I have been on a bit of a card making bender lately. I forgot how much I love working with paper and stamps.
I also like having a stockpile of cards on hands for birthdays but the price of cards is ridiculous these days. You can’t find a decent looking one for under $5. And forget about the nicer, embellished ones – you are looking at $7 or $8 a piece for those. It’s also hard to find gender neutral cards or ones that aren’t overly sappy. We aren’t overly sappy people.
I get a lot of inspiration from Pinterest and YouTube but try to adapt the cards I see there to stamps and dies I already own. This could be a very expensive hobby if you let it.
Here is an example of a card on Pinterest that I pinned probably five or six years ago. I have the die that was used to create the main element on the inspiration card but I didn’t have the other dies that were used to layer on top. The link to the original photo no longer works so I can’t even tell what dies they did use. I have another die set that I was able to pull from to recreate it though. My point here is check your inventory for you have and see if you can’t make do and put your own spin on a design.
The background die cut is made from cutting out the Spellbinders Fantastic Flourish 3 four times. It is no longer available but you might find someone selling it on eBay. The other two layers came from a Spellbinders die set but I’ve lost the original packaging and can’t remember the name of it.
I did two versions of the card. The white on blue card would make a lovely wedding card I think. I added a rhinestone embellishment which I would probably leave off if I was going to mail it. The second card, the gold on blue, I gave to Rick for our anniversary yesterday (36 years!).
This next card is completely inspired by Nicole Nowosad. She added some machine stitching to her version which I think is a lovely touch. To replicate that look I used the smallest die from the Lawn Fawn Stitched Squares die set which has a stitched look around the border of each die cut square. For the Scrabble tiles I found an image of all the Scrabble tiles and printed it on card stock. I glued another piece of card stock to the back to help thicken it and then cut them out. I darkened the cut edges with some light brown ink and the result is remarkably lifelike. I used double-sided adhesive foam on the back of the tiles to make them stand out a bit.
Keeping with the sewn/quilted look I did another saw tooth star card in a different colorway. I also wanted to try my hand at a cathedral circle pattern. I do love the effect but need to work on my folding technique as some of them are a little wonky. I used a small circle die to cut out the circles. I want to do this one again but make sure the backs of all the circles are the same color. I think my version is a little on the busy side and the pattern gets lost.
My favorite design is one that is a bit serendipitous. I bought the Hero Arts Star Light Star Bright background stamp that I though was a sprinkling of stars, well it is, but rather than the stars being the part that gets inked it is the background so when you stamp the design the stars are whatever color of paper you are stamping on. For example if you used black ink on a white piece of paper the stars would be white in a black sky.
In order to get the multicolored star effect I took a piece of white card stock and blended various colors of Ranger Distress Oxide inks on it. I wasn’t overly fussy about it but I did make sure thee wasn’t any white paper showing through. I then stamped the starry sky image with embossing ink and then coated it with white embossing powder and heat set it. I LOVE how it turned out. I cut the image down to 4″ x 5.75″ and mounted it on a coordinating 4.25″ x 6″ card stock. That was then mounted on a 4.5″ x 6.25″ (A6) white card. I stamped the birthday greeting on a small banner and mounted it with foam tape.
I followed the exact same technique using black embossing powder on the second card. I love how both turned out and how different they look despite being essentially identical. You could change up the banner to any occasion. Or leave it off completely until you need a card and then add the appropriate sentiment. That is what I generally do unless the sentiment is part of the design like the Scrabble tile card.
Before I sign off I just wanted to thank everyone for all the congratulatory messages on my last post. I cannot wait to start working again. I start in less than two weeks!
