Time for Teacher Gifts!

I have a tremendous appreciation for teachers. My sister is an incredible (and nationally recognized - brag, brag) elementary school teacher, so I hear all about the heartbreak, hard work, and amazing successes that come with her job. Now that my girls are in middle school, we have to spread our appreciation through gifts a little more widely than we used to, but I always try to send a special thank you at the end of the year for all the hard work these amazing people have put in to teach my kids.

To get started on this year's end-of-school cards, I pulled out my PTI Teach and Inspire stamp set. This set has some great heartfelt teacher-themed sentiments, and since you can't have a teacher card without an apple, I also grabbed my Apple Prints set and coordinating dies.

This card layout was originally created by Nichole Heady, and I have made several incarnations of it over the years. I adore scrunchy seam binding bows, and the partial die cutting along the edge is an easy technique with a fun wow factor. 

To create a border using any die, position your top cutting plate so that it is part on and part off your die. The section sandwiched between the two cutting plates will cut through, and the section without a top plate will remain attached. Then trim with a trimmer or craft knife in a straight line between your cut images. Hard to explain but easy to do! Here's a card I did using the same technique and some Halloween pumpkins a while back:

Partial die cutting is an easy way to make dies more versatile. Anyway, back to the topic at hand! My second teacher card uses the images from Teach and Inspire. I love this cute tree, and the sentiments in this set are some of my favorite in all of my extensive stash. (Insert guilty grin.)

I plan to create a nice card for each teacher to pair with a modest thank you gift or treat. I am so grateful for the teachers in my life who inspired me to pursue the things I still love today. What a gift they are to the world!

An Old Favorite

It's so easy to lose touch with old friends. I was reminded of this the other day when one of my besties from our years in Oklahoma sent me a beautiful note in the mail, and I realized how long it has really been since I talked to her. I wish there were more hours in the day and quick travel between places far away. Maybe in the future the quick travel part will become even more of a reality!

In the spirit of old friends, I pulled out a stamp set from years past that I just love. Back when it was shiny and new (and trendy) I used it all the time, but now that the vintage trend has passed, it is neglected and in the back of my stash gathering dust. Not this week! Out it came to do three projects using different techniques.

 

The first is a vintage inspired wedding card. I watercolored my image twice and die cut a butterfly out of one version to pop up over the second so the little wings are a bit three dimensional. Quick, simple, and the watercolor breathed new life into an old favorite image.

 

For the second card, I pulled out all the vintage tricks and created a collage focal panel with white embossing as the top layer. A scrap of trim and a little tag, and this card is shabby chic enough to live in 2010. Those were the days. 

 

The third card is pretty and pastel and a little more clean and simple than the others. I added a layer of vellum over this butterfly for a touch of softness. Easy and best of all ... easy to mail!

I hope you be inspired to pull out an old favorite crafting tool and maybe even to a send your creation to an old friend!

Coffee is Real Magic

Hi, friends! Have you heard of Jessa Frieg and Useless Trinkets? Now you have! This great blog features several hilarious and adorable free digital stamps with tons of multi-lingual sentiments. Thank you, Jessa!

I couldn't resist this adorable unicorn named Cookie Jar. I created two card versions of Cookie Jar in different sizes and used two of the matching sentiments.

 

For both cards, I used a die cut cloud as a mask and sponged several pastel shades of ink in layers to create a sky background. I colored up Cookie Jar with Copic Markers and layered some clouds in the foreground. A touch of white Wink of Stella glitter brush pen to adds some subtle sparkle.

 

This cute little Narwhale card is a birthday card for one of my daughter's friends. I used the same masking process to create the water background. I created the wave mask using a scallop edge die and a piece of copy paper.

 

I hope you'll check out Useless Trinkets! Thanks for visiting my blog today! If you do use any of these images on your own projects, I would love to see them!

Stampin' Up Goodbyes ...

Alas, it is that sad time of year again when all of the beautiful things on my Stampin' Up wish list retire to make way for new beautiful things. It might be a bit sick that someone with upwards of a gazillion stamp sets can still have a wish list as long as mine!

There were two sets on my list that I couldn't let go. The first was the simple but sweet set called "Summer Solstice." This set took a long time for me to discover since it's rather unassuming, but the pieces lend themselves to the collage style I love so much.

The second was a set called "World of Dreams" that features several really lovely silhouette images that will compliment some of the other sets in my stash.

This simple card was inspired by Lisa Young. In fact, it was blatantly cased. Thanks, Lisa! You sold me on this one! The orchids are gorgeous, and all of the elements work together beautifully.

I can't believe summer is here already. Today my mom and I took our annual field trip to the garden store to buy our flowers for the season, since it is just about safe to plant! The green grass and trees against the blue, snow-capped mountains is just breathtaking. How amazing to be alive!

Folk Art Fox

   Today I'd like to share an easy and fun technique for adding a folk art feel to your cards using symmetrical stamping.

    I created this simple card using the Good Times stamp set from My Mind's Eye, the fox from Love You to Pieces from Papertrey Ink, the Book Cover Details stamp set from Papertrey Ink, the small circle from the Rosie Posie set from Papertrey Ink, and a sentiment from Stampin Up's retired set, Notably Ornate.

  

     I started by stamping the leaf garland from the MME set in green, curving the stamp slightly to create a more rounded garland shape. To make this technique work, follow the rule, "whatever you do to one side, do to the other."  I built on the image with the orange flowers from the MME set and the blue swirl from PTI Book Cover Details. I added a few spots using the small circle from PTI's Rosie Posie stamp set, and finally, I stamped the cute fox from Love You to Pieces in the center. I used an old sentiment from Stampin' Up's Notably Ornate stamp set to complete my project.

    I think this card turned out to be an adorable quirky mish-mash, and in my mind, that's just right! Thanks for stopping by today!

Howdy!

     Today I'm here to share a blatant copy. A case. A rip-off. I shamelessly copied a design and made it. And it was SO MUCH FUN!

  A huge thanks to Erin Lincoln at Procrastination Station for the inspiration. Sometimes we all need to just get crafty; to bust out our stash of scraps and have fun creating our own version of a design. I think this can be the ultimate stress relief!

  I cased Erin's design using my trimmer, three shades of cardstock, my hexagon punch, some scraps from my stash, and my On the Farm stamp set and dies. This is a super easy design that would be fun to make for country lovers for any occasion!

      This is one of my favorite sets, and this go-to design could also be stamped with the hexagons and florals in the Rosie Posie set for a fun alternative. Thanks for stopping by today, my friends!

Book Lovers Unite!

     I have been coveting Papertrey Ink's Book Cover Card Die from the moment I laid eyes on it, so when it came in my latest haul, I couldn't wait to try it!

     Instead of coming up with my own inspiration, I settled for Pinspiration from my constant muse, Melissa Phillips. 

     Just like Melissa, I used the Rosie Posie and Rosie Posie II stamps on my book cover, along with a few elements from the Book Cover Details mini stamp set. I glued my cut sentiment over a foam layer for a little added height.

     As much as I enjoyed this die set, I had an issue with one of the die's design elements. Instead of scoring the book's spine, the die cuts through it nearly all the way, leaving a tiny section attached at the top and bottom. This makes the card base very unstable at the fold. I created two layers for my card and washi taped over the cuts in the spine on the inside layer for added stability. This was a moderately frustrating step when one little tweak in the design could have solved the problem completely! It would be much easier to cut a spine (one rectangular strip) than to reinforce every card base this way until the end of time. (*insert bemused smiley face here*)

     Other than this one tiny complaint, I really enjoyed playing with this product and will have fun using it. It would be much easier to cut using extended cutting pads as a standard cutting pad just isn't *quite* long enough, and I ended up running all the pieces through twice.

     I can't wait to add a cute bookmark using my All Booked Up stamps and dies! Thanks for stopping by today, my friends!

Inspired by ... Houndstooth

    I'm having lots of fun playing along with the anniversary challenges going on at Papertrey Ink's blog in my little bit of free time this week! I've been watching closely for a couple of challenges that I found particularly fun or interesting, and when I saw a challenge asking us to create a project inspired by a favorite piece of clothing, inspiration struck right away!

     I'm a fan of classic and retro clothing, so this skirt from my Pinterest board is on my must-find list. When I remembered the large houndstooth stamp in the Autumn Pattern Pieces stamp set, this card almost made itself!

     I had a terrible time getting a good photo of this card because of the lousy, dark weather here in Montana today, but playing with this pattern was tons of fun! I drew a horizontal line in pencil with a ruler to keep my pattern straight, added some gold embossing, and embellished with the beautiful flowers from the Brushed Blooms stamp set.

     I hope you have the chance to check out PTI's fun challenges and giveaways this week!

Guiding Lights

     The Guiding Lights stamp set from Papertrey ink has some absolutely lovely images, and I was excited to try it out when it came in my latest PTI haul! My sister came over for a crafty play date, and we did our darndest to enjoy our first go with this set. Let's just say that our experience was one part fun and two parts frustration.

     I have never, ever had a bad experience with PTI, and I wouldn't say I did this time, but I will warn you that this set isn't for the faint of heart. I'm a fairly experienced stamper, but try as we might, getting the multiple layers of this set to line up reasonably well was nigh impossible. After stamping these lighthouses more than 10 times each, I finally got a reasonably passable combination for this Melissa Phillips inspired birthday card:

     Because PTI's dies are not framelits (as in you can't see your image through the center of the die), you must cut first and stamp second. Lining up a series of tiny images atop an equally tiny cut shape was absolutely maddening.

     Of course, with great frustration comes great ingenuity, so I had a moment of sheer joy when I realized I could create a die cutting "mask" on a clear window sheet and then use that to place my die in the proper position for stamping before cutting. This will eliminate half the difficulty, even if you still have to fiddle with lining up all those tiny pieces correctly as you stamp them.

     Practice makes perfect, so I practiced some more with another card and some Scene It elements from PTI's Petite Places line:

     The second go was a little easier. It only took me four tries to get a lighthouse I could live with. My stamp positioner worked much better when I could stamp onto paper first and use my die cutting mask to line up my dies. 

     The moral of the story is practice makes perfect in crafting, as in life!

My Favorite Occasions Catalog Product!

     Do you ever forget how many projects you can create using just dies? Guilty. I forget that these little gems have a life outside of just cutting out my stamped images. I fell in love with the Cups and Kettles die set in Stampin' Up's Occasions 2016 catalog at first glance and knew it had to be my first purchase. I loved the dies, but since I already own several tea and coffee themed stamp sets, I realized that this set would be useful all on its own.
    

     The first card was inspired by Melissa Phillips and uses just dies, a small sentiment from one of my other tea-themed sets, and a few little stamps from Papertrey Ink's Garden Variety set for the spines of the books. The paper was leftover from one of my favorite paper collections ever ... that has unfortunately become anonymous after living as a scrap in my box for years and years.

     The second card uses basically the same formula, with a background of resist paper that I left nearly unaltered. I added a stamped image to my kettle on this card with versamark ink and pounced gently with chalk. 

     I hope this post inspires you to comb through your die box in search of hidden treasures!