by Karen Endress | Oct 13, 2016 | Hello--Thinking of You
As so often happens, you can follow the progression of my card making from scrap to scrap, so here’s another look at that oh so pretty Echo Park floral paper (We Are Family by Lori Whitlock) I used recently. It’s very similar to one of the papers in the My Mind’s Eye On Trend 2 collection by Jen Allyson (which I also have, so at least I’m consistent!). There’s just something I love about the shape of those little flowers!
This was a simple card, the part that took the longest was deciding what to use on top of the flags in the top left corner! As usual, Neenah Solar White 80 lb. for the cardbase, layered with the EP paper. The black & white side strips are the reverse of the floral paper. And if those aqua flag ends look just perfectly cut…well, they are!! Because I didn’t do it! These are from the Teresa Collins Studio Gold 7 Labels pack and they’ve come in very handy already 🙂
I used two more as a base for the sentiment. The hello is die cut from The Crafter’s Workshop hello die from scrap black cardstock which I layered onto one cut from black craft foam to give it more dimension. The “friend” part was stamped with The Paper Studio “Everyday Expressions” which has many useful single words.
To finish off the card I finally found the perfect match for that top corner—a heart shaped “button” epoxy chipboard sticker from a really old Heidi Grace collection called “Cartwheel.” The bling is from KaiserCraft in aquamarine. Stash!! I did add one more touch (unfortunately after I photographed) which was to fill the holes in the heart with silver Stickles.
As you can see from the photo, they’re just these two gaping holes & I had no matching fibers at my temporary craft area (a.k.a. the dining room table.) I’m hoping to do a post soon on this and the fun I’ve had there with my crafty friends this month then carry it all back up to my real craft room. My DH has been VERY understanding of the mess so far, but…
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 4, 2016 | Congratulations
Hardly anyone I know ever moves, so who would have guessed I would need two housewarming cards within a short time of each other? So…I dug around till I found some brown cardstock embossed with cute little houses that I knew I had somewhere. This is why it’s a good practice to go through your stash from time to time. It reminds you what you already have and, theoretically at least 😉 keeps you from buying duplicates.
The first card was for a very special niece 🙂 I covered the whole cardbase (Neenah Solar White 80 lb.) with the brown paper, then die cut & layered the four houses. Slap on a sentiment sticker, pop up a house sticker on Scotch foam tape, add a self-adhesive glitter craft foam heart & wow—a card that didn’t take me two hours to make!!
The cardstock stickers are from the Lori Whitlock “The Story of Our Family” collection by Echo Park. (I only bought the sticker sheet, not the whole collection but now sort of wish I had!) The heart was in one of the many “bits & pieces dishes” on my desk from a previous project so I don’t remember which die I used. Sadly, these stash items are no longer available—the house dies from Stampin’ Up’s Homemade Holiday set and the teal paper from the Kelly Purkey Second City 6×6 pad by Basic Grey.
I did use current product to ink around the edges of the brown and patterned papers—Memento Luxe ink in Teal Zeal and Ranger Archival ink in Potting Soil. Both of these links have videos explaining the qualities of the ink so you can compare the differences if you like.
I needed a gift card holder to go with the card, so I used a piece of beautiful floral paper from a coordinating (but confusingly named) Echo Park collection, We Are Family, also by Lori Whitlock! The striped circle pull tab is the reverse of the floral paper. I was inspired by that combination to make a hello card for a friend right after that, so look for that post after my second housewarming card 🙂
Till next time,
by Karen Endress | Sep 14, 2016 | Congratulations
I was flipping through an old copy of The Stamper’s Sampler and saw a card that had a rectangle stamped in a pale ink color which was then overstamped with the top part of a long-stemmed flower. I thought aha! I have a solid rectangle stamp like that! I’ll try the same thing. Well, it wasn’t a rectangle, it was a square (and a slightly wonky square at that). I needed to send a congratulations card, so I decided to turn it into that! A lot of my cards start out with that sort of inspiration, but don’t usually end up the way I originally envision! 🙂
This card is one of my rare clean & simple cards. The cardbase is Neenah Solar White 80 lb. cardstock. I centered and stamped one of the sentiments from the Lawn Fawn Grand Greetings set in VersaFine Onyx Black pigment ink and embossed it with WOW Clear Gloss embossing powder. After I stamped the cardbase, I stamped the Rubber Stampede “Skewed Square” in the Hero Arts Shadow Inks Pale Tomato and Butter Bar and Ranger Archival Aquamarine.
I lined the squares up on scrap paper the way I wanted them on the card, turning the center one upside down for variety. I stamped the sentiment again over the squares and embossed each one separately with the clear WOW. Once they were dry, I lined them up over the sentiment on the cardbase and adhered them with some Tombow tape runner.
For the finishing touches I found a coordinating washi tape and just the right colors of enamel dots in my stash. Don’t you love when that happens?
Hope you’re finding time to get crafty!
