#849 – Another New Year card!

Hello and welcome! Here’s another new year card. I made this one to send to a dear blogging friend of mine. Hope she liked it! 🙂

I was totally inspired by this card made by Jennifer McGuire (the last card in the series). I don’t have any such die, but I wanted to achieve a similar effect. So instead of a single die cut, I used many!! 😉

Of course, as you can see, I made the card a more-or-less tone-on-tone, rather than colorful, as I first intended to. I kinda liked this look! 🙂

I first started with a card panel – 6″x4″. I used MFT Flutter of Butterflies and die cut a few of the butterflies from the panel. I then used the flower and leaf dies from Paper Smooches Flowers and Flowers 2 dies, and die cut from the gaps in between the butterflies. I also added a few dotted swirly lines using Paper Smooches Stitched Flourishes 2 die. I retained all the die cut pieces, to use them later in my card.

I first adhered the die cut panel on a cream colored cardstock. I then started adhering the die cut pieces, layering a few and finally embellishing a the butterflies and flowers with cream half pearls.

Finally coming to the sentiment. After finishing the card base, I had no idea how to proceed. I finally settled on using the happy die from Mama Elephant along with a strip of stamped sentiment from Reverse Confetti Whole Lotta Happy. I first die cut three pieces of the die and stacked them. I added some liquid glue behind both the die and strip and just laid them on the card – no pressure, so that they would appear floating on top of the butterflies.

And that finished the card! With this card, I am joining the following challenges –

Just us Girls challenge #514 – Trends Week: Create Dimension

Global Design Project #223: Celebration

Happy Little Stampers January Anything Goes with Dies challenge

Just Add Ink challenge #488: Celebrate! A BIG congrats on completing 10 years of the challenge! Wow! What an achievement!!

Thanks for stopping by!

#844 – Christmas Poinsettia

Hello and welcome! Time for another Christmas card!! This time, the focus is on the poinsettias. The red of the poinsettias against a white (or, in this card, a cream) background is just fantastic! The red looks absolutely dashing! 🙂

I first die cut the top and bottom pieces using the My Favorite Things Stitched Scallop Basic Edges dies. Then, on the card base, I drew the outline of the two pieces using a pencil and set the pieces aside. I then die cut a bunch of the poinsettia leaves using the Simon Says Stamp Poinsettia Cluster die using the same cardstock. I then adhered all the pieces, flat on the card base, taking care not to go much beyond the pencil markings.

Next came the sentiment. I used Paper Trey Ink ‘Tis The Season stamp. I first stamped the upper half in red ink, then stamped both using Versamark watermark ink, and heat embossed the bottom half using platinum embossing powder, and the top using clear embossing powder. I repeated this a couple more times to give it a bit more dimension. I then foam mounted the top and bottom pieces on the card. Finally I adhered the poinsettias, which are from Itsy Bitsy, on the card. For embellishing, I added half pearls on the centers of all the poinsettias and added silver glitter shine on the poinsettias.

I am joining the following challenges –

The Flower challenge #39: Use a Die

Inkspirational challenge #202: No Stamping (I have stamped for heat embossing the sentiment, so if this doesn’t count, please take my entry off!)

Happy Little Stampers: December Anything Goes with Dies challenge

Just us Girls challenge #516: Anything Goes

Thank you for stopping by! 🙂

#843 – Sending Christmas Greetings

Hello and welcome! This post features the second Christmas card I made to send out to a friend. 🙂

This time I made it a shaker card. The background is another print from the CrafTangles Elements pack, Christmas Animals. I lightly watercolored it a bit using distress inks, since the white background was looking a bit too bright in white. I also added glitter on the elephant’s and rabbit’s caps’ white bits and the baubles and star on the Christmas tree. I also added glossy accents on the baubles and star on the Christmas tree. I let it dry completely before proceeding further with the card. I also adhered a few pieces of silver star sequins on the tree and here and there on the piece.

To make the shaker, I used Moss Green cardstock from CrafTangles to cut out a window frame. I used a white card base, adhered the cut out ‘Elements‘ picture, added a few shaker elements and then adhered the window frame, to which I had already stuck a clear plastic sheet.

For the sentiment, I die-cut a few pieces of Simon Says Stampers Sending die. For the top most piece, I first heat embossed in silver the scrap piece of cardstock that I was going to die cut. After heat embossing a couple of times to get a good coverage, I then die cut it, and adhered all the pieces together. The stamped piece of the sentiment is from Winnie & Walter Wishing You stamp set. I then adhered them both on the card using double sided red tape.

At this point, I felt that the white of the cardstock was too bright, compared to what I could see from the window. So I colored it the same colors as the shaker panel, lightly. And finally I was done. 🙂

Joining the following challenges with this card –

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Interactive Christmas

Simon Says Stamp Christmas Card Day

Just us Girls challenge #516: Anything Goes

CrafTangles Monthly challenge #12: December challenge: Christmas

Thank you so much for stopping by!

#842 – Christmas Wishes

Hello! I’ve been thinking of sending Christmas cards to friends who celebrate, but wasn’t able to for the last few years. This year, I finally was able to plan properly and send them out on time – so they will hopefully receive them before the festival! But I hope they do forgive me for publishing it before they receive it!

So here’s card number one –

{Pardon me for the grainy, blurry images, but I had to send all the cards and was in a hurry to take the photos, and the cloudy weather outside was not being my friend!}

To make a quick card, I made use of the pretty prints from the Elements pack from CrafTangles, called Christmas Animals. The animals are totally adorable, and the prints and paper are of a good quality too. I cut this particular deer in a bauble by hand, and foam mounted it on a grey toned cardstock on which I had splattered some Picket Fence distress paint.

I thought of adding a little green and red to the card by imitating the flowers on the little rabbit’s head. I used leaf dies from Pink Fresh Studio’s Dainty Blossoms and the flower dies from Paper Smooches’ Flowers to die cut water color paper, water colored them and then adhered them on the card. The sentiment, from Neat and Tangled Winter Wishes stamp, came in the end.

With this card, I am joining the following challenges –

Simon Says Stamp Christmas Card Day

Timeout Challenge #150: Merry & Cheerful

Just us Girls challenge #516: Anything Goes

Stamplorations December CAS Challenge: Anything CAS goes with optional twist of Christmas Colors

CrafTangles Monthly challenge #12: December challenge: Christmas

Thank you so much for stopping by!! 🙂

#798 – Bunny Thanks

Hello and welcome!

In a previous post, I mentioned using a cardstock for watercoloring, which gave out results pretty different from the traditional watercolor paper. The colors were dulled, and softened by a great deal. But thankfully, since the cardstock was holding up pretty well against a medium amount of water, I didn’t want to give up. And with the encouragement I received from my sis and everyone’s comments then, I decided to give it another go.

I had tried distress inks then, so I thought of giving Zig brush pens, which hold some nice and bright colors, a try this time. And here’s what I made –

I used stamps from My Favorite Some Bunny and Geometric Greenery, stamped the bunnies in Vintage Linen distress ink and the Greenery in Shabby Shutters distress ink. I then proceeded with no line coloring using the Zig brush pens. And, just as expected, the colors did lose a lot of brightness, and ended up softer than what would have been on watercolor paper – or any other cardstock.

I did add another coat of color on the bunnies – they were so faded after they dried, I thought they might become invisible by the time I took the photos!! Once everything was dry, I used a handmade stencil to add the clouds. I also colored in the ground.

I am joining the following challenges –

My Favorite Things Sketch challenge #403 (the diagonal in the background is using the leaves)

My Favorite Things Color challenge #101 (sorry, the colors are only on the bunnies dresses and the clouds.. but the colors are mostly masked by the abundance of browns)

Just Us Girls challenge #459

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day! 🙂

 

#772 – Heat Embossing and Coloring

PE: CAS-ual Fridays Favorite!!

Hello! So I finally got out of series of ‘quickie’ cards and spent a little more time on the card this time. I took the inspiration from the Ellen Hutson Color Trend challenge and thought of trying out all the colors from the palette, if possible. The idea was to use the lighter color (i.e., yellow) on the flowers and the rest of the them to create the background.

I chose the Mondo Sakura florals from Ellen Hutson – it is a latest addition to my stash and I couldn’t wait to try it out! 🙂 A search for a suitable background led me to this Stiched Circles stamp from JustRite – a background stamp I had bought ages ago. And it was kinda fun mixing this old stamp with the new one! 🙂

I stamped the flowers first, then masked the image and stamped the background image, and heat embossed the whole panel using gold embossing powder. I used Gansai Tambi watercolors to color the whole panel. And then I die cut the piece using Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles die. Looking back, I should have left it as is, and covered the whole front of the card with the panel – that was my initial idea, and I think it would have looked better too. Anyways, I added the gold heat embossed sentiment from Winnie & Walter Sending You stamp set. Then I added a bunch of gold sequins in the flower centers.

With this card, I am joining the following challenges –

Ellen Hutson June Color Trend Challenge: Verdure

CAS-ual Fridays challenge #203: Heat Embossing

Just us Girls challenge #449: Trend week: Watercolor Background

Thank you very much for stopping by! 🙂

#769 – Your Day to Celebrate

Hello! I’ve got a fine way to start another week – another card!! 😀

I made this card using a combination of images from the Simon Says Stamp Look for the Miracles and Happy Little Stampers Doodled Flowers stamp sets. After stamping them using Versafine Black ink, I colored them using my Zig Brush pens. I then die cut the panel using Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles.

I added a few more layers of same die cuts behind the panel and adhered it on a grey card base. The sentiment comes from Reverse Confetti Simply Sentiments, which I foam mounted on the card. Finally came a few embellishments in the form of white and silver gem stones.

I am joining the following challenges with my card –

Stamplorations 5th Birthday challenge: CASEing Juhi Khanna’s card from here –

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes

Just us Girls challenge #447: Wild card week: Anything Goes

The Paper Players challenge #400: Celebration

Thank you so much for stopping by! 🙂