My allergies keep trying to sideline me but I keep trudging on.
This weekend I participated in Concord & 9th’s Color In The Classroom. If you haven’t heard the wonderful news, they are releasing new colors next month! Yay! We got to play with some of the new colors in class.
These wreaths were one of my favorite designs.
We got 8 of the new colors in ink cubes, several quarter sheets of the new color cardstock & a quarter sheet sampler of all their colors old & new combined. I’ll be saving my pennies for a few of the new colors.
This class included the Big & Bold stamps & dies. Can’t wait to play with them some more.
I hope your Christmas weekend is filled with joy & peace.
Tonight’s card can easily be done in 10 or so minutes & is still very elegant.
White on white with just a touch of color. What makes the card elegant is the specialty papers used. The background is done with Concord & 9th’s Snowfall Card Front die paired with Cryogen White Curious Iridescent cardstock, the glitter cardstock pieces are Sizzix Tim Holtz Woodlands & Holiday Words dies paired with a Memory Box star die.
Are you ready for Christmas? It’s just a couple days away now.
Designing with mirrored cardstock gives cards an elegant look and I love how these 2 turned out.
The card on the left uses Concord & 9th’s Nordic Noel and Stitched Vines dies. The card on the right is a case of a Gina K Designs project and uses Gina K’s Holiday Toppers dies.
If you are in the freezing area, please stay safe & warm the next couple of days.
I hope you have a bit of holiday fun planned for this weekend.
Today’s share is another sympathy card. No matter the season, life ebbs & flows, happy or sad times. Every day should be celebrated as a blessing.
I used Concord & 9th’s Blended Petals stamp & die set paired with their Honeycomb Quilt Top dies. The flowers & sentiment are embossed in gold on some of my handmade watercolor paper. Simple & elegant.
Since I still have several creative projects to post from the fall months, I thought I’d do a December round-up of several posts to finish off the year.
In October I joined Concord & 9th’s In the Classroom Holiday Edition Classes and on that weekend completed one class with the 2nd class still waiting in the wings. I had lots of fun with the Holiday Joy stencil set & class. We were scheduled to make 2 cards & since I had been sick with a sinus infection & cold & was finally feeling better, I worked on 4 cards.
The top 2 cards are the class cards & the bottom 2 are my extras. Coming up with different ways to use the same set is fun & stretches your creativity. The set came with a coordinating stencil, stamp & die bundle.
I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season filled with hope & love.
Yesterday was our youngest daughter’s birthday and I had fun creating her card with Concord & 9th’s Friendly Florals and Hexagon Quilt Top dies.
Love the coneflowers in this set and I used some alcohol inked & foiled paper for the top layer and some hand painted paper for the bottom layer of these flowers, the leaves & sentiment. The sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio. The yellows & oranges in the alcohol ink paper give the flowers a bit of a fall feel perfect for a fall birthday.
Don’t forget to set your clocks back tonight if you are on Daylight Savings time & enjoy an extra hour of sleep on Sunday.
I love creating cards that make 2 with one design. I created the flower celebrate for a dear friend’s birthday party and ended up with a solid complimentary card to use later.
I used mainly items from Concord & 9th Exclusive Summer Camp, Celebrate Today Dies, Summer Blossoms Turnabout Stamps & dies and Let’s Eat Cake Stamp set. I paired them with My Favorite Things Roses Background (retired) and Pinkfresh Studio Essentials Blanket Stitch Slimline & Mini Slimline dies.
I stamped one panel with the roses background & created a second panel with an ink blended background, cut the celebrate die out of both & switched which background the word went back into. The letters are stacked on 2 more sets of white letters to create dimension & depth. For a finishing touch I added a couple of sentiments & sequins to each card.
I have been playing a bit more in between sorting & organizing so stay tuned for some more inspiration.
Let’s check out some ideas for shaker cards today. These cards from camp were quick & fun to put together.
You can turn just about any shape die into a shaker card fairly easily. Peruse your die stash & imagine which dies you already own that may make fun and unique shaker cards. Don’t forget to keep the cutouts for other fun projects.
Be generous with the foam tape when creating the “well” for your sequins, confetti or embellishments you plan to add to your shaker. Make sure to seal the opening edge to edge. You can also foam off several wells and highlight the area with different colors if you like. Each row of letters in the Celebrate card above is it’s own well. It also keeps the sequins front & center instead of at the bottom of the window.
Not all shaker cards have to be “fluffy”. Try your hand at the newer style of full front shaker cards. Shaker cards with less bulk are still fun and easier & less expensive to mail.
Using patterned paper will use up some of your scrap pile and add lots of interest to your card when you mix patterns that work well together. The Balloon card could easily be created with all scraps or make a stack of them with a 6 x 6 paper pad.
What kind of sequins or bits & bobs do you have that can make the shaker element fun? Confetti left over from a party, small seed beads from your bead stash, tiny flowers from your dies or flower collection, tinsel, chunky glitter or snow for a Christmas card, the possibilities grow when you look at your supplies with a new eye. This set came with a die that cut confetti shapes. If you have something similar in your dies, you could spend an evening watching TV and cutting out shaker bits from scraps.
Shaker elements are also fun for mini albums, junk journals, and scrapbook pages. Are there other art projects you can think of that you can add a shaker to?
Go on a creative adventure with your art supplies and see what you have that could make fun shaker elements. You might be surprised & come up with a few ideas for other projects when you look at your supplies with a different point of view.
I broke out my group of cards from Concord & 9th Summer Camp into their individual classes and will try to share some tips & ideas to recreate a similar look with what you may already own. Especially since these are exclusive sets only for the campers. Class 1 was taught by Laura Bassen, who always shares great creative inspiration.
This Cardscapes set of dies, stencils & stamps offered a lot of variety for the class but also should translate well to similar items we already own. Let’s explore:
If you already own hill, mountain, wave, cloud or similar dies, it will be easy to duplicate this style of layered scenery. Look at your cover plate dies and see if they lend themselves to a decorative frame or check out your foliage & tree dies to be able to add in natural elements. Tree line dies were really popular a couple years ago so you may already have one. A simple circle makes an excellent sun or moon and it’s easy to make stenciled rays even if you don’t have a stencil. Blending between sticky notes works well when laid out in a ray pattern. Here’s a few more tips:
Tip #1 from class – if your die allows it, use it right side up and upside down to vary your hills, mountains, clouds, waves more.
Tip #2 – you can use edge stencils or torn paper to add the shading you see in the card on the right. It was blended with the same color ink that matches the cardstock. Shading & highlights add depth to the card without bulk.
Tip #3 – to create the tree shadow in card one, we used a matching stencil to the tree die placed upside down. If you don’t have a matching stencil you can use the negative die cut left from cutting out the trees as a stencil to create the same effect.
Tip #4 – add some playful fun by mixing patterned & solid cardstock
I hope these tips & tricks provide some idea starters for your next scenery card and allow you to look at your supplies with a new eye to possibilities.
I’ve been missing in action for a few weeks. Life was really busy and I’ve been having some neck issues that can make my hands numb in just a few minutes depending on what I am doing so crafting was a slow process & I took a break. The good news is physical therapy is helping & after a consult with a neurologist for steroid shots in the next couple of months, it should resolve quite a bit.
I am really happy that after a couple of weeks of therapy, I was able to participate in Concord & 9th’s Summer Camp this weekend completing all 6 classes & making 14 cards. I’ll post about each class this week with individual class photos. In the meantime here is the complete group of cards:
This was my first time participating in C9 Summer Camp, it was so much fun and almost all the products are exclusive to camp. Even if you can’t get the exact same supplies, hopefully a bit of info and close-ups of the cards will give you some inspiration for the supplies you already have.
I plan to slowly work my way back into regular crafting and getting back to some more sorting. After this break, I have several ideas and projects in the works.
