Congratulations Card

Sorry I haven't been around much.  I've been busy with a bunch of other projects and haven't had much time for card crafting lately.  I did spend a few days making and adjusting silhouette cute files for greenery and cutting them out in different colours so I have quick access foliate.

I used some of that foliage for this card.

I die cut and embossed the bottom of a black panel of cardstock.  I then die cut some flowers out of red cardstock and used black paint to add interest.  I scrunched the petals and added some white foliage.  I stamped the sentiment in dark red ink on the white cardstock base.

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

Blue Butterflies Card

I made this card for another Papertrey Ink challenge, to create a blue ombre effect.  For this card I tried something I've wanted to do for a while, make stamps out of die cuts.  I cut the four butterflies from the Beautiful Butterflies die collection out of craft foam.  Because the foam was thin, I decided to ink it up on my desk with some scrap paper underneath and use my fingers to apply the stamps rather than put them on a stamp block, which would likely have transferred ink from the edges onto my card.

Before I stamped the butterflies though, I inked my sentiment, from the Daydreamer stamp set, using white pigment ink and then heat embossed it with white embossing powder.

I used 4 shades of blue dye ink, starting with the lightest at the bottom.  To make the sentiment stand out a bit more I wiped a tiny bit of ink on a make up sponge over that part of the paper.

The foam stamps performed beautifully, making great impressions.  Indeed, the foam held the ink much better than I expected.

Birthday Airplane card

I made this card for Papertrey Ink's use an unused stamp challenge.  I can't believe I've never used my map background stamp, so I used several water based markers to ink it up (with some shading) and stamped it on a white cardbase.  I stamped their airplane and the happy birthday sentiment (again with markers) and fussy cut them out.  I attached the plane with pop dots.

The card seemed a bit plain, so I added score lines to make a frame and tied some thread through 3 small red buttons and hot glued them on.

Admire & Love You card

I made this card for the Papertrey Ink challenge to make a card inspired by the work of Maile Belles (one of their designers).  So I decided to case her "Wishing you a lovely birthday" card.  I liked that there was a space between the panels and started with that.

I started with a piece of pink cardstock and stamped the couple from the Papertrey Ink Simply Jane set in red ink.  I then used a paper trimmer to cut the straight line around shoulder height and fussy cut around their heads.  I trimmed the bottom so it would fit on my white card base and lined up a second piece of pink cardstock with the heads tucked under.  I stamped the frame in black ink, so it slightly overlapped on their feet but, with the heads covered, not their heads.  I then trimmed the top of the second piece so it would fit the card.

I stamped the sentiment, from the same set, on the bottom of the card in black ink.

I used a tape runner to stick the top piece on first, then the panel with the figures, with the heads stuck to the top piece.  For accent I added a few sequin hearts.