After making over 400 cards for moving notifications, Halloween, Christmas and New Years, I found myself signed up for more swaps at a recent event, so I created 92 more! Add in the Mad for Plaid series and the January birthday cards, I have made and personally handed out or mailed over 500 cards in the last 3 months! Here are the most recent ones I needed to make for January swaps I signed up for!
~Enjoy
This first card I started by playing with the cute little 4-leaf clover that came in the Amazing Life Stamp Set. I knew I wanted to make a background paper with it, so I went off to select a few of my favorite staple colors. I am so happy that Stampin' Up! brought back Blackberry Bliss, it is one of my all time favorites! Combined with Crumb Cake & Old Olive it is just perfect! Everything is stamped on Whisper White cardstock and matted on an Old Olive card base.
I wanted the background paper to be the star so I just added small strip of Blackberry Bliss embossed with the Swirls & Curls Embossing Folder and added a small hand cut banner tag stamped with the sentiment and Memento Black Ink and then popped up with Dimensionals. A small bow made from Whisper White 1/8" Sheer Ribbon added the finishing touch!
The moment I saw the wavy lines in the Incredible Like You Stamp Set, I knew I wanted to do something with some small skinny candles. Luckily the set also came with a little flame, ok, it is probably a leaf - but I saw a flame! Once I stamped all the candles on Whisper White Cardstock with Poppy Parade Ink and the flames in Daffodil Delight, I contemplated adding the Memento Black Ink sentiment right on top of the candles but thought it would get lost so decided to stamp it on Vellum instead. I think it makes it pop & added a little more dimension to the candles without breaking that they are really tall skinny candles although it almost looks like striped paper also! I added the black bow made from Black 1/8" Cord and then, tragedy struck.
There was this huge empty space at the top of the card & I did not know what to do with. I am not opposed to white space but this one was just too much. This set on my desk for about 2 weeks taunting me.
One day, I was looking for something else for another project & picked up the Wonderful Moments Stamp Set and while I was looking through it I noticed all these little tiny dots, what the heck were those??? WAIT a minute, those would be cute as little sparks above my candles & fill in that gigantic white space!!!!
Note about this card - I made 20 of them & its is really forgiving when it comes to errors, not all my candle are straight, some of the flames do not touch the right candle and I just noticed that one of the flames is actually straddling 2 candles - oops - but see forgiving!!
I love the hibiscus flower from the Humming Along Stamp Set - maybe because they were in my front yard as a child so they have fond memories for me. I am not a colorist by any means, ask my friends Shannon & Tracy. So I wasn't sure what to do about this huge empty outlined flower.
I decided to apply the "swoosh" technique. I started with a piece of Whisper White Cardstock and the Granny Apple Green and
Highland Heather Ink pads. You take the open ink pad & hold it at about a 22 degree angle (it is almost flat to the paper, you are really only touching the top edge of the ink pad). Then you drag the edge of the ink pad back & forth, mine is done at even a little diagonal of an angle across the card front. Then I switched colors in the middle of the card. You could do a whole rainbow with the effect, but I wanted the purple for the flower & green for the stem & leaf. No measuring, just eyeballed about half way down & went for it!
Again, I was worried that the flower would disappear in the background so I stamped it on vellum. as well as the sentiment.
Once I layered it on the background, the flower was still not popping enough for me so I decided to back the flower with... a flower! I stamped the flower on Highland Heather Cardstock & the leaf on Granny Apple Green Cardstock & hand fussy cut them out. After some strategic glue dots were applied to the backside of the vellum, I was pretty happy with the overall result.
Adding the finishing touches were the Daffodil Delight Organdy Ribbon from the Sale-a-Bration catalog and some rhinestones and mounting the whole thing onto Daffodil Delight Cardstock card base.
What I intended to be a simple card kept getting more & more difficult and ended up probably being an avid stamper card.
This card you have seen before but it was actually created with this swap in mind and actually turned out to be the inspiration for my New Years cards (of which I made about 85).
I was trying to be conservative with the paper since I knew I wanted to use this for a swap - so I cut the 6x6 into 4 equal parts. I used the Amazing Life set that everyone got at convention. I love the mixed fonts sets. I used just the top portion of the 3-tiered cake, Swirls & Curls embossing folder, gold glimmer paper and the black 1/8" cord. I gradient-colored the word Cake with the light and dark Daffodil Delight blender pens as well as the cake.
The last card I really wanted to make a masculine birthday card, but had the hardest time deciding on a color combo - see the last image, but finally decided that the green one would be good for the swap.
I got a birthday card from my friend Tracy that really inspired this card. She had a stamp set with multiple birthday & friendship greetings in it & inside she stamped them all and wrote - I couldn't decide which one to use - so I used them all! I thought that was so funny! But it inspired me to use all of the birthday greetings in the Itty Bitty Birthdays Stamp Set. I lined them all up on my Stamparatus on a 45 degree angle (eyeballed it again) and it stamped the cutest little strip which I intended to fishtail & turn into a banner. I positioned all of the stamps really closely together - see the Stamparatus picture below.
I pulled out the Corrugated Embossing Folder - my favorite - and layered the hand cut fish-tailed banner. As I was looking through to find another layer I came across a piece of scrap in Soft Suede that was embossed with the Hexagons Embossing Folder and that was a perfect fit for this masculine card!
I roughed up all of the edges and added a small bow from Braided Linen Trim (can't help myself, its not done if it doesn't have a bow), I tried a knot, but it was knot enough (pun & typo intended).
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