Tag Swap

I've never done much with tag making, but made these for a swap on the Paper Wishers message board. 

Tag Base: I cut the base tag from white card stock using a die from HOTP (Tags & Trims).  Next, I colored the tag with Distress Oxide inks (Peacock Feathers, Broken China, and Faded Jeans) - starting with the lightest color all over, then adding the other two colors, covering a smaller area each time, keeping it more and more to the edge of the tag.  

Decorations:

• Ribbon - a sparkly velvet ribbon from my stash
• Deer - Cut with dies from Heartfelt Creations (Woodsy Critters) out of lavender glitzy paper (DCWV)
• Christmas Trees - cut with dies from the same Heartfelt Creations set from white glitter card stock (with silver glitter in it).
• "Snow" cut from the glitter card stock & edged with Broken China distress oxide ink
• "Winter Greetings" stamp from a HOTP small stamp (Winter Wonderland) stamped with purple ink from my stash

I made six of these - all similar, but no two exactly alike.  Four went for the swap:

And I kept two:

Zebra Cards

Today's set of cards come a Hunkydory Kit called "Wild at Heart" - the zebra set from there.  I also used adhesive backed zebra faux fur (from the dollar store!), zebra striped faux fur ribbon, greetings from the HD Essential book of pearl greetings, metallic gold tag board, and a couple small paper pieces from my stash.

This first card is a center step card - angle makes it a little hard to tell that.  I love the feel of that faux fur!

Next up is an easel card.  I had to cut the inside greeting so the card would stand up correctly!  Here's what the inside looks like:

This card was an A2 size.

Next up is a long card - 4" x 9".  Once again, that faux fur feels so luxurious!

This one is a dual center step card.  

This last one uses the faux fur ribbon.  The texture is nice - though not quite as luxurious as the other faux fur.

UpCycled Cards

Every year when I get Christmas cards, I save some parts for my "scavenge pile".  If the card front is pretty & isn't a specially hand made one and doesn't have a message on it, I save it for card making later so it gets double duty.  This year as I was preparing my cards, I found I needed another 6 cards.  So, I went through my scavenge pile and found some pieces that looked interesting to make the remaining cards I needed.  For this first one, I embossed the front of the card base & then added the scavenged embellishment (and a sentiment from my HD "Essential book of Christmas Greetings").

This cut-away card was quick to make.  Embossed the card front & cut it away to add HohoHo on the inside so it could be seen when the card was closed.

Again I embossed the card front before adding my scavenged topper with a greeting from my HD "Essential book of Christmas Greetings".  On the inside, I added a HD die cut from an older set.

I loved this framed bird, and thought it went well with the background paper.  To make the greeting stand out, I attached it to a piece of fun foam.

This scavenged topper was already embossed, so I just matted it to a simple plaid design & added a greeting.

This beautiful topper was a paper tole style scavenged piece.  I added a piece from a HD deco set - and another to a patterned paper border on the inside.

Clothe Yourself

The stamp used was from a set called "Paper Dolls" (HOTP).  It was stamped with StazOn ink after the page was protected with clear gesso.  The flesh tones were watercolor pencil with a water brush - the rest was Inktense (I don't have a good flesh-toned inktense color).  I did the background with distress ink - added some with blending tool. For close around the body, I applied the distress ink to a craft mat &amp added it with a watercolor brush.  The highlighted section was Inktense, blended with with Wink of Stella.  The lettering was created with Pitt pens.

A Very Merry Christmas - Christmas Choir Part 4

Most sets only had 2 pictures from the little book that coordinated with it - but this one had 3.  Here are 3 cards I made using the 3rd little book picture.

For this first one, I created a fancy frame using Spellbinders "Radiant Rectangles" dies with gold metallic tag board & red holographic card stock.  The picture was also cut with a die from that set.  The sentiment was once again from the Hunkydory Essential Book of Christmas Greetings 2016. 

I cut a piece of the remaining scrap of the picture for the inside & matted it on the holographic card stock.

The next card uses the same idea, same card stock & dies, but obviously done a bit differently.  I embossed the front of the card using an M-Bossabilities folder (Spellbinders - Imperial). 

I used some of the leftover part of the picture to create this oval for the inside.

The last card was pretty straight forward - a tall one.  I did trim it a bit to make it more narrow for the card - then finished it top and bottom with a border cut from the coordinating card stock from the set.  A sentiment from the Essential book and this set was finished.

So - that makes a total of 13 cards from the Christmas Choir set, bringing the grand total of cards made from this half of the set to 79.  One more set to go!

A Very Merry Christmas - Christmas Choir Part 3

Part 3 of a Christmas Choir (Hunkydory) set - is once again actually from a little book.  Three different cards from three identical little book pictures.  The last card you'll see in this post was made in a pretty straight forward manner, but the other two - not so much.  By this time I was REALLY getting tired of just "same old" cards made with a little book picture & pushed myself to come up with some other ideas.  I thought this picture lent itself well to being cut in two pieces, but having learned from the one I showed in the last post, I decided to make this a cut away card!  

I found a piece of tan card stock in my stash, then cut and scored to make a 5" x 7" card.  I then embossed the front (Decor Circles embossing folder from Craftwell) - inking with distress ink (walnut stain).  Next, I cut away the section on the right and glued it to the inside of the card.  As you can see, I matted the right part of the picture on red paper.  On the right side, I didn't mat the picture, but used the same paper to cut a border strip on which the greeting was placed (from Essential Book of Christmas Greetings 2016).

On the inside, I have a piece of white paper that I cut using a Spellbinders Labels One die.  I inked it with Distress ink (walnut stain) using the die as a stencil.  

By this time I was getting desperate to do something really different.  So, I decided to do a mosaic look:

I cut the picture in pieces, inked the edges, mounted them on tan squares, and inked those edges before gluing them to the front of the card.   It seemed to take FOREVER!!!!  Then I simply cut a strip from the same tan card stock used for the squares & inked those edges before adding a red ribbon down the center & a star shaped greeting from the Essential book.

For this card I made things easier on myself.  I inked the edges of the picture and matted it on a piece of coordinating paper (which I also inked).  Then I cut a border strip from the coordinating card stock & added it on the left.  A greeting from the essential book finished things off.

A Very Merry Christmas - Christmas Choir Part 2

Continuing with the Hunkydory A Very Merry Christmas - Christmas Choir Set - these 3 cards were made from pictures in the coordinating "Little Book".    As you can see, for this first one I made a frame from a piece of red paper - cutting out the center with a Spellbinder's die (Labels Four).  I used some border stickers to edge the frame & glued all to the card front which had been embossed with an embossing folder from Craftwell called Decor Circles.  Sentiment is from the Essential Book of Christmas Sentiments (2016).

This one is really straight forward - I simply framed it with a frame I cut from tagboard using a Spellbinder's Card Creator Basics die.  Sentiment is once again from the Essential book.

This final card did not turn out the way I envisioned.  I cut the picture in half.  I figured the left side was my focal & framed it with gold.  The other part was put on foam tape.  I wanted it to look like they were going down steps into the church, but it just ended up looking "different".  Oh well - live & learn!  Oh yes, the pieces were first matted on red paper that had been embossed with a M-bossabilities folder from Spellbinders (Venetian).

A Very Merry Christmas - Christmas Choir - Part 1

Back to the "A Very Merry Christmas Deco Large" kit from Hunkydory.  A couple of weeks ago I posted about a challenge my Mom & I did where we both started with the same coordinating set & worked to see how many cards we could make.  We enjoyed it so much we did another.  This one is based on the "Christmas Choir" set. 

As you can see, my first card is an easel card. The card front looks pretty basic (though in real life you can see all the layers - added with foam tape - that you can't see in the picture).  However, the topper is only attached to the bottom half of the card.  (I scored the fold before embossing the card front & adding the topper.)  This allows the card front to fold back to create the easel.  On the inside, there is simply a strip of red holographic card stock and a sentiment (from the set).  The sentiment on the outside came from the 2016 Essential book of Christmas Sentiments (which I've used extensively.

I got two cards from the "decoupage" layering pieces.  Here's the 2nd one: 

The focal picture uses part of the coordinating paper for the snowy background.  As you can see, I matted this with more of the holographic card stock (from HOTP).  Which in turn was matted using metallic silver tag board.

Here's the inside:

Same basic idea - border strip of holographic card stock matted on silver metallic tag board - with one of the little decoupage figures added.

Next up are two cards made from the border image of the coordinating paper (from inserts & paper pack), which I cut into two pieces - one for this card, and one for the next.  The piece for this card was further cut & matted and then put on the card front.  (I DO think it would have been better if I had had a little less white space between the 3 pieces.)  A sentiment from the Essential book finishes this card nicely.

The next card was really very simply done.  I used a piece of dotted paper from my stash to border the "choir" piece - top & bottom, added a sentiment (from Essential book) & a bow.

The inside used more of the same paper for borders - and the mat for the message area.

Set Challenge

Yesterday I took part in a "set challenge".  3 of us were all given the same set of materials & asked to make a card.  It was fun to see how different they all turned out.  This was mine. The papers came from the Christmas Wonder paper pack.  The tag was stamped using the Christmas Tags and Trims - heat embossed in gold.  After being cut with the matching die, it was matted twice - once on red patterned paper and once on white.  It was colored with inktense pencils & Dazzles were added.  A red ribbon finished it off.

I like the inside even better than the outside: 

It has another stamped image - this time a sentiment from the Christmas Cheer set (HOTP).  It was again heat embossed in gold.    More dazzles and a bit of inking finish it off.

Pay It Forward Challenge

A friend on the Paper Wishers Message Board sent me this small card kit - card, 3 pieces of coordinating paper (2 were 5" x 6.5" and one was more like 4" x 5" - from HOTP "Home Grown" paper set), 4 small brads (2 each of tractor & star), a piece of grosgrain ribbon (16-18" long), a couple of stamped images, and a stamped greeting - greetings and images were stamped on larger pieces of paper/card stock so that I could cut them as I chose.

This was a real challenge because I didn't want it to look too busy, but also wasn't wanting to add to the materials in the kit (except for adhesive & coloring!).  I decided to cut the sentiment apart (and add the 3 dots for elipses) so that I could have part of the greeting on the front of the card and the remainder inside.  By cutting down the focal image, I was able to get white strips that I could piece together to form the white mat.  To help it and the greeting stand out further, I used the red ribbon that was included in the kit. 

Then it was time to do the inside:

Focal was colored with Inktense pencils & a water brush.  Scraps from the other papers helped to form a bit of a frame & a separating strip between the message and the stamped image.

Ambition

To illustrate this one, after protecting the page with clear gesso, I used a stamp from a set called "Sew Pretty" that came with a Cardmaking and Papercrafting magazine.  I used StazOn ink, but had some problem with the stamping and needed to go over many of the lines using a Pitt pen.  I waited to do that, however, until after I colored the "thread" with a bit of marker & water brush.  I used my Scroll and Brush markers to do all the coloring & lettering.  I actually created the lettering on my computer, then used a thin light pad (like a light box) to trace the letters with the markers.  I used just one edge of the "scroll" side of the marker to draw the finer lines of the lettering.  The black lettering was all done with Pitt pens. 

Promises of Healing

After protecting the page with clear gesso, I stamped the girl ("Janie's Girls" stamp set from HOTP) with black StazOn.  I colored her with Inktense pencils and a water brush - and highlighted the relevant texts with the same.  Except, I colored her skin with a watercolor pencil as I don't have a good flesh tone in my Inktense set.  The lettering was done with Pitt pens.  I actually made a mistake when doing the lettering, so "fixed" it by adding a pink heart sticker & writing the word on top of it.

HD Twilight Forest - Howling Moon

My husband likes wolves & with his birthday coming up, I thought this HD set would be perfect.  However, the first day I pulled it out, I just sat staring at it trying to figure out what to do with it.  Yesterday, however, it all came together & I got 6 cards from the set.  

This first card started with a frame and small focal from the set.  I used a bit of coordinating card stock to back the frame.  After using an embossing folder on the card front, I added the focal & a sentiment from the kit.  Here's the inside: 

For the inside, I cut borders from one of the pieces of coordinating card stock, and added another sentiment from the set.

For many of these cards, I'm not sure what sentiment I'll use, but it's nice to have them mostly done.  The background for this card is pieced from the coordinating card stock - then simply has another image from the set added to the card front.  Here's the inside of this one:

For the inside, I used scraps from the card stock & another image from the set.

This next card started with a background piece from the coordinating card stock & a piece of glitter/velvet ribbon running across it as a border.  The lacy frame was created using Dazzles stickers (HOTP).  The focal was created using a Dazzles frame over an embossed blue glimmer paper.  A small image from the set finishes the focal.

For the fourth card, I backed a piece of coordinating card stock with HD black miri.  The focal has a matching frame that was raised with foam tape.

Card number four starts with a piece cut from the coordinating card stock - backed with black paper.  The sentiment was stamped on a scrap of card stock & heat embossed in white - matted on white glimmer paper.

For the inside, another piece of card stock backed with black forms the backdrop for a greeting from the set.

The sixth and final card used the final piece of the card stock for the card front. I used the same sparkle/velvet ribbon for a border & added the last sentiment from the set.

The inside is just a bit of white card stock & the last image from the set.