Christmas in July!

I have finally started to work on some Christmas cards. Last year I left it too late, in my opinion, and felt very rushed. So this year I have decided that I would come up with several designs and gradually make them over the summer and fall.
I am using my Penny Black stamps for these 2 cards - both image and sentiment. I just love the adorable Mimi images.
The images were stamped and coloured with Copics and then cut out. I stamped the image on the card base and adhered the coloured image.

Card #1:

Card #2:

I am entering my cards in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Anything Goes

PaperPlay Challenges - Christmas in July

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

CAS-ual Friday #62

CAS-ual Friday's current challenge (that ends Thurs at noon) is:

I'm really liking my new Hero Arts stamp set, Blossom Art. I paper pieced the flower and leaves and popped them up with a little dimensional foam. I stamped the Thank You in Frost White ink (ColorBox). I thought of embossing it, but when I tried, I didn't like the results. I wish I had a finer white embossing powder - mine made the sentiment look splotchy when I tested it.

I am also entering my card in Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Anything Goes.

Have a good day!

Day 7 Flowers

The last card I have is from Day 7 - Flowers. I didn't have the stamp set they used in the class, so I used my HA Blossom Art set and paper pieced and layered the flower.

I added a little blue background using HA Envelope pattern. I made a mask with copy paper and a spellbinder's reverse wonky rectangle. I stamped the image inside the cut-out area of the copy paper. The image came out a little lighter than I planned, but if you look close, you can see it.

I used dimensional adhesive to pop up the petals and the leaves. I added a little glitter to the flower with a glitter pen and blue stickles on the flower center. The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn. I wasn't quite satisfied with it until I rounded the bottom right corner.  The paper is MME's 6x6 Away We Go for the flower, and Echo Park Dots and Strips for the leaves.

Hopefully I will have some time later to make a couple more cards. So far, I have loved watching the videos and trying some of the new ideas from the class.

Day 2 - Happy Birthday card

I needed to make a card for my niece's birthday, and I really loved the card that Amber made on Day 2. I don't have any collage stamps, but I did have some pretty butterfly stamps from HA. I liked the black card base (I liked everything about the card) so I tried to reproduce it for my niece.

The clear cardstock is tricky to photograph - anything with flash made it shine in a bad way. :)

I photographed the card in the basement, so the lighting is poor, leaving me with grainy pictures. But there wasn't enough time to take better pictures before the party. I had made a card for my brother-in-law as well, but forgot to take a picture of that one.

Day 1 (and 3)- Stretch Your Stamps... Baby Tags

My niece is going to have her third baby soon - real soon, she's overdue by 9 days already! I decided to make some announcement cards (tags) for her. All she would need to do is fill in the information and take a picture of the baby (Owen) to put inside the cards. Then she can hand them out to family, etc.

I used my Spellbinder's Scalloped circle die to create the outside. After making most of the shaped cards the hard way, I figured out a much easier way to finish the last few. First, cut 2 pieces of cardstock to 4.5"x4.5". Score the back piece (can't remember how far down I scored, but just under 3/4 inch...I think) and put a strip of 1/2" scor tape above the score line. Adhere the top piece of cardstock and flip it over. On the backside (where you can see the score line) line up the scalloped circle die and tape it down (I use washi tape to hold it in place). Run it through the Cuttlebug and you have a perfectly lined up shaped card. It also presses the paper together so the tape adheres nicely. If only I had figured this out earlier! It took me so much time to line up the scallops.

Day 1 - Background stamps. The middle one is the one I used a background stamp on(from Penny Black). I used HA's soft pool on the stamp, stamped it first on scrap paper and then on the white tag front. The digital stamp is from Hero Arts.

The envelopes are inspired from Day 3 (alphabet stamps) of Stretch Your Stamps. I used Lawn Fawn stamps for the letters and the black dash lines. The heart is from Paper Smooches.

I haven't given them to her yet, but I'll probably get my oldest to give them to her tomorrow when she goes over to visit. Hopefully she'll have the baby tomorrow. :)

Hero Arts July Contest

It has been a while since I've posted - just over a month. Things got busy just before Father's Day. I moved my crafting stuff down to the basement so my supplies would be out of the way when we had the family over for Father's Day. I needed to re-arrange the kids' playroom before I could set up my work area, so I only had time to finish off the cards for school. The teacher I gave the 'thank you' card set to really liked them. :)

When the online card class started on July 9th, I had my work area mostly set up, but I had to focus on making some family birthday cards. Now that all of that is over, I can start posting a few of the cards/sets I made over the last week.

The first post is for the Hero Arts July Contest - Paper Flowers. Shari Carroll has a video (here) that shows how she made some cute flowers. I used Martha Stewart glitter embossing powder to give them some sparkle.

I am also entering this in Papertake Weekly Challenge - All things girlie.

Supplies:

Sizzix Hero Arts - Bold Pop Designs

Hero Arts - Trees, Birds and Messages (sentiment)

Hero Arts - Blossom Art (leaves)

Echo Park - 6x6 Dots and Stripes

MME 6x6 Lime Twist - Happy Go Lucky

Thanks for stopping by!