A Final batch of strip cards for a while.

 So, giving these a break now. I've made a couple of dozen or so over the last few days, and I'm all done for a while.

A few Birthday cards in an assortment of styles.

 Then I moved on to some Get Well cards,all made the same as others, this time using a set of heart dies from Nellie Snellen.  I also swapped to some corrugated cardstock instead of glitter. Like the Star cards made before, I die cut a smaller heart from Fun Foam to give the heart some dimension.
The Get Well Soon die is by Crealies.

And then I switched again, and made a Happy Anniversary, word die by Crealies, and a Thinking of You card. It looks a lot clearer in real life, the glitter really seems to confuse the camera lens!
This time I layered a background die cut over a panel of striped card for a change.

Strip Birthday Cards

I'd already made the pink version- go me- then I made the gold/brown version, and that's when it crossed my mind that these would be good male cards, so made half a dozen in suitable colours.
 Apologies in advance for some photos appearing a little blurry, but glitter and camera lenses do not play well together!



 All were made exactly the same way. First I cut a strip for the card front, they were roughly half the width of the panels I'd made, so about 2" or 5cm.
These were attached with DST, then I found two strips of glitter card that I'd used in the panel, and edged the striped panel with them, using Matte Medium.



 To apply the Matte Medium, I have some little bottles with a very fine nozzle.

They were bought from E-Bay, £1.62 for 10, and are perfect for giving a very fine line of glue. The bottles are quite soft, so easy to squeeze, and so far I've not had any issues with the nozzle blocking. All I do is poke a pin down the nozzle to make sure it's clear, wipe it clean, then replace the little stopper over it. Ive been using them for about 6 months now, and have refilled a couple of times,so I can highly recommend them.

The little stoppers actually come attached to the bottle with a ring that goes round the neck, but I found it got in the way, so just snipped it through.


Next I die cut a star from glitter card, and using the next star size down, cut a star from Fun Foam. Stitched Star dies were bought from The Works.

The Fun Foam gives  the star some dimension. I also die cut my sentiment once from  a glitter card that tied in with my strip panel, and 3 times from matching cardstock, so I could stack them up. Again, that fine tip nozzle is perfect for this.

Final step is to add the star to the card front, then the sentiment to the star.

These were so quick and easy to do, in fact the longest part of the process is making the strip panels in the first place!

It's easy to ring the changes with the colours, and you could also swap the orientation too, having the panel widthways on the card, rather than top to bottom.

WOYWW #509- The Ouch Edition

Ouch, because I seem to have Sciatica. On the upside, the bonus is that it must be on my left side, as I'm not getting the pain down my leg, which I wouldn't feel that side thanks to the nerve damage. On the downside, my back hurts like hell. But, I'm still here, linking up at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, for another week of desk sharing. If you're new to this, just follow the link to Julias, she has all the info there.

Shot of my desk in mid-create. Making cards using those strips from last week. I liked the golds/brown version so much, I'm duplicating it in a red/black mix.  I might do a more in different colours, I reckon they'd be good masculine cards. And look! I did Pink!!!!

The desk is looking extremely clean, however, the die cutting desk tells a different story. Dies & die cutting scraps everywhere. And the desk behind my desk is a nightmare of discarded stuff.

 A load of card strips, envelopes of card scraps, baby wipes. The water bottle isn't a drink, it's for filling my mister bottle/watering the plants!
 Annies adorable Crop bear keeping an eye on what I'm up to.😇


 
The Bauble cards I was making last week are HERE, along with another go at a You Tube video.






And so I'm done. Which just leaves ......And Finally ............

Christmas cards using offcut strips.

As I've said before, I picked up this technique of using strips trimmed from cardstock offcuts from Jennifer MacGuire.
Earlier this week I spent some time making up some sheets, and whilst doing it I thought of this die, and how the baubles would look with this technique, so I made some using suitable colours for Christmas Baubles.
 HERE is the original post I did making cards this way.

The dies used are all by Memory Box, Hanging Ornaments,Traditional Ornament & Classic Ornament.

 I've had these some years, so I'm not sure if they're still available.






 I'll share how I made these, and also the changes I made to make the fourth one for the video,as well as a suggestion or two that I think would have made the process easier.


 I began by die cutting the Hanging Ornaments, and as you can see I separated them from the backing. This is the first recommendation- leave them in the backing piece. Although cut from cardstock, the lines of the ornaments are very thin, and it's quite hard to maintain the shape when adding the bauble backing.
I also found it easier to add a layer of Double sided adhesive sheet to it before die cutting. It's very time consuming adding liquid glue to all the lines.
Also, keep the little circles that come out of the die cut. You may want to use these later.

Next I die cut the bauble backgrounds, and for the fourth one I also cut the small circles from the striped base.

 After attaching the baubles, it's best to lay them flat with a couple of acrylic blocks on them if you've used liquid glue.


I skipped a few photos at this stage, but what I'd done was run some white cardstock through an Embossing folder, this one is by Crafts Too, and called Seamless Circle.







 I trimmed it down to leave a slight border from the base card showing. The base cards are roughly 5¾ x 4¼. They were made from an A4 sheet of cardstock, cut lengthways in half, to give a topfold card, or a landscape side fold card.

 I used some white fun foam on the back for a little dimension, equally you could use foam tape/pads. The Ornaments were added with glue again, then lay under acrylic blocks to set.
 You may be able to spot in the pic of the three die cuts that the lower bauble backing sticks out into the circle next to it. In the blue one you can see I trimmed it to shape with small scissors, but if you are going to attach those little circles with foam pads or Pinflair Glue for a bit more dimension, that really won't matter.
 The sentiment is from a Hobby Art set called Winter Wishes.
  I stamped in Versamark and heat embossed with gold or silver EP. Then layered on an offcut of gold or silver card. Again added with foam tape.

On these three I used the gold & silver circles that came out of the die cut, and on the final one I used striped.



  So, another tip here for you. If you intend to make some of these striped pieces, and are going to die cut from them, I'd definitely tell you to use either very thin cardstock, or even paper to stick your strips to. Jennifer actually tells you to do it that way, I'd just forgotten! The cardstock strips will give it enough rigidity, but if you do as I did and stick them onto your normal card base/layers cardstock, it makes it very difficult to die cut with the thin dies, as you are trying to cut through 2 layers of cardstock and the adhesive sheet. Took a lot of shimming, and multiple passes to just cut out those bauble background shapes. If your dies were more intricate, or you wanted to cut out words/sentiments I think you'd end up needing to do a lot of fussy cutting/ trimming with a craft knife to free them.

Final touch was to add some acrylic gems to the snowflake design on the baubles.

These are the batch of background sheets I made, mainly A5 in size.
 If you want to do this, but don't have double sided adhesive sheets, you could just put strips of double sided tape on your base .






I've also done a You Tube video of this, making up the last card.

Christmas Card Club Challenge #5

Back again with Christmas Cards, and this fortnights Challenge is set by Valery, who wanted to see Poinsettias. Now, all the Poinsettia stamps I have I've used in the past for the challenges, so as we also have the option of Anything Goes, that's what I've done for this one.  I do have other reasons too- we had visitors yesterday, so my plans for crafting didn't happen, and also somehow or other, I've managed to develop sciatica! No idea what happened, I'd been fine all morning, got up from my desk, and could barely stand.The only upside to it is that it must be on my left side, as I can't feel the classic pain all down my leg, and as I have nerve damage that side, that would explain it.
 Oh well, onto the cards.
I made these earlier in the week, not specifically for this, I'd had an idea for how to use the 'card strips from scraps' technique I've done in the past. I thought the Memory Box Baubles dies would suit it nicely.

I'd made up some strip sheets using Christmas colours for this, and although a bit fiddly, they came out OK.

 The sentiment is from a Hobby Art set, Winter Wishes. The Embossing Folder is from Crafts Too called Seamless Circle.

There will be a blog post on the making of these a little later, as I've also done a You Tube Video of it.

Valentines Day Card

This is the Valentines Card I couldn't show on Wednesday, for obvious reasons! The base card is an 8" square, which as I've said before, actually means the envelope is 8" square, the card is 7¾".

 The main focal point for the card was the hearts, die cut from a piece made with red, gold & black strips, a technique done back HERE.
 I layered the black card onto dark red, then gold cardstock. The large heart is attached with foam pads, the smaller ones added with Multi Medium Matte.





Next I created a duplicate matted layer for the whole card front, using the same cardstock. I started with the gold layer at roughly 7¼", and came down a quarter inch at a time for the red and black.

 All three pieces have some texture to them, the red & black being a hammered finish, and the gold has a cross hatch pattern.


I layered up both with DST, then added the focal piece to the Matt layer.

I didn't add it to the card front yet, as I wanted to add a die cut ribbon, and wasn't sure exactly how this would fit, so decided to wait till after I'd done this bit.

 Normally, I'd die cut these ribbon parts from paper, but I wanted it to match the rest of the card, so used some scraps of the red & black card. This did make the bow a bit thicker, but I found that if I curled it around a stencil brush handle, I could get the bow to curve, without it getting a crease.





 
 
 The dies for this bow are both Sue Wilson dies, Classic Bow, and Lattice Bow. The Classic, on the left, is used as a base for the Lattice on the right.
The ends of the bow were stuck down with glue dots, which I also used to attach the bow to the 'tails', and then onto the ribbon.
 I matted the whole thing onto an offcut of the gold card, then added it to the card front, before adding the whole panel to my card base with DST again.

Now all I needed was a sentiment, and chose one from Inkylicious, Today, Tomorrow, Always & Forever. This comes in two sizes, and the smaller one (approx 1¾" square) is used here. Stamped onto an offcut of the black hammer card with Versamark, then heat embossed with gold EP.
 Trimmed it down to fit the space, then matted it on red & gold again.

Stamping was done on the Tim Holtz Platform, as the cardstock surface is quite heavily textured, but this gives a nice solid print.

Card strips, and getting more mileage from your dies.

Six cards made using strips of off cuts, sorry if the image looks a little blurred in places, Glitter & camera lenses do not play nicely together!

I'd started off making up some panels- I haven't used the rainbow ones yet.

I had a thought the other day about a design, I'd recalled the Tim Holtz Umbrella Man die, and realised I could chop off the umbrella, and add a bunch of balloons instead.
So, I cut 3 men from the striped panels, and 3 from plain card. I also cut 3 sets of balloons from the striped panels, and a whole bunch from some pearl paper off cuts. The balloon die is semi cut through around the balloons, so I could easily separate parts and paper piece them.
 I cut balloon sets also from plain card, so I could do the piecing onto a firm base.
 I *think* the balloon set came from Aliexpress.

For the first set I made, I used the Umbrella man cut from the strip panels, and matched that up with paper pieced balloons,and a strip of glitter card/paper, die cut with a curved line die, at the bottom.

The sentiment is a Crealies die, cut from 3 layers of black card, and one layer of glitter card, and stacked up for dimension.

I  cut away the Umbrella from each one, and then re-shaped the arm a little to look more realistic.
 As the balloons are part cut, I used a double layer of foam pads behind the Heart balloon at the front, and a single layer under the others.

This black card base is a top fold card, as is the black and white one. C5 size.

Put together exactly the same as the first.


The brown version has a sheet of backing paper added, from an old paper pad by Prima.

The next set of three use the plain card Umbrella man, and strip panel balloons.
 The all also have a paper backing, The grey one on the right from an old Papermania pad set with a Steampunk theme, the other two from the Prima pad.


They are all created the same as above. One Umbrella man facing the other way, I put the cardstock on the die upside down, lol.

 The Birthday Wishes sentiment is made from two Crealies dies, Happy Birthday and Best Wishes. Again, another way to stretch your dies a little.

 You can make these more feminine or masculine, depending on the colour choices you use.