Hello everyone! Welcome to a new week! And a blog post … gasp!
How has your summer been going? Mine has been flying by. A lot of that has to do with having a new job and, once again, trying to find my new routine that allows crafting as well as all the other tasks a mother/wife/entrepreneur is expected to complete in a day. Crafting has taken a back seat. Not my first choice but … reality is, sometimes feeding the children really IS more important than creating a new card or layout. Go figure!
It’s also been about a million degrees out! By West Coast Canadian terms that means high 20’s – low 30’s Celsius. Not Phoenix or LA hot, but … when there’s no A/C .. it may as well be! My little Scrap Cave has a window and I did get my blinds back up so the heat is cut down a lot but even so, it’s WAY too hot in here to be spending hours filming and editing process videos. Sorry! I’ve put about 4 hours in here today and I need to spend some quality time in front of our large fan in the living room soon! I’m just about cooked!!
My efforts and sweaty back are your gain. I’ve got the first part of my version of the ever popular 10 Cards 1 Kit type posts. I am using the July 2018 card kit from Simon Says Stamp and if you missed my reveal video, here it is.
Pretty sweet, right? I went straight to that flamingo die and cut out as many as I could from the pink glitter paper. then I used one on my first card (I’m saving the majority for a layout about my daughter’s dance routine this year – they were very glittery flamingos so …)
Card #1 – Be a Flamingo (blue)
I embossed the sentiment in white and used several of the clear sticker flowers to balance the pink flamingo. You maybe saw this on my Instagram.
Card #2 – Fishing You a Happy Birthday (layered)
This one was also posted to my Instagram with the cryptic caption about an embossing error. I’d embossed the sentiment onto the blue card stock (that I ripped to look like waves) but I managed to swipe my finger through it while it was still warm so … totally ruined! Rather than start again with a new piece of card stock, I found a bit of blue patterned paper and simply covered up the first attempt. It means there is less of that starfish pattern on show than I’d originally planned, but I’m okay with that. I think the final card is actually really cute! I used pretty much all the shell stickers from the Amy Tangerine sticker book as well as a couple shell puffy stickers. Then the bubbles came about to cover another botch job. This time I had tried to stamp the bubbles (from the stamp set) with white ink but my ink pad is a bit too dry so they looked horrible! Liquid Pearls to the rescue!
Card #3 – You’re One In a Melon
Another you may recognize from Instagram. I kind of love this card! I do not normally go in for a lot of hand colouring because I’m lazy, messy and get bored pretty quickly. That’s why most of my cards focus on patterned paper! But I’d seen versions of this card online so thought I’d attempt to make one too. The red and white polka dot paper in the background really makes this card pop! And rather than the yellow toned sequins that were in the kit, I grabbed these iridescent ones from an old kit. I’m hoping they look like water drops … as in, these watermelon slices are so juicy … Oh, and it’s probably hard to see, but I added a tiny bit of Glossy Accents to the black seeds.
Card #4 – You are Beautiful
There are so many lovely stickers in the Amy Tangerine sticker book that I felt I could create a card using just stickers for a bit of something different. I grabbed a Happy Birthday stamp from an old stamp set to complete the sentiment. I also used half of that sheet of foam adhesive to pop up the entire scalloped white rectangle. My finishing touch was to add “filler” stamped images above the stickers. It was looking quite bare otherwise. I think these dots are supposed to be a flower centre (the same stamp set as the sentiment) but here I just used them to reduce the expanse of white card stock.
Card #5 – You’re One Cool Pineapple
One thing I decided to do with this kit was to use every stamp in the set. Sometimes it’s really easy for me to do that as they are all equally lovely or neutral enough to work for the types of cards I make. But a set like this one is not really in that genre. BUT that isn’t to say I don’t like it! It’s super cute. Just not really what I normally gravitate towards.
That being said, I decided today when I started working, that I needed that extra challenge. So, hence a card with a pineapple wearing sunglasses! I started by stamping a piece of the green card stock with the pineapples. I used Versamark and then embossed the pineapples with gold embossing powder. On a piece of white card stock, I stamped the pineapple once more but this time in Stazon ink. That way I could colour it without the ink running. I stamped the sunglasses at the same time. Once the pineapple was coloured, I covered it with a shimmer pen. The shimmer is subtle but I like it! I also added Glossy Accents to the lenses of the sunglasses for a bit of a different texture. Then it was just a matter of stamping my sentiment onto white card stock, die cutting it into a scrolled label shape and backing it with a bit of one of the pattern papers. Super fun!
Well, there you have it, the first five of my 10 cards I’ve created with this kit. I’ll post the second part on Wednesday so be sure to come back to see those.
Have an excellent week everyone! See you Wednesday.