Christmas Cards

OK, so it's a little late to get started on my Christmas cards, but i'm a procrastinator at heart, and no one who knows me should be surprised that I waited till a week before Christmas to start making and mailing my cards. So I thought this year instead of assembly-lining a stack of cards, I'd make a few different kinds. Here are two:

This card was inspired by one made by Beth McAlexander that I found on Splitcoast. Hers was a bit different, but the layout is basically the same. I used the Merry Moments DSP and Old Olive, Chocolate Chip and Whisper White Cardstock. This stamp set is one of my favorites. It's from the Holiday Mini (order now...time is running out for that catalog!) called "Berry Christmas." It's so versatile. I punched out the sentiment from that set with the Word Window punch. Fits perfectly. The ribbon is Old Olive grosgrain ribbon. I used Old Olive, Chocolate Chip and Ruby Red ink.

The next one was inspired by Lisa Mekeel at http://www.creativecucina.com/. Again, I used Old Olive and Ruby Red, but with Very Vanilla this time. I stamped the holly branch, the berries and the bird and thought the space just needed something, so I used the snowflake in the set and some clear Stampin' Emboss powder to give it a texture of snowflakes. It was a neat touch. The sentiment is from Holiday Punch hostess set, stamped in Old Olive ink on Old Olive paper and punched out with the wide oval punch. The DSP is from the Merry Moments pack.

I will be working on more tomorrow, actually did make another one tonight, but because it's a special card for Ms. Patti, I can't post it here until she gets it!! :)

Happy Stampin'!

-jen

More Scrap Cards

Here is yet another set of cards that I made for the scrap paper card swap I was in...these ones were really simple...used a sizzix die for the leaves and flowers. They came out pretty cute. :)

Again, all scraps on these cards...the scallop circle is a Marvy Mega punch I think. Sentiments are from Stampin' Up!

Thanks for looking!

Scrap Paper, Anyone?

I was in a swap on SCS hosted by my dear friend, Slegos, which challenged us to use ONLY scrap paper to make some cards. Well, I have two huge baskets full of scraps, so I thought this should be an easy challenge. Surprisingly, though, it was tougher than it sounds! I didn't cheat, though, and I only used paper and embellishments out of my scraps stash, and here's what I came up with:


It was actually rather easy to put together the "quilts" thanks to Stampin' Up!'s matching sets of DSP, and thanks to a few pieces I had with stripes of patterns on them, making punching matchy patterns quite easy. I used a small square punch from EK Success to make all the squares, and mounted them on the back of a large shipping label...instant sticky without wasting Xyron adhesive...and guess what? The labels were in the scrap basket too! See, I really didn't cheat at all!

My husband really liked the bright one with the swirly embellie on it, but my favorite was the decidedly Fall looking one. It was actually kinda hard to send these in for the swap in the end of it all...I hope whoever got them liked them!

Happy Stampin'!

Fun and Easy Halloween Cards

I recently did a swap for a dear friend of mine on SCS (Slegos) using only scrap paper. I came up with quite an array of cards, and thought I'd share them on here one post at a time. The good news is I have quite a few days' worth of posts now without making anything new!

Here's the first set of cards...Halloween cards!

This picture doesn't quite do them justice...both of them feature an orange embossed sentiment on Basic Black using my newest dollar stamps. The haunted house is part of the House of Haunts SU! stamp set, embossed on Pumpkin Pie cardstock, then punched with the ticket corner punch after layering on the black piece, then mounting the whole thing to an Elegant Eggplant base. The spider stamp is another dollar stamp, and the middle of the web is a stamp, but since I wanted it bigger, I filled in with my VersaMarker. The web and spider are on Elegant Eggplant. The web is embossed with clear EP, and the spider is embossed with black. This one is mounted on a Pumpkin Pie base. These were really fun to make, and they came out really cute. They would be great for kids, and went together very quickly and easily. Hope you like them!

Happy Stampin'!

Tri-Shutter Graduation Card

I had to make a card for my niece's graduation party, and since i'm broke and couldn't give her a gift yet, I figured I better make it one phenomenal card! Split Coast Stampers just featured this technique by Bonnie Swalkiewicz as their weekly tutorial so I thought I'd give it a try. It was tedious, not exactly hard, but not really for the beginner stamper either. I used the Delicate Dots DSP that I got from the 2009 Sale-A-Bration catalog, along with more mustard, old olive, and brocade blue cardstock and handsome hunter ink. Here's what I came up with:

Other accessories I used were some rick-rack from my naked mail gift, Stampin' Up's Scallop Edge Punch, 5-Petal Flower Punch, and 1/2 inch circle punch, my Crop-o-Dile, and Martha's Cosmos punch (also a gift from my naked mail swap!) This card style is really cool, and everyone passed it around at the party opening and closing it a million times in awe. Definitely an impressive way to give a greeting, especially if you're not able to stick any money in there with it! :) Here's what the front looks like when it's all closed up:

My only suggestion and what I will do next time is to not score the last line (at the 10" mark) all the way down, but rather only at the top and bottom. Either that or I would put a matching square for another sentiment there, because it gets floppy. This is hard to explain, you just have to make the card using SCS's instructions, which are found here. This one is defintely worth the tinkering to create!

Happy Stampin'!

-jen

Happy Birthday Autumn!

Today is my oldest great niece's birthday...she's FIVE already! She had a party yesterday with a "girls rock" theme that she picked out. I made her a quickie of a card following her theme and then bought her a rather punk looking outfit and a bag with guitars on it. She actually looked a second longer at this card than all the other ones she threw at her mom after ripping the envelopes open! Hey, to get an extra second of attention from a five year old is an accomplishment...

The circles are cut from some DP that my husband bought me for Christmas...the black is actually flocking, which is pretty cool and quite rock and roll if you ask me. The guitar and musical notes came in a pack of sticker embellishments from AC Moore though I can't remember who made them. The guitar has a little window with beads and sparkly gems in it that shake. The "Girls Rock" was written with a glue pen and glittered with silver glitter. Real Red cardstock layered onto some black textured cardstock gave it a nice complimentary layered effect. I thought it turned out cute for how quick it was. I've learned that with my great niece, short and simple is the best way to go! She only has a few seconds of attention to give you, you know!

A Thank You for my Great Niece

My great niece is almost five. For my birthday this year, she made cupcakes and shared them with me including one she made "special just for me" with lots of icing because it was my birthday. We had a great day spending time together just playing and talking about stuff. I don't get to see her often, and she usually takes a while to warm up to me, but lately she's been my buddy. So i made her a special thank you card for my cupcake:
I used a stamp set I got at the 2008 Heirloom Rubber Stamping Expo in Allentown. You construct the puppies piece by piece, and depending on how you put the pieces together, they come out with individual personalities. She loves puppies, so I thought she'd like it. Plus she loves getting mail. I came across the picture while cleaning off my camera, so I thought I'd share. The best part is that I made it pretty quickly using scraps of paper and ribbon! I love that!

Happy Stampin'!
-jen

Fast & Fun Sunshine Garden Card

I feel like I've been on a dry spell when it comes to creativity, but tonight my mojo showed up again and I put together what will probably be a demo card at my first workshop on March 1st (Thanks, Patti!). It's a pretty simple one, but came out much cuter than I thought it was going to. The main image is from Fun & Fast Notes, stamped in Chocolate Chip on Very Vanilla and colored with a blender pen and Stampin' Pastels. It's then layered on Chocolate Chip and Old Olive cardstock. The card base is textured So Saffron cardstock from the Sunshine Garden Simply Scrappin' kit and the stripes are cut from a sheet of DSP in that same pack. I then used my Stamp-a-ma-jig and a Chocolate Chip Stampin' Write marker to stamp the sentiment on Very Vanilla. It looked kinda plain, so I added the flower from Totally Tabs using Old Olive ink. I punched that with the round tab punch, folded it in half and nestled it in behind the DSP.

Hope that wasn't too much detail...this whole blog thing is still kinda new to me and I'm not sure what all I should say! :) I feel much better having a cute card that I can show at the workshop that uses a lot of different basic techniques but comes out to be less than boring. If you have any suggestions for me, feel free to offer them!

I'm still looking for players for the Embellishment Sampler Pack, and I'm willing to ship anywhere in the US, so if you're interested, let me know! (Details in post below!)

'Til tomorrow's mojo comes around....

-jen

Gotta Love This Set...

I really love the Bronc Buster set from SU and every time I use it, I find that I make something I love. Here's the latest that I made a couple weeks ago...

I found some old Cool Caribbean (still missing that one) in my scraps basket and paired it up with some chocolate chip and I believe it's Bazzill's green though I'm not sure the exact name of the shade. I layered the CC on black and double secured it with black brads. The BG of the CC was achieved with the Weathered BG stamp and some distressing using chocolate chip stamping spot and sponging. The swirl from Bronc Buster is also on there, stamped off once or twice in chocolate chip ink as part of the BG. The main image is done in black Staz-On.

I've kept a hold of this card to use it as inspiration for a set that I plan on giving my sister-in-law one of these days of a bunch of cards in a portfolio type holder with some other goodies like a post it note holder or coaster album. I'll be sure to post that whole project as soon as it's done.