This is a card I made back in the winter for my local gift shop that I neglected to post to social media until now. I love the delicate details of this one! The flower bouquet is embossed—I think the set was from K & Company—and the lattice paper is from Stampin’ Up (the Delightfully Detailed Laser-Cut Specialty Paper, available only until June 4 or until supplies last: https://www.stampinup.com/ecweb/product/146907/delightfully-detailed-laser-cut-specialty-paper), and I inked the lattice and background slightly with Distress Ink as well. The beautiful ribbon is Stampin’ Up’s Blushing Bride color, and the ink I used on the sentiment is also from SU.
Welcome to another post for Amy K’s Inkin’ Krew Blog Hop for Tuesday, January 8! This month we are featuring the theme of love with Stampin’ Up products. I’m making wedding and anniversary cards for my local gift shop right now (along with other themes and random custom orders), so I was very excited to join this hop!
For several days now, I thought I knew what I was going to create for this blog. In the end, I did stick to my original (barely fleshed-out) idea, but did I ever find ways to complicate it. (I always do.) I definitely should have started on it earlier. But I had craft room organization on my mind this week and I got to it when I got to it.
I was able to use several current SU products as well as a couple of retired products and ones from other companies (oops!). The focal point of the card is the bride stamp from the “Wonderful Moments” stamp set, set off by a lace oval from the Delightfully Detailed Laser-Cut Specialty Paper pack and a background of Petal Promenade DSP.
The laser-cut paper is vanilla on one side and white on the other. Since my card base was white and the bride’s dress would be too, I chose to use the vanilla side of the lace oval. And then I decided it needed something else. It felt too plain and too neutral. I kept “seeing” pink with this stamp and card, but the last two wedding cards I created had pink hues in them, so I tried to use other colors.
I have to keep trying. I did manage to sneak in an orange and a dark purple…but there’s still pink. So when I was looking at the oval and trying out colors in my head, I started sponging Bundled Sage Distress ink onto it, thinking winter colors. But then I picked up Tattered Rose and sponged it on too. (Evidently those colors should have gone on in the reverse order.) I added a second layer and different sponging before I was done. And then I got an idea, when I realized that the ink was drying slowly enough to get onto my hand as I held the card. (This is subconscious Pinterest at work in my brain, I think. Lol!)
One of the retired products in my stash that I need to use more of is our Iridescent Ice Stampin’ Emboss Powder. I’ve only used it in small bits until now…but I remembered seeing others do a whole-scene kind of treatment with it. I wasn’t even entirely sure I remembered how this product worked since I bought it late in the game, but the paper was definitely ready to be treated – it was still inky. My friend E assured me that I could indeed use Distress inks for embossing. So I got out my catch-all tray and my coffee filter and proceeded to pour the Iridescent Ice powder overtop (hoping I was making the right decision and not ruining a lovely piece of paper) and then heat embossed it, as the label suggested, three times before I finally saw the powder changing and understood what it was going to look like or do.
Turns out I love this look. It reminds me of our Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer Paper except it’s not as thick and has slightly different colors. I’ll have to try this technique again sometime. I also appreciate how the pink and green sponged inks are still coming through the translucentness of the embossing powder. It’s faint, but it works.
With the lace oval paper finished, I turned my attention to the bride stamp. I chose Archival Basic Gray ink because it felt like black would be too harsh and bold against the soft oval. I had to stamp the bride several times with my stamp platform because it was the first time I’d used the stamp and I hadn’t prepared it even though I know better. So my outline got a little thicker than I’d intended.
After she was stamped, I watercolored the bride’s hair, skin, bow, and flowers with watercolor pencils and used an AquaPainter on those places afterward. For the dress, I decided to experiment with some Nuvo Crystal Drops (Ivory Seashell color) new to my stash. Since that is also translucent, I was hoping it would soften the lines of the dress if I covered them with the liquid. I later went back over the dress again, using a paintbrush to smooth out the Drops on the paper. I also took Wink of Stella to the bride’s bouquet (though I erred first and grabbed my White instead of my Clear. Once it dried, I realized what I had done and went back over the bouquet with Clear as well.) It sparkles more in person than in the photo.
So I had one finished oval and one watercolored, Nuvoed bride. I wasn’t sure how to treat the background behind her. In my mind I had seen her on white, but that seemed far too plain now. I thought of putting a watercolor pencil down as a background but couldn’t settle on which color. Blue for sky? (So she’s out in the open, looking at nothing?) Or some kind of background stamp to imitate wallpaper or wood planks? I then decided to think about the Graceful Glass vellum and hit upon an idea I’ll use at a later date, before the vellum led me to looking through my current DSP. I ended up fussy-cutting around her and placing her on patterned paper so I wouldn’t have to mask her for a background stamp or risk ruining something.
The paper I chose to use feels most like a sunset in front of my bride, and it even matched the flowers, hair, and bow I had colored before viewing this paper pack. (That actually happens to me a lot!) Because that was my best background option thus far, I cut (and then recut, due to first error) a notecard/A1 size of paper where the jagged stripe in the paper best flowed beside her dress and body posture. Once I had the background paper glued to the notecard card base, I played with the placement of my bride, attempting to center her and play off the “sunset stripe” to its best advantage while trying to cover the bottom of the dress with the sentiment I intended on using. (Many thanks to patient E for this stage, who was with me on video chat while I created the card!)
Something then made me think about the Rose Metallic Thread I had stored with my baker’s twine, and I decided to do a bow of some sort. I’m not very good at bows with delicate threads yet. I ended up laying ATG tape on the back of the sentiment and looping it around and sticking to the tape however it looked the best to me.
The gold-and-white “Best Wishes” sentiment came from a resist coloring pack from another maker. I just left it as is, since I had enough color going on already. It fit with the “brown” tones of the card anyway. The gold on the sentiment appears to have been embossed, though it came that way in the pack and I merely cut it out. I popped up the sentiment with its new metallic loops with Stampin’ Dimensionals foam dots, placing it right above the hollow circles at the bottom of the oval.
The last touch on the front of the card was the tiny little mini pearls I used on the buttons of her bridal dress. I had SU’s white mini pearls from the Notes of Kindness card kit on her dress originally but later changed to even smaller ones from Recollections.
The inside of the card has been kept simple to be size-appropriate for the notecard and also to leave room for the sender to write. I used the retired Petite Pairs stamp set with its “for the new Mr. and Mrs.” sentiment on a bit of the Petal Promenade DSP (from the first piece I’d cut the wrong direction by accident), the current Fresh Fig ink pad, and the gorgeous Stitched Labels Framelits Dies. And then I added two more mini Recollections pearls on the sides of the inside tag. 🙂 (Side note: the Petal Promenade DSP pack is one of my favorite things in this catalog. The papers are just so beautiful!)
If I had set out to create this exact card, even with all the detail, it wouldn’t have taken me very long. But creating from scratch and using trial-and-error means that sometimes happy accidents have to happen to lead the creator to the next step, which later seems so obvious. 🙂 I’m really quite happy with this card now, but there were moments when I wondered where I was going with it. Maybe you’ll find even faster ways to recreate this card. I’d love to see what you come up with! I think this card could be used for a bridal shower, a wedding card for the couple, or an anniversary card. It just depends on which sentiments we use.
Below are the current Stampin’ Up products I used on this card. If you need any of the supplies, just click on the thumbnail to go to my store or visit this link. I’d be happy to become your demonstrator! Sale-a-Bration (from now until March 31) is the best time of the year to stock up on products and earn others for free! Please use code JJBCPS4W for a free gift when you shop with me! (You can continue with the hop participants below the thumbnails.)
Thanks for stopping by my blog! To continue with the hop, see what Karen Finkle created by clicking on the Next button or visiting her link below. To go back to see Sue Prather’s card, click Previous or her link above mine. See you next time!
Thank you for joining me once again on my blog! I have another sympathy card to share today, but I do have other themes coming up soon. I just couldn’t wait to use Stampin’ Up’s Delightfully Detailed Laser-Cut Specialty Paper, and it was one of the first things I ordered from the annual catalog. I kept this sympathy card simple partially because it was for a masculine friend and also because I didn’t want to cover up the beautiful paper.
The Delightfully Detailed Laser-Cut Specialty Paper from Stampin’ Up has eight sheets in the pack, four each of two designs. One design is a full 12×12 of gorgeous delicate flowers, and the other design has several borders and six card fronts that can easily be cut apart. Some of the latter are backgrounds, like the one I used here, and others are shaped pieces like circles or an oval or borders. As a bonus, the papers are vanilla on one side and white on the other–perfect for any color scheme! I’m looking forward to playing with the rest of the patterns as well.
I first took a cream card base and covered the front with some retired Mellow Moss cardstock from Stampin’ Up. I love vintage, muted colors like this in general, and they are appropriate for a lot of what I create, like sympathy cards.
Then I simply cut apart one of the card front sections of the laser-cut paper and adhered it to the Mellow Moss cardstock with touches of Tombow Multi Glue, displaying the vanilla side. I chose the vines background on purpose because it was my friend’s grandfather who had passed and vines and trees always remind me of genealogy, another favorite hobby of mine.
While wrestling with what I wanted to create for this card, I saw a filigree Spellbinders tree on my die wall and thought it just might do the trick and bring the theme together. Plus the size worked well.
Because both the paper and the tree are delicate-looking, I needed a divider between the two so the tree didn’t visually disappear. The square 3×3 piece I used was from a scrap pack I bought years ago, but it was perfect. It’s slightly textured as well, which just adds to the look. And the tree fits just right on top. It’s not quite the same color as the specialty paper, but I deliberately used both cream and white throughout the card so it wouldn’t look odd.
We all get into little habits with what and how we craft, and I’m just now remembering that I had intended to put brads vertically in the corners of my cream diagonal piece. That idea left once I saw how far the tree extended – but now I see that I could have put them horizontally instead. However, it’s probably just as well that I didn’t fall into my same rut anyway. 🙂
Instead, to keep it simple, since it was a masculine card and all, I merely tied a knot in a piece of Very Vanilla/Copper 1/8″ ribbon from the Tea Room Ribbon Combo Pack from SU and stuck it onto the tree trunk with a tiny Bling Zot.
The scripture piece underneath the tree was cut from a storebought card that was sent through the mail–I reuse things like that sometimes if they seem appropriate and unique. And if I can cut them straight, it’s kind of like using a sticker anyway. 🙂 This one I popped up with foam dots and used as a bottom border.
I confess, I made this card over several weeks around other things calling my name, so by the time I got to the inside, it was easiest to scrounge around in my drawer of sentiments that I keep full for when I’m short on time or ideas. A generous crafty friend once die-cut a few of the “Thinking of You” pieces for me and I’d not yet used any. The green-and-white piece matched well enough to fit this card, so I was happy to finally use one. On the inside left I placed a scripture sticker written in silver. The inside overall is simpler than I like, but it was better to have it done and mailed than lingering. It left me space to write a heartfelt message anyway, and that’s really more important.
Hope you’ve enjoyed my little offering today and that it’s inspired you to create something lovely too. If I can help you order something from Stampin’ Up, feel free to contact me or look me up on the Stampin’ Up Demonstrator Directory. You can also search for my name and state (Ohio) under Find a Demonstrator. Thanks for being here!
ConstantlyCreating.Me 