CAS Just Because, Flower

I made this card for 2 challenges, CAS-ual Friday's challenge to use kraft and text and Simon Says Stamp's anything goes.  I don't normally use kraft, but I remembered this tutorial by Jennifer McGuire for a technique called ghost stamping.   

The idea is to stamp your image with white pigment ink and when it's dry, to stamp over it with a coloured dye ink.

I added a sentiment and voila, a quick, clean and simple card.

Butterfly Music

I made this card quite a while ago, back when I first got my neon pink ink.  I stamped a music notation background with it on pink paper, then added a bunch of punched black butterflies.  The top butterfly has a pink on over the black and they all have rhinestones in their centres (pink for the black and black for the pink).

I've been frantically making Christmas cards, having realized that the holiday's fast approaching and my time's going to be more limited the closer we get to it.  That means you may see a lot of older unposted cards appearing.  But we'll see.

Baby Snuggle Kaylee Card

I made this card for a family member who recently had a baby boy.

I printed the Some Odd Girl digi, Baby Snuggle Kaylee, and coloured it with pencil crayons.  I die cut the frame out of my cardstock card, glued the picture to the back, stamped 'Adorable' from a Fiskars stamp set and added the embellishments.  The duck was cut on the Silhouette SD and coloured in with markers.  The safety pin and buttons were embellishments from a button company I bought at a craft show several years ago.

Simple Layered Butterfly Card

I made this card a while back but forgot to post it.

It was an easy card to make.  A purple cardstock back, a piece of patterned paper with a butterfly die cut out (using a Papertrey Ink die) and 2 corners round punched, and corrugated paper underneath.  I used pop dots to keep the patterned paper raised around the corrugated paper and finished the card with some glitter glue dots in 2 corners.

CAS Birthday

Due to a large amount of reading I have to do for my other blog, I may be posting a bit more sporadically here over the next little while.  Also, expect more clean and simple cards, as I can whip a bunch of those up fast.  Like this card.

I stamped the large flower and sentiment in dark blue, stamped the smaller flower in light blue, added a strip of blue washi tape and voila.  A nice CAS birthday card in 2 minutes, 46 seconds.  (Ignore the crosshatched patterning around the top.  I tried photographing my cards in a different location, hoping for more even lighting and instead got shadows from the window screen.)

I'm entering it in the 10 Minute Craft Dash Birthday Bash challenge and Simon Says Stamps' Monochromatic challenge.

Primary Colours Pastel Card

I made this card for a colour challenge, to use pastel pink, blue and yellow.  Alas, the challenge ended the day I made it, so I can't enter the challenge.  While I liked certain elements of the card, it isn't my favourite, so that's probably a good thing.

I started out by stamping and cutting out the pink frame.  I then did the banner and sentiment (which I stamped in a darker pink so it would be more visible).  The flower was stamped on a glossy cardstock and coloured with markers.

To finish off the card I die cut some spellbinders flowers, inking them up a bit with a darker yellow.

Simply Jane Background Card

I made this card for Papertrey Ink's Make It Monday Challenge: Stamping Random Background Patterns.  I only used stamps from the Simply Jane set.

I started by stamping a light blue frame on blue cardstock.  I wanted the girls to show up a bit more, so I used a darker blue ink for them, masking the bottom of the frame so their skirts wouldn't go over it.

I die cut this piece out using a slightly too large Spellbinders oval.  I decided I wanted some contrast with the panel, so I inked the inner rim of the die and put the oval through again, getting a nice rim around my piece.

For the card back I used the same blue cardstock and light blue ink.  This time I used the bouquet stamp (minus the stems) and a small single flower image to do a random background.

The label is another Spellbinder's die with a Jane Austen quote in the dark blue ink.

To finish the card I added some self-adhesive rhinestones.

Using Cricut Cutting Mats with the Silhouette SD

A while back my 2 Silhouette SD cutting mats ran out of enough stickiness to be useful.  I was able to do some designs, but the paper tended to twist and move during intricate cuts, so I knew the time had come to replace them.

The problem?  The Silhouette SD has been discontinued, and so has their custom sized mats.  The SD mats are 12x9" while the Cameo's are 12x12" and the Portrait's are 12x8".

I read 3 options online and I'll tell you how each one worked for me.

Option 1: Wash the mats: I used this option for about a year until it no longer worked.  You want to make sure you're not washing off the glue and definitely not drying the mats with something that will stick (I let mine air dry where nothing would disturb them rather than patting/rubbing them dry).

Option 2: Use repositional adhesive spray.  The idea here is to put your mat into a paper bag, spray it with adhesive and voila, new sticky mat.  Just remember that you need a small area on both sides of the mat without adhesive for the machine's runners.  I tried this on one of the 2 mats that came with the machine.  Turned out to be a BAD idea for me.  Yes, it worked, but the adhesive came off the mat and stayed on my paper when I removed it.  Now, if you're just gluing your project down and using a properly sized piece of cardstock, then this is great (though I suppose you'd have to keep reapplying the adhesive between uses).  I, however, cut a design out of a full piece of cardstock.  The leftover cardstock can't be put back in my stash or it will stick to other papers.  So I decided this method isn't for me.

Option 3: Use a cutting mat from a different company.  I researched this online before buying a double pack of Cricut 12x24" cutting mats.  For about US $10 I'd get 4 mats (much better than the $25 the SD mats cost, assuming I could find even a place that still stocked them).  There are several differences between the mats.

1) SD mats have adhesive going all the way to the edges, so there's a bit of plastic kept on the 2 sides, so the sheets don't get stuck on the rollers.  With the Cricuit mats, the adhesive stops where the grid markings stop.  All the way around.  While that's not a problem for the sides, it means the top and bottom have less adhesive to keep your paper in place.

You can see at the 3" mark the mat grids are already diverging.

2) This is a bit more problematic, but the grid itself doesn't quite line up, despite each mat company using inches.  They start out the same but the Cricut's grid slowly gets larger.  If you're using scrap paper with the machine you need to know what grid to put it it so it matches the machine's spot for the cut.  It's not a huge distance though, and I was able to add the proper markings with a permanent marker (just be sure to let the marker dry before you use the mat or it will smear all over the place - lesson learned the hard way).

3) The Cricut mat's a bit thicker than the SD, so you have to watch the loading to make sure it catches.  Maybe even help it out a bit.  Once it's in the machine it works just fine.

4) This is probably due to the fact that I haven't had a new mat in 2+ years and so don't remember how sticky the SD mats came, but the Cricut mats were so sticky I ripped one of my designs taking it off the backing.  It was a somewhat more intricate cut than usual (definitely more intricate than anything I tried when my SD was new).  Still, remember new mats are sticky and be careful taking your paper off.  

If you're replacing your cutting mats I hope this post helps.

Pastel Vines

I saw this card a few weeks back and, liking the card and realizing I had the vine stamp she used, decided to make my own version.

I stamped the vines in white pigment ink on vellum.  I cut out the blue backing cardstock, carefully glued the vellum on and then covered the glue dots with butterflies (I'd hoped to hide the glue under the ink, but it was still noticeable.  Finally I added a label.  I haven't put a sentiment on as I'm not sure what to use the card for yet.

Steampunk Brianna

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Last week I had to catch up on some reading for my other blog and this week I wasn't feeling well.  That passed yesterday and I managed to do some card crafting again, so I'll have some new cards up for you next week.

Today I've got my entry for Kenny K's Steampunk challenge and Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.  I've missed working with the awesome Kenny K digis.  Today I used Brianna Blaster for my card.  I printed her out and cut her outline using my Silhouette SD (one reason I haven't used digis for a bit is because my cutting mat needed replacing and I dithered over it as the SD has been discontinued, so I needed to find an alternate.  More on that next week).

I started with a red layer meant to back Brianna.  I have a doily stamp that looks like wrought iron, so I inked that a few times in black.  I then cut a similar sized black piece of cardstock to put underneath and stamped some gears on it in versa mark ink.  I then embossed those with red glitter embossing powder (much of which later wiped off, but it still looks cool).  I ended up switching the layers around to show more of the embossing.

The third layer is black magic cardstock from Core-dinations.  It's black on top and white underneath.  I cut the piece and then ripped the edges.  I embossed it with a steampunk plate and then sanded some of the raised bits.  The cardback is black cardstock.

For the embellishments I used some silver and grey gears I cut out the last time I did a steampunk card, glued on between the layers.  The 3D gear is from one of my tape runners painted with metallic nail polish.  I had to cut out the centre part as it stuck out too much, so I glued a gear brad to cover the hole. The colour of the brad was too dull for the card so I painted it with silver nail polish.

Finally Brianna.  I coloured her with pencil crayons, adding a silver pencil crayon for the hair, eyes and parts of her gun and outfit.  I also used black and silver glitter pens for the detail work and a red glitter pen for the gauzy cape she's wearing.  There's a touch of glossy accents on her goggles.

The layers are all taped on with Brianna added with pop-dots at the end.  It's one of the busiest cards I've made, but I rather like it.