Category: Paper Smooches

Splish Splash

The CAS-ual Fridays Challenge this week is to create a project featuring something you might see in or at the ocean. What a perfect challenge for the month of August. I love almost anything associated with the ocean – the colors, the animal and plant life, the sound of the waves crashing on the beach, … I could probably craft cards with this theme for weeks!

For this card, I paired Paper Smooches adorable “Surf and Turf” stamps with the newly released Avery Elle “Picture It!” stamp set.

Splish Splash

Supplies: Paper Smooches “Surf and Turf” stamps; Avery Elle “Picture It!”; My Mind’s Eye, Echo Park, Little Yellow Bicycle, Basic Grey patterned papers; Hero Arts dye ink; Avery Elle kraft cardstock; Neenah white cardstock

Bear Hugs

Our youngest son left to go back to college at the beginning of this week. Our oldest leaves in September (his school is on the quarter system, so they start later and get out later than schools on the semester system) – we’re not in full “empty nest” mode yet.

I had my youngest son in mind when I created a card for the Retrosketches #24 sketch challenge.

I set out to create a masculine-looking card in fall colors. I paired camping-themed papers from American Crafts with dry-embossed brown cardstock. It was my first time using the A Muse Studio impression plate. In fact, it was the first time I’ve ever used an impression plate. (I have several embossing folders that I use on a regular basis). I tried several Big Shot sandwich formulas before finding one that worked. I sanded the paper after embossing it to bring out the woodgrain.

RetroSketchesBear

Supplies: Paper Smooches Happy Camper stamp set; A Muse Studio impression plate; Papers: Echo Park; Stampin’ Up; Neenah; American Crafts; Fiskars punch; Spellbinders circle dies; Versamark ink; Stampin Up’ embossing powder

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #63

This week the CAS-ual Friday challenge is to create a Clean And Simple project using the colors-lime, aqua & navy.

I almost always enjoy color challenges and had some time to take two different approaches with my submissions.

The first uses one of my favorite Paper Smooches sets – “Reflections.”

CASJuly272912

Supplies: Paper Smooches Reflections; Paper Smooches Simply Said; Memento + Archival inks

My second approach was a happy accident. I don’t own a nesting star die set; I own a Sizzix set that has four stars on one block. It took some finagling to position the banner strip in just the right place on the star die. I had planned to adhere the three banner strips to the card and have the negative space be empty. In other words, the stars would be the white of the cardstock underneath. But when I saw that the punched stars could be put back into the banner die strips, I decided I liked that idea better.

CASCongrats

Supplies: Echo Park papers; Paper Smooches Simply Said; MFT banner die; Sizzix star die; Memento ink