Cardinals for Christmas

 

Cardinals are quintessential Christmas birds, not only for the male's bright red coloring, but because I only see them in the winter here in Florida. 

These birds are created with a die from Gina Marie Designs called Layering Cardinal. I have to tell you, this didn't come with instructions and I had a real time trying to figure out how to do the wing layers and the legs/feet. I found only one example of this assembled on line so I took that one and ran with it. The card above is 5" by 6.5", larger than the usual cards I make. The wreath is build with various greenery from Spellbinders' kits. 

One of my pet peeves with art featuring cardinals is that there are often multiple males in the picture, but no females. What's up with that?   So for this card I took the die and cut it from some golden brown card stock and flipped it over to make the mirror image. I used a bone folder to smooth down the cut edges since the back side isn't as finished looking around the edges.

The greenery that the birds are perched on are from assorted bits from Spellbinders' kits, as are the script die cut sentiments.  I had the silver snowflake die cuts in a cup on my desk from several years ago. The card below was also inked around the perimeter of the navy base with black soot Distress Oxide ink, and finished with some baker's twine at the top fold.

Christmas Wishes - 10 cards from one kit, so far

These cards are from the Spellbinders' card kit of the month for November 2019, "Christmas Wishes".  I bought this kit on sale, but truth to be told I mainly got it for the die.  It's the only way to get them, and I've been wanting the little poinsettia die since I saw it last fall. The card above also used Spellbinders' scalloped circle dies and Gina Marie Designs' greenery sprigs dies.

Yes, this card features the dies from the set, the poinsettias that I had to have. The ornament dies are nice, too.

The above card is on a forest green background that has been embossed with a folder from Fun Stamper's Journey, of pine sprigs.

The "Merry Christmas" die is from Kat Scrappiness. The center bit of the "M" always sticks in the die and I've about a 50% chance of getting it out without ripping it or distorting it. Yay me.

This last card features a new frame die I got from Spellbinders, Candlewicking.  It's another tricky one that only works if  I pass it through the Big Shot multiple times in different configurations.  It does't show in the photograph, but there are circles embossed in the center of each little diamond shape. These require their own pass through the machine with the tan embossing mats. 

I have loads of products left in this kit so there will be more cards coming from it. 

Here come the Valentines! Almost.

Yes, I have climbed up onto the Valentine wagon, sort of. Although I'm kind of wondering why. I presume I'll mail a small amount of these and donate the rest, somewhere.

The monsters above are from My Favorite Things' Monster Sized, again. Yes, I DO have a lot of them already colored with Prismacolor or Polychromos pencils, all cut up with my Brother Scan N Cut 2, ready to go, so why not?  A strip of black and white striped paper, a couple of die cuts, some ink, and it's good to go!

The cat below is from Tim Holt's Crazy Cats collection. A bright pink cat? Why not? He is colored with my Spectrum Noir markers, and mounted on double stitched hearts (diecuts from Gina Marie Designs), The sentiment, and striped paper accents are from My Favorite Things. 

Are these really Valentines? Probably not, but what the heck. They will have an appropriate "Happy Valentines' Day" greeting inside, to redeem them.

Believe in cocoa.

I might just sneak in under the deadline for this one. This cup of cocoa is from a die from Gina Marie Designs, as is the die that I cut the "Believe" from. The reindeer is sporting Doodlebug Erie Eyes. This will be my second entry into the Winter Coffee Lover's Bloghop. 

The second card is a bonus, designed with patterned paper and MFT's Blueprints 27 dies.The greeting is from MFT's "Snowfall of Blessings" sentiment set. 

Most wonderful!

Another Christmas card, this one with some new dies from Gina Marie Designs. This white panel was cut with the Snowflake border die, and stamped with a sentiment from Avery Elle's Comfort and Joy. I put die-cut sprigs of greenery at the top and bottom.

The pine sprigs were harder to glue than I thought they would be, especially since I put them at an angle near the edge. I tried to add a bow at the top but couldn't get one to stick properly. I may sneak in a sequin or two, because it looks like it could use a bit of red in the greenery.

Aww nuts, how did that happen?

True story: my sister's birthday card was riding around in my purse from September 11th until September 18th. I was going to put it in my mailbox, but we had just had Hurricane Irma and the Post Office wasn't delivering or picking up that day. So I put it in my purse to put in the box near work the next day. And I totally forgot it was in there. It is a very big purse. Her birthday was on the 15th, by the way. Well, she didn't have the greatest day either since she didn't have power for a week at her house.

So, enter the belated birthday card I put together this morning. It is a near copy of one done by My Favorite Things' design team member Inge Groot and a Facebook user in a stamping group I'm in, Monique van Steenbergen.

I cut the three background papers from some old 12 x 12 papers in my stash. So old! I then die cut the white circle and many leaves. I tucked all the leaves behind the white circle, along with some twine, and as I was placing the little squirrel I decided something wasn't right and went back to look at the original. Yes, the leaves and twine should have been behind the squirrel, not the white circle. So I just cut a few more leaves and some more twine and built another layer.

I used Lawn Fawn dies for the background, and a few of the leaves, Paper Smooches Dies for the rest of the leaves, and Gina Marie Designs for the white double stitched circle. The squirrel is from My Favorite Things' "Wild Woodland". He's stamped onto craft card stock and fussy cut. It feels strange not to color the image.

Now this card is going into the mail for my sister, and I can save the purse riding card for next year. I'm super early for that!

Tail wagging terrific day!

So, I've decided to do the color throwdown challenge this week. I've actually done 2 of them, but we'll talk about the other one later, ok?

This is actually stretching the limits of the color choices, as I did not actually use kraft specifically. I've had these water colored dogs for a while now. They are from Inky Antics' Delightful Dogs #2.

I started by putting down some Distress Oxide colors on some 140 lb water color paper, then spritzing with water and blotting off the excess. Then I used the same 2 colors to create some splatter. I then cut the panel using the largest die from Gina Marie's Designs Stitched Scalloped Edge Dies.

The dogs, which I colored last year using Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers, were cut out using the Scan and Cut and attached flat to the water colored panel. I stamped the sentiment with Versafine black ink and mounted the panel to a bright green card base.

I observed that the Lucky Clover Distress Oxide ink was a good match for the card base before I used the water on it. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but in some of the "lifted" areas it left behind more blue than green. Fascinating.

Flippin' awesome!

I have been experimenting with brick backgrounds this week, and here's my latest.

The brick background is from a cheap embossing folder (maybe Darice?) that I've had for a while, and I lightly went over it with Distress Oxide in Iced Spruce.

The fat chef is from My Favorite Things' Recipe for Happiness, and the red frame is from MFT's Blueprints 27. The blue background panel is cut with my new rectangle die from Gina Marie Designs' limited run of double stitched inside and outside shapes.

The shapes mostly cut well enough, but I get better results if I use my precision cutting plate in my Big Shot. Also, one end embosses the stitching better than the other, so I put a shim on one end to try to equalize things.

I am getting a little smarter, though. I've started to mark the end of the die that needs the shim so I won't have to test it each time. Live and learn, right?

Mr Chef and his kitchen tools were colored with Spectrum Noir markers.

And now, my random craft room thought: Where can I have put that BIG pad of Bristol Smooth cardstock? It's too big to be so hidden.

Cats + Hearts = Purrfection!

Wow, I am still using up all the cats I colored back in May. Would you believe I'm still not done with them? Most of them were colored with Copics or Spectrum Noir markers and cut with my Scan and Cut, but these were on water color paper scraps, so were fussy cut.

Anyway, this week I ordered and received a bunch of basic shaped dies with double stitching around both the inside and outside edges. These dies, from Gina Marie Designs, are a value, priced much lower than the die sets from big-name companies, but are not no-name dies from China, either.

What I am discovering with these dies is that I must use the precision plate in my Big Shot, and if I want both ends to emboss the stitching evenly I need to put a little shim at one end only. My next project is to cut each one separately and mark the low end so I'll know where to shim them in the future. Oh boy.

Anyway, for the hearts in this card, I cut all three at once and colored each one separately with Distress Oxide Ink.

The front of the pink card base is embossed with the 2nd largest of the rectangle dies from Gina Marie Designs. It's very subtle.

The kitties, from My Favorite Things' Catitude set, were water colored and fussy cut. My Brother Scan and Cut is not so great at cutting things from heavy watercolor paper scraps. When I tape down the scrap the scanner wants to pick up the tape and it's too close to crop out. Yes, I need to get my cutting mat sticky again.

I finished up with some Nuvo Crystal Drops and Nuvo Jewel Drops.

Let the coffee cards begin!

It's that time again! Time for the Summer Coffee Lover's Blog Hop, gotta love it!

My first card for the hop is a stack of cups cut with a no-name die. I cut the die 4 times and hand trimmed it so that each cup could be it's own pattern.

The sentiment is from My Favorite Things. and the scalloped panel is cut with a die from Gina Marie Designs.

Floral Bliss, Part 4

For this floral wedding card, I used (again!) the large spray from the Simon Says Stamp June card kit. I used the barely beige ink from the kit, but the stamp still had Versafine from the previous stamping, so the lines were somewhere between in darkness.

I used the Daniel Smith watercolors for most of the flowers and all the leaves. The small pink flowers were water colored with the Worn Lipstick Oxide ink that came with the kit. I gold embossed the sentiment onto a strip of dark Kraft card stock and mounted it to the center between the 2 sprays.

I cut the panel out using a Gina Marie Designs die and mounted it to a Kraft card base. I used a white gel pen in the centers of the flowers and finished off with some large no-name iridescent sequins.

I'm ready to move on to different images now, I think.

Floral Bliss, Part 2

Once again, I used the Simon Says Stamp June 2017 Card Kit, and tried my hand at no-line water coloring. I'm not thrilled with it, but I pushed on with it.

I started by stamping the image with the SSS Barely Beige ink that was included in the kit onto some Ranger watercolor paper, also included. This was my first experience with the Ranger paper, and I was surprised at how lightweight it was. The 140 lb paper I've been using is quite a bit heftier. I think if I ever want to cut more water colored images with the ScanNCut that this might be the way to go.

I then colored the pretty flower spray with the Daniel Smith watercolor samples that were also in the kit. After blundering my way through the painting I had to walk away from it for a while. When I came back to it I had a plan of action!

I fussy cut the image and mounted it to an oval of light yellow card stock that had been cut with a Gina Marie dotted oval die, and embossed with a Darice script embossing folder. 

I chose a very bright stripe background from a My Favorite Things paper pack called Fun and Frolic, and mounted that to an eye-watering bright yellow card base. I chose a sentiment from Simon Says Stamp's Sketchy Banner, and used the matching sketchy banner die.

Finally, I used my gloss white crystal Nuvo drops to highlight the center of the flowers and the upper right and lower left of the card. 

Call anytime. Really.

So, this week I played with my new Distress Oxide Inks. The first thing I did was this tri-colored panel. I used a Gina Marie die for the panel. I played around with a lot of different white die-cut sentiments, but ended up liking these simple palm trees the best. The palm trees are one of the no-name dies from China that I recently got. More on that story later.

I used a sentiment from an older set from The AlleyWay Stamps.

I have decided that I will go and use most of the stamp sets that I HAD to have, but have never used. And to make the challenge even greater, at least one stamp should come from a set that is no longer for sale. Then it will truly be archaeological.

Of course, I haven't stopped buying new stamps, what do you think I'm capable of here?

No prob-llama!

Today's birthday card features this super cute llama from My Favorite Things' Llama Love set. I've had it for months, even had the llama water colored, but not cut out.

I water colored the llama with a combination of Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers and Mission Gold watercolors. My big advice is don't use the cheap children's watercolor paper from W*lm*rt. The color soaked into that paper so fast and spread out so quickly that it was hard to get this little image contained. I had to work a lot drier than I wanted. The only reason I used it was because I thought it would cut easier on the Brother Scan and Cut. I never even got that far since these were the only images on the whole sheet that didn't bleed badly. So, back to fussy cutting, again.

The background "glow" was created with sponge daubers and no-name ink from the dollar bin at Michaels.

The rectangles were cut with a Gina Marie Designs set with an interesting detail that totally can't be seen in the photograph, but is southwestern feeling in real life. It can almost be seen in this photo:

So my next project is to work with this die set to emboss that detail more deeply into the cut pieces. The dies put that detail on both sides of the cut line, but oh-so-faintly.

To complicate matters, I may have messed up my Big Shot last week. I was experimenting with an old Spellbinders frame that never cut well, and shims. I MAY have overdone it. Yikes.

Hey, fishy fish!

So, for my next white on white adventure I used these rainbow trout dies from Gina Marie Designs. I die cut a bunch of them and glued them all down. The center fish is colored with Copic markers and covered in sparkly Wink of Stella.

The sentiment is from an old Alleyway Stamps set called "Gill Friend". I mounted this panel onto some brown card stock, then put that on a top-fold Kraft card base.

As I'm gazing at it, I'm thinking it could have been a pretty good masculine card except for that sentiment. Oh well.

I dig you!

I wanted to try the background technique of stamping all over, embossing in white, and watercoloring the images. It always looks so good when the pros do it. They are pros because they make it look so easy! When Amy R does this technique, she often puts a layer of velum behind the main image, but I've lost my velum. I know it is in there somewhere, but do you think I could find it? Not today.

Well, since that wasn't working for me, I broke out an oval of white and essentially obliterated the area behind it.

Oh, and when you do this technique, the white eye dots just don't cut it. I went back in with a gel pen to blacken the eye dots. I suspect this background technique is better with non-human (or human-like) images.

I used the My Favorite Things' You Gnome Me stamp set for these cute guys and the sentiment. I colored both the background and the main image with Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers, and added sparkle to the main image's clothes with a Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen.  I'm still working on how to watercolor a big fluffy beard.

I had this card all done and was making the photograph when I realized I hadn't painted his belt yet. I'm still considering this card an experiment. I may or may not try this again, as it seems a little busy to me.

I used the stitched scalloped die and sentiment strip from MFT's Blueprints 27, and a cross stitched oval from Gina Marie designs.