We’re having a few new people join at work and so when I saw the set Welcome Words it was a no brainer to make cards to welcome them to the team. Here’s my latest, this time using my brand new World Traveler TIEF for the background.
I happened to have a piece of pool party on my “haven’t put the odds and ends away pile” and decided to use it with the embossing folder. I love pool party with lost lagoon so quickly decided to use lost lagoon on very vanilla for my welcome banner and then border it in lost lagoon. I glued the pool party piece to a lost lagoon card base and then popped the banner up with dimensionals, using one of the lines on the embossing to help line up the banner.
I also embossed the envelope flap with the same embossing folder to match. And that’s it. A quick, clean and simple card for today. It’s funny how cards sometimes come together rapidly and sometimes take a long time. I’d spent some time last night playing with the Picture Perfect stamp set and eventually put my card to one side for later because something isn’t quite right. This card just fell together.
Picture Perfect is one of the new sets that arrived in my order last week and so I was itching to play with it. I find that on the first use of a set, I go very simple, just to check it out. This set is a multi step stamping 2 for the starfish, 4 for the humming bird. I started with the starfish since there are less colours to pick for that!
Last night I was talking to someone on Facebook and she is such a nice person, I was inspired to create this card for her. I’ll hopefully get it in the post in the next day or two now that I’m more mobile. I’m actually able to drive without pain now (being my left foot and I drive a manual transmission) although moving too much gets me time on the sofa with an ice pack reducing the swelling. But it’s tremendous progress and I’m happy.
I started off trying so saffron and pumpkin pie for the starfish stamping the pumpkin pie first so that it’s easier to line up the so saffron but the yellow was overpowered so I switched to hello honey. I covered the starfish in clear wink of stella to give the impression that it was just out of the water.
I then fussy cut out the starfish (does anyone else keep typing fuzzy but accident for fussy??!) and, after stamping the sentiment in hello honey, popped up the starfish on dimensionals. There’s a full sized one in the centre and little tiny strips at the end of each arm. I then glued the whisper white panel to a pumpkin pie mat and mounted that on a hello honey card base.
I lined the envelope with the backgrounds DSP in hello honey using the envelope liners framelits.
Here’s a fun set that was added earlier this month to the list of items you can earn for free during Sale-a-bration. My order that arrived a couple of days ago had the two new sets so you’ll be seeing the Party Pants set soon. But today, it’s Pedal Pusher. This card was one of the “let’s start with a stamp and see where it ends up” variety. I wanted to use the bike and was pretty sure I wanted to use my aquapainter but even so I started by stamping the bike in archival basic black rather than using the stazon. There’s not much watercolouring over the black so I figured it would be safe from bleeding.
The really fun thing about the Pedal Pusher set is that it has a basket stamp and several options for what to include. I of course had to start with the wine! The grapes fall over the edge of the basket – I didn’t stamp it quite perfectly so I just added a grape to fill in the gap with my stampin’ write basic black marker. It worked perfectly.
I then did a pale wash of mossy meadow for the ground, trying hard not to make it too neat and tidy. Not that I’m claiming that I’m neat and tidy by nature (my sister and others who know me are probably giggling) but I like symmetry and things to visually be neat. Then I used a less watered down shade of mossy meadow for the bike frame and mudguards. Since I’d started with last year’s in colours, I grabbed hello honey for the basket and watered it down a little for the bread and then finished with a very watered down blackberry bliss for the grapes.
The sentiment is from Enjoy the little things which is a set intended for Project Life but it seems perfect for cards too. I stamped off once so that the blackberry bliss sentiment would be closer to the grapes in strength. The mat is blackberry bliss and it’s on a card base of mossy meadow.
I definitely need to check my supplies of the card stock in the in colours and get any extras I need by the end of next month. If I’m going to stock up on them, it makes sense to do so now so that I can get freebies from Sale-a-bration, right? 🙂
Ann asked me if there’s a trick to ensuring that washi tape doesn’t pull up from the card if you don’t wrap it all the way around although she wonders if it’s due to living in a dry climate. New Jersey is definitely not dry but I haven’t had any issues, so I reached out to Eimear (my unofficial upline) to see if she had either although the UK isn’t really dry. We agreed that the best thing to do would be to use some glue on the end – and that fast fuse would stop it (and anything) moving. When I say unofficial upline, it’s because my sister introduced me to Stampin’ Up! but since she lives in the UK I couldn’t be part of that group. But Eimear’s adopted me and I’m part of her Facebook group. Both Eimear and my sister Caro have blogs and are taking part in a blog hop today. I know that they’d be thrilled if you dropped by especially if you left them a comment.
Have a great weekend and I hope that you have some time to craft. I’m off back to my kitchen table to play some more.
Here’s another card that I made at the crop, I’m not sure where it came from. It just evolved.
This is one of my favourite sets, Lighthearted Leaves and I decided to stamp one of the images in the archival basic black three times. I used the stamp-a-ma-jig to ensure that I had them lined up and spaced the same. Then I looked at the card and decided to mark each leaf with the white gel pen. Actually I practised first on the grid paper to be sure that I liked the look. Which I obviously did – it’s quite a fun look. I matted the piece of watermelon wonder in basic black and contemplated a sentiment. And left the white gel pen to dry whilst we came home from the crop. In the end I decided it didn’t need a sentiment and placed it on a watermelon wonder card base. This is the first time that I’ve used the white gel pen and I like how it adds interest. Just be careful and test it on scrap paper first to ensure it’s flowing and be careful of the drying time. The three days that I left it may have been excessive!
I’ve been fancying the Berry Basket Bigz L die for a while so when it was on special last week, I pounced. Then of course as soon as it arrived, I had to make a basket. I grabbed the nearest card stock which happened to be Watermelon Wonder and made a basket. You cut out the die twice and then put the two main pieces together with a strong glue – I favour fast fuse for this. Don’t forget that you need to snap to break the tape and you need to alternate the direction. If you always go the same way, it will stop working and you will get very frustrated with it. Trust me, I know this!
You then take the two edge pieces that you want (there’s a scalloped and a straight piece) and fold and glue them together and then attach them to the box. It’s easiest to do this with the box upside down. I put little bits of fast fuse on the box and then added the edge because I don’t want to see a staple ruining the look of my box.
Then it was time to decorate and I decided to use the botanical builder framelits dies. I cut out most of the flower pieces in delightful dijon and watermelon wonder and built flowers using glue dots. I also attached them to the box with the glue dots. I’m going to fill it with some blank notecards and envelopes and a few other goodies to give to a friend at work.
