A Trio of Cards

Its been some time since my cards have had this much of color. And although making these cards took a hell lot of time, I had fun making them! 🙂

I started with four card panels, and colored them with some base colors using distress inks – Dried Marigold, Squeezed Lemonade, Shaded Lilac and Broken China. I then stamped them all with the same stamp – Roman Surround from Penny Black, using Memento Tangelo, DI Mustard Seed, Memento Sweet Plum and Memento Bahama Blue.

I then die cut them using different sixes of Spellbinders’ Labels 24. I then added some more ink to the sides of each die cut panel. Now coming to the individual cards –

Starting with the one I had the toughest time with! 😉 It was relatively easy to align pieces such that the pattern between the different pieces was continuous. Rather, I found it difficult to bring the entire piece together, because this was my first time doing such a thing, and I made quite a few mistakes, which resulted in the panels becoming smaller than I intended. 😦

What I learnt – do not try to trim the pieces to size before adhering them all. And adhere first to a scrap piece of paper, NOT to the card base!!! Ask how I know! 😛

While adhering the pieces together, I stuck the outer pointy tips to the inner panel directly, while adding a foam dot to the inner pointy tips. This gave the piece a simple dimensional look. So, after I (finally) adhered the pieces together, I adhered this in the center of the card base direclty, and foam mounted two strips of black, Copic colored card stock strips, leaving a small piece of the white card stock showing through. (Can you believe my hours of hard work got explained in 2 paragraphs!?! 😀 Irony of life!!)

For the sentiment, I cut out another piece from the same die cuts using blac kcard stock and stamped the sentiment from Bo Bunny Sentiments stamp set in Hero Arts white pigment ink. I then embellished the card with some pearls colored with black Copic marker.

Coming to the next card – this was relatively very very easy!! I first colored the back and sides of all the pieces with the color I used for the base. I then curved the dangling ends of each piece and foam mounted them, taking care to align them according to the pattern.

I then cut out a small circle, lined the edge with Hero Arts Charcoal ink and stamped the same sentiment with it before foam mounting it in the center. I then adhered this to the card base directly, placing to the right, leaving a stripe of the white card base showing. I then embellished the card with some pearls.

The third card is made using the scrap pieces left back while I was trimming the first card! 😛 I just made a weave pattern out of the four stripes and adhered them to the card base. I then stamped the sentiment, from Bo Bunny Sentiments, using Hero Arts Charcoal ink.

I thought of adding some pearls to this card too, but held myself back, thinking that I wanted to use something else – preferably making the card as flat as possible. I then suddenly remembered the twinkles (that’s what I am calling them!) from JustRite Bokeh Time stamp set. So, I stamped a few of them just above the sentiment using Memento Dandelion and Tangelo inks.

And that finished my stream of cards! I am submitting these to ColourMe Card Challenge #56 and the last card to CASology #131.

Thanks for looking!! 🙂

Stencilled Vases

Hello!

I always love to create my own stuff to use for my card making – stencils, stamps…just that I usually don’t know what to create and how to create it! 😛 But today, I got a fantastic inspiration for a card and the corresponding stencil from Cornelia’s card here. That lady has got some fabulous talent! I am actually casing her card here!

I made my stencil before starting with anything else. I first adhered two pieces of thin, transparent plastic book wrapping sheets using double sided adhesive in between. This makes a thin, flexible, mostly see-through and easy to cut piece. I then folded a portion in half, drew one half of the vase, and cut it (still keeping the plastic folded). This stencil was easy to create since the pieces were solid, weren’t intricate and also symmetrical. The easiest ever! 😀 I should mention that I kept the cut pieces, since they can (very conveniently) be used as masks!!

I then started with the actual card. I chose three of the many vases I’d cut, and sponged in Pumice Stone distress ink through the left, top and the bottom, leaving the right side completely free of any color. I also dabbed a bit of Black Soot at the very edges using a sponge with bigger pores. I used the mask piece for the vase in the leftmost when I started coloring the vase in between – so happy that I kept those cutoff pieces too!

I then started stamping the flowers in the vase using Micia Friendship Forever stamp set and Memento inks Potter’s Clay, Rhubarb Stalk, Lilac Posies. I also added a bit of shading to the flowers using my sketch pens. I finally stamped the sentiment which came from the same stamp set in Tuxedo Black ink – in fact I had to stamp it twice to achieve the desired darkness. 🙂 That finished my simple, one layered card.

I am submitting this to ColourQ Card Challenge #277.

Thanks for looking!

Pinspiration #10

Since my interest in card-making, I have come to add quite a few related boards in Pinterest. One of them being inspirations of patterns and designs. Now, even after creating this board, I found that I rarely made many cards from them. Finding that one of the card makers I follow has an explicit series dedicated for cards made from Pinterest inspiraitons acted as a trigger and I thought that I should maybe try to make a few cards, at least now and then, picking inspirations from that exact same board I reserved for that purpose!

And so, I present one more card from the “Pinspiration” series! 🙂

This card is inspired by this pin –

I picked up a few flower stamps that had a striped design on them. Now, I didn’t have stamps which would substitute the solid flowers, so I made some using the same flowers I chose. I learnt making my own stamps from dies from this video from Yana Smakula. I applied the same technique, except this time the stamps are cut by hand. By the way, the stamps came from Blooms Of Mine and Full Blooms stamp sets from Micia; and one more stamp set, whose name I don’t remember 😦

Before I started stamping, I cut out a heart mask from scrap paper, and stuck it to one side of the card. I then started stamping using Memento inks Dandilion, London Fog, Grey Flannel and Tuxedo Black.

Once I was done stamping, I added a couple of dashed outlines to the heart using sketch pens. I then adhered washi tapes to scrap cardstock and cut out stripes of it and cut out the ends to a fish tail and a diagonal. I then cut out another strip of of cardstock and cut a fishtail to an and, to add the sentiment – from Hero Arts All Occasions Messages. After first stamping it in Tuxedo Black, I stamped it two more times at an offset in Dandelion ink, making a shadow. I then adhered and foam mounted all the stripes on. Finally, I adhered this whole panel to the card base, on which I had already adhered some dark grey color paper.

And that finished my card! Hope you liked looking at it as much as I loved making it! 😀

Raised Windows

Today, I made an attempt to make a card using a classic layout – with aligned windows/raised panels with stamped images. It’s simple and easy to make too!

I cut out 3 pieces of squares of 1.5 inch each and stamped the flowers from the Flower stamp set from Hot Off The Press using Hero Arts black ink. I then colored them using sketch pens. I didn’t add any shading – but that’s the way I wanted it! 😉

I then water-colored the card base lightly with a light peach color and stamped the sentiment from Lace Vintage Labels #3 from JustRite using Hero Arts Black ink. I then adhered the card panels on the card base.

And that finished my card! Thanks for looking! 🙂

CASology Guest Designer!

Hello!

I am so excited about this! After winning challenge 127 in CASology, I was asked to guest design for their challenge 129. I am truly honored (and in shock!! :D). Couldn’t ask for a better start of the year!! Wow!

The CASology challenge this time is NBUS (Never Been Used Stuff) which means we will be trying to use things from our craft supplies that have never been used. And CASology is joining Darnell Knauss for her NBUS challenge on her blog.

For my cards, I’ve used my new (and of course, never been used) Spellbinders’ die, Medallion 1. So, presenting my card (or two) –

For the first card I first adhered a piece of color paper and adhered it directly on a card panel using double sided tape. I then die cut this using Spellbinders A2 Curved Matting Basics die. I then centered the Medallion die in the upper portion and die cut it.

I then stamped the sentiment in Hero Arts white pigment ink using the stamp from Avery Elle Petals and Stems stamp set. And then I foam mounted the panel on the card base. I also adhered a clear rhinestone in the center of the medallion die cut for embellishment.

For the second card, I die cut the medallion from a darker piece of color paper (this was also thicker than the previous one, but still thinner than a card stock).

After adhering this directly to the card base, I traced the design on the medallion using Glossy Accents and added a pearl in the center. I then stamped the same sentiment in Memento Grape Jelly ink.

Those are my two cards! Though I have submitted only one for the NBUS Challenge, I would certainly like to know which version you liked better!

Thanks for looking! 🙂