Love Struck

Sharing a “just because” Valentine’s Day card today, using some of the recently released Paper Smooches products.

LoveStruck

I stamped and colored the “Love Struck” arrows and cut them out with the companion die set. I colored them with Copics using a blue/pink/red color scheme. Honestly, deciding how to color arrows was the most complicated aspect of making this card!

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Penny Black Valentines

Happy Monday, everyone! Today, I’m sharing two cards made with the same design, both using the Penny Black Love Expressions die cut “I Love You” [#51-025].

ValentinesILoveYou1

For my first card, I used a heart-embossed white cardstock. I die cut a heart from the front panel and adhered acetate and vellum to the inside. I adhered the “I Love You” sentiment to the front of the acetate panel with Glossy Accents. I stamped the inside of the card with the Daisy Heart [#4291K] stamp. The vellum softens the appearance of the stamped image so that the sentiment takes center stage.

ValentinesILoveYou2For my second card, I dry-embossed a soft gray cardstock. The inside is stamped with with the Letter Background stamp [#1999L]. Because the pattern of the letters offered more white space on the background, I didn’t add the vellum to the front, only the acetate. I also rounded the corners and added a twine bow for additional color.

OCC Stenciled: Day Three

Today’s lesson in the Online Card Classes Stenciled Class focused on using embossing pastes with stencils. I followed one of the cards shown by Debby Hughes.

OCC Stenciled: Day Three

I made several modifications and simplifications on my card. For one, I didn’t use any mist on the card panel like Debby did. I can see how doing so would lend a little more softness and color. Instead I used a colored  card base rather than white. I used vellum, die cut with the Poppystamps Lorelai Leaf, as a substitute for one of the elements Debby used. The “hello” die cut is from Simon Says Stamp. The butterfly is cut with the Memory Box Vivienne Butterfly die cut. Like Debby, I used white embossing paste with the Hero Arts Tweed Pattern stencil.

This class is going by quickly! Right now my goal is to make a card each day and in the next several weeks I’ll revisit the techniques and designs.

OCC Stenciled: Day One Take Two

I couldn’t resist taking another go at the lesson from today’s Online Card Classes Stenciled class. This time I created a card based on the one shown by Julie Ebersole.

OCC Stenciled: Day One Take Two

Julie misted the same stencil for her card. I don’t mist (or more accurately, I’ve tried to mist and it was a mess!). So I inked my card with distress inks instead. And I used a much bolder sentiment – I really like the black with the sunshine ink colors.

I think if I were to redo my earlier card, I’d use darker colors for the inking, so that the white heat-embossed sentiment would be more visible. I’m also beginning to realize that you have to consider how much of the stencil image will show through. For example, this stencil gives a generous amount of background whereas the stencil I used for my earlier card did not. Lots to learn!

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Thanks!

After experimenting with the Paper Smooches Quote Tag in this post for Ellen Hutson’s CLASSroom, I wanted to try using it on a card. In this case, a colorful card to beat the January blahs (think foggy, overcast days).

ThanksJan2014

I cut the Quote Tag (including the “thanks” sentiment and the quotation panel) twice – once with paper from the Echo Park pad and once with white cardstock. I also cut the large tag by itself to serve as a base for the die cuts. I carefully removed the “thanks” sentiment in blue and replaced it with the one in white, and adhered it to the base tag. I stamped one of the cats from the Nine Lives set and cut it with its companion die set. I stamped the quotation panel with a sentiment from the Fresh Snow set to pair with the “thanks.” I adhered the cat with dimensional adhesive to the quotation panel. Seeing a blank spot to the right of the cat, I added a few die cut flowers.

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