2017 Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

In case you didn't know, today is the last day of the 2017 Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop. I had originally planned to have at least 2 cards to post/participate with this week, but it just didn't happen, lol. While I only found the time to squeeze in just this one, please head over to the blog where there are hundreds of beautiful cards from other papercrafters to see!!!

Today's card was made using sketch #409 from Tuesday Morning Sketches as my inspiration and I chose the beach-y colors of deep ocean, seaweed and sand along with some silver accents. 

My A2 sized card base is made from kraft card stock and folds at the side. The seaweed green cardstock has a white core, so after running it through with the Tim Holtz coffee themed embossing folder I sanded the top layer off to highlight the design. I stamped my repeat design in Memento London Fog gray ink on a strip of white paper and cut a deep ocean teal layer for behind both it and the seaweed embossed/distressed layer.

The 2 tiny coffee cup clear stamps are from a fabulous planner stamp set I found @ Hobby Lobby that is made by MAMBI as a part of their Happy Planner product line. The "I Love Coffe and You" sentiment comes from an awesome stamp set from Stamplorations that I just received from my May Gold Stamp Club order. (If you have not checked out Shery's website -you must! She has the best customer service and her stamp clubs are a wonderful value!) It came in a straight line, so I snipped it in half and bent it on my acrylic block before stamping to manipulate it to the shape I needed to fit on my diecut ovals. The small oval die set is from a Die of the Month kit from Spellbinder's.

To help the sentiment stand out, I stamped it in Versamark ink and heat embossed it in silver. The coffee cups I colored using my trusty watercolor pencils and a blender pen. (As you can see here, I started to color the cups with Spectrum Noir pens, but felt the color was just too intense. So I made sure to cover that boo-boo up with the placement of my sentiment later on) Once the panel was dry, I did color around the cups with a light gray Spectrum Noir marker.

The brushed silver ovals I ended up cutting by hand to accent the sentiment layers, so they are not perfectly symmetrical but they work just the same. I also used Peacock Feathers distress ink and an ink duster brush to add a tiny bit of color to accent the sentiment oval with a slight stippling effect. The final finishing touch was to add the 3 matte enamel dots and the 2 silver sequins according to the sketch...for a slightly different look, I turned the sequins up-side-down this time (meaning they look like a hub cap instead of a bowl -if that makes any sense, lol!!!) before adhering them...just thought it somehow looked less bling-y and more manly that way, lol.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to head on over to the Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop and comment or participate for your chance to win some awesome prizes from all the fabulous sponsors! 

Until next time,

How To Make Good Use of Old Rhinestone Embellishments

Today's CAS card was made for ScraPerfect using sketch #65 @ Retro Rubber and will be entered @ The Merry Christmas June Challenge for "Anything Christmas -Optional- Snowmen".

Even though the weather here has been gorgeous and definitely feels like summer, I still like to get a jump start on my cards for the holidays. This card is an A5 (5 x 7) white card base and the blue cardstock is white cored, so after running it through with a snowflake embossing folder, I sanded the top blue layer off to reveal raised white snowflakes.

I knew I wanted to accent the center of the snowflakes with rhinestones and pearls for some bling factor, so I was rather disappointed when the old rhinestone stickers I pulled out of my stash were no longer sticky on the back. But that was actually a very easy problem to solve with the help of my ScraPerfect Best Glue Ever! Using the ScraPerfect Embellie Gellie  (it's like a magic sticky wand!) to place the bling onto the tiny dots of glue made this step easy and painless. 

Both of the stamp sets I used are long ago retired from TAC (The Angel Company -probably about 7+ years old!) and I used Memento Tuxedo Black ink so that I could water color without the ink smearing. A small strip of silver glitter washi tape added the perfect touch across the front and using the Stamp Pefect tool I was able to double stamp my images to get a nice dark impression.

Close up of some perfectly placed bling!

Using Prismacolor watercolor pencils and a Dove blender pen I colored the snowmen. Using 2 shades of gray to shade the whiteness of the snow , I then followed up with some soft glimmer from a clear Wink of Stella pen over the snowmen's bodies.

Keeping with the CAS style, I simply stamped the sentiment inside in black ink and declared it to be done.

Until next time...happy crafting with ScraPerfect, 

Summery Yellow Layered Roses

Today's card is the second one we will be making at my local library during the month of August and it is also the second one I have made recently using this layering technique, but this time I made things so much simpler by using a rectangle die set from Fun Stamper's Journey. I'll be entering this card @ Creatalicious Challenges for "Anything Goes #117 with Die Cuts", @ International Art & Soul for " #CH 11 -Flowers" and @ Fashionable Stamping for " Challenge #124 -Make it Feminine".

The first step was to die cut the 3 white rectangles from white cardstock, then I trimmed the 2 smaller yellow layers just a little bigger and made a top folding A2 yellow card base.

Picking the dye ink colors that I wanted to use for the 2 step Rose set was the most time consuming step of this whole process, lol. As you can see below, some of them were obvious fails for various reasons, but in the end I chose a sunny yellow for the base and the light orange for the top layer.

Colored inks are from The Angel Company and the black is from Fun Stamper's Journey. The clear stamp set is from Close To My Heart and the inside red rubber sentiment is a retired stamp from TAC.

Following the same process as I used here to stamp the layers, after stamping I then used my ATG to securely adhere everything together to the card front.

The finished card is quick and simple, yet has great visual impact!

Inside was also kept simple by accenting the sentiment with 2 green leaves and that's all there is to this beauty! I would probably go back and add some glitter to a few of the roses for a bit of an accent, but glitter glue takes too long to dry during the time period we have to work with for our library class, so for now it will have to stay the way it is.  

Until next time, 

Serene Sympathy

Today's card was inspired by the June Sketch @ Stamplorations and uses the "Stamps and Family" theme. It will also be entered @ Craftyhazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge  and @ Simon Says Stamp for their Wednesday "Use Patterned Paper" challenge. My son-in-law lost his grandma last weekend, so I have been busy making sympathy cards for them this week. 

The patterned paper I used for this card was a quarter sheet piece I got in a variety pack from winning a newsletter contest through Stampinton and Company last year. The sympathy stamp set is from Stampin' Up! and the leaf set is retired from The Angel Company.

I trimmed the patterned paper so that there was a small white border around the edge of my white A2 side folding card base but cut the sage green textured panel the same size as the card front. Using Versamark ink and my Stamp Perfect stamping tool I double stamped (to get a good impression over the texture of the paper) then heat embossed with Platinum embossing powder. Using the Perfect Crafting Pouch helped me to get a nice crisp image and the Perfect Cleaning Cloth took away any remaining dust out of the grooves in the textured cardstock once the embossing was cool.

I then stamped and embossed the leaf three times and fussy cut them out. To get the round shape around the sentiment I simply traced the outside edge of a circle template using a pencil and then cut it out by hand.

I adhered the sentiment flat to the card front with my ATG gun and then did the same with the top and bottom leaf along the edge of the curve...the middle leaf I popped up on foam dots to add some dimension. The mini sprigs were diecut from vellum and tucked behind the leaves along the border between the sentiment and the patterned paper using The Best Glue Ever.

The last step to completing the card front was to create some dry embossing along the bottom right corner using the tip of my bone folder -simply tracing along the the border of the underlying patterned paper added the tiny bit of definition that was missing.

The inside sentiment was stamped in gray ink and kept simple with a tiny piece of left over paper adhered along the bottom.

Until later,

Masculine: With Sympathy

Today's card was inspired by just the sketch @ Fusion Card Challenges and will be entered @ Just For Fun Rubber Stamps "For the Guys", @ Crafty Purple Frog for "Make it Manly", @ Connie Can Crop for "It's a Guy thing", and @ Glitter and Sparkle Challenge for "Father's Day/Masculine". Sadly, this card will be sent to my son-in-law because his grandmother died this past weekend after suffering from dementia for many years. I hope I am able to share some comfort with both he and my daughter during this difficult moment in time.

 The first step in making this fairly simple card was to use a Prima Marketing/Finnabair stencil on the white, A2 side folding card front with Antique Linen Distress Ink and the distress tool. Frog Tape is my new best friend when it comes to using stencils, because it removes so easily!

Next up, I trimmed the brown patterned paper with my CM circle cutting tool set to mimic the card sketch.

Using a sympathy stamp set from Close To My Heart, I stamped in Versamark ink and heat embossed with Platinum powder. 

Before adhering the brown paper to the card front with foam pop dots for dimension, I sanded the edges just a tiny bit for a rustic, antiqued look, as you can see in the close-up shot below.

To tone down the stencil and soften the card front, I layered a piece of vellum between the white card base and the brown patterned layer and tied a knot with gold trim I wrapped around the spine of the card.

For the inside, I put to good use the scraps from the front and stamped a sentiment in Momento Rich Cocoa ink. This card is now all ready to go out in the mail tomorrow morning.

Until next time,

Clean and Simple Manly Birthday Card

Today's card was inspired by sketch #325 @ Try Stampin' On Tuesday and will be entered @ Cards in Envy for "You're the Man", @ STAMPlorations for CAS "Anything Goes -Masculine Colors" and @ Craft Rocket Challenge  "For the Men/Boys". This will also be one of the cards that will be made at my library's card making class in the month of August.

First step was cutting the patterned paper from the Glitter Mat Stack according to the sketch and then using Frog Tape to gently hold the stencil in place at the top of the card so that I could use the distress tool with some blue ink.

This card is made to fit in a legal size envelope and measures roughly 3.75" x  9.25". The stamp set is from Unity Stamp Company and was one I received as part of the Stamp of the Week club a few months ago.

After stamping the cake in Momento Tuxedo Black ink on scrap white cardstock, I colored it with Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils and the blender pen. Then I covered the whole cake with clear sparkle from the Wink of Stella pen and fussy cut it out.

The blue banner was hand trimmed and sanded to give it a softer, more weathered look. I used my ATG gun to adhere the patterned papers and the blue banner, but I used mini pop dots to adhere the cake.

Keeping it clean and simple, I stamped the sentiment in that same black ink underneath the focal image, at the bottom of the card.

The inside sentiment is from an old wood mounted Stampin' Up birthday stamp set that I have in my collection.

I don't always do a lot of cards that I could consider as Clean and Simple, but I do think this one fits the bill and I am very happy with the way it turned out! Until next time~