Archive for the ‘Cards’ Category

The Hero Arts blog is having a “book” contest this week. Their featured blogger, Lisa Spangler, is making example books from and interviewing the author of “How to Make Books,” by Esther K. Smith.

I needed to make a very special card for a friend who is having a tough anniversary this week. Her little girl lost a battle to Leukemia two years ago two days after her fourth birthday. This mini-book idea was just the inspiration I needed. The photos are from the Light the Night Walk and a picnic we had with our friends at a concert, both at the Riverwalk. I chose them because they evoked the same mood in me as the poem (author unknown from the Internet.)

Watch this how-to video to see how I folded the card. I can’t take credit for the video, it is from this Hero Arts blog post by Lisa.

The trickiest part of this card was not the folds, that is easy if you watch the video! It is just a little tricky to figure out where and how to emboss with all the folds. So I started my design by putting in the embossed images and then worked around them.

Also, I used a 12 x 12 piece of paper, but after I folded my book I had to trim about 1/3 of an inch off so that it would go through the Cuttlebug.

The tag was not part of the author’s design, it is my addition.

• Paper: Basic Grey-”Oh Baby Girl”
• Acrylic Stamps: Hero Arts Birds & Branches, Hero Arts Birthday Expressions, Luxe Designs corner stamps, and Heidi Swapp’s date gadget
• Embossing Folders: Just My Type, With Love, D’vine Swirl, and a birthday selection
• Ribbon: Michaels
• Distress Ink: Fired Brick with Colorbox cat eye chalk in hot pink and Vintage Photo
• Embossing Powder: Stampendous Jeweled Gold
• Dimensional Glue: Liquid Pearls in Gold
• Gell Pen: Inkessentials

If you are thinking, I can’t write like that, don’t worry! I don’t write “loopy” like this either, it took me quite a while to do, but I copied the style from “Doodling for Papercrafters.”

My In-Law’s anniversary is just a couple of days before ours. All my energy went into their 45th anniversary party, so all my dh got was this little card!

The silver title was done with Cricut’s Base Camp cartridge. I hit “apply” on kerning without changing the number then nudged a few of the letters to the left, selecting “weld.” After cutting it out on silver from DCWV’s glitter stack I snipped between each letter almost to the edge, leaving about 1/8 of an inch intact. The cut-out letters didn’t pop enough so I backed each letter with scrap paper from creating the chocolate brown card (DCWV cardstock stack.) A glue pen makes this process a breeze.

The rest of the cuts were made with the new Cricut Storybook cartridge. Even with the “wish” theme, my husband thought the dandelion pod was fireworks! So I’ll be interested to know what everyone else thinks it is! The dandelion mat and icon’s shadow were cut on a copper sheet from Wausau Paper’s Metallics Cardstock. And, I thought the green scrolly flower print from Basic Grey complimented the silver/brown/copper palette perfectly. The green velvet rick-rack ribbon, also from Basic Grey, was a little tricky to adhere. I used Zots ultrathin clear adhesive lines, applying an inch or so of the adhesive at a time, laying the ribbon down on top.

I distressed all the edges with vintage photo ink and stamped several “eights”, “xoxoxo”, and a heart with the same ink. All the stamps were from Studio G sets. My white gell pen came in handy to add highlights to the copper sentiment, otherwise it doesn’t pop on the brown paper.

I applied a manilla tag to the inside, as a nice finishing touch for the sentiment. The rosebud charm from “Paper Bliss” brought the silver accent over to the inside. I had to explain to dh though that {brackets} mean “hugs” in internet speak! Somehow I figured he wouldn’t know that since the only internet community he hangs out on is for UFC!

If any of you have as hard of a time as I do coming up with card designs for the male loved ones in our lives I thought you might appreciate the .cut file: “ With You My Wish Came True ,” but you have to right click on it, then choose “save-as” and type “.cut” after the file name. It should then open right up in Cricut Design Studio software.

Update: Thanks to Cricut for selecting this card for the Newsletter on 8/25th!

When my nephew saw the camo ribbon sticking out of the envelope he said, “I’m going to open this one first because the ribbon is cool.” My dd was so proud to help make his card, I’ve shared before where you can get these coloring book images.

He got a new (funky twisty?) skateboard for his birthday from his uncles and we are going skiing this Christmas, he is jumping at the bit to try snow boarding so I thought he’d like this image.

I used yellow DCWV glitter stack paper for the embossed greeting. These small Cuttlebug sentiments are very nice to have on hand! The striped cardstock is from the DCWV Grade School Stack and has some nice sporty glossy stripes. The camouflage ribbon complimented it perfectly. Of course dd could not have chosen better colors and no, I did not coach her on color theory!

My brother-in-law has a beautiful (and huge) white dog that is half wolf and half Alaskan Husky, he dwarfs his German Shepherd work dog! I really struggled coming up with a manly birthday card, it is just so much easier to make girly cards, isn’t it?! I wanted to use the Adirondack Paint Dabbers that I got from Tim Holtz’s class. I started with the Basic Grey blue/green circles paper as my inspiration and decided Eric would like an outdoorsy theme.

While at CHA I was drawn to all of the designs using butcher block paper, so I used that as my base and mimicked the circles by blotting my Hero Arts “watercolor  circle” stamp with the Adirondack “Aqua” paint dabber and “Lettuce” Earthtones dye ink.

Next I picked up on the vertical lines in the Basic Grey print by embossing a velum rectangle with the new Cuttlebug forest branches folder.  And stamped one side of my background with the Tim Holtz catails stamp in copper embossing powder.

The dog is from Cricut’s Paper Pups cartridge and the happy birthday, grill and beer bucket stamps are all from Studio G. They look great in the copper embossing powder on the velum. The finishing touch was the dog’s collar which I colored with the Versamark pen before embossing and his party hat, also Studio G from the recent January pack.

All of the pieces were distressed first with Tim Holtz’s Vintage Photo distress ink and followed up with Black Soot on the very edges.

The card itself is made from the new “Heritage” fall colored 8.5 x 11 DCWV card stock. I am really looking forward to giving this to Eric and hope he does not see it on my blog first!

The last time I did anything for the soldiers was embarrasingly way back in 2004. I raised money to buy soccer equipment for some Iraqi school children. A then co-worker of mine was stationed there and when I pitched him the idea he knew just who to call. We even had press coverage!

I decided it was time I step up to the plate again. This time I’m not spearheading it, I’m just contributing handmade cards to a project on the Cricut messageboard. They are trying to get to 100,000 cards for the year and only have about 7,000 to go. When is the last time you did something for the soldiers? You can contact me to find out how to join in!

I wanted something I could do in an assembly line fashion, so I bought some adorable family character stamps, they will star on every card design.  I chose the new Debbie Mumm glitter mat stack, which is just as cute as the new DCWV fall glitter stack. First I cut a solid sheet of cardstock 8.5 x 11 (DCWV Heritage) in half. Then I trimmed the top off of a patterned sheet from the mat stack and about an inch off the side, setting that piece aside for use on another card. This first card has a standard 5 1/4 x 2 5/8 tag with the end slightly trimmed to fit. I sprayed it with Tim Holtz’s Butterscotch Color Wash then stamped the starring characters with opaque carnelian (orange) embossing powder. The Prima flowers have “skittles” in the center. All of the ribbon is from Joanne’s and this edge was done with Tim Holtz’s Vintage Photo distress ink.

You’ll have to excuse the girls on the purple bat card, I smeared lavendar Perfect Pearls on the tag before embossing the gals in midnight black, and it was evidently not dry enough! I’ll do that part the night before next time around. But, you still get the idea, isn’t it cute!  This time the tag was cut and embossed with a Nestabilities long rectangle and the edges are accented with a Colorbox hot pink cat eye. The background was distressed with black soot ink.

I think my favorite is the football card, I used the amazing Inkessentials pen to make a sparkly smile! The tag is cardstock, cut and embossed with round Nestabilities, distressed with Vintage Photo and accented with a Martha Stewart brown pen. The image was colored with my Bic markers as I’m patiently waiting for the Copics we ordered at CHA.

I’ll be posting more designs, I have 6 weeks to get 15 done…but I hope to do at least 30 by then.

I’m fairly new to card-making, I started doing it when I bought my Cricut last fall. I actually used to use Prismacolors to make cards for people in college, but that was way long ago!

I think sometimes us newbies have some “ah-has” that might seem a little “duh” as time goes on. And they are easy to forget, so I thought I’d capture one here. This is one of the very first cards I made with my Cricut machine. It was for my niece who stayed in college so many years we stopped counting. Ha, just kidding you Emily! She was a music major, which explains it to those of you who know.

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This was a natural product extension that leverages two Cricut products. You need to buy a blank embossing folder and a card-stock weight material with sticky backing on both sides. First you cut your image on the embossing material. Then remove the sticky backing for the negative side of your image, but do not take apart your image!  Position and adhere your image to one side of the folder and run it through the Cuttlebug. Next you remove the sticky backing for the positive side of your image only, close your folder, and run it back through the Cuttlebug again so that it adheres to the other side of the folder. Now your embossing folder is ready. Insert your paper and run it through the machine a third time.

It is brilliant, and easy to do, plus it is not very expensive because you can use the same blank embossing folder over and over! However, I have slightly mixed feelings on this product release. The resulting image is not raised very far and in the samples I saw was difficult to see. I would ink the image in order to make it pop! My first question was why didn’t you use a thicker card stock? The answer is that it isn’t the thickness of the template that produces the depth of the impression. In order to get a deeper impression you would need spacing between the positive and negative image. Say for example your image was a square. If you cut a 2 inch square with a 1 7/8” square inside the image then peeled the thin frame out before adhering your template AND you had a thicker card stock embossing material then you could get a deeper impression.

The problem is that it is not that simple, but the shadow feature may work to create the gap on simple images. So, when I get my hands on the material I’ll try using CDS to create the gap with the shadow feature and I’ll post my results. I have not read up on the Cricut website, they may have already tested this option, we’ll see.

Fiskars introduced a new product at CHA called the “Push and Print Stamp Factory.” It will retail for about $40. You layout any of your acrylic stamps on the 3 x 5 acrylic block and place it in the gadget along with a Fiskars brand stamp pad (12 colors to select from.) Then in one motion you press down and it inks and then stamps.

One benefit is that you would assumedly apply even pressure every time with no more over inking.  For the experienced stamper this may not be any perceived value. For the novice stamper it may, but would they rather buy a $40 gadget or buy $40 more in stamps?

I think their most obvious customer is the semi-professional crafter. If you were doing limited editions and selling them on Etsy or eBay, or selling custom invitations and stationary then this gadget is for you! The question is, are there enough of you out there? Will you be adding this product to your wish list?

I already own Cuttlebug, a Provo Craft embossing machine, so Spellbinders was smart to design a product that can work in most competitive embossing/cutting machines.

Beth helped me learn to use the product at the make and take. It was pretty easy. You have to make two passes with the machine. The first time you put it through you put a white spacer plate under your template, place the paper on top and sandwich it between the white cut mat and white emboss mat. Then, you take out the white spacer and place an embossing pad on top of your paper. You can just leave the negative cut alone. Run it back through the machine and the embossing is complete. The cut can be a little difficult to get out of the plate, especially if it is detailed, so go slow and have toothpicks handy to push the piece out if necessary.

Not only can the Spellbinder dies cut and emboss, but you can use them as a stencil and for paper piercing with their newest product introductions. Here the die has been inked with two colors. The neat thing is that the color will be pressed into the paper without affecting the embossed areas. Tape the stencil to your paper with a re-positionable tape so it won’t move, this will help make sure your embossed areas stay clean.

This photo shows the card after both the cut pass and the emboss pass. The tiny raised dots are where the piercing could be applied, only a few in the center were punched out here.

Another thing that I wish Cuttlebug would do is roll out 12 inch border folders. Spellbinders just released several pictured here. Of course if you are doing a 12 inch scrapbook layout you can’t run the entire page through either machine. So, it would make most sense if Cuttlebug rolled out a die/emboss combo folder so borders could have a nice detailed edge like these. I’m hoping Lisa buys some of these tomorrow, hint, hint, hint.

Here is an “Edgeability”, it is a card sized template that creates a frame. This one comes with 5 pieces which are sitting in the middle of the blank frame area.

Thanks to Jerry Bowman for taking the time to tell me the Spellbinders story. It sounds like you are having a great show. Best of Luck!

My most favorite product of the day was from Hero Arts. They have come out with new TWELVE INCH clear stamp borders! This one is called “Birds and Branches”, it is my personal favorite. There are 16 different designs in 8 different sets.

Here is their catalog in case you want to see them all.

My sister Lisa is going to order some tomorrow. So if you know you want some let us know!

This was the make and take in the Hero Arts booth today. I’d never done a slider card. It was so easy and cute. Very cool how the ribbon just disappears when you push in the card, then it looks so cute just tied on the end!