Author: Jean Manis

Stamp Nation Sketch Challenge

There’s a new challenge at Stamp Nation to create a card with a sketch from Stamp Nation Design Team member Maureen Merritt. The DT provided fabulous inspiration using the sketch. My take closely follows the sketch, although I used stars rather than hearts as shown in the sketch.

I’ve been wanting to combine this fun Lawn Cuts set with the Lucky Stars sentiment set. I heat-embossed the sentiment and covered the heart in the sentiment with a die-cut, for a bit of contrast.

It’s fun seeing the various interpretations to the Stamp Nation challenges from other  members. In addition to the inspiration, this friendly and supportive community of cardmakers offers lots of positive feedback, as well as advice on cardmaking products and techniques.

Supplies:

Color Throwdown Butterfly

I’m sharing a card created for the Color Throwdown #293 challenge.

Color Throwdown ButterflyThe In Detail post I’ve been working on for the CLASSroom at Ellen Hutson’s includes a review of the Stephanie Barnard Butterfly Triplits Die Set (as well as the Flowers set). After seeing the fun colors for this challenge, I created a card featuring one of the die-cut butterflies. I framed the butterfly in an InstaFrame. The inside area of the MFT die was a tad small for the butterfly, so I used a square die to punch out a bigger background. I finished the card off with a sentiment from WPlus9.

Flower Power

I have been working on an In Detail post for the CLASSroom on the Sizzix Stephanie Barnard Triplit dies. I had bunches of flower die cut pieces on my work table and assembled some for this card.

Flower Power

With all of the flower pieces, it’s easy to get overloaded with choices, so I kept to three colors for the flowers, although I’d originally started out with four. I first tried the flowers on a kraft cardstock base, but they looked much better on the green base. I had a Mead spiral notebook in the early 1970s with a fabric floral pattern that had these same colors. Even though I can more or less remember the pattern, I wish I’d kept it for card inspiration!

I’m entering this card in the Less is More Challenge whose theme is flowers, as well as the CASology challenge whose theme is also flowers.

Penny Black Father’s Day Card

Today, I’m sharing a masculine card created with the Penny Black …Lost Without You  [#30-248] stamp set from the new Sunny Stamping release. This stamp set lends itself to a variety of masculine cards including birthday, graduation, new job or promotion, and Father’s Day.

FathersDay2014I used the compass in the set to stamp a tone-on-tone background. I stamped the suit twice, once in brown and again in rust, and fussy cut the rust one to use for the tie. The sentiment was stamped twice as well. I first stamped “lost” and then masked that word when I stamped the rest of the sentiment.

For a new job or promotion card, it would be fun to choose a different color for the suit and tie like navy or gray.