House Shaped Easel Card - Happy Diwali

I saw this house shaped card video by Jennifer McGuire and remembered I have a Top Dog Die (now out of business) that is a house shape. It's 5 x 7 so I knew I could make a shaped card out of it. So, I shopped my stash! I knew I had a lot of smaller dies I could use with this house but I did keep it pretty simple.

Easel cards is the theme of my next card making class. I did a slimline card class in October as my first class in 2 years. The kit was a repeat for those who didn't make it to my class in October 2019, but I did change up one of the card to use a new stamp set. But - that's a story for another day!

When I made the sample for my easel card class, I realized the string of lights could be perfect for Diwali! Lights play an important role in this holiday for several religions. I have a co-worker who celebrates both Diwali and Christmas. So, I made this card for her.

I have an alphabet set of "Lego-like" peg stamps that click together, so I knew I could spell out Diwali. For my Christmas versions of the house cards, I spelled out "holidays" to go with the "Happy". I also have a giant "Noel" stamp, so I cut that from the red satin finish cardstock and then spelled "Joyeux" to go with it so I have a French language option too! The size of the big word stamps fill the rooftops of these houses perfectly, or else they would have looked like a big void.

While my holiday houses have more greenery, I opted for more light strings for the Diwali version. I cut them from white cardstock and coloured them with copics and glitter pens. The bulbs are all glittery. I also used my lamp post die. I rarely get to use it, even though I love the lantern-style of the lamp posts. Behind these ones, I put some alcohol inked paper that I did over pearl card I made. So, it's a shiny alcohol ink blend of yellows and oranges.

I love how easel cards display themselves. This way, you can see the warm sentiment inside and enjoy the outside of the card at the same time!

There are A LOT of windows on this card, each with 3 steps: The window frame, some vellum, some blue cardstock. The vellum is very subtle but it does help give that window pane glass look.

I have lots of dies that can make shaped cards. I just never have the inspiration to get up and do it! But this time I did! I will try to remember to share my holiday versions later in the year!

Heat Embossing Techniques on Handmade Cards

 Hello crafty world! My creative crew wanted to practice some heat embossing techniques, so I've made some kits for 4 cards. These cards include:

• A regular, heat embossed sentiment
• A coloured, stamped sentiment overlaid with clear heat embossing
• Emboss Resist
• Watercolour emboss resist and lift
• A DIY embossing powder enamel shape
• Water splatter embossing
• Water coloured focal images with each image heat embossed on watercolour paper 
• Watermark stamping

My favourite is the water splatter embossing. The bear from Penny Black stamps is just so amazing. Penny Black makes great stamps for colouring because the spaces are big. I think that if you swap out the sentiment on this card, it could make a great sympathy card too.

 

The teddy bears from Penny Black are just adorable, including this tea cup one. This card features the emboss resist lift. First you colour the background, then you clear emboss on it, then you mist it with water and sop up some of the exposed colour. 

 

This one is the watermark - no embossing powder.

And this one is the same background stamp but as emboss resist. I clear embossed on plain white cardstock and then inkblended over top after. I put the house die cut in my mini pancake maker and melted gold embossing powder on it. Then I sprinkled on some white embossing powder and swirled it with a toothpick.

 Which one is your favourite card? Which technique is your favourite heat embossing technique?

DIY Mini Envelope

 I've been having fun using up paper scraps to make mini-envelopes as embellishments for my cards. I figured out how to make the medium sized one with the Envelope Punch Board. But I also wanted some mini ones so I figured how to do that on the Scor Pal score board, with out the Scor Envi guide.

Tah-dah! This size of DIY envelope is a bit smaller than the currently popular Envelope of Wonder die by Spellbinders. I did make one the same size as the Envelope of Wonder, but I find it a little big. I made this as my mother-in-law's birthday card. I used a few Penny Black stamps and went for a watercolour look. I watercoloured the bird and then the flowers are a solid stamp, designed to look like you watercoloured them. The newsprint paper is among the last of the scraps I have for it. I love that paper!

I think I did okay with the watercolour. It's not my style but I've tried a few more since then. I do love that you only need 1 colour to get the variations by diluting with water. But, you don't get the same degree of control that you do with alcohol markers. It was fun to play around with something different though!

Do you like making mini-envelopes? What do you use yours for?

Scrap Paper Christmas Cards

If you're a paper crafter, you have scraps! I've been working away at my Christmas paper stash for a few years. I finally finished one pad off and another is about halfway there. I'm not going to buy pads again unless I love a lot of it or I'm making a mini album and I will use most of it for that singular project. I'm finally "low" on Christmas paper, but I picked up more from others who were offloading them, so it's still on the no-buy list unless I'm making an album.

So, this year, I've been saving up these scrappy card ideas and I made some Christmas and winter cards! I think they turned out great!

I started with the envelopes. Spellbinders has an "Envelope of Wonder" die set that is popular right now. But I knew I could make mini-envelopes on my own with my score board. I also knew I had tonnes of little shapes and stamps that I could stuff the envelope with. So, this is my take on it!

The first one is stuffed all with die cuts and a branch punch. For the second one, I cut out the snowman and ornaments from a paper pad. The trees, greenery, bird, and garlands are other die cuts I have. I used an embossing folder in the background for interest. The greeting is a hot foil stamp. I hot foiled it on the left and letterpressed it with pigment ink on the right. I don't have the matching die, so I cut it out by hand.

I had so much fun making envelopes in different sizes. The one above and the tiny mini envelopes were my favourites. The larger envelope uses a 4.5 inch square and the smaller one uses a 2.5 inch square. These use a decent amount of scraps! For the mini's, I coloured up a whole stamp set with my Copic markers and stuffed them inside the envelopes.

The next thing I tried were strip clusters. I had some left over strips and I've seen lots of YouTube videos for making your own cluster embellishments. Clusters are not my strong suit. I lean to clean and simple. I started with just layering up the strips. I made some paper stockings and these were the left overs. When I sat down to make cards, I pulled out the layered strips (pictured on the right). Then I just tried to match them with a focal image and a sentiment.

Although I tried to add some interest with the softly ink blended circle frame, this card still felt a bit too plain for me. It's fine for a masculine card, but it needed something more. So, for the next one, I embossed the background again and it made a big difference!

Then I did one more step with the embossing folders and used white pigment ink on top.

The last of the scrappy Christmas cards I made use the tried and true scrap strip background technique. You just keep layering strips next to each other to cover some amount of the background. Then I used an idea from Jill Foster (from the Penny Black YouTube channel). Penny Black has some sentiment dies that cut out only the top part of the word. So, I did some partial die cutting to mimic the effect. Their dies do a swooshy line. I could only achieve a straight line but I think it looks fine.

The "joyful" die by Hero Arts has a shadow. The shadow is what I partially die cut and then I cut the word from red foil cardstock. For the next batch, I don't have a shadow die. So, I just manually cut around the words. It's easier with words like these (from C.C. Rubber Stamps) that are not too frilly.

I finished all the cards off with some enamel dots - except the deer. It has flat stickers (I think they are vinyl). The "candy" style dots are from Queen and Co. and were actually marketed as beach balls. But I think they look like candies. The glitter dots are from my Your Next Stamp stash. (Your Next Stamp is closed now, sadly.)

I hope these scrap paper Christmas cards inspire you to work your stash this holiday season! I really like the bear on the strip cluster and the partial cut words on the strip backgrounds. What's your favourite?