Naughty Kitty

This is another card from a quick batch.  I suspect my work schedule is going to be crazy come November, so I'm trying to get some extra cards made now so I have something to post (and so my Christmas cards are all ready in time).

The kitty on this card is from Stampendous' Fluffles the Cat set, which I've woefully underused.  I paired it with a CAS-ual Friday sentiment because that cat just looks guilty of something.  Which is why it's holding the little Christmas tree as a 'look, I'm good' ploy.  It's standing on a piece of glitter gold ribbon.  I used a bit of pink glitter pen on the berries on the tree and the cat's nose.

I'm submitting this to Simon Say's Stamp's Anything Goes challenge.

Lawn Fawn Deer

This is the first card I made yesterday for the CAS-ual Friday's Fall Colors and a Leaf challenge.  I thought this was too busy, but looking at it again, I don't think it is, so I'm submitting it after all.  I'm not generally a fan of brown, but I'm having fun playing with it lately.  I'm also submitting it to Simon Says Stamp's Anything Goes challenge.

This card again uses the stuff I won from Lawn Fawn.  I love the maple leaf sequins.  And yes, I know, birch trees don't drop maple leaves, but that's what I had so...

I started by stamping the deer on white cardstock and colouring it with markers.

I used brown cardstock for the base, then cut a piece of patterned paper to go on top because I wanted something to wrap the brown and white hemp twine around.  I attached the paper to the base, then added the shimmery dark orange leaf sequins and the fussy cut deer to the card with pop dots.  Lastly I glued on the blue sequin.

I Love Fall

This is the second card I made for CAS-ual Friday's current challenge: Fall Colors and a Leaf.  I thought the first one turned out a bit too busy for a clean and simple card, though looking at some of the other entries, maybe it would have been ok.  Anyway, I'll post that card tomorrow.  For today, I've definitely got a CAS card.

Since it's a fall theme and I just won some fall oriented things from Lawn Fawn, I decided to play with them.

I started out by scoring three lines on the bottom of the cardstock for the ground.  I stamped the tree in brown and then the leaves in various colours.  I'd actually planned to put an animal next to the tree (either the racoon - which didn't end up fitting the colour scheme - or the fox - which would have) but in the end decided that the card looked fine without anything in the middle.  I stamped the sentiment to give the card a bit of balance.

Winter Wishes

This card is for the Some Odd Girl card challenge, which is a card sketch:

I tend to use these pretty literally, so here's my card.

I started with a piece of dark blue cardstock for the card base (it looks black in the picture, but it's really navy blue).  I die cut the circle out of the light blue cardstock and then embossed it with a snowflake folder.  I debated using a smaller circle for the inset piece, but it looked strange, so I used the same die to cut out a white circle which I then stamped and coloured with pencil crayons.  The winter wishes was carefully masked so I could separate the sentiment (which overlaps a bit), and the ends cut with scissors.

If you're interested in trying digital stamping but aren't sure how, or if you already use digital stamps but could use some pointers, Some Odd Girl has put out a free downloadable ebook with information.  You get an image to practice with too, which is pretty cool.

Monochromatic Christmas Card

I made this card for the Lawnscaping challenge going on right now, monochromatic.

I wanted to use more of my scratch and sniff embossed gingerbread cookies, so I decided to make my card with shades of brown.

I punched snowflakes out of a lighter piece of brown cardstock and a border out of a metallic brown/bronze cardstock, then started assembling things.

The cookies were fussy cut a while back and applied with pop dots.  The tray was cut on a silhouette and lined with a white gel pen.  I used a bit of coloured gel pen on the cookies themselves.

I used the sentiment from the Sweet Christmas set, as well as the mini snowflake, which I stamped in the open areas.  I probably should have centered the sentiment, but I didn't think of that in time.

Crafting companies are so amazing.  Lawn Fawn recently had a contest for their newest collection, stamps and dies.  And, along with several other lucky people, I won!  This is the prize they sent me, the complete Into the Woods collection.  And it looks awesome. :D

Hydrangea Birthday

Today's card is for the current Simon Says Stamp Challenge, to celebrate Stamptember and use a product from the SSS catalogue.  I used SSS's Delicate Dahlia die and Impression Obsession's Hydrangea die, which I got at their store.

I started by die cutting the hydrangea out of light green and light blue cardstock.  I then used the dahlia die to emboss the upper and bottom corner of my cardstock base.  I glued on the hydrangea stem and the thin bits of the leaves, using pop dots to raise the leaves themselves up.  I glued down the flower backing so there's a nice matching blue behind the flowers.  I removed the fuzz from a Q-tip and used the end to fold the individual flowers around and so I could dab bits of glue on the bases.  I then applied them to the flower base (I die cut 4 batches of flowers, though a 5th wouldn't have been amiss).

I applied a bit of chalk ink to the base of the card to give some colour to the embossed image there and the impression of grass.  I guess pigment ink it's a bit more forgiving than the dye inks I normally sponge with, so I didn't get any smear marks the way I usually do.  I'll have to remember that.  

To finish off the card, I stamped Happy Birthday in a light blue pigment ink.

Embossed Wedding Card

This is a wedding card I made when I first got my Big Shot intending it as a quick wedding card.  So far, I've ended up personalizing my cards when friends have gotten married, so it's still in my pile.

I started out by punching the edge of my black cardstock and putting it on the white card base.  Then I cut the three banners out of silver cardstock, embossed them and glued them to the card.  For the center image the deboss went on the shiny side, which I thought made a nice contrast with the other two embossed images, so I wasn't too miffed with the error.  

Beary Birthday Card

Today I've got another card I made quite some time ago but never posted.  Enjoy!

Scent Embossed Gingerbread Cookie Cards

I started this last week after seeing this tutorial on Papertrey Ink's Capture the Moment blog for making your own scented embossing powder.  I remembered this cute recipe book cover on the Lawn Fawn blog from last Christmas with a design I wanted to reproduce.  I actually bought the stamp set they were profiling because I liked that cover so much.

So, first I needed my spices.  I mixed the spices used for gingerbread cookies, which turned out to be too strong for what I wanted and didn't quite smell like gingerbread.  The tutorial for this technique emphasized not adding sugar (because it will burn when you heat the powder), and I imagine that and molasses help give the traditional scent.  I messed with the powder, adding some more ginger, etc, until I liked what I ended up with well enough.  I then use 1 tsp of my spice mix and combined it with 1* tsp clear embossing powder in a small container I got at the dollar store.
[* After looking at the tutorial post again, it's supposed to be 2 tsp embossing powder to 1 tsp spice/scent, which is probably why I had issues if I used too much powder at once.  Having said that, the 1-1 ratio did work, just probably not as well as the 1-2 I was supposed to use.]

Now, my gingerbread cookie stamps aren't solid, so this was the perfect excuse for me to pull out the Versamark pen I bought years ago and never used.

I started the cookies by stamping a bunch in white pigment ink and another set in black dye ink.  I wasn't sure which I'd prefer, so decided to do both.  After the pigment ink had dried, I went over the faces of the figures with the Versamark pen, and then added the embossing powder on top.  I did 3-4 at a time (and found that 4 was pushing it, as the 4th ones turned out spotty) and tapped off the excess powder.   Then I heated the 3-4 designs before shaking my powder to keep it properly mixed and moving on to the next group.

Here, you can see a few embossed.  The cardstock looks darker (due to the spices in the embossing powder).  Here's a close-up.  You can see how the embossing makes the cookies look a bit rough.  And if you scratch them a bit, they smell!

Fussy cutting them all out took a decent amount of time, but they look great.  I added a few gel pen accents to the arms/legs/hem and tree.

The final step, which I did today, was to cut out the cookie trays with my Silhouette SD and assemble the cards.  I also cut out a slightly smaller tray out of acetate, which I used to help me white gel pen a line around the pan.

I did two cards, trying out slightly different designs.  For the first card I added a strip of glitter ribbon above the stamped sentiment.  I attached the cookies using pop-dots.

For the second card, I added a contrasting panel, which allowed me to wrap some twine around the card.  I'm submitting this card to this week's Simon Says Stamp's embossing challenge.

Becomes a Butterfly

This was a pretty quick card I made using one of the paint chips you get at hardware stores.  I started by punching a butterfly from each section, giving a gradient effect.  Then I took a lighter piece of purple cardstock, stamped the Unity Stamps sentiment (which I can now get straight using my stamp positioner.  It's unmounted rubber and it was a pain to get it correctly placed before) in purple ink.  I glued on the butterflies and added a few pearls to the sentiment for effect.

Colourful Vines

I started this card a while back but only finished it today.  I started out by stamping the image in white pigment ink on black paper.  Then, when it was dry, I coloured over the image with pencil crayons.  I added some dots with a white gel pen and mounted it on a piece of light blue cardstock.