My Core’dinations Creative Frenzy

Today is all about Core'dinations Products since I would LOVE to be a part of their design team! It is SO much fun to score, emboss, sand, tear, and otherwise mutilate this card stock allowing the beautiful inner colors to shine through!  Today I'll be sharing three projects I've made with these products: a set of notepad covers, a scrapbook page, and a "Thinking of You" card. 

Notepad Covers

These notepad covers are quick and easy to make, but really dress up a notepad.

Materials:

• Inexpensive notepads (I got several for a dollar at the dollar store)
• Core Essentials card stock from Core'dinations - blue & purple
• Stencil (this butterfly one is from Sandy Art) & Spellbinder's cut/emboss dies (I used "scalloped square" and "labels one"
• Big Shot or similar machine for cutting and embossing
• Sticky-backed velcro (just a couple of small pieces)
• Non-Smear Pastels & Brush from The Stencil Collection (optional)
• Dazzles Stickers from Hot Off the Press (optional - I used Gold Greetings Stickers and Gold  Border Stickers)
• Score board of some kind (I used Ultimate Crater's Companion for fancy score lines and Martha Stewart's scoreboard for straight lines)

Method:

• Cut a piece of card stock a bit larger than the dimension of the notepad in one direction, and an inch or two longer than twice the other dimension. This depends on which way you want the notepad to open -- top to bottom or side to side (see pictures).

• Decide how you want your overlap (how deep do you want your overlap? do you want a fancy border? etc.)  For the blue one, I scored a decorative line twice at one end (approx 3/8" apart) and sanded it to bring out the core color of the card stock.  Then I trimmed along the first score line to give me a decorative edge. If you are going to do this, do it before scoring the rest of the lines.

• Next, score straight lines where you need the folds to wrap around the notepad and then glue the notepad in place, as shown in these pictures:

• Now for the FUN part - decorating!  For both of these, I started with a square of the same blue card stock (the chalked edge makes one look purple, but it IS blue!), ran it through the Big Shot with a Spellbinder's die to cut it, then again with the Spellbinder's die & a stencil to emboss it. 
• Next, sand both to bring out the lovely core color.  One I left that way, the other I colored with the pastels (using the brush & stencil to keep the color where I wanted it) and added some Dazzles stickers.
• Attach decorative focals to front of notepad cover. Add Dazzles greeting (if you wish), and attach small bit of velcro for closure.

Scrapbook Page

Materials:

• Core'dinations ColorCore card stock -- Core Essentials & Black Magic in peachy tones,
• Photos -- in this case, the journaling and title are also printed as "photos" and cut out,
• Flowers -- the containers don't have a name on them, but the white ones were purchased at Michaels Crafts, and the peach ones came from a set I purchased at Paper Wishes. The centers are "innies" from some Peel-Off borders.
• Ultimate Crafter's Companion (for doing scalloped scoring)
• Sanding Block
• Martha Stewart Border Punch -- Doily

This scrapbook page demonstrates several of the things I LOVE about Core'dinations card stock.  The black is from the Black Magic Collection and is so much fun because sanding or tearing the black brings out that lovely peach color, AND the Core Essentials line has so many beautiful colors that coordinate with it (and just about anything else!).

Method:

• Starting with a piece of Black Magic 12"x12" card stock, trim it to 8" x 11" and score a decorative line along one edge. Sand it to bring out the color, then trimmed along the edge, leaving a little bit of a black border. Back this edge with three coordinating colors of Core Essentials and then add the focal photo.
• Take the largest remnant of Black Magic and cut it to 8" wide. Score, sand, and trim as before, then tear the top and bottom edges to form a mat for the smaller picture & journaling. Attach this to the page as shown.
• Using the border punch, punch along one edge of the two lighter colors of Core Essentials, trimming the medium colored one slightly narrower than the lighter one, then adding two smaller strips (thin lightest color on top of darkest color) to form the border you see on the left-hand side of the page.
• The punch used in the last step cuts off a narrow strip of card stock in the process of punching the border.  Use these scraps to frame the larger photo.
• Finished the page by adding the small photo, journaling, and flowers.  For the flowers, layer the peach flowers on the white ones and add silver flower centers (the centers are "innies" from the Peel-Off borders). Glue these together and add them to the page as shown. 

Thinking of You Card

 

I'd been playing with adding dimension to my cards with straight cuts along the sides & folding at different places, but I thought, "why not try a curved line?!"  The Ultimate Crafter's Companion has a variety of decorative scoring lines, so I decided to use them and see what I could come up with.  This was the result.  The top picture is a scan of the card so you can see the details; the second is a photograph so you can see the 3-d effect.

Materials:

• Ultimate Crafter's Companion (for the scoring), 
• Sandy Art daisy brass stencil, 
• Spellbinder's Labels Eleven Dies, 
• Big Shot (or cutting/embossing tool)
• patterned paper and Teal Jewel Dazzles from Hot Off the Press, 
• a sparkly gel pen (blue), 
• a corner punch, 
• scissors & paper cutter, 
• and of course Core'dinations card stock (yellow & blue Color Core from the Roy G. Biv super assortment). 

Method:

• Create base card from yellow card stock. (Essentially like the card I showed yesterday, but instead of scoring and cutting straight vertical lines use decorative scoring lines to create a curvy cutting line.) Score, cut, and fold as needed to create this base card.
• Score decorative lines on the sides of the card and sand them so the lighter yellow shows through.
• Glue patterned paper to the front part of card (not the sides that you just embossed) and trim to fit.
• Using largest Spellbinder's die, cut and emboss a piece of the blue card stock. Repeat with the next to largest die & yellow card stock EXCEPT - add the daisy stencil to the center when you emboss this one (I did this step with my Big Shot, but you could use a similar machine).
• Sand embossed daisy piece to bring out the lighter yellow on the raised areas.
• Color selective raised areas and border with blue sparkly gel pen; then add jewel stickers for flower centers.
• Glue daisy focal piece to center of blue embossed piece.
• Write "Thinking of You" greeting on a strip of yellow card stock with the sparkly blue pen and then round the corners with a corner punch.
• Glue focal and greeting to card front, slipping greeting in between the layers of the focal.
• Outline the decorative embossing on the sides with the blue pen.

Well, there are the three creations I made during my Core'dinations Creative Frenzy.  Here are links to a couple of other Color Core projects that I posted last year:

• This one is a birthday card, but would be quite nice as a Mother's Day card.
• And here's a very quick and easy Thank You Card.