Monthly Archives: July 2016

Delicate Ornaments Thinlits Dies

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Well I’m sorry. But yes – it’s time to start thinking about Christmas cards. Slowly, admittedly. But if you start now, you can be relaxed about making them – if you wait until November, it’s a bit of a forced march. I’m planning a monthly class to help you get your Christmas cards under control. But I need to learn that there’s more to Christmas cards than just making them. Last year, I was really late sending them out which makes no sense. I’d made them early enough. Anyway, here’s a card using the delicate ornament thinlits dies for a Christmas challenge at the Paper Players. I love making Christmas cards and the year that I started making cards I expected to make them all year but there’s something that doesn’t work for me, making them in January. How it’s okay to make them in July when it’s hot, I can’t explain!!

Stampin' Up! Delicate oranaments

Here’s the banner which inspired my card

This gave me the perfect opportunity to use my new paper – the fabulous foil designer acetate. These are 6 sheets, 2 each of three designs for $12 and they are gold foil which looks like silver on the other. They are perfect for Christmas. Here’s the picture from the Stampin’ Up! store, beautiful, yes?

Fabulous Foil Designer Acetate

So I used the delicate ornament thinlits dies to cut out the acetate and it was hard. This was when I discovered that there’s a removable backing on the sheet. I guess it protects it, so it’s good to leave it there, but pull it off before you put it on your card. I cut out the two ornaments in the acetate and also in real red and emerald envy (this colour is going to be so amazing for Christmas!). Because the emerald envy bauble is slightly hidden, I used tombow to glue the acetate to the card. For the red ornament, I used a rolled up glue dot under the twine, but it can move. It’s fun that way. I used the retired gold twine (from last year’s holiday catalog) to tie a bow around the neck of each ornament. The green ornament is glued to the very vanilla but the real red one is popped up with dimensionals. So much fun.

The sentiment is from Embellished Ornaments and it’s stamped in real red. I did this first before adding the ornaments and then added the whole piece to a real red cardbase. This isn’t a card that I’d do at a class, it’s a little fiddly with the glue dots, but it’s a fun card to make for a few special people.

If you’re in the US, I hope that you’re enjoying your short week!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Weather Together Thank You

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Pootles is starting a weekly colour challenge and I thought that it would be fun to enter the inaugural one and to take the opportunity to use my last so far unused set, Weather Together. It’s the issue (ha!) with getting such a large first order, it takes a while to use everything!

Stampin' Up! Weather Together

The colour challenge is to use any or all of smoky slate, so saffron, pool party and pink pirouette. I’m really not a grey person (too much grey school uniform and I’m still not over it although it’s over 30 years ago!) but I like how smoky slate goes with pink pirouette. I started by stamping the umbrella handle in smoky slate on smoky slate cardstock and then cut it out with the matching dies, Umbrella Weather Framelits Dies – how easy is that? And actually they aren’t just matching, they come in a bundle saving you an instant 10%. I stamped the outline of the umbrella in smoky slate on pink pirouette and then added the pink pirouette dots. I built the card by gluing the umbrella handle onto a piece of whisper white and then popping up the umbrella itself with dimensionals. The sentiment is also from the Weather Together set. I made a little border to pull everything together with a slim smoky slate mat and left a good frame of the pink pirouette. It’s fun to play with different size borders, tiny changes make a big change to a card. Once I had the card all together, it felt as if there was something missing, so I cut out some of the little hearts using the Umbrella Weather framelits and stuck three of them onto the middle panel of the umbrella. There. That’s what was missing.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Floral Boutique DSP for Freshly Made Sketches

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Yesterday I was playing with the Detailed Floral Thinlits dies and I flipped to the catalog showing the Floral Boutique suite and was reminded how beautiful the Floral Boutique DSP is (that’s Designer Series Paper in case you’re wondering). So when I saw the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches, I decided to use this paper.

Stampin' Up! Floral Boutique DSP and Botanical Builders thinlits dies

Here’s the banner from the challenge sketch which ends today:

I decided to follow the sketch pretty much to the letter. I first cut a piece of the Floral Boutique DSP 2 by 4.5 inches and then a piece of whisper white just 1/8 inch larger for the mat. After gluing that panel to my night of navy card base, I made my flower. I cut out two flowers using the botanical builder framelit dies, one in night of navy and one in whisper white and layered them. I attached them together in the middle with glue dots and pushed the petals up so that there is a lot of extra dimension. Happily I have the new enamel shapes in regals and there of the larger circles were perfect as my flower centre.

Even more happily, I’d first cut my DSP at 2.5 inches wide and decided it was too big and so removed a half an inch. And this leftover strip made a perfect decoration for my envelope to make it match my card.

Stampin' Up! Floral Boutique DSP and Botanical Builders thinlits dies

I’m really not sure why I used to be so nervous of sketch challenges – they are my preferred type these days! I encourage you to have a go if, like I used to be, you move on rapidly when you see that a challenge is a sketch.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Vertical Greetings for CASology

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As I hoped, I spent some time yesterday crafting and took my inspiration from a number of challenges. Today’s card, using the Vertical Greetings set, is inspired by the latest challenge at CASology.

Stampin' Up! Vertical Greetings

Here’s the banner which inspired my card. It closes tomorrow, so if you want to enter, you’d better get crafting.

I decided that I wanted five of the trees and drew a pencil line to so that I could easily line up the pots. I started from the left and used the edge of my stamp-a-ma-jig for the spacing! So for the second tree, I positioned it on the line and then moved it to the right until the edge of the plastic was at the right most edge of the first tree. It worked perfectly. Then I put my emerald envy stamped trees onto a card base of the same colour. The little bow made with the thick bakers’ twine in melon mambo is the accent. I toyed with adding a sentiment, but everything seemed to be too much. So, it’s very much a clean and simple card.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

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I have a four day weekend stretching out in front of me with nothing particular to do (so far), so I’m looking forward to some crafting. This is a good thing since yesterday I booked a business trip out of town for the week of the 11th so I need to get ahead on my blog. This morning I decided to play more with the Detailed Floral thinlits dies. I love the night of navy and white together on page 76 and 77 of the catalog where this die is featured but I figured that emerald envy was of the same deep rich intensity and it ought to work pretty well too. And it does.

Stampin' Up! Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies and Vertical Greetings

Whilst I was choosing a greeting for my card, I decided on the Vertical Greetings set and all of a sudden my card turned horizontal! So here I’ve cut two of the smaller dies with the edge cut as well. I placed them onto the thick whisper white cardbase for placement purposes and decided where to put the greeting. The stamp-a-ma-jig is so handy for this. And because the stamp has a nice large gap between the words, there’s no need for masking, just tap a single word onto the ink pad and you’re good to go. After stamping (successfully) the words, I glued on the detailed floral thinlits diecuts. You’ll notice that there is a flower in the die and that’s what I’ve used for my embellishment – and they are popped up on teeny fragments of stampin’ dimensionals for some fun.

Stampin' Up! Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies and Vertical Greetings

Wishing you a happy Saturday.

See you tomorrow,

Liz