by Karen Endress | Oct 20, 2016 | Encouragement
Hello crafty friends! I finally had time to post this encouragement card I made a while ago. When my new crafty friend 🙂 came over to make cards with me, she chose this one to duplicate. I liked it so much myself that I ended up making another almost just like it.
The cardbase was (you guessed it!) Neenah Solar White 80 lb., covered with a nice gray followed by a slightly smaller panel of a light salmon, both linen textured from my stash of DCWV mat stacks. I continued layering with a panel of cheap white stock cut with one of the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangles and a panel of patterned glitter paper (My Mind’s Eye Home Glitter Book) cut with a long deckled rectangle from this Spellbinders set.
The sentiment verse is from Impression Obsession stamped with VersaFine Onyx Black on Neenah Solar White cut with the same Spellbinders die set. I added trim from the Celebrate It Aria “Vintage Blush” assorted trim roll (Michaels) about 2/3 of the way down the sentiment panel and cut an assortment of leaves & blooms with the Essentials by Ellen Bold Blossom dies from white, vellum & a dotted silver foil paper (CraftSmith Silver Gift). Both the trim & die cuts were adhered with matte medium using the Fineline precision applicator bottle for all of those intricate areas.
As you can see from the photos, I used all the same elements but a different arrangement of the leaves & blossoms and a different trim from the same Celebrate It Aria pack. I also found a match in some flat back adhesive pearls from my stash. Serendipity!
Blessings! 
by Karen Endress | Oct 10, 2016 | Coffee & Tea
OK, so here’s what I did with those yellow scraps I had from the second housewarming card!! This one got pretty detailed and I’m not entirely happy with how bottom heavy it turned out, but overall I think I can send it to one of my tea-loving friends and they will enjoy it 🙂
I used a mostly monochromatic color palette with a cardbase of gold Recollections cardstock layered with the DCWV Mi Casa scrap, a doily from my stash (that’s an actual doily from an actual restaurant, I told you I “collected” things!), Distress inks in Scattered Straw & Frayed Burlap, VersaFine Toffee ink and tea cups cut from two different yellow and gold patterned cardstocks.
I used the Tim Holtz/Sizzix Mini Tea Time die for these, but not recently so I can’t tell you what the papers are. I’m always anxious to try new tools and products, but don’t always have a project to use them on so that’s how a lot of those bits & pieces end up in dishes on my desk!!
The stamps I used were: TPC Studio “Coffee Cafe” (Tea Time), Peddler’s Pack (tea bag), Stampington & Co. (tea packet) and Graphic 45 (spoon, which I stamped with VersaMark ink and embossed with Ranger Liquid Platinum embossing powder). The inside sentiment “Makes Everything Better” is from the MFT Hug in a Mug stamp set.
For the tea bag, I sponged some ink on the part that’s supposed to look like it has tea in it and used the Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher to staple the tag to some string I had lying around. Even the Tiny Attacher staples were a little too big to look realistic for this tea bag. Maybe drawing the staple onto the tag would have worked a little better?
I adhered the doily, tea packets and tea cups flat to the card with Tombow tape runner. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but I scrunched the tea bag a little and used some Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Dimensionals to try to make it look like the tea bag had been taken out of the tea and squeezed. The last thing I did was round the top left corner to try to bring at least a little something to the top part of the card! Whew! Describing cards is thirsty work! Time for a cup of tea 🙂
Happy crafting!
by Karen Endress | Oct 7, 2016 | Congratulations
Hello again!! As promised, here is the second housewarming card I made recently 🙂 While I had all the house stuff out, I used some of the elements from the previous card (brown embossed paper, Echo Park cardstock sticker, glitter foam heart, Stampin’ Up dies, Neenah Solar White) plus some modifications to make the second card 🙂 This one went to one of my dearest friends. After living 40 minutes away for 25 years or so, she recently moved about 5 minutes from my house!! Which means we will see each other ALL the time, right? Umm…
For her card I die cut two of the houses into the brown cardstock and layered the yellow patterned paper under them, then layered two more yellow houses on top. The edges are inked with Ranger Distress inks in Scattered Straw and Vintage Photo. I added the heart to the front door & popped the house up on foam tape and the outside was done!!
On the inside, I stamped a sentiment with the Nicole alpha set “Typewriter Uppercase.” (I know AC Moore still sells these, but I could not find a link for them 🙁 I was afraid to stamp the letters for the WELCOME directly onto the cardbase (don’t ask), so I stamped onto white scrap and punched them out with a ½ “square punch (Recollections, again no link, their website was not cooperating). The rest of the sentiment was easy because I used an alpha set I got once at a scrappy yard sale (Karen Foster Small Casual) and they connect together to form the words!! Score! These are go-to for me for that reason. I die cut a piece of the scrap brown with a Spellbinders classic scalloped rectangle die to back the sentiment.
Since that same yellow DCWV Mi Casa paper (circa 2009) was out on my desk, I made an envelope out of it and my project was done!! In the next post you’ll see what I did with the rest of those yellow scraps 🙂 Once I have a piece of patterned paper out, it’s hard not to keep going with it! Anyone else do the same thing?
Hope you are all crafting up a storm & using up your stash!!
by Karen Endress | Sep 23, 2016 | Hello--Thinking of You
Hi, everyone! Here’s another card origin story for you!
Often my card ideas come from seeing a sentiment, some patterned paper, an embellishment (like the previous “Believe” card), or even just a particularly pleasing color combination. And very often, a new card will emerge from the scraps of a previous card with new elements added to round it out.
This idea came from the backdrop papers I used to photograph the last card. They looked really pretty together as they were from the same DCWV stack I used for that card. Hmmm…my mom likes pretty cards, she’d really like that floral paper & I could use another one of those words from the Color Splash pack!! A card idea is born 🙂
I double matted (DCWV) the blue floral to cover the entire cardbase (Neenah Solar White 80 lb.) and used the red dotted paper as an accent. I chose a darker red for contrast (Recollections Vintage Collector) and cut both with different sizes of the Spellbinders Labels One dies, positioning them so that the word would be about 2/3 of the way down the card. This time I used Faded Jeans Distress ink to color the chipboard word instead of Zig markers and it blended much better 🙂
I grabbed some textured light blue & vellum scraps (from the bits & pieces dishes that are overflowing onto my desk) to layer under the ‘Love’ word for contrast. Then I went to the color section of my ScrapRack for some red embellishments. Most everything in the ScrapRack is unlabeled and as old as the hills but still quite usable! I found the flower & the postage cancellation mark there–YAY! Using my stash!!
Finishing touches included some DMC floss that I wrapped around the ‘L’ and tied into a bow as well as a few coordinating enamel dots (MME Lost & Found Christmas) from my stash. Inside I stamped the Technique Tuesday Ali Edwards sentiment you can see test-stamped in the first picture. Looking back, I’m not totally pleased with the placement of that postage circle, but it is a handmade card and I’m pretty sure my 97 year old mom is not going to be critiquing her card! Have a great weekend!!
by Karen Endress | Sep 18, 2016 | Encouragement
Hello again! Thought you might like to see the card I made for my husband a few days ago. I knew the “believe” would be a perfect set up for the inside sentiment, which would mean absolutely nothing to anyone but him 🙂 He loved it!
The cardbase is my usual Neenah Solar White 80 lb. covered with royal blue glitter paper (DCWV mat stack), layered with patterned paper from DCWV’s Summer Dream Stack, another oldie but goodie. I wanted the dark coral strip to mimic the blue paper’s mottled pattern, so I ran a piece from the DCWV Brights Border punch strip stack through Tim Holtz/Sizzix Bubble embossing folder, then sanded the raised areas with an emery board.
For even more interest, I inked the sanded portions as well as all the panels’ edges with Distress inks in Chipped Sapphire and Abandoned Coral, then punched one edge with the Fiskars interchangeable border punch cartridge Up in the Clouds. I used the same punch on a scrap of the glitter paper and layered them onto the card.
The chipboard die cut is from this Recollections Color Splash collection embellishment pack I found in the 80% off clearance bin at Michaels. I’ve already used three of them (card posts to come 🙂 and have plans for the other two! That’s the kind of bargain I just love!!
My bargain embellishment pack–or what’s left of it 🙂
One of the embellishments after watercoloring!
I used my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers in deep blue & Persian blue to try to get an ombre effect. They didn’t blend as well as I had hoped, either because the surface was of a lower quality or I just need more practice with these markers.
I didn’t care for the dot on the ‘i’ so I cut out a tiny heart from one of the elements of Lawn Fawn’s Stitched Journaling Card die set to finish off the card. Next post—where I used one of the other words from that embellishment pack 🙂
Hope you have a crafty week!
