Fun Technique for Leaves & Flowers

It's been awhile since I posted on my blog - been super busy.  I'm going to try to get back to posting more regularly, but it probably won't often be more than once a week because of schedule changes in my personal life.  Anyway, I wanted to share this card with you today.  It is really shiny & shimmery in person -- always hard to capture that on camera.  Today I'll be focusing on how I added dimension to the flower & leaves. 

First, here's my list of materials and tools:

• white glimmer paper
• green glimmer paper
• pink patterned paper (from Hot Off the Press)
• pink foil paper (not sure where I got that)
• stamps from JustRite ("Be Strong" and "Antique Valentine Tags One")
• white brad
• pink & green pads (I used green "Page Craft" and pink shimmer "Brilliance" inks)
• adhesive
• M-Bossability embossing folder ("Imperial")
• Spellbinders dies ("Petite Scalloped Oval Large", "Resplendent Rectangles", and "Rose Creations")
• Grand Caliber (could also use Big Shot or other die cut machine if it's large enough)
• Paper Crimper or Corrugator

Instructions:

Background & Frame:

• Cut the patterned paper 1/8" smaller than your card in each direction so it will leave only about 1/16" of the card for a border around it.  
• Using the pink ink, inked the edges of this and let it dry.  Then cut out and embossed the center of it using the largest Resplendent die, setting the cut-out aside for use in another project.  This creates the piercing around the inner edges of the patterned paper.  
• Cut and emboss the frame out of pink foil using all three of the largest dies in the Resplendent set.  
• Using the largest Resplendent die, cut a piece of white glimmer paper that had been embossed with the M-bossabilities folder.
•  Before attaching anything to the card itself, tape the pieces together from the back.  Center the foil piece inside the patterned paper and tape it together, then tape the white piece in place.  Now you can attach the whole to your card front with everything staying where you want it.

Sentiment:

• Stamp frame in pink on white card stock, then stamp sentiment in green in the middle.
• Cut out with the 2nd smallest of the scalloped oval dies
• Using the next larger scalloped oval die, cut and emboss a piece of the pink foil for the mat
• Glue the sentiment to the mat and then mount it to the card using foam tape for extra dimension. 

FLOWERS:  

• Cut each piece of the Rose Creations set (except for the leaves) out of the hot pink vellum. 
• Add dimension as shown below:

This was my "test" petal.  I've seen some really nice kits with different sized embossing-type tools that work great for flowers, but I don't happen to have one of those.  I first tried using the largest side of my standard embossing tool.  I placed the flower on the back side of a small mouse pad and rubbed in circular motions on the inside part of the leaf.  You can see the result on the petal in the lower right corner.  It turned the petal whitish and left all sorts of marks - not a bad look if you want it, but it wasn't what I was going for.  I really wanted a larger tool!  I decided to use the rounded end of my gel pen cover!  It worked great.  I used it on the rest of the petals.  It added a nice textured rounding to the leaves without discoloring them.  For my real flower, I used this "tool" on all of them - just pressing in a circular motion with the end of the covered pen.  For the smallest petals, I just placed the pen in the center of each petal and pressed while twisting it just a bit.  I was quite happy with the result.

LEAVES:

• Cut two large and one medium leaf from green glimmer paper.  
• The idea for how to add dimension to the leaves using a paper corrugator came from a Spellbinder's video, and it works great!  Simply folded the leaf in half lengthwise:

• Then run it through a paper corrugator! (They used a straight one, I only have the wavy one, so used that -- worked great)  Just place your folded leaf into your corrugator, tip side first, at a 45 to 60 degree angle with folded side down. Then run it through. 

• It comes out looking like this:

• And when you open it up you have this:

Isn't it cool?  LOVE IT!!!!  So quick and easy!  Your other option is to simply use your stylus and a mouse pad to emboss your own lines.  The smallest leaf shown above is approx 1/2" by 3/4" and perhaps looks better with the stylus-embossed lines, because the corrugator's lines are a bit far apart for a leaf that small.  Here is a picture comparing the two techniques on the smallest leaves:

The one on the left is hand-embossed with a stylus. The one on the right is just run through the crimper. I like the spacing of the hand embossed, but the crimper actually gives a bit more depth.  What do you think?

Have fun playing!

Masculine Card

With Father's Day just around the corner, I decided I better get some cards made.  This one is for my husband - who, frankly, likes colors that don't particularly appeal to me.  To accommodate his tastes, I made this card.  (The light blue is just the photo background - not part of the card!)

It's a pretty simple card - made with stamps and some cutting dies (Ornate Squares and Resplendent Rectangles by Spellbinders) - with some of the elements popped up on foam tape for added dimension.  The stamp of his name was made using my Teresa Collins Stampmaker, and certainly comes in handy when I want to personalize something for him.  The central sentiment is a small stamp from Studio G.  Though it's hard to see in the picture, the edges of the striped paper are bordered with a 1/8" black ribbon that looks really nice in person.  Once again, I made the mats for my elements by tracing around the outside of the dies and hand cutting along these traced lines.

As you can see, this is a square card.  I seldom make square cards since I like the envelopes to match the card pretty well and mailing square envelopes cost more.  However, since this was to be hand delivered, this wasn't an issue.  

But I still needed an envelope.  I made one using my Enveloper (Ultimate Crafting Companion).  The biggest challenge for it was deciding what paper to use for it.  The paper had to be 9 3/4" square, which ruled out any 8 1/2" x 11" sheets, and I hated to use my 12 x 12 papers for an envelope.  What I decided on was this wallpaper sample!  It worked great!

Misc Cards

From time to time I've made somewhat generic cards without greetings on them so they could be quickly transformed into a card with whatever greeting I needed.  Lately, I've realized, however, that I too often forget to look at them when I need a card!  I have cards made ahead and arranged by type of occasion.  When a specific occasion arises, I go and look in that section to see what I have that might work.  Unfortunately for me, I seldom think to look in the "Misc" section to see what generic card I might adapt for a specific need! Too often, I just have frantically put a whole new card together!

So, I decided to go through my generic cards and add specific greetings to some of them so they'd be more likely to be used.  So, today's cards are all cards I've already posted on my blog - but they were posted in generic form.  I thought it might be nice to show how I finished them.  This first one was first shown here.  I was amazed how well the "Thinking of You" fit on this generic card.  Love it!  I had been a bit worried because the focal had been added with dimensional tape around the edge and I was afraid I wouldn't get a good impression.  I also didn't know how well plain black stamping would work next to the embossed areas. Before stamping, I made sure to place my card front on a double-thick piece of fun foam and the press reasonably hard when I stamped.  I don't think I could have gotten such a clean stamped image otherwise.  But I was very happy with the result.  It looks like it was originally designed with this sentiment!

This card was of more recent origin - a rather recent post here.  As you can see, I added the "Happy Birthday" greeting to finish it off, by stamping on a small tag cut with a Spellbinder's Decorative Labels 8 die. I matted the tag on a turquoise piece of paper by tracing around the outside edge of the die and cutting on that line.

These last two cards were made using dimensional paint and fun flock.  The one with the pink Iris was finished by adding a stenciled greeting with dimensional paint.  You can see the original here. The tag had already been cut and put with the card - I just had to add the greeting as you see.

The final one was finished with the addition of a small tag (once again cut with a Spellbinder's Decorative Labels 8 die) with a stamped greeting.  You can see the original of this one here.

Stamping Notebook

I just realized my last post on this blog was nearly two weeks ago! That doesn't mean I haven't gotten any paper crafting done - just haven't posted it.  Unfortunately, some of what I've done was so time critical that I didn't get pictures of it either, but I DO have a few things I can share with you over the next few days.  Today I'll talk about my Stamping Notebook.

As I've accumulated more sets of stamps, I began to realize that no matter how I organized them, there was still a challenge finding the right stamp for my cards sometimes.  I've organized my stamps into 6 basic categories:

1. Specific occasions - like Father's Day, Christmas, Birthday, etc.,
2. Small stamp sets - cute little sets that tend to be just perfect for card focals,
3. Decorative elements - borders, swirls, etc.
4. Themed sets - kitchen, birds, sewing, etc.
5. Word sets - quotes or greetings sets
6. Mounted rubber stamps (being bulker - these couldn't be stored with the others)

Though organizing this way has helped me be able to find some stamps when I needed them, I particularly noticed a challenge when it came to quotes and greetings.  The reason for this was two-fold.  First, some quotes or greetings that might focus on a specific occasion - could also be used just as well for some other types of occasions. Secondly, themed sets or small stamp sets, often have a few words associated with them.  These can be very useful - but hard to remember where they are. So, I decided to make a stamping notebook that has two sections.  

The first section is a list of single word stamps, arranged somewhat alphabetically.  If you look closely at the picture at the top of this post, you'll see it is composed of small 1/4-sheet sized papers - each with words that start with the letters that are highlighted on the mini-page.  I've simply taped these papers onto a larger sheet with removable tape.  This allows me to add more little sheets as needed to show all my single word stamps.

The second section is arranged by occasion or type of need.  For example, some focus on "Christmas" or "Birthday", or "Thank You".  And some pages show other types of needs like names used for people (husband, daughter, Dad, friend, me, etc.)  You can see an example of the second section here:

Here I've got a page of stamps related to occasions where one might want a "Congratulations" card.  

In both sections, I've stamped all applicable stamps from a single set together and drawn a line around them - then written the name of the set they came from in blue, so I can find them easily. 

As you can imagine, this project took a bit of time, and I found myself wondering if it would be worth it.  IT IS!!!!  Recently as I was making cards, I found myself wanting sentiments that needed to be a certain size and shape and font-type to support the theme of my card.  How nice to just be able to turn to the right page in my stamping notebook and see what would best fit my needs.  Several times, I ended up using stamps that I know I would have totally forgotten about if I hadn't had this notebook to refer to.