January 2, 2015

Enjoying Life

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques card, challenge, embossing, from my heart, Stampin' Up, technique 3 Comments

Welcome to my blog! My design today is a 5×7″ card for As You See It Challenge #068 featuring the From My Heart stamp set and the Back to Black designer series paper.

I’ve been taking a break from crafty expectations and obligations for the past couple of weeks. It’s time to jump back into all the “doing”, but the sentiment on this card represents the need to not forget the “being”. I have enjoyed playing Rock Band on the Play Station 3 with my family, playing charades, playing boardgames, going skiing, eating too much food and making spirits bright.

“I will not allow my busy life to interfere with my creative living”, has been my motto for this past year. It still applies, but I also need to add that I won’t allow my busy life to interfere with quality time with my family. I thought that was a given, but I think it’s important to remind myself that I need to take the opportunities to play games and enjoy my kids and my husband. Sometimes, I find myself denying them because I’m too busy with things that need to get done. Obligations and expectations that are put upon me mostly … by me.

Do you enjoy the passing of time? Or do you get caught up in the tasks and all the things that you want to accomplish in a day? Could it be that you let too much time pass and nothing gets done? Maybe you got it all figured out and have found balance between family, work, home, and all the things. I’d love to hear your secrets.

It’s a fun sketch with lots of possibilities. You can check out the diversity of our designers over at the As You See It Challenge to see what they’ve done with this one. I wanted my card to be simple, and it is … sort of. I ended up complicating it with twisted layers. LOL!

I started with the idea of using Whisper White craft ink over a section of the Back to Black Designer Series Paper, so that my sentiment could be seen. I found that the thin layer of ink wasn’t quite enough to fade out the black and white design, so I used Versamark ink directly to the paper, then used White Embossing powder over the area and melted it with my Heat Tool.

After giving the powder a minute to cool, I stamped the sentiment from the “From My Heart” stamp set over the white embossing with Stazon Jet Black ink. Still, the black and white pattern in the background seemed to harsh. I decided to fade it out with a bit of Whisper White craft ink. I added the ink directly from the ink pad to the paper, focusing on the edges, then I used a sponge to soften the ink, giving a softer look to the paper.

After all that, I ended up cutting off a lot of the sponged areas as I worked on my card. I’ll definitely use that technique again, though. I quite like the softer look and I suspect it will work beautifully on other patterned paper as well.

I used Whisper White bakers twine and Basic Pearls for the embellishments. Basic Gray, Soft Sky and Whisper White cardstock were used along side the Back to Black Designer Series Paper. I chose to mostly use thin white borders to show the layered edges. I even pulled those angles and thin edges to the inside of this 5×7 card.

I’m trying to make sure that I complete the inside of my cards as soon as I’m done the design as it can be very frustrating to grab a nice card to quickly write in as you run out the door (this happens more often than not, for me), only to find that you forgot to add a writing space inside the dark coloured card base. sheesh!

Because my card is 5×7″, I also needed to use a handmade envelope, which I did using my Envelope Punchboard. I decided to avoid squishing the card by making my envelope slightly fatter. To do this, I added 1/8″ of an inch to the paper size required to make a 5×7″ card, then when punching and scoring, I started with the usual score guide number first, then added a second punch and score on mark that is 1/8″ more. So, the envelope punch board guide says that I needed to punch and score at the 4 inch mark. I did that, then punched and scored again at the 4.1/8″ mark and carried on around my paper following the directions on the punchboard, but adding that second 1/8″ bigger mark. Folding those little score lines can be fussy because they are so close together.

Glad you came by for a visit today.

Be sure to show off your card using the As You See It sketch this week by linking it to the challenge site.

Hope you do!

Amy.

October 3, 2014

Winter Joy

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Christmas, Techniques As You See It, card, challenge, Christmas, Gorgeous Grunge, lovely as a tree, masking, Stampin' Up, star confetti punch, technique, wonderful wreath 9 Comments

I love designing with my Stampin’ Up! inks, paper, stamps, and tools. I’ve fallen in love with this beautiful sponged winter landscape technique using Lovely as a Tree.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another As You See It Challenge card. We’re on challenge #56.

I was teaching a technique card class last night and we were working on a project using the technique in this video and remembered I needed to design a card for the challenge blog today. I thought I would use this great sponged landscape technique and add my own touch and style for my As You See It design.

If you click on the link for the video above, you’ll see how the trees and hills were created. I used Island Indigo and Night of Navy for my sponged hills. Mossy Meadow ink was used to stamp the coniferous trees while Night of Navy ink was used for the deciduous trees. For the snow, I simply used one of the splatter images from the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set and stamped it multiple times over the completed winter scene with Whisper White craft ink.

You can see in the above picture that my JOY cutout (from the Wonderful Wreath framelits) looks a little bit different than a regular die-cut piece of cardstock. We were shown this technique at a workshop at the Inspire.Create.Share Stampin’ Up! Convention this last July. The look is achieved by layering 5 or so cuts of the same framelit or punch. To make it easier to adhere each layer together, you can apply an Adhesive Sheet to your cardstock before cutting out your image. I chose to use Night of Navy cardstock for the bottom layers, then top it with Whisper White cardstock for my JOY image.

I added some Basic Rhinestones to the tree in the foreground and a little Silver Glimmer paper star on the top that I cut using my Star Confetti Border Punch.

The inside layer of my card shows a couple of trees stamped with Night of Navy ink, then sponged over top with the Island Indigo and Night of Navy combo of inks to coordinate with the card front.

Hmm. Now I’m thinking I should have added snow to those little trees inside my card. I might just go back and add that yet!

And, of course, I really like Stampin’ Up Dimensionals, so I used them to pop up the white matted layer over the Night of Navy card base.

I hope you’ll try this cute sketch! Go on over to the As You See It Challenge Blog and check out what the other designers have done. Then give it a go yourself!!

Amy

September 26, 2014

Inspired Thank You

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques 2014, altered DSP, As You See It, AYSI#55, card, challenge, embossing, floral framelits, kinda eclectic, Stampin' Up, technique 4 Comments

So glad you could stop by today and check out my design for the As you See It Challenge Blog. I used the Kinda Eclectic stamp set for this unique framelit card.

The challenge today is a little different as it’s a “fill in the blank” challenge. Where do you find inspiration?

Oh, so many places!

This particular card was inspired by online sources. I was looking for a technique to show my Monthly Stampers group for September and I came across a tutorial on how to use your framelits to cut a fancy edge on your card. I found this video on Pinterest that explains how to use a framelit to cut only the edge of your card.

I also found inspiration through Pinterest when I saw a fabulous display of colour combinations using Mossy Meadow, which is the green card base you see here. The colour combination was a lovely fall colouring, but without the potentially dreary colours that are more traditional for fall. This one included Mossy Meadow, So Saffron, Soft Sky, and Baked Brown Sugar.

Bits and pieces of this design are also inspired by various projects that I’ve seen using this particular stamp set.

I find inspiration all over the place: Pinterest, Google searches, card swaps, Splitcoast Stampers, and random images or art that I see. I have a Pinterest board that is titled “Creative Inspiration” where I have interesting art work, colour combinations, techniques or just something interesting that reminds me of a Stampin’ Up product. I get lots of ideas from looking at other blogs and cards that you post on the As You See It Challenge Blog! So keep posting!

My card was designed for my technique class/monthly stampers group. We used the Window framelits, Good Greetings hostess stamp set, Kinda Eclectic stamp set, Woodgrain Embossing folder, Polkadot embossing folder, sponges with Mossy Meadow ink on the Mossy Meadow cardstock, Back to Black Designer series paper (which we altered by sponging heavily with the Baked Brown Sugar ink), and the Crushed Curry 1/8″ taffeta ribbon.

I hope you’ll share your inspiration with us for Challenge #55 at the AYSI Challenge Blog! I look forward to being inspired!!

Amy.