, I used pop-up squares to raise up the red pieces so the white background showed around them.

To finish off the front, I took two of the heart-shaped pieces that were cut from the large pendant and hooked them together like linked hearts. I pressed them against sticky dot paper to pick up the sticky dots, and placed them at the bottom between the accent pieces. I stamped the ‘Happy Anniversary’, carefully cut it out and placed it beneath the large pendant.

On the inside, I used the second large pendant as the background for the sentiment (Stampin’ Up‘s Curvy Phrases), which I cut out using a 2″ circle punch and sponged around the edges using the same dark red ink. And there you have it!

Hope this Crafty Wednesday was worth the wait! 🙂

Belated Crafty Wednesday

Or in other words, Crafty Thursday! Well, I have a few more cards to share with you.

The first was made with the the new Tim Holtz die cutter I got for my birthday – Bird & Birdcage. I used gold glitter card stock for the cage, to which I added gold ribbon, and I added feathers to the bird. For the background, I embossed it with the Swirls embossing folder and my Cuttlebug. Inside, I used a piece of sheet music and curved the corners with a punch. The stamped bird is from Stampin’ Up‘s Confucius stamp set. I believe the Happy Birthday is Stampin’ Up as well from a sentiments set I got a long time ago. I like the swirly look to it and use it a lot for birthday cards.

The next card was for my niece’s wedding. She really likes Betty Boop so used the black & white theme with red accents. That’s why I chose the red background. I stitched across the top with pink embroidery cotton. The stamp is a discontinued wedding flourish that I first stamped with Versa Mark (sticky pad) and added black embossing powder. Add a little heat and the powder forms a shiny raised impression, to which I added black ‘jewels’. The ‘love’ is also made with black embossing powder on pink card stock.

 

The inside contains a sentiment that I created with MS Word. I added black, heart-shaped jewels to the sentiment. The hearts were black-embossed on pink card stock. They are from Close To My Heart’s ‘Love Life’ clear stamp set.

 

 

 

 

For our ‘Sweet Sixteen’ nephew, I created this card using a background from a calendar my brother’s wife gave me a few years ago. It was a ‘Scrap Booker’s’ calendar that contained 365 pages of elements you could use for making cards or scrapbook pages for all occasions. The page I used had masculine colours and the swirl looked like a six, which seemed appropriate for the occasion. The ’16!’ was embossed with blue embossing powder. The stamps are from CTMH’s ‘Varsity Alphabet’ set. The base paper that I used was a crackled-look paper from a set I got years ago – so long ago I can’t remember the name of it! I found some pearlized buttons to put on the black-net ribbon.

 

 

 

On the inside, I used the left-over piece from the calendar page and embossed the ‘Imagine the Possibilities’ (from SU’s ‘Word Play stamp set) and the ‘Happy Birthday’ in blue. The Happy Birthday I punched out using a 2 inch circle punch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The girl who got married (above) was also celebrating her birthday at the Easter gathering, so this is the card I made for her using the same red/white/black colour scheme. The background was embossed using the Cuttlebug and the ‘Victoria’ embossing folder. This has to be one of my favourite patterns for the Cuttlebug. I used a 3 1/2 inch scalloped circle punch, I cut out the base for the CTMH bird from the ‘Find Your Style’ set. The silver ‘feathers’ are rub-on transfers from one of American Crafts ‘miniMARKS’ transfer packs that we got as one of the specials offered by the owner of The Scrapbook Cottage during our scrapbook weekend in March. The ‘soar’ is also part of CTMHs ‘Find Your Style’ set cut out with a 1-1/2 inch scalloped oval punch. The final embellishment is the black and white polka-dot bow.

On the inside, I added a feather, then put on the black-embossed ‘Happy Birthday’ sentiment, cut out using SU’s 2-3/8 inch scalloped circle punch. The sentiment ‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams’ was stamped with black embossing powder and painstakingly cut out using a sharp pair of pointy scissors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final card for this week was fun to make, especially when I made one  for each of our grand nephews born on the same day! The background is a wallpaper sample from which I cut a few matching leaves to cover the giraffe and the ‘photo hunter’ using ‘pop-up’ sticky strips. The giraffe is from the ‘ZOO’ Recollections stamp set that I stamped on a beige patterned paper. The ‘hunter’ is from my Publisher’s Gold clip art disc. It is normally a black and white image, but I used coloured pencils to brighten him up a little. Inside is more wallpaper in a kind-of African pattern. I printed the sentiment from the computer. It was stamped with a bargain-bin ‘Happy Birthday’.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s installment, even if it was a day late! 🙂