How to Make a Gorgeous Holiday Shaker Card Using the Best Glue Ever

Today's card for my ScraPerfect design team assignment was inspired by sketch #73 @ Your Next Stamp and by the CAS-ual Friday's "Shaker Card Challenge". And since it is a holiday card I will entering it @ ABC Christmas where "S is for Sketch", @ Christmas Card Challenges #22 and @ Crafty Hazelnut Christmas Challenge #352.

This card ended up being an A7 size to accommodate the large Sizzix ornament die that I had my heart set on using. The silver mirror paper was in my stash and I think it may actually have come from Creative Memories at one time. The brushed silver and the snowflake paper I think both came from Stampin' Up a pretty long time ago. The stamp set is also an oldie from SU!

This card has a lot of steps to it and the first one was to cut the ornament 4 times...twice on white cardstock, once from white fun foam and once from a clear acetate sheet. I used my CM circle cutting tool to cut the hole in one of the white cs layers -this will be the top layer during assembly and would have been much easier to do if I had a circle layering die set! Since I didn't, I had to trace and hand cut that same inner circle in the fun foam. After stamping the same large winter scene image twice -once on the bottom (full cut) white ornament layer and once on the top skinny white layer I then layered it using the Best Glue Ever using the No Clog Writing Cap...on the very top went the skinny cardstock ornament layer, then the clear acetate sheet(also cut in the full ornament shape) for the window and then the skinny fun foam layer. I set that aside to dry and worked on trimming layers, embossing sentiments and coloring the rest of the card front.

To heat emboss the sentiment in silver on the white layer, I repeatedly stamped "Happy Holidays" in Versamark ink. Swiping the paper first with the Perfect Crafting Pouch ensured that the embossing powder would only stick where I wanted it to. After the powder was melted and heat set, I gently brushed over the piece with the Perfect Cleaning Cloth to remove any left over residue from the pouch and really bring out the shine of the raised silver letters.

I colored the winter scene on the ornament using watercolor pencils and a blender pen. I accented the white, snowy areas using the clear Wink of Stella pen and I used the silver Wink of Stella pen to top off the brushed silver ornament topper that was die cut and glued on after the shaker was fully assembled. I filled the shaker window with the white iridescent flakes from the Tiny Bottles of Embellishments along with some clear microbeads from the Martha Stewart Collection that I found @ Michael's. 

I found it to be rather challenging to photograph this card due to the mirrored quality of the silver cardstock that covers the card front, but hopefully you can get a feel for how gorgeous this card is in person...my hubby was actually really impressed when he took a good look at it and promptly picked it up to shake it, lol.

On the inside, I used a scrap of paper from the front on the bottom and because I hadn't used watercolor friendly ink when I stamped the sentiment and holly, I ended up coloring the holly using chalk pencils and a Stardust Glitter Gel Pen on the berries and the leaf veins.

That's it for me today...until next time, happy crafting with ScraPerfect and be sure to give their blog a visit so that you don't miss out on all the terrific projects from the other designers!

How to Make an Easy Embossed Butterfly Watercolor Splash Card

Hello ~ Kathy here from Create.365 to share an easy card with you that I made using 2 of my favorite ScraPerfect products! This will be one of the cards the gals at my local library will get to make in the month of September at our cardmaking class, but I will also be entering it @ Shopping Our Stash for "Butterflies, Bees & Bugs", @ Pause Dream Enjoy for "Summer Bugs" and @ Happy Little Stampers for both the Watercolor and CAS July challenges.

Making the watercolor background on this one layer white A2 size card is as easy as scribbling with 3 colors of Metallic Gel Sticks and then wetting it with a flat, wide water color brush! I used the purple, blue and green sticks today.

While the background was drying, I prepped a scrap of white cardstock with the Perfect Crafting Pouch to remove static and stamped the butterfly from Fun Stampers Journey in Versamark ink on it. I then heat embossed it using black powder. I really won't do this anymore without the Crafting Pouch because tiny bits of stray black embossing powder can ruin a card front in the blink of an eye, lol! Once the powder was cool, I brushed the Perfect Cleaning Cloth over the image to remove any residue and then fussy cut it out with small detail scissors.

 Once I added the butterfly to the card front with foam pop dots, I brushed clear Wink of Stella over some of the butterfly details to add shimmer that matches the shimmer in the metallic gel stick watercolors.

After stamping the sentiment in black ink at the bottom center of the card, I rounded all four corners with a corner punch.

Keeping it Clean and Simple (CAS), I only stamped the "happy birthday" sentiment (retired from TAC) on the inside in more black ink.

That's it for me today...until next time, happy crafting with ScraPerfect~

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,

How to Make a Quick and Easy Handsome Birthday Card

Hello -Kathy here from Create.365 with a quick and easy handsome card for a man's birthday using ScraPerfect products that I'll be entering @ Always Fun Challenge "For a Male or Dad" and @ Tuesday Throwdown "For the Men" and @ heARTful Stamping for "Masculine + a Stamp".

I shared how to make the rainbow watercolor background in this post here and when I did it originally, I made 4 all at one time...so far, I have used 3 of the 4 on card fronts. This one, I tore the edges to get the square I would use for my focal stamping scene.

I started with a side folding A2 white card front, trimming the turquoise panel so that there was a white border and punched the corners with the southwest corner punch after spattering it with FSJ Silver Silk. Then I glued it onto the card front with a small amount of the Best Glue Ever.

Using dark green and dark brown dye inks, I stamped the pine trees and the moose (retired stamps from TAC) on the panel and adhered it to the bottom of the card front with foam pop dots.

Using clear embossing ink, I stamped the Happy Birthday sentiment to the top right of the watercolored panel and heat embossed it with dark green embossing powder ...of course, the first step in heat embossing for me it to wipe my cardstock with the Perfect Crafting Pouch to eliminate static and the last step is to clean everything off with the Perfect Cleaning Cloth.

Using a thin jute twine, I wrapped the spine of the card several times, tied a bow at the top and secured the knot down with a tiny bit of BGE. Then I used that same glue, the No Clog Writing Cap and the Embellie Gellie wand to adhere the 3 enamel dots exactly where I wanted them to the left of the sentiment.

Inside, I stamped the rest of my sentiment (retired from TAC) and the smallest pine tree. This card is now ready to go out in the mail to one of my brother-in-laws in July.

Until next time, happy crafting with ScraPerfect~

Easy Layered Anniversary Card How To

Hello from Create.365 ~ Kathy here...today's card is my first post for the month of June with ScraPerfect and I have  an easy layered anniversary card to share with you. This uses a technique that I always admire, but often forget to utilize. So just in case it is a new one to you, I will walk you through it and then you can give it a try too!

This card will be entered several places for challenges this week: "Anything Goes/Flowers" @ Artistic Inspirations Challenge, "#365 -Inspirational Photo" @ City Crafter Challenge Blog and @ Penny Black where "Anything Goes" for the month of June.

To start this card, I used an A2 size top folding horizontal card base in a rose red color. I trimmed 3 rectangles from white card stock, layered them evenly and temporarily adhered them together with repositionable sticky dots so that I could stamp them all at once. Using rose red dye ink and a stamp set from Close To My Heart, I repeatedly stamped the solid rose base image all over the 3 layers then added leaves in a sage green ink and the "Happy Anniversary" sentiment (retired from TAC) in black ink. (No need to worry about the white halo around the layers on the stamped images -that's the beauty of this design because they will be covered up in another step down the road.)

Before moving on to the next step. I tapped the newly stamped layers with the Perfect Crafting Pouch to quickly dry the inks so that the embossing powder in my next step would only stick to the Versamark ink. Using the 2nd step rose detail stamp, clear embossing ink and Silver Pearl embossing powder I added a second stamped and embossed layer to the 5 roses in the center of the card only. Once melted using the heat tool and cooled off, I wiped the Perfect Cleaning Cloth over it to remove any stray pieces of powder that may have been left behind.

The next step was to carefully remove the temp adhesive to separate the stamped layers and trim a red layer to back each one of them with a narrow border using my paper trimmer and the Best Glue Ever to hold each layer together as I built up the card front. 

 The Best Glue Ever also worked perfectly to adhere the red micro beads to the center of several of the flowers for added interest and dimension. The No Clog Writing Cap ensured that I had utmost control of where I wanted to apply the glue too.

While it's very hard to see in the photo, there is an added element of clear sparkle sprinkled over the card front because I splattered FSJ Sparkle Silk across it. It is subtle, but gorgeous in person!

The inside was kept super simple with just a retired TAC sentiment stamped in black ink. This card is now ready to be mailed out later this month to my brother-in-law and his wife.

Until next time, happy crafting with ScraPerfect~