A Masculine CAS Card and a Sympathy Card

A few of the challenges I enjoy are asking for masculine cards:  Sweet Stampin' "Masculine Makes", 52 Christmas Card Countdown "Masculine Christmas", and The Paper Players "Masculine Clean and Simple".

Using a brick wall stencil, I went over it with a rough mixture of black, copper, and white embossing paste. It came out way to dark and too shiny so I then sponged white gesso over it to lighten it and dull it down a bit. I also splattered a bit of the white gesso on it and then trimmed it with a square die. I popped it up on the card base with fun foam.

I stamped the sentiment in grey and trimmed it with a narrow strip die sentiment. I die cut the wreath twice out of scrap cs and once out of off white shimmer cs, glued them together and added it to the brick wall.

For my second card today, I needed to make a sympathy card so used Can You Handle the Pressure's "Something Starting with F".  I went with a floral embossing folder and a flower for my focal image.

I inked up the stamp with Tombow markers, trimmed the panel with a stitched rectangle die, popped it up on fun foam on a background embossed with a floral folder, and added a drop of yellow Liquid Pearls to the centre of the flower.

 

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - Penny Black sentiment
Ink - Distress Pumice Stone and Hickory Smoke, Versafine Smokey Gray
Paper - mixed media cs, chalk cs, off white shimmer cs
Size - 4.75" square
Accessories - MFT brick wall stencil, Dreamweaver black, copper, and white embossing paste, Sizzix wreath die, fun foam, white gesso, narrow strip die

Supplies for card 2:
Stamps - SU Love and Sympathy flower, unknown sentiment
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper - white cs
Size - A2
Accessories - Craft Concepts embossing folder, Tombow markers, Lil Inkers stitched rectangle, fun foam, liquid pearl

Owl and Forest

Peace on Earth's new mood board has a beautiful image of a Snowy Owl so I was inspired to pull out a very old stamp and create this card.

In my first attempt, I stamped and heat embossed the owl in silver and then tried to stamp the trees around it but it just came out looking messy so I discarded it and started again.  

I stamped and heat embossed the owl in silver on a small piece of white cs and trimmed it with a small rectangle die.  On a larger piece of white cs I stamped the snowy trees by tapping the stamp with two shades of green Distress ink.  I trimmed that panel with a square die and added it to my card base.  I popped the owl up on fun foam.  And stamped and heat embossed a sentiment in silver and trimmed with a stitched banner die.  It's not quite what I'd envisioned making but I feel I captured the owl and the snowy trees from the mood board.

We'd love to see what our mood board inspires you to make.  Head over to Peace on Earth for more inspiration from the rest of the Design Team.

Supplies:
Stamps - Inkadinkado owl, Deep Red trees, Penny Black sentiment
Ink - ColorBox silver, Distress Pine Needles and Evergreen Bough
Paper - white cs
Size - 4.5" square
Accessories - silver embossing powder, rectangle and square dies, stitched banner die, fun foam

Bits and Pieces - the Reindeer Edition

The last couple of weeks have been abnormally cold, snowy, and icy here so all my usual time spent volunteering with therapeutic riding has been cancelled because of the dangerous conditions.  So that has meant a lot more time in the craft room!

I had a ton of leftover bits and pieces of card making stuff after Christmas.  So I decided to start trying to use some of them up so I spread them out on my desk and tried to combine backgrounds with die cuts, stamped images, sentiments, etc.  Here's a couple of photos of my desk during the process:

I'd pick a background created when playing with some technique or other, or an unused embossing folder background, then some die cuts or a stamped image, then a stamped sentiment, etc. that could go together for a card.  And I tucked each little grouping of things into one of my cellophane card bags and bit by bit, I've put them together over the last few weeks and made a bunch of cards.  I decided I'd post some of them here, just to have a nice record of them, but I'm not writing up descriptions or including the supplies I used as, in most cases, I don't remember!!

Today will be reindeer day as I seemed to have a lot of unused die cut reindeer so put them together with other unused bits to create these cards: 

 

And three stamped reindeers that hadn't been turned into cards (the two using the old SU Dasher stamp had been in my UFO box for years!):

 

Since I need at least 100 Christmas cards made for my sale in November, it felt great to get this many made.  Now I just hope my customers like reindeer.  And trees - you might have noticed there are die cut trees on four of these.  Well, there will be another "Bits and Pieces" post soon as I also had a lot of die cut trees and I turned them into cards as well!

Thanks for taking a look, and if you desperately want to know what anything is on one of these cards, leave me a comment and I'll look for it in my supplies and get back to you.

 

Back to Christmas Cards

After the recent flurry of Valentine cards, I'm now back to Christmas ones.

First of two for today is for the ABC Christmas Challenge "D for Die Cuts" and the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown "Black, White, and Gold".

I die cut the stars out of a square of black cs and layered it over a gold card base. The Santa and sleigh is die cut twice and glued together for extra dimension. The trees are only die cut once.

Today's other card is for Cardz 4 Guyz "Clean and Simple".

I used the Heated Copper Accents technique shown in this video by my friend Loll to create my copper Christmas tree. I glued it to a piece of blue smooshed background, tore little strips of white cs to layer for snowy ground, stamped and heat embossed the sentiment in copper embossing powder.

Supplies for card 1:
Stamps - SSS sentiment
Ink - Versafine Onyx Black
Paper - black, white, and gold cs
Size - 5.75" square
Accessories - Sizzix Dash Away All stars and Santa, Spellbinders square die, evergreen tree die

Supplies for card :
Stamps - Rosie's Roadshow sentiment
Ink - Versamark, various blue Distress inks
Paper - white cs
Size - 6x4.25"
Accessories - thin copper sheet, tree die, copper embossing powder