Set of Birthday Cards

Hey stampers, Anni here! 

Birthday cards are the cards I send out the most. So I am always short on them. I decided to make a set of simple birthday cards with My Favorite Things’ Diagonal Design. That is an amazing background stamp that unfortunately will be retired. It is on sale right now so run and grab one as long they are available.

I started by stamping the background on four pieces of watercolour cardstock. On two I stamped with Versamark and heat embossed the background in white and on the other two I stamped with a black pigment ink and heat embossed the pattern with a clear embossing powder.

To colour up the backgrounds I used (very old) ink sprays I found in my stash. But you could also use ink pads or watercolours. I sprayed the backgrounds heavily with the ink and water. I inked up the white one in a warm and the black ones with a cool colour scheme. 

While the background panels dried I worked on the sentiments. I went through my stash and looked for big sentiment dies. The ones I chose were Altenew’s Script Words 3, My Favorite Things’ Celebrate and Neat & Tangled’s Hooray Word Die.

For one of the cards I just chose a Happy Birthday from Lawn Fawn’s Happy Happy Happy and heat embossed it in white on black cardstock. 

To make the word die cut stand out more I added also a layer of vellum to most of the cards. The Hooray word die comes with a shadow, so no need to add a extra rectangle.

I also added a sentiment to go with the die cut. Mama Elephant’s Birthday Messages is just the perfect sampler for this need.

For the finishing touch I added some sequins to the cards in various colours.

So you see: fast and easy and I can add four birthday cards to much stash.
Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.

Anni

               

Father's Day Card

Hey stampers, Anni here swapping for Taheerah today!

Overhere in Germany last Thursday was Father's Day. My father a pensioner and he is always searching for exciting projects he can work on. At the moment (and through the year) he is gardening, especially a raised bed. So I thought Altenew's Garden Grow was the perfect set for a card for him.

I started by stamping the plant pot with the basil and the snail onto white cardstock in a light shade of brown. I chose this light ink because I wanted to do some no line coloring.

As my colouring medium I chose coloured pencil. These are my prefered medium for no line colouring as I find it makes it easier to the details.
For no line colouring it is important to make the shadows really dark and the lighter areas really light to define the shape.

When I finished up the colouring all there was left to do was to stamp the sentiment (this one is from Lawn Fawn's Happy Happy Happy and to assemble the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty day.
Anni

      

A Bowling Scene

Hi, it's Jenny here back in my normal Monday slot :)

I have been inspired by a couple of recent diorama style cards, one from MFT here and then Dawn at Wplus shared a video showing how to make a larger, skinny version here. 

I love a spot of papercraft engineering so I decided to make a bowling alley scene using the videos as a guide and the Sugar Pea designs stamp set called Spare Me.....

I adjusted the measurements so my card would fit in a standard UK C6 envelope and added two strips along the base to build the scene.

I stamped the images onto white card and coloured them with markers before cutting them out with scissors. I added a piece of patterned paper to the back wall and some basic shapes to represent the back area of the bowling lane.

The stamp set comes with some funky retro shapes which look great as signs so I added another strip of card for a ceiling so I could attach the "Strike up some fun" sentiment  to it.

I have used a discontinued alpha die from my stash for parts of the sentiment but there are small alphabets in store you could use instead such as the Bottlecap letters or alphabet stamps like Hollow Letters for the same effect.

Here's a top view to show the card strips inside the box.... I love the neat and compact this style of card is yet it's quite different from the normal too... just fold it sideways to flatten it for the envelope :)

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x