by Karen Endress | Aug 23, 2016 | Thank You
Hi, everyone! Hope you had a crafty weekend! This card was a real quickie, which is so unusual for me! Cards usually take me anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. It’s also very rare for me to use a large pre-made embellishment like this bacon and egg (Recollections). In this case it was totally appropriate and I felt justified in using it. It’s a thank you card for a dear friend who has had me over for lunch twice this summer and both times made me eggs and bacon 🙂 I’ve had this in my stash for at least a year, thinking I’d make an “I love you more than bacon” card for my daughter.
I picked gold for the card base to match the yolk, just some Recollections from a large multicolor pack I am still trying to use up. The white panel is Neenah Solar White 80 lb. (great quality cardstock for stamping) and the sentiment is from the Avery Elle “Many Thanks” set stamped with Versafine Onyx Black ink. And that’s all there was to it!!
Hope this makes you smile like it does me every time I look at it! Have a great day!! Karen
by Karen Endress | Aug 22, 2016 | Hello--Thinking of You
The starting point for this card was the intent to use some of my stash paper. I browsed till I found this gorgeous foiled paper from the 2012 DCWV “White Ginger” stack. (I did mention I was a paper hoarder—I have even older paper than that!)
I layered the foil with a brown paper with a tiny check pattern from the same stack and added a strip of pearlescent green cardstock. It came from a mat stack, but I can’t say which one as I got so tired of looking through ten or twelve mat stacks for the exact color I needed that I just tore all the papers out and put them in color order in a mesh bin. It took a long time, but was totally worth it! I do know they were all DCWV mat stacks, though 🙂
The sentiment is the Penny Black “to say hi” stamped in Versamark ink and embossed with WOW white embossing powder.
For this cluster on the top left I cut some strips from the brown check and green cardstock as well as an additional pattern from the White Ginger stack, cut flag ends, inked the edges with Colorbox pigment ink stacks, probably Rain Forest and Surf’s Up. These stacks are my “go to” for inking edges because they are small, easy to handle, and with just three or four carefully chosen stacks you have almost any color you could possibly need. Of course I may have a few more than four, but they have served me well over the years!
To finish off the card I wrapped it several times with some very hairy 🙁 twine salvaged from a package, tied (with great difficulty) a bow and glue dotted the bow & button (source unknown) to the card. It kind of looks like it’s threaded through the button, but believe me with that twine I would not even have attempted it! Anyway, I usually do just cheat and pretend I threaded the button 🙂 Does that make me a bad person? Let me know if there are any kindred spirits out there who can’t be bothered trying to thread twine through buttons!! Happy crafting! Karen
by Karen Endress | Aug 22, 2016 | Encouragement
I was re-organizing my stamps when I ran across this old stamp & die set from Hero Arts/Sizzix. I thought it would be fun to have the butterflies stamped inside the card so you could see them through the die cut openings. Apparently not as easy as it sounded, the first attempt was a fail. This one turned out much better 🙂
I used a Ranger ink blending tool to sponge on some Distress inks in Squeezed Lemonade and Peacock Feathers (my personal favorite) then added some water droplets. The butterflies made me think of flight and reminded me of an older wood-mount stamp in my stash from Prickley Pear. I do have a tendency to over-embellish, but after using the ¼ WRM Corner Chomper I wisely decided to leave it as is. Here’s a close up of the cut-outs.
Let me know if you decide to try one of those oldies from your stash! Thanks for stopping by!
