Candy Cane Lane Suite

Another card Judy had for us to make used some of the products from the Candy Cane Lane suite in the new Holiday catalog. The diagonal patterned stripes are three of the designs in the Candy Cane Lane Designer Washi Tape pack. Just love how quick you can step up a card using washi tape! The gingerbread houses are from a sheet of the Candy Cane Lane Designer Series Paper pack. Really cute papers in this stack of 12; 2 each of six double-sided designs. It was a bit of fussy cutting to cut out the houses. Judy's sample didn't have the two candy canes on the sides of the smaller houses, but I decided to see if I could cut around them without messing up. I did it! My friend, Karen decided to just cut around the houses leaving a little of the Crumb Cake background color around them. And to be honest her card was just a cute.
The thing you can't see in this photo is how we used the Wink of Stella clear brush to add clitter to the snow on the roofs and chimneys. Sparkle! The expression comes from the Embellished Ornaments stamp set in the annual catalog.

Sunburst Thinlit

 Today's card was made using the Sunburst Thinlit from Stampin' Up! To make this card I cut four of the framelits; one each from Hello Honey, Crisp Cantaloupe, Lost Lagoon and Sahara Sand. Then I used the negative pieces from the Hello Honey, Crisp Cantaloupe and Lost Lagoon to fill in the spaces on the Sahara Sand Sunburst after gluing it to a pieced of white card stock cut to 4 by 5-1/4. After all were glued down I trimmed the excess hanging over the sides of the white cardstock.  I used some of the scraps from one edge to decorate the inside. I finished off the card with stamped expression and layered circle punched shapes and some punched hearts. The hearts were "colored" with clear Wink of Stella to give then some sparkle.

 I found the easiest way to decorate the inside was to trim three edges off three sides of the card front; leaving one edge to work with.

 I cut the outer edge of that untrimmed edge to get a straight edge as shown in the picture below.
 Then I applied a strip of adhesive to the one long edge of the inside Whisper White cardstock (meauring 4x5-14). Then adhered that to the pieces sticking off that one edge of card front. So, when you are looking at the picture below the piece on the right is the back side of the card front and the piece on the left is the back of the card interior. I then used my scissors to cut along the white card stock edges.

 So that you have a row of cut pieces making the design on the interior.

And of course, you have enough sunbursts and negative scraps on your table to make three more cards. Each will have a different color of Sunburst.

Cupcake #2

 I made this cupcake with a flowery icing top. I just used part of the "Money can't buy happiness..." stamp from the Sprinkle of Life stamp set because I got this idea to make this card into a cupcake gift card holder. So here's the inside of the card...

I just glued down three sides of the DSP on the inside so that a plastic gift card would slide under it. When I attach the real gift card I'll probably use a small glue dot to help hold the gift card in place.

Bookmark Keepsake Card

This is the commercially made card that I received for Easter. It's a clever idea of combining a card and bookmark. The right side of the card had a line of perforation and pulled off to become a bookmark for the recipient.

So, first of all I planned a design that was one layer and with a right edge that would make a pleasing bookmark. Then after stamping I had to make that perforation line. I'm sure I have a perforation blade somewhere but do you think I could find it. So, I wound up using a seamstress tracing wheel and stratightedge to make my perforation line. 

Here's my card...

To give it a little more pizzazz I used my chalk pen to color in with white on some of the flowers and also used Clear Wink of Stella on the centers. 

That's all for this week and commercial card inspiration. Tune in next week to see what I'm creating.

What a mess!

These are the two cards I used for inspiration today. Again they have the same basic layout. I started with the card to the left and created quite a mess.

 Here's the mess... I wanted to use Glimmer paper as a mat but also wanted it to be in the Rich Razzleberry color. So I thought I would use my Razzleberry marker... didn't get much color with that... so tried direct to ink pad... a little better but it didn't want to dry and I wound up with smudges of Razzleberry everywhere! On top of that I was trying to mock the gold dots on the background of the commercial card; so I used my dotted embossing folder and inked it with silver Encore pad before running it through the Big Shot. I wound up with silver smudges there, too. Realize now I should have used a Sharpie to color the glimmer paper. And could have embossed the dots and then used silver pen to fill them in. 

Then I remembered I had Blushing Bride Glimmer Paper. So, I changed my color scheme and came up with this card. By the time I had the background images colored and stamped on the Whisper White cardstock I decided using the textured embossing folder was just going to make it too busy. So quit while I was pleased with the background and moved on to layering my other elements. I used Clear Wink of Stella on the tree and grass to give some sparkle to that image as the commercial card had sparkles on the pathway and church building. It's a nice touch that doesn't show up in the photo. 

The second card went together much more quickly and with no mess! I embossed some Shimmery White card stock and then used Clear Wink of Stella to add more sparkle to the embossed design. It is so pretty in real life but hard to get a good photo. I'm really happy with the Clear Wink of Stella; now thinking about ordering the Gold. Then it was a matter of coloring the stamped image. Instead of using lots of layers of cardstock to get the same framed effect as commercial card I decided to free-hand a line using Watermelon Wonder marker and then layering on Watermelon Wonder cardstock which I trimmed freehand to match the wavy look of the drawn line. 

I also used the inside of this commercial card for my card interior. See how the flowers are hanging upside down. I would never have thought to do that. But I did give it a try and am pleased with the way it looks.