Messy Mondays: I love EWE

Welcome to another Messy Monday post! It's technically Tuesday now, but an unplanned request from a friend yesterday kept me from posting this up. Sorry for the delay, but friends, family, and work (sometimes) always comes first. I also figured out why my comments kept appearing as emails in my inbox, and not on my posts. HTML drives me crazy sometimes. So now if you have any questions, comments, or requests, you can actually post them instead of sending me an email. Magic. Haha.

 That's enough talking for now, so let's dive into the card! This card has gazillion layers, and is a bit on the thicker side, but since I was hand delivering this, it didn't bother me. For the furthest back layer, I cut a piece of 4" by 5.25" of light blue cardstock. On top of this, I adhered on a piece of 3.75" by 5" of white cardstock that was dry embossed with my We R Memory Keepers small script 6X6 folder. To give this piece a little bit more definition, I ran over the edges with a black ink pad and added some pale green and peach satin ribbon across the panel.

For my focal panel, I cut out a 3" by 4" piece of fun patterned paper than reminded me of grass and stuck it on a slightly larger piece of coral paper. I stamped on two sheeps from Mama Elephant Carnival Cupcakes set and colored them in using Copics (N0, R20, and E00). I fussy cut them out and used foam tape to adhere it onto the panel. Lawn Fawn Violet's ABC and Altenew Invisible Alpha were used with Versamark ink and white embossing powder to make the greeting on a piece of black paper.

The final touch on this card was adhering a heart between the sheeps and adding a layer of glossy accents. I love the dimension the glossy accents add!

Thanks for reading this longer post. Feel free to comment now that you can (haha).

Happy crafting!

Sparkling Saturdays: Stretching your dies

Welcome back to another Sparkling Saturday! Today I will be sharing another way to stretch your dies to get more use out of them (click here for another way). I made the panels for these cards a couple of months ago, but didn't get a chance to make them into cards until recently. I love using my dies to make stamps because it means I get to save money (for other stamp sets!) and get more uses out of my dies.

The crazy gorgeous die set I used to make my stamps is from Essentials by Ellen Bold Blossoms Stand-Alone designed by Julie Ebersole. I personally love roses, and these pretty shapes captured my heart. I die cut these out of some craft foam I had lying around, and then used temporary adhesive to stick these 'stamps' onto my acrylic blocks. They cut out cleanly and beautifully.

Since I was planning to watercolor these flowers, I used Versamark ink to stamp these images onto some watercolor paper and embossed it using Hero Arts white embossing powder. The embossing makes it easy to stay inside the lines when watercoloring, and holds the color in the shape better. I made a set of these cards, switching up the layout for each one. I used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors for these flowers.

To finish up these cards, I glued them onto an A4 sized pink side folding card base. For my sentiment, I cut out a piece of black card stock and embossed different greetings on them using the same white embossing powder from Hero Arts. Before using foam tape to adhere the sentiment on the card, I wrapped some silver/gold thread in a circle and stuck them behind the sentiment. A few more silver rhinestone stickers were added as the finishing touch. Hope you enjoyed and try this technique out with your dies! Happy crafting.

Messy Mondays: 24 Karat Friend

Welcome back to another Messy Monday! I hope you all had a nice weekend. Mine was filled with lots of rest, spending time with friends and family, and crafting. What was yours like?

I'm really excited to share this card with you today because the stamps are so gorgeous and it was so much fun to make! This stamp set by Essentials by Ellen (by Julie Ebersole) is aptly named Hello Gorgeous and contains so many fun sentiments and images to work with.

For this card, I started out with a piece of 4" by 3.25" of Canson XL watercolor paper. I used all the pretty jewel images in the set (6 different ones) to repeatedly stamp out a background using Versafine Onyx ink. I find that this ink gives the crispest and blackest images.  For the sentiment, I combined 2 of the greetings in the set and stamped it near the bottom left hand corner.

To color this piece, I used Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers in Pink (25), Light Pink (26), Blue (30), and Persian Blue (32). Some jewels were colored in using a Pentel waterbrush and some were colored in using my Wink of Stella Clean Glitter marker. To add some 'artsy' feel to the image, some paint splatters were added.

To make the base background panel, I used my MISTI to line up the stamp images that would extend outside the watercolor panel and stamped it onto a 4" by 5.25" piece of white cardstock. The MISTI tool made this so much easier and faster to do, although it would be possible to do without the MISTI as well.

After these images were stamped, I filled out the rest of the background using the same jewel stamps. I love layering my images as I feel that this gives it a more polished look so I layered the background panel onto a black piece of cardstock measuring 4 1/8" by 5 1/8".

To finish off the card, I applied a layer of glossy accents on top of my larger jewels and added a scattering of rhinestone stickers, in both silver and pink, to the watercolor panel. This panel was then stuck onto a smaller piece of foam and adhered to the background piece to give it more dimension on the card. Sticking everything down onto a bright pink A2 side folding card base finished off this fun card.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Happy Crafting.

This card will be entered into CTD #360  and Ellen Hutson Pin-Sights Challenge.

Sparkling Saturdays: Blueprints Happy Birthday

Welcome back to another Sparkling Saturday! It's been pretty rainy here in Vancouver, but spending more time indoors means more crafting! Today I will be sharing a special birthday card I made for a special friend.

To start off, I used Pretty Pink Posh Storybook 1 die (it's quickly becoming one of my favorite dies!) and die cut it 6 times. Using the outside frame, I layered each frame on top of another using Ranger multi matte medium (it has a precision tip on it). After I got some nice dimension, I took the insides of one of the frames to stamp on my images. I used the present, cupcake, and party hat stamp from Tim Holtz Blueprint 1 stamp set. The images were stamped using Memento Tuxedo Black ink as I wanted to color them in using my Spectrum Noir markers. As these images are quite small and detailed, I decided to use my Spectrum Noirs instead of my Copic markers. These images were colored in using PP3, PP5, IB2, IB3, OR1, and OR3.

After the images were colored, I cut a 4" by 5.25" piece of white cardstock and used SSS fog ink to make a background panel using the same set of stamps. It gave the card a nice background to lay upon without it being too busy. To adhere my colored stamp panels onto the background panel, I used the popped up frame to lightly draw in lines and adhered the stamp panels on. The popped up frame was glued on top after the panels were on.

To finish up this card, I adhered it to a premade A4 pink card base and added a sentiment using the Three Amigos set by Mama Elephant. A scattering of PPP sequins in Sparkling clear (4mm and 6mm) was the final touch on this card.

Hope you enjoyed! I will be entering this into the SSS Wednesday Challenge: Die Crazy.

Happy Crafting.

Messy Mondays: Level Up

Welcome to another Messy Monday! I make tons of birthday cards, so today I will be sharing with you another one. This design for allows for some versatile greetings, so it could be a graduation or congratulations card if you want as well. Your imagination is the limit!

To start off this card, I used MFT Game Controller Die to die cut lots of mini controllers out of black cardstock. I love this die cut as it embosses the buttons on as well, giving it a lot of next texture. Next, I adhered on all the mini controllers onto a 4" by 5.25" piece of lime green cardstock. I trimmed off the parts that were hanging off the sides, and used some of the leftover pieces to fill in some gaps.

For my focal image, I stuck buttons onto one of the controllers. The buttons were die cut out of grey, red, blue, yellow and green cardstock and then a layer of glossy accents was put on top. My sentiment was made using Violet's ABC from Lawnfawn and the Three Amigos set from Mama Elephant. I embossed this using Versafine Black Onyx ink and clear embossing powder onto a vellum banner.

To finish off my card, I used a mini stapler to attach the banner onto my card panel and added some purple enamel dots. The panel was then adhered to a teal A2 side fold card base.

Hope you enjoyed! I will be entering this card in the Superstar Card Contest over at MFT and the SSS Monday challenge.

Happy Crafting!

Sparkling Saturdays: Celebrate

Welcome back to another Sparkling Saturday! Today I will be sharing with you a foiled card I made for a friend's birthday. My friend's favorite superhero is Spiderman, so I thought it would be fitting to make him a Spiderman themed card.

To start, I used my computer to find a web pattern and then sized it to fit an A4 sized piece of paper. After it was centered and sized the way I wanted it to look, I printed this image out on my laser printer on a piece of red cardstock.  After it was printed, I cut this piece down to 3.5" by 4.75" for my focal panel.

Next, I used the holographic foil from Heidi Swapp Minc collection and cut out a piece to put on top of my web. I ran this through my laminator (still on the fence about buying the Minc!), and it came out perfectly. Don't you love how gorgeously shiny the web looks?

Using the Mama Elephant Tiny Heroes set, I stamped one of the boy superheros and tried to color to him to look like Spiderman. As I look back on this now, I realized I should have drawn in Spiderman's mask and colored the face all red to make it look more like him (oh well, next time!). I used Copics to color him in and then fussy cut him out and went around the outline with a black marker for a more finished look. Spiderman was then adhered onto the middle of the web using foam dimensionals.

For the sentiment for this card, I kept it simple by using my gold foil alphabet stickers to spell out the word 'celebrate'. To finish this card, I layered this onto a 3.75" by 5" piece of black cardstock and then stuck this down onto an A4 card horizontally.

Hope you enjoyed! Happy Crafting.

Messy Mondays: Happy Belated Birthday

Welcome back to another Messy Monday post! I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend if you live in North America, and enjoyed the last couple of days. Today I will be sharing with you a card I recently made for a friend's birthday.

I first stamped a background for my card using a 4.25" by 5.5" piece of white cardstock. I used layering stamps from Altenew Vintage Roses and Painted Butterflies for this. I also used Altenew Red Cosmo crisp inks set to stamp on some of the butterflies and I was blown away by how crisp it stamped! I am in love with these inks!

After the background was done, I used some tacky glue to scribble onto the bottom right corner of a piece of vellum which was also cut at 4.25" by 5.5".  I used some of my gold Heidi Swapp Minc foil (still in love with these foils!) and pressed and rubbed it down. After this was done, I pulled the foil off, and it left an artsy looking blob. The vellum was sewn onto the background piece to give it a softer look, and then adhered onto a A4 sized side folding white card base.

To finish up this card, I white embossed a sentiment from Simon Says Stamp It's Your Birthday Stamp set onto black cardstock and cut it out. This was adhered on top of the foil using some foam adhesives. After adding a couple of sequins from PPP (4mm Metallic Gold, 4mm/6mm Sparkling Clear), this card was done! I love how this turned out and ended up making another similar background using just butterflies, which you can see here on my instagram account.

 Hope you enjoyed and happy crafting!

Sparkling Saturdays: Congrats on Graduation

Welcome back to another Sparkling Saturday! If you're like me, sometimes (more often than I want, haha) I run out of time to make a card, and need to make a card in a hurry. So today I will be sharing a card that looks awesome, but was super simple to make.

I started out with a 3.75" by 5" piece of white cardstock as my base panel. I used Mama Elephant Sentimental borders (the special day one) and repeatedly stamped it onto my panel using Tsukineko Encore Ultimate Metallic Gold ink. Next, I layered this on top of a black piece of cardstock measuring 4" by 5.25". This was then adhered to an A4 white card base. All the layers give the perception of a more finished and sophisticated card, without having to spend a lot of time making it.

To finish up the card (and this is where another time saving tip comes in!) I used Recollections Dimensional Stickers, in both the graduation hat and the congrats saying, to add both an image and a sentiment to the centre of the card. Since these 3D stickers come premade with foam tape stuck on the back, all you have to do is remove the backing and stick them on.  These stickers are awesome and you can usually get these on sale. It not only adds quick, simple, and a shiny focal image/sentiment to the card, but it also adds another layer as these are popped up.

Wasn't that fast and simple? I hope you enjoyed. Enjoy the long weekend if you live in North America and happy crafting :)