Monthly Archives: November 2014

Superhero curvy keepsake boxes

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Whilst at the crop last week (I can’t believe that is was a week ago!) my sister and I borrowed the mustache die from Randa (thanks Randa!). Caro had the curvy keepsake box die and we had seen a superhero made out of the box on Facebook. Sadly, I can’t find the post and so can’t give credit – if my sister can find it, I’ll come back and edit this.

curvy keepsake boxes superheroes

This is a pretty simple box to make – you cut out 2 of the dies and glue them together to form the box. If you use your bone folder to slightly curve the sides of the box, it comes together more easily. It is of course easier to adhere the mask when the box isn’t assembled. And here we had a first. I was convinced that I would never use candy dots, I don’t like the plastic look. But after struggling to find the right size punch (with my sister giggling at my efforts) I gave in and used two of her candy dots for the eyes.

Here’s a better view of the cape

curvy keepsake boxes superheroes back view

This is made by cutting out part of another half box and then using either a scallop edge punch or the scallops on the largest square framelits. I think that the largest oval framelit would work as well.

I’m doing another craft show tomorrow and I now have the curvy keepsake box die and the mustache so I’ll be making some more of these this afternoon.

Baby Tees

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Another of my colleagues at the office had a baby recently – this time a baby girl. I decided to continue not using the typical pastel pink/blue and chose crisp cantaloupe for my card.

Stampin' Up! Baby Tees on alphabet embossing

I borrowed the Alphabet Press embossing folder from my sister in my continued attempt last weekend to use all of the supplies that she’d brought from the UK. I liked the idea of having the alphabet on a baby card although I doubt that the baby will learn much from it. I ran the piece of crisp cantaloupe through the big shot and mounted it on a piece of very vanilla which in turn was mounted on the crisp cantaloupe card base. Next I took the single tee that I have from the retired Stampin’ Up! Baby Tees wheel (when I de-wheeled it, I ended up with 4 tees which fit on a block and a spare one) and stamped it in crisp cantaloupe on very vanilla. It looked a little stark so I put the edges of the card onto the crisp cantaloupe ink pad to soften the look.

Thanks a lot

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As I previously mentioned, my job has been outsourced and I’m serving my three months of notice. My last day is tomorrow. An unexpectedly large number of people have taken me out for lunch even though there was a big farewell luncheon of twenty plus people a couple of weeks ago. Rather than just send a blanket email to thank them, I decided to write them cards. I made a number of copies of the following card:

for all things crumb cake early espresso

This is the epitome of a clean and simple card. It’s also very easy to mass produce – I know, I made a dozen yesterday morning before work! This is using Stampin’ Up!’s For All Things stamp set – this was a set that I thought that I could do without until I went to my upline Jen’s house for a class and we made a card with it. It certainly is great for producing a quick thank you card.

I used very vanilla as the base and the top mat ( sized at 3.5″ by 4.75″) with the early espresso a quarter inch larger than the top mat in the middle. This gave a wider mat between the early espresso and the usual sized base which gives a different effect from quarter inches between each layer. I used crumb cake for the water colour stamp with early espresso on top. The THANKS is from the same set although there is more to that stamp so I used my stampin’ write marker in early espresso to colour just the word thanks. After this it was a simple matter of constructing the card and then I used an embossing folder to add interest to the envelope. As I mentioned recently, embossing the envelopes appears to be rather addictive.

When I ran out of early espresso after a few cards, I swapped it out for soft suede which also worked very well.

It’s time for a Merry Monday challenge

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I really like the idea of the Merry Monday challenge – it’s always about making Christmas cards. All year long. The idea being that by the time Christmas comes, you’re in really good shape. It’s a shame that I only found this recently! Here’s the challenge:

My favourite ornaments are, sadly, retired – the Ornament Keepsakes set. Having worn grey to school for about seven years, I still hate it so I was happy to see that I could use silver.

holiday ornaments navy and silver

I stamped the ornament three times in versamark on night of navy and then sprinkled the silver embossing powder. After using the heat tool to make the ornaments look magical, I cut them out using the coordinating dies. So much easier than using scissors! I then used the sentiment from Sassy Salutations on the bottom of the card, again using the silver embossing powder. I popped up the ornaments using dimensionals and, with the help of my trusty ruler, placed the two outside ornaments at a quarter inch from the edge. After this I lined up the bottom points of the ornaments using a clear block to help me position the middle ornament – the ruler was also handy here to ensure that the distance between the ornaments was consistent.

I had originally intended to put ribbon on the card to give the look of the ornaments hanging but in the end it was too much. I like the clean look of this much better. I matted the card in the brushed silver cardstock and used a night of navy card base.

Secret Pal inspiration

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This past weekend, Caro and I attended our first crop and it was fantastic fun! We made cards, met new people, deepened our relationships with others, spotted words in songs for raffle tickets, participated in swaps, played bingo, drank wine and margaritas and stayed up way too late. It was a blast. The New Jersey Crop Weekends are highly recommended. We’re very lucky in that they are at a hotel about 20 minutes from my house so it’s easy to get there – that’s not to say that we didn’t stay over – remember the margaritas? 🙂

We took part in the Secret Pal swap. The idea is that you shower your pal with gifts over the weekend and there’s a reveal on Saturday evening when you find out the wonderful person who was spoiling you. My pal was Jill. She definitely was extravagant and took the showering almost literally! One of the first gifts was a copy of Cardmaking & Papercraft, the UK’s number one crafting magazine. This confused me rather since I knew that Caro was gifting Jill and I hadn’t heard any other British accents – I later found out that Jill found this at Barnes and Noble. Anyway, I flipped through the magazine (didn’t want to waste crafting time and I can read it this week) and found an article on gold gilding. Well, I didn’t have the products but it did inspire me to take the tree stamp that I’d picked up at Michael’s and heat emboss it in gold.

hero tree gold emboss on white

The tree stamp is from Hero Arts – I posted a card with it last week. The text is from Stampin’ Up!’s The Newborn King stamp set. I really love the typeface and the simplicity of the card.I used whisper white for the stamping and matting and adhered it to a whisper white base. I like the white layer on the white card base – it looks rather classy. This is definitely a card that I’m going to be sending myself. So apologies in advance if anyone reading this gets a spoiler on their Christmas card!