Embossed Peace, Love, Joy

Here's a card we made at my stamp club this month. The ladies wanted to try heat embossing and I wanted to show a Christmas card, so this is what I came up with. Although this image looks great coloured in, I thought I would show how simple and elegant it can be just embossed. We used gold embossing powder on Very Vanilla, and edged the panel with a gold leaf pen. It doesn't really show up, but we used Bella Toile and versamark on the background. That is my new favourite background stamp!

Thanks for stopping by.

All Supplies SU unless noted: Stamp: Holy Triptych, All Holidays; Ink: gold encore, versamark; Paper: Very Vanilla, Handsome Hunter, Bravo Burgundy; Other: scallop edge punch, gold embossing powder, gold leaf pen (not SU).

Christmas card stamp camp

Here's what's been keeping me busy for the last little while - I've had Christmas card stamp camps the last two weekends. Good times!

The ladies made 3 of each design, and we had lots of other treats on the go as well. For door prizes I gave away some ornaments from the Holiday Mini ornament kit, and little packages of gift tags that I made. I'll make some more and post them - I need to make some stuff for the Christams bazaar at church, and I think the gift tags would be good projects for that.

The Noel card was inspired by this card on splitcoast by akbride. Supplies: Stamps: Big on Christmas; Ink: Basic Black; Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Old Olive; Other: markers in Brocade Blue, Real Red, Old Olive, ornament cuttlebug folder, red glitter pen (swirl accent).

The tree card was inspired by this card on splitcoast by jcslegs. I changed up some of the colours to suit my design and I didn't want to use heat embossing for my second camp as there were a lot of novice stampers, and I didn't want to overwhelm them with techniques, even though heat embossing is easy. It's just another step to remember. I like it like this one. The Naturals White adds a nice rustic feel to the card. The card shown uses Ski Slope dsp, but two of the three cards featured Kiwi Kiss dsp instead.

Supplies: Stamps: Snow Swirled; Ink: Brocade Blue; Paper: Naturals White, Ski

Slope/Kiwi Kiss designer paper, Real Red, Brocade Blue; Other: square rhinestone brads (ice), Top Notes die, red gingham ribbon.

This card was a bit different, more of a vintage feel. Although this card looks great coloured in, I felt that would be too time-consuming so I showcased how good the line art can look just stamped in one colour, with a hint of watercolour wonder crayons added here and there for accent.

Supplies: Stamps: Home for Christmas; Ink: Always Artichoke; Paper: Very Vanilla, Bravo Burgundy, Always Artichoke; Other: burgundy grosgrain ribbon, burgundy watercolour wonder crayon, aquapainter

This card was my favourite - I think I saw one like it somewhere, but I couldn't find it again to give the credit. If it's yours, let me know and I'll post a link to your original. That being said, there are lot of cards out there with variations on this theme.

For this card, we stamped an all-over pattern using the snowflakes from Snow Swirled (isn't this such a versatile set!) and then added some designer paper and a felt snowflake. The ladies got one snowflake in each colour and I did two red cards and one blue card for this design. It doesn't show in the scan, but the snowflakes have a lovely sparkle - I brushed on some Crystal Effects and sprinkled on Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I can't tell you how pretty that was. I am going to do that to all my snowflakes!

Supplies: Stamps: Snow Swirled, Heard from the Heart; Ink : Chocolate Chip, Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze; Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Ski Slope designer paper; Other: small Felt Flurries, crystal effects, dazzling diamonds, scalloped edge punch.

Thanks for looking! And to the ladies that came to my Christmas card camps - a great big thank you! I had a lot of fun!!!

Pretty, pretty butterfly

This has to be my current favourite card. I love the colours, I love the sparkle, and I love the beads. It's just so pretty! I had a very special person in mind when I made it and I can't wait to give it to her.



I was on a mission to get some mileage out of this set before I sold it, and making two of these cards with individual flowers all coloured in different (6!) colours fit the bill. I love the set, but I could bear to part with it :-)


I used Tombows to colour the flowers in shades of turquoise, green, pink and purple. When I had it done, I realized it went perfectly with my Euphoria pack of patterned paper. (I'd like to be the sort of stamper that plans this kind of thing in advance, but I usually colour away and then try to find something to go with it. Oh well, I cook like that to - assemble the ingredients I have on hand and then hit google to find a recipe for hamburger, Dijon mustard, pickled beets and frozen corn. Luckily this card worked out better than the average dinner around here lol.)



This little butterfly was so pretty, it needed to be accented with some sakura glitter pen and seed beads here and there. The other details were added with a lot of layers (why have one layer when you could have 7?) and some pretty ribbons. The opening was scalloped and some coordinating Eurphoria paper put inside (it's scalloped too). This was not one of those cards that was finished in 10 minutes, but it's not for an ordinary person.

What follows is some chit chat from my life, so if you only want the card deets, skip to the bottom. If you want to read about our Thanksgiving weekend, keep going :-)

It's Thanksgiving weekend here and the weather is glorious. We had our big turkey feast yesterday at my brother's house. Mmmm it was fabulous. My sister-in-law's table was gorgeously decorated, she has such a flair for that sort of thing. Her meal was phenomenal, such a gift of time and love for all of us, as always. My mother made our family favourite, the world's best pumpkin pie. It puts all others to shame. Seriously. And I contributed the green salad. Lest you think this was a healthy contribution, it's a pale green foamy confection comprised mainly of cream cheese, marshmallows and whipping cream, with some pears and lime jello thrown in. For those of you who think you don't like jellied salad, you will be converted. But I can't share the recipe or my aunt's sister-in-law will have me whacked. The only thing I missed was stuffing with Mt. Scio savoury in it. I was an instant convert the first time I had it, years ago when my roommates from Newfoundland made it for me. DH is a Newfoundlander too so we always have Mt. Scio savoury in our stuffing, and I even add it to dumplings in chicken stew. (I'm actually not a bad cook, despite my earlier remarks.)



Today we took the kids to a local pumpkin patch. The car ride was hellish (DD2 should have been having a nap and was just rotten) but once we got there, the girls had fun. Their favourite thing was the pile of straw bales to climb on. (It did make me wonder why we bothered moving a van load of wood and reassembling the play structure when we could have piled up a dozen bales of straw instead....) They hoovered up a lot of apples and I turned a blind eye to the number of times DD2 (who is 2) dropped her apple and kept eating it. I figured the straw was a bit of extra roughage. We got some lovely squashes and the farmer assured me they would keep till Christmas if stored in a cool spot. I look forward to torturing my family with nutritious winter squash for several months to come....hehehehe..... (There do have to be some perks to motherhood after all! They can torment me in the car, but I am in charge of supper!!!! bwahahahaha )



Supplies: Stamps: Reason to Smile, Riveting; Ink: none - Tombow markers + SU marker in Rose Red; Paper: Whisper White, Pretty in Pink, Rose Red, Spring Moss (PTI), Euphoria (Basic Grey); Other: seed beads, sakura glitter pen, ribbon (SU, other), SU punches: scalloped edge, 1 3/8" circle, 1 1/4" circle.

New class - Alcohol Inks & Geometric Blocks

If you're free on Wednesday evening and in my area, you might want to sign up for my next class - Alcohol Inks Meet Geometric Blocks. It's at Heather's Stamping Haven, and you can click on this link to see the card samples.

We'll be creating wonderfully vibrant backgrounds with alcohol inks then building two different cards with one very versatile stamp.

Hope to see you at HSH!
Karen

Colour-blocked daisies

I celebrated World Card Making Day on Saturday with an Open House. This was also my new catalogue open house, and my first time having all my stamping friends over to the new house. My parents were visiting too, so it was a celebration all around.



One of the projects we made was this card, which was inspired by this card by cullenwr on splitcoast. I knew I wanted to do a sponged silhouette technique and had a great card planned out with Fresh Cuts, but at the last minute (as in the night before 14 people were coming to stamp), I decided to change the design. Much as I love Fresh Cuts, I thought it would be hard for people to get the square stamped straight the first time. It's much easier to stamp and then cut it out, but with that many people stamping, I wanted to minimize the steps.



I turned to Upsy Daisy for a quick and easy silhouette but I couldn't get the layout right with a deadline looming. When I saw cullenwr's card at work (it was lunch time!), I knew colour blocking was the answer. It's quick, easy, and has the wow factor I wanted for the Open House.



The silhouette is stamped using a sponging technique I learned in my Stampin' Up demonstrator magazine. You stamp the whole image with the lightest colour (here it's Baja Breeze) then you sponge on additional colours here and there (here we used Kiwi Kiss and Pacific Point). Everything is mounted on coordinating cardstock with Chocolate Chip as the grounding neutral. People could choose one of the three sentiments in this stamp set and stamp it in Chocolate Chip. A Kiwi Kiss/Vanilla ribbon finishes it off.



The other project was a gift tag, heat embossed in gold or silver on burgundy or hunter, using the scrolly frame stamp from Holy Triptych.



My Open House was a lot of fun - I met some new people and sent many retired stamps and accessories to new and loving homes. I'll miss them, but it's time for them to get the TLI (tender loving ink) they deserve. Thanks to all the ladies for coming out (and thanks to all my helpers for making it happen)!





Thanks for stopping by!



All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamp: Upsy Daisy; Ink: Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Pacific Point, Chocolate Chip; Paper: Very Vanilla, Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Pacific Point, Chocolate Chip; Accessories: dimensionals, Kiwi Kiss ribbon, stampin' sponge.