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.

November 7, 2014

Snowflakes Fall Slowly

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Christmas As You See It, card, challenge, Christmas, embossing, Snowflake Card Thinlit, Stampin' Up, thinlits 3 Comments

I have a card for today’s colour challenge that uses the Snowflake Card Die from Stampin’ Up! with some atypical snowflake colours and I think it turned out beautifully!

Check out this palette:

When you think of beautiful snowflakes, do you imagine them in red and brown? Not usually. You probably think of white, silver, or blue if you have snowflakes on an art project. However, these challenge colours: Baked Brown Sugar, Cherry Cobbler, and Silver give a warm earthy feel to something normally cold and crisp. Snowflakes fall slowly and quietly, they dampen the noise in the street, all while you are warm and cozy by the fire in your living room. These are cozy colours of sitting by the fireplace on a cold, snowy day.

I have been aware that I need to slow down a bit lately and have been completely unsuccessful. In fact, I think I’ve had more going on in the last month than I’ve had in a long time! The autumn months are always busy in the stampers world with all of the Christmas preparations. It’s busier with the kids in the fall as well. I find that whenever I’m able to delete something from my time table, another thing comes along to fill its place. I was asked the other day what I do for downtime, to recharge, and I realized it’s been so long that I don’t even KNOW what I do for downtime. Part of that is the busy life of a mom of 3 ever-going kids – I’m always one or two (or 23) steps behind everything! It’s gotten a bit out of hand lately. The house is a disaster with piles of stuff all over the place, boxes of stamping supplies still waiting to be put away after events long gone, school papers from the kids, clothes in boxes that need to go to charity – I’ve lost things in the clutter and have found myself forgetting things while attempting to juggle the activities and events for me and my family.

But … I watched a bird today. It wasn’t doing anything special – just silently flying above the noise of the cars zipping around on street below, in its own world, just being a bird. I think it was playing on a breeze up there. I wanted to be like that. Just ‘in the moment’, not caring about anything or anyone. Enjoying ‘being’.

So, I take notes from the bird and ponder a snowflake falling slowly and quietly, and I am going to try to be more like that for a while. To slow down. To enjoy some ‘being’. And a part of that will be to take a break from my stamping events so I can catch up on the needs of my household and my family. I might even light the fire in our living room and have a cup of tea. Why not? Crazier things have happened before, lol!

I designed my card while I was away at the Creative Escape Retreat at Rockridge Canyon in Princeton, BC. The photo below shows the card closed. I used the Snowflake Card thinlit in the Big Shot to cut the card base but using a full 5.5″ x 8.5″ piece of cardstock so that the thinlit would not cut it on the one end (I’m sure you’ve seen these sorts of dies used this way before – if not, google ‘extended flip card’ and you should find a tutorial’)

The die set for the Snowflake Card thinlits includes the die for the Silver Glimmer snowflake in the center of this card as well as the Joy and the mini snowflake that are inside the card. It has a bunch of die shapes that are all very useful.

Oh, my goodness, I used a ton of things on this card:

Baked Brown Sugar cardstock, Cherry Cobbler cardstock and Under the Tree Specialty Designer Series Paper. Nordic Designer buttons. Cherry Cobbler 1″ Sheer Linen Ribbon. Linen Thread. Silver Glimmer Paper. Scallop Edge Border Punch. Hardwood Background Stamp with Baked Brown Sugar Ink. Northern Flurry Embossing Folder. Sponging with Baked Brown Sugar ink. 1 3/4″ scallop punch. 1 3/8″ circle Punch. 1 1/4″ circle punch. Snowflake Card thinlit dies. Big Shot (by far, my most FAVOURITE TOOL!!). Sticky Strip, Tombo Liquid Multipurpose Glue, and Stampin’ Dimensionals (another favourite supply item.

The photo below shows the card with the snowflake flipped to it’s other side as the card is opened.

The next photo shows the card fully opened to reveal the available writing space and the entire inside of the card.

You might be wondering how I cut the large Cherry Cobbler snowflake when there isn’t a die that fits in that space. I used the full thinlit die for the card base and laid it on a piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock that was just big enough to fit that section of the thinlit. I ran that through the Big Shot, which leaves you with a partially cut large snowflake. I then removed the partially cut piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock and repositioned it by 90 degrees so that when I ran it through the Big Shot again, it would cut the areas that weren’t cut the first time. Because the top and bottom of the shape are exactly the same as the sides of the shape, this works! Easy peasy!! (Maybe not as easy to understand with written words, sorry I don’t have a quick photo tutorial for you).

I hope you give this colour combo a try and link it up to the As You See It Challenge blog! I love to see what you come up with!

Amy

October 31, 2014

Better than Nacho Libre

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Christmas As You See It, AYSI#60, card, challenge, Christmas, embossing, holiday cheer, markers, nordic noel, quick and cute, Stampin' Up 0 Comments

Here we are again with another card for the As You See It Challenge Blog. Oh how I struggled with this sketch, but I loved using the little saying from the Project Life by Stampin’ Up Holiday Cheer stamp set.

Though the sketch is Halloween inspired, I am geared into Christmas already. So a Christmas card is what I did. I’m not very happy with it, but it’s better than how it looked before I decided to turn it on it’s side!!

Do you remember the movie Nacho Libre with Jack Black. I found it very funny! That sort of humour suits me just fine.

Before I turned my card design on its side, I found that with all of those stars in combination with the Real Red and the Bermuda Bay colours, it became very American, but in a Nacho Libre sort of way (though, I’m pretty sure he was not American, lol!). The strip of Champagne Glimmer Paper looked like a belt with the oval sentiment in the centre; and the flashy red patterned paper from the Nordic Noel Designer Series paper looked like fancy wrestler pants! So I absolutely HAD to turn it sideways to avoid the confusion!

Tilt your head to the left and see if you can imagine what I saw!!

Even though it’s better than my Nacho Libre version, this is not my favourite card. Maybe it just needs some loopy thread like in my card a couple weeks ago. Yes, I might go back and add that!

This card used the Lucky Stars embossing folder on Whisper White cardstock. I used Bermuda Bay to mat the Under the Tree Specialty Designer paper (with those cute tiny stars on it) along with the strip of Nordic Noel Designer Series Paper and the strip of Champagne Glimmer paper.

The Holiday Cheer sentiment is from the Project Life “Holiday Cheer” stamp set. I used my Stampin’ Write markers to ink the “holiday” in Real Red and the “cheer” in Bermuda Bay ink and (after huffing on it with my breath to re-moisten the ink) stamped it on Whisper White cardstock, which I then punched out with the Large Oval punch. The cute stocking is also from the Project Life Holiday Cheer stamp set, stamped with Bermuda Bay ink and hand-cut. I added a bit of Dazzling Detail glitter to the stocking as well.

Of course I used Stampin’ Up Dimensionals as well. They are under the Bermuda Bay layer and under the oval and the stocking.

Now I want to watch Nacho Libre again!

I hope you’ll play along this week and show me how to make this sketch amazing!! Upload your designs to the As You See it Challenge blog and give me some inspiration!

Amy