December 4, 2015

Hang a Shining Star

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Christmas alphabet rotary stamp, As You See It, card, challenge, Christmas, embossing, envelope punch board, lighthearted leaves, sketch, spider web doily, Stampin' Up, star framelits 8 Comments

My favourite thing about a song, especially Christmas songs, is when someone says something in normal conversation and it sparks a song in your mind that you absolutely MUST sing out loud. As it was said in the movie, ELF, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.”

My hope is that my card today will cause a Christmas song to be placed in your mind when you read the words. (Basically, I’m working on developing my talents in mind-control.)

Don’t forget to check out my previous post, Fleecy Caribou and Blog Candy, for a chance to win a stamp set! Winner will be announced on Tuesday!

Here’s today’s sketch from the As You See It Challenge blog:

The card I have to share with you today is a 3″ x 5.5″ card. The elements that I chose simply demanded to be on a narrow card design. Seriously, the cards should just make themselves if they’re going to be so demanding!!

It begins with a 3″ x 5.5″ Mossy Meadow card base and the layer of patterned paper from the Merry Moments Designer Series Paper. The next layer is a Spider Web Doily that has been trimmed and turned around to show the white side rather than the black side of the doily. This, of course, was adhered with the Fine-Tip Glue Pen.

Next, the leaf image from the Lighthearted Leaves stamp set was stamped with Old Olive Ink onto Old Olive cardstock. This was then die cut on the Big Shot, using the Leaflets Framelits. I happily sponged away on the edges of my newly cut leaf using Stampin’ Up Sponges and Old Olive ink. Before adhering the leaf, I took a moment to gently curl and shape its edges.

The star on this card is die cut from Silver Foil paper, using the Star Framelits. After using my Embossing Buddy to remove static, dust, and finger prints from the Silver Foil paper, I used the Alphabet Rotary stamp to create the words and stamped them on the star with Versamark Ink. Then they were heat embossed with Silver Embossing Powder and a Heat Tool.

I saw my crooked words and decided to go for it anyway. I think it adds an authentic, kind of, stamped metal look.

The star is adhered with Stampin’ Dimensionals to pop it up off the page. The Silver Sequin Trim and the Real Red 1/8″ Striped Ribbon were attached using a Mini Glue Dot.

Because I had an unusually-sized card, I needed to make a custom envelope to go with it. The Envelope Punch Board is the perfect tool for just that very thing. Unfortunately, the envelope sizes available on the punch board still didn’t match what I needed. I played around a bit, changing the starting size of the paper and the different positions for scoring and punching and determined this:

To create an envelope for a 3″ x 5.5″ card, start with a piece of 7.5″ x 7.5″ paper (Red Envelope Paper, in this case), using the Envelope Punch Board, punch and score at 2 7/8″. Then carry on with the punch board as you normally would until your envelope is complete.

I also took the time to trim one of the side flaps on my envelope to give it a professional finish. I just drew a pencil line where I wanted to cut, then used my paper trimmer to remove the unwanted bit of paper.

This sketch is simple and cute. You should give it a try and share it with us on the As You See It Challenge blog. We love to see your take on our challenges!!

Did my card make you sing out loud? The words on the star are from one of my favourite Christmas tunes, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.

Do you have a favourite Christmas song? Leave a comment and let me know!

October 24, 2015

Woodland Embossing Folder

Amy Jasper Christmas, Techniques card, Christmas, embossing, Stampin' Up, technique, tutorial, woodland folder 122 Comments

The Woodland embossing folder by Stampin’ Up! is so versatile for Christmas, Halloween, fall, winter, summer – it can literally be used for anything!

My new favourite is to use it to create a forest scene. I’ve seen this done by a few other demonstrators, but I ran into a few problems along the way and thought I could share my trouble-shooting with you.

First, here’s the card I made and have since fallen in love with:

To created this card, I used a direct ink pad to embossing folder technique. This has been done before, but this time I used Soft Sky where the lower half of the sky was going to be, then used Pool Party for the upper half of the sky.

My first few attempts gave me blobs and pools of colour that didn’t jive with my expectations. This is likely because my ink pads are nice and juicy. Normally, you want a juicy ink pad for great colour distribution, but it can backfire a bit on you with solid flat sections on a stamp or when you want to use the ink pad for sponging techniques.

You could work with some of these effects for a different overall look, but I was looking for something softer and smoother.

Soft Sky ink – no brayer

Soft Sky ink – spritzed with water – no brayer

Soft Sky ink – with brayer

When I get blotches of ink on a stamp (like when I used my Definitely Dahlia background stamp), I will often roll my brayer over the stamp surface after inking it to thin and smooth the ink. I decided to try it with the ink on my folder.

Once I sorted out my sky and decided on the Pool Party/Soft Sky ink combo, I could proceed with directly stamping my Winter Wonderland trees with Mossy Meadow ink on the Woodland embossing folder. I stamped them in varying heights and was careful to re-ink my stamp each time to ensure every tree was solid.

With my images and inking completed, I was ready to press my Whisper White cardstock. If you lay the paper on the un-inked side of your embossing folder, you will avoid the risk of smudging the ink on the cardstock. I chose to lay my paper dead center on the un-inked side of the folder so that the messy bottom area of my stamped trees wouldn’t show on my cardstock, but I would have a nice tree line showing in the middle-upper area of my cardstock piece.

Fold it all together carefully, holding it so it does. not. move, run it through the Big Shot.

Vacant areas actually work on this project, because it is an art piece. You can interpret those vacant areas as wisps of clouds or even snow.

Finishing the card was simple. I didn’t want to cover up the pretty woodland image, but wanted to highlight it as much as I could. I started with a Crumb Cake mat behind the embossed cardstock and layered that on my Thick Whisper White card base with Stampin’ Dimensionals. The sentiment from the Hostess stamp set, Six Sayings, was stamped in Early Espresso ink on a Whisper White banner. Linen Thread tied in a bow to finish it with a bit of natural texture.

The final touch is adding the 3 sequins (pronounced “seek-wins”, not “sequence”, lol!). I thought of them as Christmas ornaments hanging from the trees, but they could also be thought of as sparkly snow softly falling from the sky.

You can order any of these products by clicking the ‘shop now’ button on my website or by contacting me through my email.

Now, don’t stop there. If you liked this tutorial, go and give it a try for yourself. Don’t have that embossing folder? Play around with what you have and see what you come up with!

Now get stamping!

October 23, 2015

Orange Watercolour Wash

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge As You See It, birthday, card, challenge, embossing, Gorgeous Grunge, photopolymer, Stampin' Up, watercolour, watercolour wash 2 Comments

Last week, the As You See It Design team honoured Lola, a little girl in the midst of her 5 year battle with Leukemia. We asked that you would create cards with fairies, unicorns, pink, gold, or glitter so that she could view them digitally and enjoy the love and best wishes that they represent. The challenge itself is complete, but the link to load your cards is still active on the website until November 16th. If you haven’t posted a card yet, there’s more time available to shower Lola with kindness. I hope you will take the time to make a card for her and upload it to the As You See It page HERE. She will get to view all of the cards. I know it will put a big smile on her face to see how many people are cheering her on!

For today’s challenge, we have a colour combination.

I chose to use these colours to make a birthday card. One might call it a masculine birthday card, but I don’t like to generalize. This card could be used for anyone who appreciates these colours or this style of card.

Ever since I discovered, while doing the card for a previous post, how much I like this Watercolour Wash background stamp on an angle, I keep wanting to use it! This time I inked it up with my Pumpkin Pie, Lost Lagoon, and Tuxedo Black Momento ink pads. I sponged on the stamp to soften the edges between colours, then stamped it on two layers of Whisper White cardstock at the same time. This allowed me to use the smaller piece for the 2 U sentiment as a layer while still maintaining the continuity of the colour wash over the entire card front.

The letter ‘U’ is from the Larger than Life photopolymer stamp set, which was stamped with Versamark ink and heat embossed with Basic Black embossing powder. I die cut the ‘2’ with my Big Shot and Little Numbers Thinlits and adhered it with my Fine-Tip Glue Pen. The Happy Birthday sentiment is from the Tin of Cards stamp set.

The splatter image from the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set was added in Tuxedo Black Momento ink to the background before adding my layers.

I’m in love with the simple looping of thread and twine on my cards, so I took the black thread out of my Basic Black Baker’s Twine and looped it to add some needed texture to this one.

This card will be added to my Tin of Cards tin as one to save for my family. My nephew and my brother both have birthdays coming up in December. One down, one to go!

Be sure to upload your take on this colour challenge to the As You See It Challenge page. It doesn’t have to be a card, either!!