Elements of Style in Watercolor

I wanted to make a nice card for my boyfriends Mom's birthday. She's had a really rough year or so, having been diagnosed with cancer a little over a year ago, going through chemo treatments and all that and then suffered a stroke shortly before Christmas. After having suffered her stroke we all found out that her cancer had spread and the Dr's were giving her 6 months to a year to live. This has been difficult for everyone involved as she has always lead a very busy and active life. So I got out my supplies and got to work making a card I knew she would appreciate. This is what I came up with.

Stamp Sets: Elements of Style (wood mount:118611 & clear mount 120045,

Teeny Tiny Wishes (wood mount 115370)

Paper: Pear Pizzazz 119795, Night of Navy 100867, Naturals Ivory 101849

& Watercolor paper 122959

Ink: Night of Navy 102977, Bashful Blue 105209, Old Olive 102277,

Pear Pizzazz 119784 & Black Staz On 101406

Tools: Big Shot 113439, Square Lattice Embossing Folder 119976, Blending Pens 102845

The Finishing Touch: Basic Pearls 119247 & Stampin Dimensionals 104430

Triple Heart Easel Card Tutorial

I originally came across this idea on pinterest and loved the style of card so much I just had to try to figure out how to make it. It didn't look all that complicated so I gave it a shot. My card took me at least two hours to complete but it wasn't putting the 3 easel parts together that took so long, it was watercoloring each bunch of flowers and then cutting them out by hand. Here's a pic of what I came up with. Tutorial to follow.

In order to make the triple heart easel card you'll need 2 sheets of 8 1/2x11", Stampin up's heart framelits, sticky stripe, simply scored and of course your big shot.

1. Choose the 3 sizes of hearts that you want for your card. I went with the 3 largest sizes, but you could go smaller if you wanted.

2. You can measure and cut your cardstock down to the size that you need to cut. For each easel you will need one full size heart of the size you have chosen and one heart that you have cut on a piece of cardstock that has been folded in half. For this part you'll want to take the piece of cardstock that has been folded in half (needs to be the same size as your heart). You'll want to place the heart so that the two peaks at the top are just slightly past the fold. This will give you the fold that you need to create your easel. Please see pic below for placement if your unsure.

3. You should have 6 seperate pieces cut in total now. The next step will be scoring a line on each heart that has the fold line on it. For the large heart (with scalloped edges) I did this at 2 1/2" from the peak at the bottom. medium heart at 1 3/4| and the small at 1 1/2". If you have chosen to do different sizes, you will want to score at approx the halfway point. Not sure if you can see my score line in the next pic. Also a little suggestion to make sure you get a straight score line, use a pencil and mark on either side so you can line it up with the grooves on the simply scored. Do this for all 3 hearts.

4. Once you have finished scoring the 3 hearts you'll want to fold along the score line. You'' want to have the heart folded in half with the bottom peak facing you, the scored line should be on the top heart. Fold it downwards like a beak, please see picture for how it should look. You'll need to do this for all 3.

5. Next you'll want to grab your sticky strip or whatever adhesive your using and place it on the bottom half of the heart that you just folded (triangle).

6. You'll want to grab the corresponding hearts (same size) as the ones you've added adhesive to, make sure they line up properly and adhere. You've basically just completed 3 seperate easel cards.

7. Now we need to attach these 3 easels to make one card. Start with the largest and the medium. Place them where you'd like, you'll see the bottom peak of the large heart will fit nicely into the hole where the fold line is from when you cut your hearts. Once you've decided where you want it then add adhesive to the bottom part of larger heart base. For this step I had mine just past the halfway point, being closer towards the top of the heart. Please see pic for a better idea.

8. And the last step of course is attaching the smaller heart, you'll want to do the same thing as  above, but once again place it where you would like it to be, and then add adhesive once your sure. Your finished triple heart easel card should look like this before you add your finishing touches to it.

To finish mine off I used the Bordering on Romance Stamp set, some pearls for the center of the flowers and made a flower using seam binding. This flower was used to the hold the smaller of the three circles in place.

Hope you have all enjoyed my tutorial. If you've got any questions I'd be happy to help

I've had a busy weekend!

I had a wonderful time at the crop that I went to and had the opportunity to meet some wonderful ladies. I got lots of pages made and a couple of cards as well. I have a couple of cards that I am going to share with you ladies. Both cards are cases from Sandi Maciver, if you haven't checked out her website you really should, she does beautiful work.

The first card I did I changed up the colors from what she had done and used Elegant Eggplant and Wisteria Wonder. I also tried out the new doily die that's in the Occasion Mini and just love this die.

Here is the card I have to share with you today and it uses some of the NEW items in the Occasions Mini!

Bordering on Romance Stamp Set #124580

Curly Cute Stamp Set  # 120510

Edgelits Dies, Adorning Accents #125595

Vintage Wallpaper Embossing Folder #120175

Paper Doily Die #125592

Elegant Eggplant Cardstock #105126

Wisteria Wonder Cardstock #122922

Watercolor paper #122959

Markers, Elegant Eggplant, Wisteria Wonder, Lucky Limeade, Baja Breeze, Daffodil Delight

The next card I made for my boyfriend who is going through a really difficult time, he got some bad news concerning his mom's health yesterday. I decided to make him a card to let him know that I am there for him in his time of need. Sadly the picture does not show the true beauty of this card.

Card base – Crumb Cake 5-1/2 x 8-1/2, score and fold at 4-1/4

mat – Island Indigo, 4 x 5-1/4

card front – Very Vanilla, 3-7/8 x 5-1/8

Bottom Basic Black cardstock, embossed, 1-1/2 x 4

16 inches of 5/8 Satin Ribbon

2 x 5 piece of Very Vanilla to stamp the leaves on.

Ink pads, Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo and Soft Suede

French Foliage Stamp Set

Sentiment from Field of Flowers

If you'd like to order any of the above items please feel free to visit my Store



The weekend is almost here

Well I am off to a crop this weekend. It's more the type of crop where we just do our own things, no classes involved. For me this is a chance to get some pages and cards done without my kids interrupting constantly. As much as I love my kids it's nice to get some mommy time to. And I'm sure that all mothers can relate to this. When I come home from one of these events my kids always ask if they can see what I have done. Having four kids I try and make sure that I get pictures of all 4 of them done so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. I'm also still working on my oldest daughters graduation album. Maybe with some luck I will get some more of those pages done.

So this morning I chose to take my car to work, which I rarely do because I work downtown and lets face it parking isn't cheap. But today I did so I could go straight to the crop after work as it cuts the driving time in half. But then I'm thinking to myself if I park where I normally do my stamp pads and markers are going to freeze. Can't lug that all to the office, so what am I going to do? Hmmmmm..... Then I remembered that there is a heated parking lot just across the street, a little more expensive but so totally worth it. Stamp pads and markers will be safe. So let me ask you all, when you go to a crop or a scrapbooking convention how much stuff do you bring with you. My car is absolutely full, trunk, backseat and front seat.

Here's a couple of Christmas cards I did in a stamp a stack recently, the ladies loved them and I had a blast teaching this class.

Wow it's been a really long time

No excuses, I know I should be posting more frequently. I am definitely going to make more of an effort. I don't have a lot of time tonight as I am busy getting ready to go to a weekend crop, but here's a couple of projects that I've done recently.

Never too early to start making Christmas Cards!

I've been playing around with the very few Christmas stamps that I do have. Trying to come up with some different ideas. The last Christmas card I did with the reindeer was brayered, it was time to try a couple of different techniques.

The first card was made with the Christmas Lodge Stamp set. I absolutely love this set and have seen many beautiful cards made with it. I haven't come up with anything of my own that I loved until I created this card. I wanted to try a vintage look, so in order to do that I grabbed my very vanilla cardstock and soft suede cardstock. I've seen the snowflakes sponged like this before and wanted to give it a try. Originally I was going to try and add more snowflakes to the card but it was too much. So because I already had them cut and sponged I thought I would try layering them which really gave it some awesome dimension. I popped them up on dimensionals which gave it a wonderful look. As for the rest of the card, I stamped my images in craft white ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. They were stamped on very vanilla. Then I lightly sponged over both images in soft suede ink. Make sure to grab a tissue to clean off excess ink off of your embossed imaged afterwards.

And my second card was made using the Season of Joy Stamp set. I wanted to come up with something different for this one as well. So I went browsing through the internet trying to find some different ideas. I saw the masking idea and I thought this would be a wonderful idea. I used two of my favorite colors for Christmas cards, Night of Navy and Whisper White. I embossed the white with our new Snow Burst Embossing folder. And the little piece of Night of Navy was embossed with our new Stripes embossing folder. For anyone who has not done masking before it's actually fairly easy. I used to avoid this technique and am now comfortable with it I can see myself using it over and over again. I used a sticky note paper for my mask so that it would adhere to the cardstock that I was stamping on but could also easily be removed afterwards. So for this card I used my 3" circle die, I used my 2 1/2" circle punch to punch a hole in the center of my sticky note and centered the smaller circle over the larger one. I centered my stamp over the circle and stamped my image. Then I used my sponge to gently sponge the night of navy ink, filling the circle. I posted this on my facebook Saturday night, Sunday morning I had a request from a friend to make a dozen of them for him to use as Christmas cards. I'm happy to say that by the time I went to bed last night they were done. I was so excited as this is the first time anyone has requested that I make a bunch of cards for them. Hopefully it won't be the last.

Dasher

It was time to pull out dasher this year. I'm not even sure I got around to using him last year. I decided to do a brayered background for him. I haven't had alot of experience yet with this but I think I like the effect. I used wisteria wonder and bashful blue for the brayering. Trees were stamped in basic great. Dasher was stamped in Night of Navy craft ink and then embossed. And Seasons Greeting was stamped in versamark and then embossed with the new pewter embossing powder. I also used a little of the dazzling details on dashers antlers as well as the snow along the bottom of the trees.

My newest addition to my scrapbooking room

I have been wanting a shelf for just my cardstock for quite some time now, I've seen some people who have had wonderful shelves for storing their cardstock by color and laying it flat the way it should be stored. Unfortunately I had not been able to find anything affordable so I had to make due with what I was able to find. Well up till this past weekend anyways. I was lucky enough to have one built for me. Who built it for me? Well that would be my wonderful boyfriend. He built it, but I had to paint it. The shelves themselves have not been painted yet as the actual framing for it with the slats for each shelf took me almost 8 hrs to paint and let me tell you, my arms were so sore afterwards. But the end result was worth it. The shelvs will wait till next summer to get painted, and I think I might just spray paint them and make my life a little easier. Well I know your dying to see it, so here it is, this is it before I painted it and no shelves yet.

The next picture is of the framing and slats all nicely painted and the shelves before I aded all my paper.

And the final picture shows all my cardstock nicely sorted :)

Countdown to Christmas Calender

This was a work in a progress over the last couple of weeks. I had gotten the stamp set for free as an incentive for recruiting. So I got busy getting my little 1" squares colored and punched out, used circles for a couple as well. Then had to wait till I had the die to do the little peek a boo frames. Due to the time required I was kind of putting off finishing this project. But then I told someone I would donate it as a prize for a fundraiser. With less then a week to go till the fundraiser I had to hurry up and get it finished. So today I finished it up, went and bought a frame for it and am quite happy with the end result. All items seen on here with the exception of the frame can be purchased through me with Stampin Up.

Christmas Ornament Tutorial

As promised here is my tutorial for the Christmas Ornament. For this you will need a piece of ribbon approximately 6”-8” long, 2 coordinating dsp’s. One of these you will see both sides with the cones that you are about to make so make sure that you like both sides.  Once you have selected your papers, put aside the one you are going to use for your top layer as that will be your last step.

With the 1^st dsp you’re going to cut out squares, depending on what size ornament you want as a finished product will determine what size squares to cut, 6”, 4” or 3” (finished size). You will want to cut your squares at 2”, 1 ½” or 1”. The 1” squares are a little harder to work with due to their size but makes a very cute finished ornament. For this ornament pictured I used 1 ½” squares.

Once you’ve got all your squares cut you’ll want to curl your paper, this will make it easier to make it into cone shapes. You’ll want to curl it from the middle diagonally to the outside edge. It should look like this.

Now that you’ve got all your squares curled, you’ll want to make them into cones, they should look like this.

It’s time to make sure that these cones keep their shape, to do that we need to use some adhesive. The first few I made I used Tombow Liquid Glue. This worked great as it doesn’t dry immediately and allows you to reposition if you need to. However your fingers do tend to get a bit messy by the end. For my last one that I made, the one pictured in this tutorial I tried 1/8” sticky strip which I found to work quite well and it wasn’t as messy. If you choose to use this you will need to be more careful as it is not repositionable. If you are making the 2” squares you will need 15, if not you will only need 14 cones.  Your cones should look like this.

Punch out a 1 ¾” circle, you will use this to glue your cones onto. I used Tombow glue for this as it allows you to keep moving the cones around until you have them just the way you want them.

Next you’re going to want to make the middle section. I’ve heard these being called many different things and am still not sure what they’re supposed to be called. But they are very simple to make. Again depending on the size ornament you chose to make will depend on the size of dsp strip to cut. For the large one I used a two  1 ½” x12” strip, for the , medium one I used a 1”x12” strip and for the smallest I used a ¾” x12” strip. For the larger one I scored at every half inch. Once both strips were done I attached them, you’ll want to attach them so that they form a circle. The other two were scored at ¼” intervals. Punch out a 1 ¾” circle again and use to hold the shape. I used sticky strip to attach it. Heather Summers also has a wonderful way of getting them to hold their shape. Embellish the center how you wish. I used a hot glue gun to adhere the accordion flower to the bottom part of the ornament.

Once you’ve this all attached you’ll need to punch a hole at the top of the ornament in one of the cones. I used my crop o dile for this. And this is my finished ornament.



Hope my tutorial was helpful. Please feel free to ask any questions that you might have. I've love to see what you come up with if you'd like to share.

It's never too early to start thinking about Christmas

Christmas is such a fun time of year and even though it's just barely September I've started playing around with different ideas. Tonight I came across a really neat idea for a Christmas Ornament. I will be posting a tutorial in the next few days, so if your wanting to see how these are made, keep watching.

The First one was made using the new Santa's Letters DSP and the second one was with a retired DSP called Jolly Holiday. I used one of the new large buttons on the second one. And am happy that I finally found a use for them. Yes they are as big as they look, but on here it looks great. Also I changed the dimensions around a little on the 2nd one. This will all be included in my upcoming tutorial. Thanks for stopping by.

My newest MDS layout

I'm still playing around with this program and trying to figure some things out. I still have so much to learn but had a lot of fun doing this layout of my boyfriends little girl. She's going to be turning 5 next weekend and is the cutest little thing. Back in June we were outside doing some yard work and she was over, and discovered that we had earth worms. It was too funny, cause for the next hour or so that I was outside she was digging for earth worms. She had lots of fun, and it kept her focused on something. I cased this one from Sherry Mackay, I loved her idea so much of the faded picture in the background that I wanted to try it as well.