Scrapping by Design

I can barely describe this amazing Christmas card that arrived, courtesy of Jean Bircham, yet another gal in our CST Holiday Card Exchange.

This card combines so many lovely techniques — stamping, coloring with possibly Copic markers, paper cutting, paper folding, stickers, dry embossing, glitter, some kind of sparkle mist, some satiny white glue to emphasize the fur trim on the coat and collar and a large snowflake with a rhinestone in the center.

The card features an accordion fold in the inside, with a window cut out of one side.  A stamped and colored girl is placed on the inner corner of this window. When the card is closed, the stamped girl stands sedately on the front of the card. When the card is open, the girl pops out through the window, and we see a stamped and colored snowman, a large snowflake embellishment and a stamped sentiment.  Small stamped snowflakes enhance the white background.

Even the back of this card has a cute sticker.

I am amazed at the amount of work that went into this card. The precision cutting alone would have had me mumbling in my eggnog.

Many thanks, and well done!  I will be attempting to duplicate this cut before too many weeks have passed.

The most recent Christmas card to arrive from the CST card exchange is this delightful and fanciful card featuring stamped, colored and glittered reindeer.

The card is matted with brown card stock. The inside matting is a pale green that is stamped with tiny snowflakes and the sentiment “Merry Christmas.”

The stamped reindeer are matted on brown and white, and colored brown except for the red saddles and Rudolph’s red nose. A line of glitter emphasizes the snow underfoot, and a silver cord is tied on the small Rudolph tag.

This is a lovely, cheerful, whimsical card. Many thanks to Judy Preston.

My Christmas gift giving this Holiday season includes these two hand-made garden journals.

Both of these garden journals are wire bound, using the ZUTTER BIND IT ALL PINK VER 2 SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL

If you are not familiar, I have a video demo of the Bind-it-All at this link.

I made the two journals using essentially the same design — but with a different style and layout orientation.

The first one has a light floral design, and has a portrait orientation. This book features coordinated scrapbook papers with matching beads, flowers and stickers that I purchased especially for the project. Therefore, the colors and images work together well.

The second has a rustic, grunge look which I hope will be reminiscent of a garden. It has a landscape layout.  I made this one completely from my stash, so I did not achieve the amount of coordination that the floral one has. Although the picture above does not show this embellishment, the rustic journal is closed with another Zutter product, a very nice little clasp, called the Bind-It-All Closure-Frame. You can see it in the video below. The rustic one also contains collage images with a garden theme, most of which I have covered with glitter using the burnished velvet technique.

Both garden journals contain places for seed packages, pages intended to hold photographs and journaling and decorated envelopes to contain receipts, invoices, newspaper clippings, articles, etc.  There are also several pages of graph paper for sketches, several pages of lined notebook paper for notes, and four miscellaneous pages that can be used for notes, clippings, sketches, dried flowers or whatever.

Thanks to various members of my CST Yahoo group who advised me on content. I am not a gardener and wasn’t sure what to include.

Here is the video showing the pages of the journals.  At one point, I make mention of a product called the Microfleur, which is listed on Amazon as the Large Microwave Flower Press For Drying Flowers. It is a great little tool for drying flowers and leaves in the microwave. Undoubtedly you can dry them without this tool, but the Microfleur does simplify things.

I made three of these garden journals, one right after the other. I truly hope the recipients like them. None are likely to visit my blog so the gifts should be a surprise.

Today’s mail brought a beautiful pink-toned birthday card from another member of the CST (Canadian Stamp Talk) email group.

My scanner seems to be distorting color lately, and even Photoshop hasn’t restored the image of this card to make it look as great at the original.

The card is a monotone with shades of pink. I love monotones. There’s something so elegant about them.

Here, the ribbon in the middle is the palest of pink, and the other parts of the card are various tones of pink and rose. The entire card has a faint glittery effect. I’m told that the sparkles were made with SU (Stamping UP) Paint.

The flower on the top left appears to be a punched shape, punched with a felt or felt-ish paper. A clear rhinestone makes up the center.

The sentiment, reading, “May every part of your Birthday have happy in it” is a stamp.

Thanks so much for this lovely card. It’s much appreciated.

This birthday card uses the Burnished Velvet glitter technique.  If you’re not familiar with this technique, please check out this Burnished Velvet Glitter Video Tutorial

I started with a collage picture that I believe came from Sommerset Studios magazine.  I coated the image with transparent glitter, then mounted it on white card stock.

Next, I layered the white card stock on a red metallic background, then in turn, mounted this on a patterned red paper. The whole thing is mounted on a card made from white card stock.

I stamped Happy Birthday with a stamp from Hero Arts, and then embellished with a strip of ecru lace and a cream colored pearl bead.

It makes a rather nice birthday card for a gal.

This is an Easter Bunny House craft project that I made yesterday.

The top picture is the front view. The bottom picture is the view from the back.

It’s made using the same pattern as the St. Patrick’s Day House I made awhile back. You can get the pattern and a video tutorial for the St. Patrick’s Day House at this link and adapt it to the Easter Bunny House.

This time I added a little pink chimney with a tulip growing in it, and some little wooden shapes that they sell at Michaels. Otherwise, its scrapbook paper, some of it embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder done on the Sizzix 655268 Big Shot Cutting-and-Embossing Roller-Style Machine

At the back, I placed a small bunny picture that I decorated with the burnished velvet glitter technique described in an earlier post

This is a video demo of the Easter Bunny House. I didn’t show how its made since I showed that in the St. Patrick’s Day House video tutorial linked to above.

This Easter card also uses a picture of collage art — a cute bunny in a garden, courtesy of Crafty Secrets.

I’ve used the burnished velvet glitter technique again, layered the image on purple shiny paper, then did some layering with blue and white checkerboard scrapbook paper.

I have a couple of embossed borders made with the Cuttlebug Frills embossing folder.

A white satin bow completes the look. I may decide to put three white buttons vertically, along the strip of blue and white checkerboard embossing.

The jury is still out on whether I will do that or not.   Buttons can add bulk which can create problems with Canada Post, and this card will be mailed across Canada.

This Easter Card has a vintage image with a Christian theme. As before, its finished with burnished velvet glitter and has flowers and ribbons.

There is a video tutorial showing how to do the burnished velvet glitter technique at this link.

The vintage image is by Crafty Secrets. You can purchase Collage Sheets on eBay and elsewhere. They come in all shapes, sizes and themes.

This Christian-themed Easter card is also made using the burnished glitter technique that I talked about yesterday.

The image is from the Crafty Secrets Heartwarming Vintage collection and I’ve used Be Creative tape and  Crystal’s Glitter Ritz.

I have an embossed border, made with the Cuttlebug border die used with the Sizzix 655268 Big Shot Cutting-and-Embossing Roller-Style Machine. I truly love my Big Shot

I’ve added a bow of cream colored ribbon.

I wish the burnished velvet glitter would show up better in the scan. On these pictures you can really not tell that there is glitter at all.

In real life, it is apparent and makes quite an attractive Easter card.

This Easter Card doesn’t scan well, but its made using the Burnished Velvet Glitter technique.

A couple of local women, Deanna Pannell and Haroldine Wingfield developed this technique. Haroldine is the owner of  Be Creative craft store in Pitt Meadows, BC  (no web site). These two gals have popularized this technique  throughout the Lower Mainland and beyond.

Essentially, the Burnished Velvet technique refers to applying glitter to double sided sticky tape, then rubbing the glitter with your fingers to bring out the sheen and to prevent color contamination when using two or more colors of glitter.    This results in a lovely effect that looks and feels like brushed velvet.

There are various effects you can get with  Burnished Velvet, including using masks to create patterns of several colors.  This card demonstrates using ultrafine, transparent glitter to completely cover a picture — in this example, an item from the Heartwarming Vintage Collection by Crafty Secrets.

Be Creative markets its own brand of double sided tape, and that is what is used here. The tape is available in sheets as shown in this video, or in rolls of tapes. You can buy it at various stores including ordering online from I’m Impressed , a Vancouver craft store.

To make this Easter card, I have also used an embossing folder from Cuttlebug. This is one of the border folders. If this is new to you, please refer to my video tutorial showing the Cuttlebug Embossing Folders used with the Sizzix Big Shot.

Here is a video tutorial showing how I made this Easter Card using the  Burnished Velvet glitter method.

I apologize in advance. In the video demonstration, I referred to the method as the Brushed Velvet method instead of the Burnished Velvet method.  It does end up looking like brushed velvet so I suppose that is where my word mixup came from.

The transparent glitter I used is Warm Highlights by Crystal Glitter Ritz. It’s also available in Cool Highlights.You can purchase it at most craft shops in the Vancouver area, including online at I’m Impressed.

Obviously you can use this technique with other brands of tape and other brands of glitter.  Around here, we just happen to think that Deanna and Haroldine have the BEST products! LOL