How To Make A Masculine Love Card Using the Best Glue Ever

Today's card is one of my favorite's to date! I made it for ScraPerfect and used the Card Map Challenge over @ Power Poppy to pick my sketch. I used to use Card Maps many years ago and had completely forgotten about them, so I was happy to see that they do indeed still exist! Because this digi stamp from Craftin' Desert Divas is coffee themed I can also enter my card over @ CAS-ual Fridays for "More Coffee Please".

I gathered lots of paper patterns for this card -many of which are from my decades old scrapbooking stash. I also used thin cut dies from Craftin' Desert Divas, Sweet Stamp Shop, Spellbinders and Itsy Bitsy. The sentiment stamps are from a set from CTMH and the Coffee Cactus digi was colored with Chameleon colored pencils.

Of course, the Best Glue Ever with the No Clog Writing Cap is just perfect to adhere everything together without any wrinkling!  For this particular piece, I dug out and used my old scallop edge decorative scissors.

Next, I used the Perfect Crafting Pouch on my speech bubble diecut to eliminate any static electricity before I stamped it with Versamark ink and heat embossed it with white embossing powder. I then brushed it clean using the Perfect Cleaning Cloth.

Inside stamping was done in black ink and I added a strip of left over pattern paper from Creative Memories.

Top left accent was a zigzag stitching stamp done up in white embossing to help it look like the banner flags were sewn on to the card front. Everything was glued down flat except for the speech bubble that was added with foam pop dots for dimension.

Well, that's it for me today. Until next time, happy crafting with ScraPerfect~

How to Make a Gorgeous Foiled Christmas Tree Card

Today's project is a gorgeous holiday card made using lots of "magically perfect products" from ScraPerfect! 

This card is a 5" x 7" (A7) white base with a kraft panel cut from cardstock for the front. Using the Best Glue Ever, a sponge and a beautiful tree stencil from The Crafters Workshop, I gently applied the glue through the stencil to just the tree image on to the kraft cardstock.

After carefully pulling the stencil away, I let the glue dry until it was tacky and clear -this took about 45 minutes...it may have actually taken less time, but I got involved in another project and knew that extra time to dry would not hurt my tree project.

The next step was to lay the green Transfer Foil down on top of the glue stenciled tree design with the green side facing up. Burnishing it well is the key here to capturing all the details! 

Gently peel the foil back to reveal your design! You can now save the rest of your foil sheet for another project.

Because of the nature of this project, there was still a bit of sticky residue coming through the foil, so I lightly tapped the Perfect Crafting Pouch all over the tree to de-stick it and then buffed the tree gently using the Perfect Cleaning Cloth to ensure no residual powder was left behind to dull the shine of the foil.

Now, of course we can't forget that we still need to clean all that glue off of our stencil and I have the perfect tool for the job in the Best Cleaner Ever. I first laid my stencil on top of a paper towel, but learned that wax paper works much better for this step because it doesn't soak up the cleaner-so learn from my mistakes if you give this technique a shot! 

I generously spritzed the cleaner over the stencil and carefully spread it around using my fingers then left it to soak for a good long time...ok, I gotta be honest here, I just plain forget about it until several hours later, lol. But it did the trick and I was then able to wash the glue and the cleaner off in warm water.

I stamped and gold heat embossed the sentiment from Stampin' Up!... you can see that the shine and texture on this card really packs a punch!

Layering the kraft panel to the card front using self adhesive gold foil photo corners was the perfect accent for this clean and simple card.

I heat embossed the sentiment inside also and that finished off this card quickly and easily.

That's it for me today and I hope you will give this stencil/foil technique a try -it is alot of fun and the hardest part is cleaning the stencil, lol. Until next time, happy crafting with ScraPerfect!

Something Borrowed & Something Blue

Today's card is the final wedding card I'll need for our family for 2017. I was inspired by sketch #367 @ the Paper Players and it will be entered @ Happy Little Stampers for "October Anything Goes with Dies", @ Shopping Our Stash for "That's Sketchy" and @ Ike's World for "Anything Goes -Celebrations". 

The tiny wooden stamp I used is from a retired tag set from Stampin' Up and the larger sentiments set is also retired but from Close To My Heart. Both of the dies are from Spellbinder's. The A2 card base and white cardstock layer are a beautiful white shimmer paper, the silver is a shiny mirror paper and the blue wrap with the lace actually came from the wedding invitation itself -so I did a little bit of recycling to make it more personal for my nephew and his new bride.

This is a rather simple card, with just the layers and sentiment stamping, but I did need to utilize the stamp omitting technique to fit the sentiment on the front of the card the way that I wanted to. What that means is that I used the small square sticky note to cover up and ink the separate portions of the stamp so that only the Best Wishes was stamped on the diecut label and the rest on the actual card front. 

This took several steps to get just right in the spacing, but that's where the beauty of a stamp positioning tool comes into play. I played with some scrap paper and gray ink under the diecut frames until I got everything just right and then I committed to the actual card pieces with embossing ink and silver powder. I made sure to also use the Perfect Crafting Pouch to reduce the static on my card stock and keep the embossing powder where it belonged.

The finished card is clean, simple and personalized...hopefully they like it as much as I do, lol! I used foam dot adhesive to pop up the layers of the diecuts. I also heat embossed the inside sentiment. Now all I have to do is wrap the gift before Sunday!

Until next time~

How to Make a Quick and Easy Fall Card Using the Best Glue Ever

Today I am sharing a unique way to color images on your cards and some tips for using the Best Glue Ever and the Perfect Crafting Pouch. 

This card will be one of the selections that the card making group from my local library will be making in November, so I tried to keep it fairly simple, while also teaching them something new at the same time. Using the wave cut paper trimmer (from Creative Memories) to trim the rust panel is super simple and then embossing it with the swirling leaves folder gives it a beautiful pattern.

The card base is a cream top folding vertical A2 and I used the window punch (from SU!) in the bottom left corner to make the window for the sentiment. (All the stamps I used today are retired from TAC.) I then also punched the window out of mustard cardstock to stamp the words on.

Instead of coloring all the leaves and pumpkins that were randomly stamped across the card front, I used a pencil eraser like a stamp with the fall ink colors from the Kaleidacolor pad. I think it tends to gives it a very distinct and uniquely modern look. I wished afterwards that I would have just stuck to using only one color per leaf, but by then it was too late, lol. Oh well, there's always next time!

Now it's assembly time...Here's where the Best Glue Ever and the Perfect Crafting Pouch come in handy! I used the Best Glue Ever to glue everything down because using tape runner doesn't really work very well on textured things like a dry embossed panel like this one and the small nozzle on the bottle works perfectly to get just the smallest amount of glue on the back of that sentiment window piece. But even though I was very careful, I still had alittle of the glue ooze out around the sentiment because it was so skinny and since it dries clear, but tacky, I didn't want it to stick to the card front. So I gently tapped the Perfect Crafting Pouch over the remaining sticky parts and that quickly took care of the problem.

When I attached the sentiment, I made sure that it would line up with and show through the window that I punched in the card front.

 I also stamped another sentiment and several leaves on the inside of the card to finish the design off...turning it into a fall birthday card!

That's it for me today...thanks for sticking around and happy crafting with ScraPerfect~

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!