Up, Up, and Away Graduation Surprise

Hi, friends! Today I want to share a card I made for a wonderful former piano student of mine who graduated this year. Because this young woman is extra special, she needed an extra special card! I have been wanting to do a tunnel card for a long time, so I set out to find a tutorial on YouTube. Why reinvent the wheel after all? I found a great tutorial from Heidi Smith which details the construction of this card. Heidi presents the dimensions in centimeters, so read on for the conversion to inches!

I used my Up, Up and Away stamp set from Papertrey Ink, along with some scraps of Stampin' Up paper I had left over from Sale-a-Bration in 2017. These cute hot air balloons fit the theme of this card so well! (Stampin' Up also has a great hot air balloon set called Lift Me Up, which could be used to create a similar effect.)

I used a standard A2 card base cut from Night of Navy cardstock (4 1/4" x 11" scored at 5 1/2" on the 11" side). The interior "tunnel" is created by scoring a second piece of Night of Navy cardstock cut to 4 1/4" x 11" and scored every 2 3/4". I die cut an oval "tunnel" by centering my die on the center score line, and then folded the paper in a mountain configuration ( _/\_ ) and adhered the far left and far right panels to the outer card base. Be sure to decorate the interior of your tunnel before assembly; I used a 5 1/2" piece of patterned paper scored at 2 3/4". The side panels were cut to 2 1/2" x 4" (coral layer) and 2 1/4" x 3 3/4" (clouds).

By adhering balloons both inside and outside this card interior, I created a dimensional effect. Some vellum clouds are fun additions too! 

I hope you'll check out Heidi's tutorial and try this fun card fold for yourself. A variety of scenes would be amazing: gardens, houses, critters, ocean scenes … the possibilities are endless!

Congrats on Your New Roost

Do you love the challenge of rummaging through your stamp stash to find a long-neglected set that you can pull out and breath fresh life into? Even though many blogs exist to promote current products, I find it just as enjoyable to pull out stamps I've loved a lot for a long time to try to create fresh ideas. After all, I chose these sets because I loved them, and I still do! 

One of these sets is the Hey, Chick set that Stampin' Up offered during their Sale-a-Bration promotion in 2017. I combined this set with some sentiments and images from my On the Farm set from Papertrey Ink to create this adorable project.

I stamped the bottom of my background with the checkerboard stamp from On the Farm, and then pulled out a chicken wire embossing folder and embossed the top part of my card panel. I cut long strips of patterned paper from my scrap box, layered them at a diagonal, and trimmed them off at the edges. I found a stamp set in my stash that looks like a stitched line and layered that on one of the strips to pull some more red into the design. I colored this cute chickee with Intense Pencils from Derwent. 

Of course this card needed a matching envelope, so I used some silhouette images from On the Farm to jazz up a plain vanilla one. I am thrilled with how this design turned out!

Kitties!!!

I am totally a cat person, so when I saw the set called I Knead You from My Favorite Things at Simon Says Stamp, it went on my birthday list right away! I actually made this project last fall, but I realized as I was going through photos on my computer that there are a lot of things I haven't shared here on my blog. Time has been short this year, but some of these are my very favorite projects of all time! I may stick a few of these projects in over the coming months when creating time is short.

I decided to make a set of cards using this set with some new stencils I got from Stampin' Up, along with their new (at the time) embossing paste. One of the stencils has a brick wall, and so I created some scene cards that remind me of coming home after a long day to see my own kitty sitting in the window waiting for me! Tinting the embossing paste with a few drops of red reinker created just the effect I was hoping for. 

As everyone who follows me knows, I ADORE scene cards and all things minature, so I had to insert some acetate "glass" behind my window die cuts to give these projects a little extra pizzazz. I am absolutely DYING remembering how much fun these were to create, and I think I may have to break these out again and create some more adorable kitties!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope these warm summer days have offered some opportunities for sunbathing for you as well!