Scrapping by Design

Yesterday, I made this St. Patrick’s Day card featuring a stamped image of a carousel horse.

The stamp is Carousel Horse by Make an Impression, a stamp company located in Bellevue, Washington. I ordered the stamp from their online store a couple of years ago. I originally used it one year for Christmas cards. At that time, I made the horse white and decorated with red and green and gold punched shapes, plus a feather from my friend’s budgie bird.

I’ve been committed to using products on hand rather than buying new — a situation that developed when I realized my craft supplies were taking over my apartment and rather than using them, I was adding more and more.  Until I see a sizable dent, I am buying only occasional supplies such as glues and papers needed to match a particular project.

Therefore, I decided to see what I could do with the Carousel Horse stamp. I need five St. Patrick’s Day cards. They go to the teenage grandchildren plus a couple of  younger children that I send to.

For this card, I stamped the image with a watermark ink, then heat embossedwith chocolate brown embossing powder. I colored the horse with Twinkling H2Os and added a few accents with a glaze pen.

I used punches to make flowers in rose, pink and yellow, and another leaf punch to make leaves.  I put a daub of green glitter glue in the center of each small flower, then  used two sizes of shamrock punches to make the shamrocks.  The bigger shamrock at the top is stamped in black ink using “Top of the Morning”, an acrylic stamp from Studio G.

The white image is matted with green, which is 3D’d on the card. The card itself is a brown Bassill card stock with a layer of green,  tweedy-colored scrapbook paper.

This will do for four of my cards. I will have to make a different design for one of my St. Patrick’s Day cards, since two cards go to the same home.

This hand made Valentine card uses Valentine themed scrapbook paper and a paper doily of the kind that you buy in packages at the Dollar Stores.

The stamped image is a lilac by All Night Media.

I stamped it with black pigment ink then heat embossed with clear embossing powder. (The Ek Success EKHG01 Coloriser Heat Tool is getting top rankings. Apparently it has two heat settings. That would sure make it handy for embossing on vellum).

I colored the lilac with Twinkling H2Os.

The image is blocked on red metallic paper.
I added a small gold heart sticker and glued in place a short length of pears.

I have made a few other cards using this design but converted them to a birthday theme.

And yet another lovely Holiday card has arrived from my CST group.

I’m thinking I really need a new scanner. Mine seems to be distorting color so badly. In real life, the card is so much nicer than it appears here.

The background is a delicate blueish-green with snowflakes stamped in an even more delicate blue.

The sentiment is stunning. It’s stamped and heat embossed with a delicate, glittery embossing powder.  It is not black, as it appears here in the picture.

I hope the card’s creator will let me know what color and brand she used, because it is lovely.

The snowflake near the bottom is white with a faint tinge of pinkish red glitter.

Thanks for this lovely Christmas or Holiday card.

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.

I made these Wreath Christmas cards using a combination of techniques: rubber stamping, heat embossing, paper layering, eyelets, Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Circles Die Template and ribbon.

They look considerably better in real life than in the scanned images.

I cut the wreath shapes with the Nestabilities dies, then stamped them using the Peruvian Lily Set by Rubber Stamp Tapestry. The set contains a dragon fly image, which I omitted. I substituted a candy cane stamp that I had in my collection since I was going for a Christmassy look and feel.

I stamped with Ancient Page die inks, then heat embossed the entire wreath with Versamark Ink and clear embossing powder. After having made several cards, I remembered a product in my supply shelf called Simple Shine by Simply Stamped Papers and Rubber Stamps. The Simple Shine was faster and did a nicer job than the heat embossing.

The sentiment is a stamp from Hero Arts.

I used various colors for the backgrounds — some red, some green, some brown and some bronze. All have four white eyelets at the corners and all have a small green, flower-shaped rhinestone in the middle. Ribbon varies depending on the background color.

These wreath Christmas cards went out to various friends this year.

These Christmas cards (0r Holiday) cards are easy to make, eco-friendly and economical. They can be quite attractive too, depending of course on your choice of papers and embellishments. They can also be considered “altered art” since essentially I altered an existing object to make them.

I used a box of Christmas cards from the Dollar Store, but recycled cards from last year would work well. Naturally, you can make from scratch if you want to cut card stock and fold it in half.

The papers I used are scraps from my stash, left over gift wrapping paper from last year and scraps of attractive paper that arrived in the mail.

Embellishments are stamped images, ribbon (gift wrap ribbon from last year), stickers, bits of lace and rick rack, buttons, paper flowers cut with a craft punch, hand journaling and pretty much anything else you want to use.

Here are seven cards made from the same design:

Here is a video demonstrating how to make the card. If you’re an experienced paper crafter, I doubt if you will find anything new in it, but if you are new to card making and crafting, perhaps you’ll be interested.

This season,  I plan on saving my Christmas cards that I receive and recycling them next year, as well as any salvageable gift wrap, stickers and ribbons that come into my home over the holiday season.

This hand made birthday journal was inspired by a project I saw on a crafting community called Life on the Scrap Beach.

The journal is called My Year, and its a gift for a friend’s birthday.

I made the project 100% from my stash, since I’m trying to use up the supplies I already have before I buy yet more. The downside of stash-using  is that not all pages coordinate well. The upside is that in addition to saving me some money and reducing the piles of craft supplies in my home, it also forces me to use more hand made embellishments and to strive for more creativity in design.

Each page in this little book  has a title and contains tags for journaling.  The book has a wire binding, made with the ZUTTER BIND IT ALL SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL. The titles and a die cut on the front and back covers are made with the Cricut Expression 24-Inch Personal Electronic Cutting Machine.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Cricut because for quite some time I could not get it assembled correctly. Now that its working the way it should, I am warming up to it.

Here is my video demo of my hand made birthday journal:

I have used a number of techniques that I have demonstrated in other videos.   People new to crafting or people unfamiliar with the tools and techniques  might want to check them out:

1. Video Demo of the Zutter Bind-It-All
2. Video Demo of the Sizzix Big Shot Universal Die Cutting and Embossing Machine
3. Video Demo of the Burnished Velvet Glitter Technique
4. Video Demo of Basic Rubber Stamping, Masking and Coloring
5. Video Demo of Heat Embossing

This hand made birthday journal is in the mail now. I hope it arrives in time for the birthday.

This easy Halloween card is inspired by a Make and Take at Making Memories, a local craft store. The Make and Take item was a black, gray and silver wedding card. I thought the style would work well for a Halloween card, so this is what I came up with.

The card requires black card stock and four different patterns of Hallowe’en themed scrapbook paper. I used the double sided kind which gave me four patterns.

For embellishments, I used a black ribbon, an orange button, a stamped sentiment and a heat embossed stamped image.

If you haven’t tried heat embossing, you might want to take a look at my video demo of heat embossing. This technique requires a Embossing Heat Tool or heat gun. (And no, a hair dryer will not work. We have all tried that at one time or another. It just isn’t hot enough to melt the embossing powder.)

In the video demo below, I make the scores and cuts using a Fiskars Paper Trimmer. I also have a video demo of the Fiskars Portable Trimmer at this link.

Here is my video demonstration showing how to make the Halloween card.

I think this easy Halloween card would be a suitable project for older kids to make, and its surely easy enough and fast enough for busy card makers to assemble in a short time.

This Happy Spring greeting card combines rubber stamping, coloring with Twinkling H2Os, heat embossing, dry embossing with a Cuttlebug border embossing folder and scalloped shapes cut with Wizard Nestabilities Die Set: Classic Scallop Oval Large (5 Dies).

The flower stamp is Spring Tulips Sketch from Hero Arts.  The Happy Spring sentiment is from Memory Box.

I quite like this little Easter Card.

This shamrock card for St. Patrick’s Day features an embossed background made with the D’vine Swirls Embossing Folder from Cuttlebug. I used my new toy, the Big Shot Universal die cutting tool from Sizzix.

The shamrock is stamped and heat embossed on the scalloped circle, which I purchased ready made.  I put a small rhinestone in the center. This embellishment is 3-D’d using pop dots.

The flowers are purchased paper flowers, and again I used a clear rhinestone in the center.

The green and white stripe along the bottom is ribbon.

I stamped a sentiment inside the card and added a colorful shamrock sticker.

I think St. Patrick’s Day cards are so much fun to make.