Friday, December 30, 2011

Big Snow!


So I was desperate for a quick idea for a Christmas card for my adult nephew.  I have this 12x 12 Christmas cardstock pad and think - why not just mount part of the big snowflake die cut on the front.  So I cut it down and did.  My DH said it looked too abstract.  Hmm... I really wanted this to work.  So I got out all my accessories and found these mirror snowflakes in my stash.  I hope it helped the overall look. 

Ingredients
Cardstock - Neenah Classic Crest, Bazzill, 12x12 DP
Stamps - Inkadinkado
Ink - Memento
Color - Copics (airbrushing)
Accessories - mirror snowflakes, Spellbinders rectangle dies.


Sunday, December 11, 2011

All that glitters...


Hmm I guess it is rather subtle for whom I made this card. LOL!  I can't decide whether it looks too simple or not.  Though I have to be really honest and say I am chuffed to bits with how it turned out even if I couldn't get a decent photograph of it. In person is looked plain luxurious.

The tree stamp is a Martha Stewart stamp and truthfully I wasn't expecting a good image.  I had read a lot of stories about how difficult it is to stamp with her clear stamps, so I really worked on the stamp with a white eraser before stamping.  I decided to go for a luxurious look - green and gold, it is almost like Fort Knox on a card.  The cardstock is from open stock at Archiver's.  I rubbed the cardstock all over with a used fabric softener sheet (cheap embossing buddy) to ensure I didn't have any stray embossing powder.  Loaded up my stamp with versamark, stamped and heat embossed with gold embossing powder that I have had forever.  Truthfully I thought it might have gone off/tarnished as I have read some horror stories.  But it seemed fine even if I couldn't photograph it!

Hope they enjoyed their elegant card.  Maybe next year I will go back to cutesy!

Ingredients -
Cardstock - Neenah Classic Crest, Archiver's open stock - linen texture
Stamp - Martha Stewart Crafts - Clear Christmas Tree Stamps, Kitchen Sink Stamps - Whole Family
Ink - Versamark
Accessories - gold embossing powder.

Paintball Turkey


Wow what a few weeks it has been - I uploaded my next few entries a few weeks ago and with one thing and another I'm just getting the "words" or back story to go with the photos up. I don't know how to do that flash thing that the lovely Joan B at Paperlicious does that hides part of the blog but I might add all that at the end but probably not.

Anyway here is the backstory to this card! It was for my youngest male cousin who's birthday is the week of Thanksgiving.  He had just recently been with all my lads paintballing, and of course they are yellow.  So although I can't take any credit for the hodge podge of inspiration I think I brought those together in a pretty fun way.

"SPLAT!"

You can feel it can't you?  Especially with that dripping goo punch greeting bar!  Genius I hear you exclaim! Oh yes! I can hear you!

Right - the nitty gritty - looked up loads of paint splats on line.  Planned to just print one and couldn't get my computer to speak to my printer in a way I needed it to do.  On to plan B.  Wing it!  So I cut out my own splat and fussed about and eventually adhered it to the card base.  Decided to color the turkey and paper piece it to the splat.  Googly eye was a must at this point.  Then worked on the greeting bar.  I punched both colors and then layered.  Found out that the black was too narrow so bodged creatively added another bit of cardstock to the upper border to complete the look.  Stamped the greeting.  At that point I decided the splat didn't stand out enough.  I knew I was tempting fate and it wouldn't be "perfect" then I justified that it was riduculous to worry about a splat being perfect.  Ideally I would have outlined it before I had adhered it to the card but by this point needs must and I did my wobbly best.  Yeah, you can see the imperfections but I think that adds to the charm... yeah it adds to the overall charm!



Ingredients
Card Size -
8.5 in x 5.5 in
Cardstock - Recollections, Georgia Pacific, Wassau
Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps, Kitchen Sink Stamps
Ink - Memento, Multiliner pen
Color - Copics
Accessories - Googly eye, Dripping Goo Punch