Bella Box with Cards

Argh!  I am totally not keeping up on my blog like I want to.  I promise I am going to try harder!  So today in the interest of putting something up, I am posting about a gift I made a couple of months ago.

This was for my friend Sharon.  I took one of the awesome small boxes my hubby brought me home from work and covered it in paper from the Bella paper pack.  I then made a set of 20 cards to go in the box with the workshop instructions from the Wishes book.  I only used 20 card bases and 3 sheets of B&T duos to make all 20 cards.  I love the Wishes book for just this reason.  It constantly inspires me and I can do many cards efficiently.

I used two different stampsets for this project.  The first was Dainty Thoughts.  It has a ton of different sentiments and is great for making a greeting card set and keeping everything consistent.  The second set I used was Friendship Blessings.  This has definitely become my go-to stampset.  I use it on everything.

Supplies Used (All CTMH unless otherwise noted):

• Book:  Wishes - I can't say how awesome this book is.  If you are into cardmaking, get it!
• Stampsets:  Dainty Thoughts, Friendship Blessings
• PaperPack:  Bella
• Inks:  Smokey Plum, Hollyhock, Creme Brulee, Olive
• Embellishments:  Clear Sparkles
• Tools:  Martha Stewart Lattice Arch border punch, Sponges, Tombow Adhesive, 3D Pop Dots

 Hope this inspires you in your creations.  If you want more info on any of the products used here, please email me at angie v crafts at gmail dot com.

Paper Flowers!

So in preparation for my first workshop on Sunday, I have been working on a few embellishment techniques.  One of the ones I really liked was the use of crumpled paper flowers on the front of the Tri-Shutter album.  These flowers are beautiful.  Just look!

It is a pretty simple tech-nique.  All you do is cut out 8 - 10 scalloped circles in an appropriate size.  They can be all the same size or graduated like these.  These were cut out of Veranda paper between 1 3/4" and 2 1/2".  I used my CriCut to cut the circles using the Serande cartridges.  The next step is to stack them up and pierce them with a piercer.  Stick a brad through the pierced hole or even use a button.  Then you lightly spritz them with water and crumble each scallop individually to your taste.  All you have to do then is let them dry.

On this particular flower, I inked distressed the edge of each scalloped circle with a matching color.  When I spritzed the flower, the ink ran slightly giving it a muted look which I love.  I can't wait to make more of these flowers.  I would love to make some with buttons in the middle and try glitter gluing the edges of the flower too.  I also thought about using markers to draw veins in the lighter colors.  I think my next one will be all Creme Brulee papers with the edges inked with a pinker ink.  Hope you like the technique!

March is for Birthday cards!

I have totally let myself down by taking so long to post these cards.  Do I have an excuse?  Not really.  Just procrastinated.  After really hating the first card I attempted for Lee's birthday, I set out to create some other cards for all the upcoming birthdays this month.

The first card layout is from the book "Originals".  It is a called "A Message Secured" and can be found on page 77. 

I have really fallen in love with this card.  It is beautiful but still masculine.  The paper isn't CTMH.  The kraft color is some random cardstock that I had saved from somewhere.  The blue cardstock is from Coredinations. It doesn't show up very well in my pictures but I sanded the cardstock so it has a distressed look to it.  The creamy cardstock is CTMH's Colonial White.  The chipboard letter is also from the stash. 

The stampset used for the birthday letters is Hodgepodge Alphabet and the sentiments are from the Something Special stampset.  I stamped everything using CTMH's Bamboo ink.  The metal ring is from Making Memories.  The yarn is Fiesta Yarn's La Boheme Goldrush (I think) from my yarn stash.  (Yes, I have a yarn stash too.  Have I mentioned my bead stash yet?)  Lee was the lucky recipient for this card and I kinda want to take it back and pet it some more.

Next card up was given to one of my favorite bartender's Lena!  This one is all CTMH.  It features February's stamp of the month, Piece of Cake, which is no longer available.  I LOVE this stampset.  I have such a fun time coloring all the images in and paper piecing it all together.  The images of the cakes are also pretty versatile.  You can use this stampset for weddings or birthdays.  Forgive the picture that is rotated but I can't make it behave and in the interest of getting this posted, I left it there to be fixed at a later time.

The cake has been colored using CTMH's awesome watercolor pencils.  I then used Liquid Glass on the flames and polka dots.  I then glittered the polka dots to bling it up (They look discolored in the image but are completely clear once it has dried).  I love how Liquid Glass makes the flames look so real.  It took quite a while to cut out the image so closely but I am really happy I did.  I don't think it would have looked as nice if I hadn't cut so detailed around the flames.  Pop dotting the image over a second stamped image really gives it a 3D appearance which is more apparent in person.

I used CTMH's Jingle paper for the background and blush cardstock.  All the edges were sponged with Blush ink to give it some dimension.  I finished it off with some grosgrain ribbon.

I recreated this card for my step-daughter's birthday too.  Only change was that I rotated it 90 degrees and the bow was under the cake image.

I hope you like the cards.  I haven't had much time to scrapbook for the last week or so but I hope to get some scrapping done this weekend!

Fail Card

My best friend, Lee, has a birthday tomorrow.  I, being the cardmaker, decided to make a card for him.  I spent several days thinking about what I wanted to do.  I recently got a beautiful stampset called Shining Star and wanted to use it.  The central image is a Star with swirls and patterns on it.  I was inspired by another card I saw on the CTMH Consultants Bulletin Board using the image.

How can you go wrong with a such a beautiful main image?  Apparently many ways.  My first attempts at stamping the image used a technique called Rock and Roll.  What you do is ink your stamp first with a light color and then roll additional darker colors around the edge of your stamp to give a gradual color change.  FAIL!!!  I had chosen colors that didn't blend that well and there was a very distinct transistion between colors.  Did I go back and re-evaluate my color choices?  Nah!  Try a different technique.

My next attempt at the star was to try paper piercing.  If you don't know paper piecing is where you stamp an image several times in different colors and then cut out the parts of the image in each color you would like to use.  You then "piece" the image back together.  After doing so, I thought it was kinda boring and not very dynamic.  Did I go back and re-evaluate my color choices?  Nah! 

My solution was to add bling in the form of Stickles!  I added the stickles on each of the colored pieces and set them aside.

My next part of the design phase was to attempt to figure out what to do for the background of the card.  When I originally chose the colors for the card, I wanted something masculine so I looked through my paper packs and chose Stardust because it is very manly/boyish.  The blue color is Moonstruck which is in Stardust.  The other two CTMH colors, Sunny Yellow and Clover Meadow, are not.  Looking through the six B&T paper options in Stardust, none of them really fit my fancy so I set the paperpack aside and went looking elsewhere. 

Next stop was my non-CTMH cardstock.  I have been hanging on to some Color Coredinations cardstock for quite a while.  It is only 6x6" but it is colored cardstock with a core that is usually a lighter coordinating color.  I looked through that and chose two colors that I thought matched my card.  Mind you it was about 2am now.  With such lovely colored cores, I needed to distress these sheets.  The first one I crumpled up and then sanded.  The second, a nice dark blue, I scored in a star pattern and also sanded.  After that I was done for the night and put everything away.

A day later I grabbed my materials and went to assemble the card.  The blue distressed cardstock didn't really match so that went into the scrap bin for use later on.  Because I have just recently purchased a heat gun and embossing powder I wanted to use it.  My next attempts at greatness included using the smaller stars from the stampset, randomly stamping with them and then embossing with an awesome iridescent silver powder. 

I think I just ran out of steam after that.  I had problems embossing with the embossing ink I had purchased for Michael's.  It was dry straight out of the package and wouldn't work.  I ended up using White Daisy pigment ink instead.  I have never embossed before and I am unsure if I applied enough heat too.  I quickly slapped the card together using the Celebrate sentiment from the stampset and then asked my husband's opinion.  His comment?  It would look better on colored cardstock.  How right he is.  All in all, I am very disappointed in this card.  The colors aren't gelling together.  The different techniques used do not give it a cohesive look and there is just too much white space.  Back to the drawing board for me. 

Have you ever had this happen to you?