It’s a sketch challenge!! Whoohoo! As a designer for the As You See It Challenge blog, I love where the sketches lead my creativity. This card is an example of a design that I would have never come up with if I wasn’t guided by a sketch. I always enjoy a unique layout that is also pleasing to my eye and this one has hit it on the head!
The sketch:
I knew right away that I wanted to use the Detailed Deer Thinlit for this card design. It took a while to find it in my disaster of a craft room, but I finally uncovered it under a pile of cardstock on my paper cutting station. Phew! (A craft room clean up is WAY overdue!)
It’s difficult to tell in the photos, but the deer is die cut from Glossy White cardstock, which gives such a nice professional look to this soft design.
I did a colour block for the rectangular background behind the deer using 1″ strips of Whisper White, Very Vanilla, Sahara Sand, and Gray Granite cardstock. The deer is attached to the colour block background with Mini Stampin’ Dimensionals. Behind the colour block piece, I placed two Gold Foil leaves, punched out with the Leaf Punch and adhered with glue dots to the card.
The colour block piece is attached to the layered card front also with Stampin’ Dimensionals.
I chose to use three layers for the card front: Thick Whisper White card stock was used for the base, then a narrow matte of Sahara Sand cardstock with a piece of patterned paper from the Festive Farmhouse Designer Series Paper. You can see in the above photo, that the greeting from the Wishing You Well stamp set, was heat embossed with Gold Embossing powder for a nice professional finish. Unfortunately, if you look closely at the photos, you can see that I did not erase my pencil line as well as I should have. This is not as noticeable in person as it is in the close up photos. I’ll probably go over that with my eraser again. *sheepish grin*
I finished the inside of the card with another narrow matte of Sahara Sand carstock under Whisper White cardstock. The deer image and the sentiment from the Dashing Deer stamp set were both heat embossed with Gold Embossing powder. So pretty.
I love the Dashing Deer bundle from Stampin’ Up! It includes the Dashing Deer stamp set and the Detailed Dear Thinlit Dies.
So, how do you see this sketch? What will you do with it? Share your cards, scrapbook pages, or home decor crafty creations with us at the As You See It Challenge Blog. We love to see what you design!
Though I’m excited to get back into routine after a wild summer, September is always a crazy time in my home. Every year, I seem to forget how stressful the start of school is for my kids (and therefore also for me!)
To add to the stress, my youngest daughter has her birthday right at the beginning of the month and we usually end up postponing her party so we can get invitations to her friends at school and give the parents time to settle into September a bit before having to jump in to the birthday scene! My card today is the design that she and I came up with for her party invitations.
As always, we started with the As You See It Challenge. The theme this time is “back to basics”.
I think Back to Basics with stamping means no fancy tools, just stamps, paper and ink! I remember when I first started stamping and what supplies I had. I didn’t have a Big Shot or dies. I didn’t even have any punches, yet! I stamped at the dining room table into the wee hours of the night while my new baby rocked in her swing and my toddler was asleep in his crib.
Ah. Good memories!
My 10 year old daughter loves the Foxy Friends stamp set. She requested the squirrel image and the wood stump for her invitations. I stamped the squirrel with Crumb Cake ink and his little face was stamped with Soft Suede ink. I then created a mask using a sticky note so that I could stamp the stump to make it appear as though the squirrel is on the stump. To do that, I stamped the squirrel image on the sticky note and trimmed around the image. Then I placed it precisely over my good squirrel image. With the sticky note in place, I used Soft Suede ink to stamp the stump image to overlap the bottom of the squirrel image. Then I removed the sticky note mask and VOILA!, I had a squirrel sitting on a stump!
Just for fun, I decided to trim down the paper around the squirrel. I used my Stampin’ Up paper trimmer as far as it could go without cutting off the tip of my squirrel’s tail, then I fussy cut around it.
Linen thread is tied in a lovely bow around the top of the Whisper White banner. The banner bottom was hand trimmed with my Paper Snips. The little heart was stamped with Real Red ink and hand cut before placing it in the little squirrel’s hands (paws) with a piece of a Stampin’ Dimensional. The banner was then attached to the Soft Sea Foam card base with more Stampin’ Dimensionals.
Here’s the inside of the invitations. Of course, I still need to add the when and where for the party, but at least we are a few steps closer to getting these invitations to her friends next week.
What are you obsessed with? That is the challenge for the As You See It Challenge blog this round. I actually had to do some soul searching to figure out if I was obsessed with anything in the first place, then determine which of the many obsessions I discovered I have was worthy of a card design.Here are some items that I had on my list:
My phone (this is actually an unhealthy obsession – I’m working on it … sort of)
There were a few others, but we’ll just stop there.
I thought more specifically about my obsession with words and realized that it has become focused on letter boards. Have you seen any letter board images on Pinterest or Instagram? They seem to be the latest thing and have definitely caught my attention. I don’t have my own letter board, but it is on my Christmas wish list! How fun to create sayings that suit your mood or your current state of mind. Or maybe some words that reflect how you want to feel or think?
Here’s my card, inspired by the latest As You See It challenge:I chose to try to create my own letter board card with a funny saying I found on Pinterest. Conveniently, the saying also allows me to bring in another obsession I have – coffee. LOL!
Most letter boards have black felt backgrounds with white lettering. I have seen others that are grey, some that are white with black letters, and even pink ones with white letters.
I started with trying to create the appearance of a letter board first. For that, I used a black journaling pen and a ruler and drew lines across the Basic Grey cardstock.The letters used are from the Make a Difference stamp set from Stampin’ Up! It required some finesse to get them all straight – not an easy task and definitely the most time consuming part of this design.
The Embossing Buddy was an absolute must for all this embossing!!
I did one line at a time, wiping my cardstock with the Embossing Buddy, stamping the letters in Versamark ink, sprinkling with White Embossing Powder, tapping off the excess, then heat setting the powder with the Heat Tool. One line. Then I would take out my Embossing Buddy and start the process again with the next line. Eventually, I realized if I placed a piece of washi tape on my block, it made it a bit easier to get my words straight. It was challenging to create the words with appropriate spaces for any letters that I needed more than one of, then add any missing letters afterward.The next thing to do was to create a frame for my letter board. Many of the boards I’ve seen have a simple natural light-coloured wood frame. Thankfully, Stampin’ Up! has just the right paper with lots of wood patterns to choose from! The Wood Textures Designer Series paper is one of my favourites and it is included in the Buy 3, Get One Free offer for paper packs now until the end of July.To create the look of a frame, I cut the desired length of paper for the size of frame I wanted. Two pieces cut at 5-1/2″ and two pieces cut at 4-1/4″. I made each piece 9/16th wide so that I could keep a black matte visible around my 3″ x 4-1/4″ letter board cardstock. I wanted to create the appearance of mitered corners, so I held two strips of the Wood Texture paper together and cut from the inner corner to the outer corner with my Paper Snips.
I really only needed to trim one end of each of the strips of paper. That way the angled end of one strip of the frame could overlap the straight cut end of the same corner. This allows for a nice clean corner that looks like a well-glued mitered wood frame. The strips were attached using Stampin’ Up Dimensionals to give a three dimensional appearance, just like an actual frame.
The thing that really makes this design work, is making it an easel card. If you’ve never made an easel card, be sure to google it and find a quick tutorial. It is a super easy thing to do.
My card base is made with Basic Black Cardstock. I used a piece of Whisper White cardstock as a layer inside the card as a blank canvas on which to create the lower portion of the easel design. For this, the Coffee Cafe stamp set and coordinating thinlits from Stampin’ Up! were the perfect choice! I also used an image from the Timeless Textures stamp set from Stampin’ Up! that looks like a coffee cup stain.
To prop up the front of the easel well, I made sure to add extra loft to the lid of the coffee cup with a piece of Adhesive Foam Strips. Additional Stampin’ Up! products used include: Leaf Punch, Solid Black Bakers Twine, 5/8″ Burlap Ribbon, Mossy Meadow cardstock, Garden Green cardstock, Crumb Cake cardstock, Stampin’ Sponges, Tranquil Tide ink (sponged on the Garden Green leaves and the Mossy Meadow paper strip), Crumb Cake ink (for the coffee stain image and sponging around the coffee cup, lid, and sleeve), Tuxedo Black Momento ink (for stamping the coffee happens sentiment, coffee beans, and coffee cup lid).Now it’s your turn. What are YOU obsessed with? Share it on the As You See It Challenge blog as a card design and/or leave a comment on this blog post!
