Orange Kitty Hello

This little kitty is one of my favourite older stamps. This week at Crazy 4 Challenges, we had a colour combo for our inspiration. Use the colours of a tiger, orange, black and white.

I’m not a huge fan of bright colours so I went with softer versions. And I added a few pastels; they are almost neutrals right? Wink, wink!! :)

The kitty is coloured with Copic markers along with a soft airbrushed background. The circle was die cut with dies from Simon Says Stamp. The sentiment is by Altenew stamped with black Versafine ink. Instead of my usual sequins, I used buttons today. I think they give a really cute homey touch to this adorable card.

If you love orange and black, pop on over to the Crazy 4 Challenges blog!

Enjoy, Rebecca

Entered In: Match the Sketch 187

Celebrate Everyday Moments

I’m so excited to finally show you one of the cards I made for SCS in January.

 

I started with this glorious cupcake paper from Bo Bunny. It uses so many of my favourite colours too! Mmmm. I love when pastels are accented with a pop of a bright or darker colour in this case the fuchsia! While not a big fan of black it works perfectly here! The oval die cut which I think is either sponged or airbrushed with a tiny bit of colour, makes a perfect mat for the cake slice inside a cloche! Some gold thread makes the chipboard (Bo Bunny) pop too! I just can’t stop adding gold! I’m so glad that gold is the trend right now and not silver as I definitely prefer the warm shimmer of gold, rose gold and copper!

I added some narrow washi tape above the patterned paper just to help it look more finished then some ribbon and glitter. The pink Distress glitter was adhered (Scor-Tape) to the card right next to the ribbon and trimmed on an angle so it almost appears that the ribbon has a glittered edge. Really Reasonable Ribbon has some awesome deals on the lovely paper flowers I used on this card; their colours compliment the paper perfectly!

Another chipboard piece provides a sentiment I really believe in. My religion doesn’t celebrate holidays or even birthdays so we really have to take advantage of smaller moments to celebrate and enjoy. It certainly makes things less stressful to celebrate a lot of small moments rather than just a few huge ones. A sprinkling of sequins and gems from Lucy’s Cards provides some sparkle and bling to this fun card!

Enjoy, Rebecca

Congratulations Wedding Shaker

Shakers are all the rage and I can’t seem to stop making them!! Have you made any yet? If not, you have to try them! They are super fun to both the making and the playing! I keep mine for a couple days before making so my 5 year old son, Teddy, and I can play with them! He’s completely enamoured with all my interactive cards.

Do you even find you have a piece of patterned paper (My Mind’s Eye-Fancy That) that is so lovely you can’t bear to cut it up? I find that to be true often when a paper has a border or is a full-sheet design rather than a repeating pattern. The gold dots around the edges of this piece were so pretty, I couldn’t bear to cut it small enough for an A2 card so this card is a whopping 6x6”! Yes, you will have to buy oversized envelopes or make them yourself. But I think it’s worth it!

TIP: One way to mail an oversized card without buying or making special envelopes is to wrap it in tissue, add some washi tape, a pretty tag or an embellishment then mail it in a plain white 9x12” envelope cut down to size.

Instead of building from the bottom up to make my shaker, I decided to work from the top down. That way my shaker’s edges are hidden under the gold striped paper. This is an elegant way to create a shaker especially if you find you have trouble getting the layers to align and look neat. My paper was cut with an oval nesting die (Spellbinders) to create a frame for my shaker then the acetate was adhered to the back of the frame. You don’t need as much adhesive for this layer as there won’t be any sequins trying to escape! To make things easier, I used the nesting dies to cut fun foam Strong adhesive was added to the fun foam on both sides. I placed the fun foam on a scrap of a quilt patterned paper then added my sequins. Finally I placed it altogether!

Love this card? Be sure to Pin or Share!

With so many sequins, all this card needed was a layered black sparkly die cut sentiment (Simon Says Stamp/Wink of Stella) and a silk ribbon (May Arts) bow. I haven’t given this one away yet because I’m still busy playing with it there haven’t been any weddings or anniversaries yet but I hope the happy couple will love this card!

Enjoy, Rebecca

Summer Hello

I can’t believe I waited so long to use this awesome new card kit from Simon Says Stamp. Anything beachy or ocean themed is my favourite! I might even do my own version of 1 kit 10 cards! I’ve got 2 so far!

I made this card using sketch for this week’s Crazy 4 Challenges. There’s one paper in the kit with a lot of fun borders so I used them for the banners on the sketch. I am kind of allergic to making cards weighted to the right of the card, not sure why, so I moved the focal panel over.

The sentiment was stamped in Distress ink but to get enough coverage I had to stamp it three times. That was enough to make it bleed into the patterned paper which made the sentiment fuzzy. I tried to fix it with a Distress marker but ick, that didn’t look so hot either. Last ditch effort was to try to stamp over the whole mess and emboss the sentiment. I actually like the way the sentiment looks with the green popping out from under the gold.

When you make a card using this sketch, be sure to link it up over at the Crazy 4 Challenges blog!

Enjoy, Rebecca

Finally!

It’s been an amazing 6 months but sadly my term at SplitcoastStampers is over. Fun doesn’t even come close to describe my time with the Dirty Girls. The themes were so creative and allowed us so much free rein to come up with truly awesome creations! Now that my term is up, I am free to blog my cards!

This box was absolutely one of my favourite creations. It seems anytime that I work with Maggie Holmes products from Crate Paper, I make something I REALLY love! The box was plain so I covered it with some 12x12 paper from the Bloom collection. Everything else except the ribbon, buttons, sequins and sentiment are from one Maggie H collection or another. Layering all of these beautiful embellies made me so happy! I can’t wait until a friend or family member has a baby so I can give a sweet little gift in there.

I will be coming back later in the week with some more cards and a book review (or two!). I have boys and they really aren’t into the crafts I do. But I’ve been contacted by a publisher and given some books to review for free. While I was given the books, I was not required to review them favourably or otherwise, and everything I write is my unbiased opinion.

Enjoy, Rebecca

Paris Sending Hugs Card

It’s time for another Crazy 4 Challenges card! This week we were challenged to make a card using a travel destination, any city, country or place.

Of course, my romantic, shabby chic and summer-loving self immediately thought of the beach and Paris. Hard to chose but Paris won as I hadn’t made a shabby card in a while. It’s pretty hard for me to make one without tons of dimensional flowers but using Webster’s Pages paper helps a lot as the paper already has many shabby elements on it.

Do you know what colour the Eiffel Tower is? I thought it was silver/raw metal colour but actually it is painted three shades of bronze. The bottom is the darkest and the top is the lightest. Apparently this enhances the look against the sky. When I found that out, I tried to mimic this in my die cut (Hero Arts). I added silver distress stain to the top and copper to the bottom leaving the center plain. Then I added bronze over top hoping the colours below would blend with the bronze on top. It didn’t work as I had to add too many colours of stain to get a solid look but it’s still pretty!

Want to get all my posts by email? Be sure to check out the email sign up widget on my sidebar!

I added some stamping, the clock, flourish on the left, the birds at the top and bits of script and postmarks. On the background paper I added gold crackle paste through a doily stencil. I hope you like how this turned out! I kinda love it! We would love to have you join us this week. Any destination, maybe your dream vacation? :)

Enjoy, Rebecca

Safari Stuffed Animal Baby Gifts

I know, that’s an odd title right? Our challenge at Crazy 4 Challenges this week was to be inspired by something in a park. I like to think outside the box on these challenges sometimes so I went past the typical neighbourhood park like the ones around my house. Then I thought about a safari park. And the stamp set I only used once, Wild Cuddly Critters!

This card is mostly one layer. I was going to tie some ribbon around the card below the sentiment but the outside had to stay pretty plain because of how I decorated the inside…

So cute right? I wanted it to look like a baby room but still allow the critters to  take center stage. So I stamped the furniture in kraft so it faded into the background. Did you notice how I made them look like gifts? The giraffe has a bow, the elephant a tag and the lion is sitting in crumpled tissue like he came out of a gift bag. The patterned paper was added as a rug and that’s where I will add my message.

I know there are many dies out there that allow you to make pop up cards, I even have some. But it’s also pretty easy to make some small tabs to create a pop up without any dies! It also means you don’t have to use two layers to make your card because there are no cuts through to the front of your card base.

Is this a long weekend for you? If so, you have some more time to play along this weekend! Hope you will join us!

Enjoy, Rebecca