Winter Birthday Greetings

Hello!  It's a new week at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge and my 2nd of 4 weeks as the Designer in the Spotlight. This week we are featuring Lawn Fawn Products with a Winter Birthday Theme. You don't have to use them to join in, but if you have some, we would love to see them used.

Lawn Fawn does such fantastic plaids and I love this Grey, Teal and White Lawn Fawn Perfectly Plaid Winter Petite Paper. This is a 6 x 6 paper pad that has been scaled down from the 12 x 12 version but if I was still making scrapbooks, I love the larger sized plaids as well.  There are gorgeous Christmas, Fall and Springtime plaids as well and you can see them here. Lawn Fawn also makes my favorite acrylic blocks which have finger grooves on the sides and an etched grid to assist in lining up your stamps.  Since the grid is etched, it won't wipe off as you clean your blocks.

For my card, I started with one of the patterns in the Lawn Fawn Winter Plaid Collection and chose my other colors, Simon Says Stamp Audrey Blue and Simon Says Stamp Slate Grey Cardstock, based on that. One of my favorite things to use for masculine cards is plaid paper.  In fact, I use very little patterned paper otherwise.  Most of the time if it's a plaid, then it will work for a guy.  My card could be used for either masculine or feminine except for one little embellishment that I put on it at the last minute, but we'll come back to that later. *Ü*

My card base is made from Simon Says Stamp Slate Grey Cardstock in a top folding A2 size.  Next I die cut an Avery Elle Postage Stamp Die from Simon Says Stamp Audrey Blue Cardstock.  This leaves you with 2 pieces - an outer frame and an inner rectangle.  I cut another one of these from the Winter Plaid Paper so that I could put the plaid rectangle on the inside of the Postage Stamp Frame.  I cut a piece of Fun Foam slightly smaller than the inner rectangle and attached that to the plaid rectangle using ¼ inch Scor-Tape.  I find that tape runner is a little bit difficult to use on Fun Foam so double sided adhesive is less frustrating for me.  You can use tape runner or whatever adhesive you have available. Next, I adhered the frame to the card base using Ranger Multi Medium Matte and followed that by attaching the inner rectangle also using Multi Medium Matte since I had it handy.  I have two bottles of this at all times sitting upside down in my jumbo cup that I keep my main tools in.  For ease of use, I have Scrap-Perfect No Clog Writing Tips on them.

 I die cut three of the Impression Obsession "Wishes" from Audrey Blue Cardstock to make a thicker embellishment.  In order to increase the intensity of the top layer, I inked it up a Mini Ink Blending Tool using Audrey Blue Ink a couple of times to deepen the color.  Using the Impression Obsession Wishes Stamp Set I stamped the "Sending Birthday" in Versafine Onyx Black Ink and heat set it with Simon Says Stamp Clear Embossing Powder.  I much prefer this method over using black embossing powder or even regular black ink.  I'm a little funny because it bugs me when my stamps get stained but Versafine, which is a pigment ink, does not stain. I suppose it might eventually, but so far, it hasn't. Simon Inks are so pigmented and rich in color, that they can really stain your stamps. That's just the nature of high quality photo-polymer but for that reason, I typically use Distress Inks or some of the other inks I have that don't stain as much.  Yes, I know I'm a goofball!

Once I had the card assembled, I felt that a crisp white snowflake would be just the right touch for this Winter Birthday Card so I cut an Eliza Snowflake from a scrap of crisp white cardstock and attached it by adding Ranger Multi Medium Matte around the innermost ring of the snowflake. Eliza is my favorite of all the Simon Says Stamp Snowflake Dies. After that I misted the whole front of the card with Tsukineko Sheer Sparkle Shimmer Spritz.  Since this card is for one of my daughters whose birthday is January 21st, I couldn't help but adhere a tiny little genuine Sworovski Crystal right in the center of the snowflake.  *Ü* Actually, I would have liked it a lot more if I'd had a bigger one to put on there.  

Thank you for spending a little time with me today on my blog and be sure to enter your project at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog link-up for your chance to win a $50.00 Gift Voucher from the Simon Says Stamp Store.

Tulip Magnolias

I've been working on Mother's Day cards since last week and I want to make a few more for the Moms of my grandkids. I haven't really decided on a design at this point in time so I'm kind of winging it.  I'm using a technique that I'm already comfortable with for my girls' cards -- watercolor with heat embossing.

I used a couple of different stamp sets from Altenew to get the look for today's cards which was inspired by this image from the Inspired by All the Little Things Challenge Blog for last week.  Although I didn't have time to participate in that Challenge, I kept the image because it inspired me.

My daughter, Yuovonne, has a Tulip Magnolia at her house and I love it when I get to see it blooming.  The delicate pink blooms are just beautiful. I have a traditional Magnolia Tree in my yard that we put in a few years ago, but the blooms are totally different in shape and color and y'all know how I love my pink and purple.

Last year it rained so much in the spring that the blooms got pelted off my tree within hours of blooming and I never got to enjoy them. This was a fairly mature tree when we put it in at approximately 18 feet tall, but the first winter after that it got hammered by an ice storm which broke several of the branches off.  It seems to have recovered from that and this will be its 3rd spring with us.

Yuovonne is the mother of all my grand girls; Kaylan, Kylie, Cameron, Lauren and Emily as well as Grant and Christopher while Shelli is mom to Lance and Tracen.  I don't really have a sentiment specific to give a card to your daughter on Mother's Day so I'm used the SUPERMOM sentiment from the Magnolias for Her Stamp Set.  It used to have an exclamation point on the end, but it always just looked like an extra line so I preformed "Stamp Surgery" on it the last time I used it. The two cards I made today are for them.  I still have one more to make and mail, but I really want to get these out today if possible.  I don't think I'm in any danger of my girls seeing them before they receive them in the mail.  They don't read my blog and one of them doesn't use social media at all.

On a piece of watercolor paper, I stamped the Tulip Magnolias from the Altenew Magnolias for Her with Versamark and heat embossed them using WOW! Copper Pearl Embossing Powder.  I watercolored them using Papertrey Ink's Lavender Moon Ink smooshed onto an acrylic block and picked it up using a water brush. There are so many different ways to watercolor and I use several of them. Do whatever is comfortable and achievable for you.

I also stamped the branch from the Altenew Winter Cardinal Set with Versamark and heat embossed it using the same Copper Embossing Powder. The branch is not an outline images so I stamped it on a different piece of Watercolor Paper and then did some ink blending with a bit of Tumbled Glass Distress Ink to resemble a sky background. I used a Ranger Mini Ink Blending Tool for that. Watercolor Paper works really nicely for ink blending.  The magnolias were cut out with the Magnolias for Her Coordinating Dies and adhered to the panel using Tombow Mono Adhesive.

I also used a sheet from the Lawn Fawn Perfectly Plaid 6 x 6 Collection for the mat on my cards.  I really struggle to use any kind of printed paper.  The butterfly is from the Papertrey Ink Color Pop Butterflies Kit. Of course, everything has a coat of Wink of Stella on it which you can't see in the photo, but I assure you it is there. *Ü*

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today. I'll be entering this card over on the "Anything Goes" Challenge at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog.  I hope to have a few more projects ready for you before the end of the week especially since I have more daughter to make a card for.

Inspired: Faith

Hello everyone!  Today I have a quick and easy card that is somewhat different than my usual style.  I've been working on trying to use all of my supplies which in my case includes a whole host of Prima Flowers and Buttons in every imaginable color.

These daisies always remind me of spring and always feel fresh, clean and crisp. For this card, I paired it up with one of the CHA 2016 Release papers called Perfectly Plaid by Lawn Fawn.  There are a variety of colors in these papers but I like this fresh blue, white and green plaid for this card.

For the stems of the flowers I used the Papertrey Ink Friendship Jar Flowers Stamps and coordinating dies. I started by doing some rough ink blending using Papertrey Ink New Leaf Ink (to give it the variation in color) on a piece of white cardstock. Once I had that done, I stamped the leaf/stem in Versamark over the top, heat set it with Simon Says Stamp Clear Embossing Powder then die cut it. The clear embossing powder gives it a little bit of dimension and shine.

I die cut both background panels with a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle in the largest size.  I just re-aligned my plaid paper in the same die to take a little off of two sides so it would be smaller.  The next size down in the rectangles made it too small. The "Faith" die cut is from Papertrey Ink's Inspired: Faith Collection and was cut using iridescent white cardstock.

I attached the buttons to the flowers with Glossy Accents because I wanted to make sure they were very secure.  Everything was mounted to a Top Folding A2 Card base made from Papertrey Ink's Stamper's Select White Cardstock.  A super quick and easy card.

In other "schtuff" today, I sat down and took apart all of my watercolor paper pads (Fabriano, Arches Cold Pressed, Arches Hot Pressed and Canson Bristol) to be individual sheets and then took all of those to Fed Ex/Kinko's to have them cut down to 4.25 x 5.5 inch panels.  Hobby Lobby actually has their Watercolor Paper Pads on sale this week for 40% off - any brand.  This is the first time since I have been buying it that it has gone on sale.  I normally buy the pad I like with my 40% off coupon but I definitely don't need any right now.  I really love the Arches (pronounced Ar-chez) Hot Pressed as it will hold a lot of water without pilling and it's very smooth, but it isn't as white as what I normally use and it's better quality than I need for what I am doing. If you know how to do any freehand watercolor, this is what I'd recommend.

I am going through way too many of my "no longer available" trimmer blades so I figured I'd just have all my specialty paper cut down.  Their industrial blade made quick work of that task!  I also took 4 packages of Papertrey Ink Stamper's Select White Cardstock and had it all cut down to 4.25 x 11 inches. Now it's just ready to go in a drawer in my studio. Occasionally I do make wide top folding cards so I did put a bit of white cardstock aside for those, but all in all it will be much easier to have card bases ready to score and go without having to stop in the middle of whatever task I'm on to cut a card base.  Now... if I just would have ordered the right sized envelopes to go with those I would have it made.  I think it would cost me more to send them back to Amazon than to just keep them. But I do wish I had ordered the right ones and I'm glad I'm not out yet.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!   Have a great weekend everyone.  It's shaping up to be a nice one here.