SAB – ConstantlyCreating.Me

Made with Love and Sale-a-Bration Papers for Stamp with Amy K’s Tuesday Team Blog Hop

A quick-and-easy card using stamps, ink, paper, and a Sale-a-Bration item…all about love and friendship.

Hello at long last, readers! I haven’t been able to join the last several team blog hops because of an increase in the busyness of my schedule (which means I’m overbooked), but I really wanted to get back to participating, so here I am regardless. 🙂 It’s nice to be back! I’ve definitely been missing my cardmaking (and I’m still surprised by that, being a scrapbooker first and foremost…for years. LOL).

Our blog hop today is all about the theme of love. When I started looking at the “new things” I could share with you, I pulled out my Sale-a-Bration Designer Series Papers and just couldn’t put them away! I do love me some good paper. 🙂 So I came up with something quick and easy to showcase the lovely paper designs and specialty papers that Stampin’ Up gave us. Of course, I couldn’t use them all, so I’ll have to post about those later. 😉

For my card today, I’m using two new stamp sets, Garden Wishes (154408) and Punch Party (155300); two patterns of DSP from one sheet of Paper Blooms SAB DDP papers (155222); and one color of the Hydrangea Hill Mercury Glass Designer Acetate (154574). I used the largest cards in the Assorted Memories and More Cards and Envelopes pack (149710) as my card base. It uses the retired Whisper White color. (If you haven’t yet heard, the mill that made our Whisper White had to close down because of Covid, so we had to find a supplier who could make something similar. Our new white color is called Basic White…but I don’t have any of it yet myself. Supposedly it is a brighter white than the retired one.)

Did you know that you can use either side of the Mercury glass acetate? The back side is silver, and that’s what ended up going onto my card, since I deviated a little from my original plan. (Be sure to take off the plastic protective covering from the Mercury glass sheets after you order yours!) I cut the pink color of the Hydrangea Hill Mercury Glass for the left side block and later flipped it. I also started out with a 2” strip but ended up trimming off a half inch before I was done, for better proportions on the card.

I had also originally chosen two different papers from the same paper pack, but a friend and I decided that we liked the pink stripes better rather than both flowers on the card front (that’s why I flipped the Mercury glass to silver—-too much pink!). I cut and placed the stripes 2/3 of the way down the base and then fitted the top floral piece next to the other two already in place.

Side note here. I had intending on entering the hashtag simplestamping, as their current monthly challenge only allows for stamps, ink, paper, and any item from Sale-a-bration; therefore, I did not add a ribbon across the middle or dies for the sentiment (although I was sorely tempted to. I’ll save that challenge for later since I used one of the adorable Heart Charms (154282) inside my Seaside Spray cardstock heart for this card.

After affixing my three strips of paper or acetate onto my card, I then stamped the open heart from the Punch Party Host set in Night of Navy ink onto the Seaside Spray cardstock and fussy-cut around its edges, using the border as my guide. Then I glued one of the silver Heart Charms onto the middle. (By the way, these charms make great shamrocks and general flowers when several points are positioned toward the center).

For the banner, I stamped the “Made with Love for a True Friend” sentiment from Garden Wishes onto a piece of Whisper White in Night of Navy ink. Then I took my little Stampin’ Up guillotine cutter (something only demos and new recruits could get at the time) and sliced off the edges toward the sentiment until the space was about even on both sides above and below the sentiment. Then I cut up toward the middle and angled inward from the sides to make a long, narrow flag. Sometimes I like that style. It seemed to fit this card. After that, using my fingers, I just curled the banner a couple of different ways to give it a flowing, waving look. I tucked one end under the heart that I hadn’t glued down yet and added a little glue under the part of the banner resting on the card.

That’s it! Quick, easy, simple. I had planned on breaking up that same sentiment to fit inside the open heart, but I had trouble getting everything lined up and straight—twice. I decided that that process certainly would not be a quick and easy card. (Aren’t you lucky?) 😆 I’ll continue to work on that and see if time #3 will finally be the one that works out.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! Be sure to visit my other team members below for their awesome cards! You can use either the Previous and Next buttons or click on the individual links themselves. I’ll try not to be too scarce again. 🙂

Karen Ksenzakovic: https://wp.me/paaNf4-3OO
Tara Carpenter: https://tarabethstamps.blogspot.com/2021/01/stampin-up-floating-fluttering-happy.html
Jaimie Babarczy: https://wp.me/p79UhD-4E3
Mary Deatherage: https://wp.me/p5snyt-gmE
Sue Prather: https://wp.me/p5yitZ-2mX
Leslie Larkin: https://leslielarkin.com/lots-of-heart-bundle/
Connie Troyer: https://wp.me/p8xvI6-zg
Donna Leonard: http://stampdabbles.com/?p=3890
Karen Finkle: https://karenscardkorner.blogspot.com/2021/01/stampin-up-forever-blossoms.html
Akiko Sudano: https://wp.me/paOv8E-2gS
Jillian Good: http://dyedwith.love/?p=54
Amy Koenders: https://wp.me/p2SFwf-lQ8

Birthday/Celebration and Thinking of You Cards with the Sale-a-Bration Kerchief Card Kit for Stamp with Amy K’s Sunday Blog Hop

Birthday and Thinking of You cards made with the Kerchief Card Kit available for free only during Sale-a-Bration with Stampin’ Up!

Thanks for joining me on my blog today! I have to start off with an apology and a correction; this blog post is for Amy’s Tuesday Blog Hop, not Sunday’s. I was thinking of the day I had to post the link! And now I can’t change it…. More proof that I’m not perfect, I suppose. 🙂

So, for the Tuesday Blog Hop, which is going with a birthday theme this month, I decided to make up the Kerchief Card Kit, which is available as a Sale-a-Bration reward for spending $50 before tax and shipping. It had been backordered, but I got it in on Saturday and sat right down to put them together. I’m still making cards for sale for my local gift shop in Amish Country, so this set is perfect to do up for them. I plan on ordering a second kit and selling them in sets of five and some singles, using our Acetate Boxes and some card jackets.

I decided to go with this kit for the birthday blog hop because of the included “Celebrate Today” sentiments, planned for the Coastal Cabana rose cards. (The Poppy Parade kerchief cards have “Thinking of You” sentiments.) I adore the blue cards (and its gold foil-dotted vellum!) because of the colors and style, and the red cards were simple and fun to put together as well (also with vellum, but plain). I also really liked the thicker twine included in the kit, and I hope I see more of it in the future. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to note that there is no stamp or ink spot in the set; the sentiments are already printed and included as die-cuts, ready to be added to the cards. It made the work go much faster—and yet still allows me creativity to add whichever sentiments I see fit for the insides of the cards.

The picture above only shows four of the eight cards in the A2-sized kit because I made two of each of the cards shown. On the blue Coastal Cabana cards, I popped up the rose and sentiment on two of them and left the other two roses flat; I also put two bows up and away at the right and two at the lower left bottom, for variation.

I changed the placement of the gold leaves on the Poppy Parade cards, two being centered and two being placed at a diagonal the way the kit shows. I also changed the location of the bow, not placing them under the tag as in the instructions. I actually even put the bow on top of one of the tags, which is not reflected here.

I finished the cards by adding sequins from the retired Love Blossoms Kit, as I thought the gold, white, and Blushing Bride colors matched well.

When I considered sentiments for the insides of the cards and looked through my current stamp sets, I found four that will work nicely for wedding or anniversary, general celebrations, or celebrating a special person or a special day that may or may not be love relate. Though they’re not stamped on the cards yet, I plan on using “Be strong, be happy, be you” from Rooted in Nature; “Wishing you the best on your special day” from the Perennial Birthday set; “Hoping you experience love and joy today, tomorrow, and always” from the Last a Lifetime set in the Mini catalog; and “Here’s to always finding joy in one another’s laughter, warmth in one another’s embrace, and love in one another’s lives” from Path of Petals. I think the “celebrate today” cards could also be used as graduation, retirement or promotion, even the birth of a baby or baby shower, and more occasions as well, if you didn’t feel the need to use the standard icons of the event. They would work fine as blank cards too—celebrating life or spring or no reason whatsoever!

Free with your purchase, the kit is a good investment. Quick to make up and easy to have a few cards on hand or to give as gifts, it’s one that will appeal to many (if for convenience’s sake if nothing else!), and the cards are lovely to boot. They’re also very easy to adapt to other styles or make into alternate designs. The envelopes are all lined with either Balmy Blue or Petal Pink and make a nice “wow” moment when they’re opened as well.

I’ll leave you with a close-up of my favorite card in the stack. 🙂 Please be sure to scroll down and “hop” through the rest of our list of participants so you can see the special birthday cards they created. We have a fantastic, creative team! If you are needing Stampin’ Up supplies, catalogs, or a consultant, I’m happy to help you out with any. You can use host code WAA2PGYR until February 16 when you check out. Thanks again for stopping by!

Jaimie Babarczy – https://wp.me/p79UhD-3B4
Connie Troyer – You are here!
Akiko Sudano – https://wp.me/paOv8E-Qx
Mary Deatherage – https://wp.me/p5snyt-btg
Karen Ksenzakovic – https://wp.me/paaNf4-1DA
Leslie Larkin – https://leslielarkin.com/birthday-with-the-peaceful-moments-bundle/
Sue Prather – https://wp.me/p5yitZ-1KD
Julie Johnston – https://wp.me/p8SzmQ-2hu
Karen Finkle – https://karenscardkorner.blogspot.com/2020/02/stampin-up-young-at-heart-for-amys.html
Amy Koenders – https://wp.me/p2SFwf-iuS

Dreaming of Butterflies

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve written. Still trying to get into a rhythm of making, photoing, and then posting. Thanks to technology and a busy schedule, there is usually a breakdown before the “posting” part. I’m working on it.

It seems the thing I do best is blog when I’ve woken up in the middle of the night. But I’m often most creative at night or when I should be sleeping, so I suppose it all works out. Tonight was yet another one of those. Three hours of sleep after three hours of editing and, boom, I’m awake again. So I got up and made a card. (And now I’m posting because the picture is still on my phone.)

I had some free time last week, so I took a few minutes to do some rearranging and organizing in my craft room. My poor pegboard spinner is someday going to come crashing down from all the weight hanging off it. To alleviate a bit of its suffering, I decided to move my dry decoupage and peel-offs to a new three-drawer Sterilite storage container I got this summer. And, as usual, when I start organizing stuff, I find things to play with and get all distracted. I was good about setting them aside this time, so they were waiting for me on my desk when I woke up early and wandered in.

What I found then were some strangely colored butterflies, a page of white grid peel-offs, and a gold sheet of beautiful butterfly and flower peel-offs from StickerKing. I have way too many butterflies, so I’m always looking for a way to use them up. On my desk, unrelated to this card forming in my head, was a piece of orange, flowery paper that I hadn’t put away. This morning they all fell into the same card, which turned out about halfway like I’d imagined. Designs always morph into something I haven’t intended.

I pulled the light green color in the butterflies into my card base by using Stampin’ Up’s Certainly Celery cardstock (very retired). The orange flowery (maybe K and Co?) paper decided to become the background mat. I positioned three of the white grid peel-offs on top of it because they had reminded me of latticework initially.

At this point everything was glued down. And then I couldn’t decide where to put the butterflies or how many to use. I thought I’d had it figured out, but then I didn’t like it. The three big ones felt too crowded and overwhelming on the paper (the card is only an A2 – 4.25 x 5.5), but we’re generally supposed to use the “rule of three” in triangles when we create so it’s more pleasing to the eye. I turned the base and the attached paper every other direction looking for something that felt right. I needed a place to put a sentiment too. I ended up tearing off the orange paper and grids (gently) so I could flip the direction of the card opening. Then I placed the punched sentiment piece onto the third grid and planned to add a smaller gold butterfly above it to use that “rule of three” technique.

I really didn’t have a sentiment in mind when I first started mentally creating this card, but I have a custom order for thank-you cards to do soon, so I figured if she liked this one, I could add it to her pile; otherwise it’ll go on the Etsy shop unless I need to use it sooner than that. 🙂

I added a tiny rhinestone gem underneath the words “Thank You” because I didn’t like the white space. The rhinestone is from CTMH (“Bitty Sparkles”) and they are probably my all-time favorite gem. They’re just so delicate and pretty. The “Thank You” stamp is from the “What I Love” Sale-a-bration set from Stampin’ Up (now retired). And I used Certainly Celery ink that matched the card base.

By the time I got to the inside, I was getting tired and lazy, so I didn’t feel like hunting down and cutting up a whole sheet of paper. I found a white scrap on my desk that was almost big enough to become the part you write your message on. Coupled with the leftover orange flowery paper from the front (which I’d intended for a different card front), the white scrap was now the perfect size. Then another sentiment popped into my head – “You raise kindness to an art” from SU’s “Vintage Vogue” set (retired) – and it didn’t take long to find it and stamp it on the inside. Certainly Celery ink again. Another gold butterfly on the inside and an identifying stamp on the back completed the card.

Now that I’ve been creative AND blogged, it’s time to sleep again. Hope you like this little card offering for today. It’s just something quirky out of my own brain. Have a wonderful day!
Connie

Masculine mover thank-you card 4

Card 4 in my series of five masculine thank-you cards for movers.

Continuing in my set of five masculine thank-you cards (to be sent to people who helped my client move), this “Card 4” is another one where I couldn’t get the brown-and-white DCWV “key” paper to work with the plaid and metallic silver-toned base. The colors just weren’t compatible enough. But I thought it would still be simple and masculine, two other requirements for the order, so I continued.

At this point in the order, it was just about keeping things consistent (like the gold embossing powder)…and I’d already used the plaid once on a different card anyway (in my “Card 1” post here). This section was the remnant of the 6×6 piece. I like to use up my scraps when I can to keep my scraps box under control, so there wasn’t much question as to whether I’d use it now. (It was “either use it now” or throw it on the desk to be used soon, since I couldn’t really take the time to look up which Stampin’ Up paper pack I’d taken it from. The scraps box wasn’t an option. I’m fussy about my SU paper and always put the scraps back with their pads since I have matching inks and embellishments in my supplies.)

I wish I knew what company this base is from. I was given a number of thick metallic bases in a craft swap, and they’ve been great to work with. They feel thicker than the usual Stampin’ Up cardstock I typically use for my bases (those are an 80-lb card weight, I think). A good base is key to the card not falling over or flattening instead of standing up.

The mechanics of how I did this card are simple. I’ve already mailed the cards, so I’m not sure of the precise measurements of the individual pieces, but I think the remnant plaid piece is just over 2 inches. I believe the squarish one in the middle was the back side of the grey plaid paper I used in “Card 1” (K and Company). I already had a chunk cut out of it for the other card, so one side had already been shortened. I measured where I wanted it to fall on one of the strips of the yellow-and-grey piece and lopped off the other side with my Fiskars trimmer.

(Confession: I don’t do a lot of measuring or precutting. It’s more annoying to store the paper as pieces get cut out of it, but I’m always afraid of limiting myself to certain sizes or creativity if I “only” have so much of something because I’ve cut it down. I do both scrapbooking and cards, so I can be pretty random in my sizing of card fronts, mats, and journaling boxes. Usually I just take the large piece of paper and a pencil straight to my project and mark where I want to cut it for that specific purpose and then file the rest away to use later. I probably ought to rethink this as I try to streamline my process for card making, since precut pieces would make it faster, but I’ve been loathe to change.)

Once I had the grey square piece cut, I took my anti-static bag to the front (I remembered!) to prepare it for heat embossing. I already had my embossing tray, coffee filter, embossing powder, and heat gun out (and just typing that sentence shows why it’s easier to do multiple cards with the same supplies at once), so I stamped the thank-you stamp (“One Big Meaning,” Stampin’ Up, current) with my VersaMark pad, pressed it onto the grey piece (don’t wiggle it!), sprinkled it with the gold embossing powder (Hampton Arts), and took my (very old) Marvy Uchida heat gun to it. (See this post about why I use a coffee filter with my embossing powder.)

It actually turned out well! Though I am beginning to wonder whether my powder is too old – or maybe it’s just the brand. I don’t think my Stampin’ Up powders dimple like that, but they’re newer. And I don’t heat emboss all that much, so I haven’t really compared it to my others yet. The dimpled look is fine for these masculine cards and during other times as well, but occasionally I do want a smoother look, which seems possible with other powders. Or companies. This is something I need to research. (If anybody has any knowledge or tips, feel free to leave me a comment!) After I glued the square piece onto the plaid one with my ATG gun, I repeated the embossing process with the “for your kindness” stamp (“So Very Much, Stampin’ Up SAB set, retired). Then I sat back and took a look at it to see if the card “needed” anything else.

It wasn’t very long before the empty spaces in the square bugged me. This is why I have trouble doing simple cards. I apparently despise “white space.” My husband is forever telling me to leave things alone and not fill every little area. I’m not very good at that. But sometimes something actually needs to be filled and looks better once it is. I think that’s the case with this one. It would have been fine on its own, but the little added touches make it more special. I used a gold peel-off from Dazzles for the top swoosh and heart doodads – not sure which exact one, since I’m still not near my supplies as I write this. (I’ve figured out how to blog ahead of time and schedule posts!) After I was done with the center, I adhered my Crushed Curry Enamel Dots (Stampin’ Up, retired) at the edges of the plaid piece. I probably could have left those off entirely, but I had pulled them when I was looking for something to finish off the grey square, so they were in front of me. And I don’t “leave well enough alone” very well either. 🙂

I was pleased with how this one turned out. It fit the requirements and didn’t take overly long.

Thanks for stopping by!

Masculine mover thank-you cards (with card 1)

Well, I’ve fallen a bit behind. A bit. Yeah. Some days I feel like I live my life in the rearview mirror, always chasing my tail and trying to catch the front of the train instead of the back. (I’m sure that’s far too many cliches for one blog post, but it’s the middle of the night and I’m deliberately ignoring editorial preferences.)

So what have I been doing? In a proverbial nutshell, trying to keep up with my health (some days are better than others), traveling to West Virginia, Arkansas, and Georgia and all places in between for family concerns, doing some editorial work, and finishing a very large custom card order for masculine love cards, one shabby chic Mother’s Day card order, a couple of birthday cards, and some grad cards. Some of those cards are on my new Instagram account (AnneGirl77). I’ve managed to keep up with that somehow. Part of my blogging delay was because I needed pics to be able to post. There is always an order to things! The rest of it was because I just had no more time. But I’m back now – at least for tonight, since I fell asleep uncharacteristically early and am now awake. 😛

Tonight’s post is about another custom card order that is in the mail: five masculine thank-you cards for recipients who helped the sender move. I detail my initial process and then focus on the first card at the bottom.

Ask any cardmaker: masculine cards are challenging. Floral, pretty, girly prints are easy to work with; there’s masses of material out there and a lot of designers are women, so they create what appeals to them. (I’m thankful for those who deliberately go in another direction for more options.) So what do we have available for masculine cards? Plaids. Varying fonts. Gender-neutral items. Solids. Strong colors. Bold prints. Fishing or hunting. Cars, bikes, trucks, tractors, all manner of machine… Mustaches. Video games or comp sci/techs stuff. Math…? Okay, that may be stretching it. But you see what I mean. It’s not easy to come up with a lot of variety. And I was supposed to find something for movers. I picked keys, thinking house, and my guy go-to, plaids. Maybe plaids aren’t a normal “guy go-to” but I grew up buying “real” flannels for my dad every other year, so for me, it’s a given.

I’ll confess, I was really struggling with these cards. Sometimes the simplest ones are the hardest. The thank-you cards that fell together the best were the plaids, which had nothing to do with moving – but the paper had landed on my desk and I couldn’t stop looking at it. And I had a design in my head I wanted to do with the DCWV key paper, but I couldn’t get the sizing to work right with the large stamp I wanted to try (which had been approved by the sender). I also wanted to make them nice and had to make the sentiment show up on the matching darker paper, so heat embossing seemed the way to go. One challenge after another.

I finally conceded that the sizing just wasn’t working with the usual A2 card base, so I switched to another (smaller) thank-you sentiment for half of them and then grabbed a couple of premade cream 5×7 card bases for the bigger sentiment just so I would make some progress.

I find I create cards much faster and easier when I’m throwing random bits around – things that happen to be laying on my desk that I need to put away…or I’ll look up at my pegboard spinner and focus on some item hanging there that’s never been a focus before and I suddenly know exactly what I want to use it for. Sometimes when I’m trying to feel my way around a vague idea, I find myself pulling out papers and fun embellishments that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. It’s like a stress relief…or maybe just a perfect stalling technique. But somehow all that creative “mess” often turns into a card, and usually rather quickly once it’s in front of me.

I’d already pulled five A2 (4.25″ x 5.5″) card bases for the new order. When I was thinking through this key paper/mover problem, I was cleaning up my desk and floor from the love stuff – I work out mental problems best by cleaning – and I stumbled upon that yellow/grey plaid paper (Stampin’ Up brand). I had one 6×6 sheet of it because I had no idea which paper pack I’d pulled it from besides “Christmas.” But it matched one of those card bases perfectly, which isn’t easy to do when you’re not using coordinating products, so I had to either use it or set them both aside for another day, another card. And I really don’t need anything else sitting out to use “later” (I already have another 10-15 cards in pieces that I never got to make for the love order before I ran out of numbers).

So using it was a given. And then I sat there and stared at it. The key paper (brown/gold) didn’t match. Nothing else matched. How could I do both browns and greys and make it look purposeful? Ugh. I ended up matting the paper with a random lightweight black piece that was also on my desk and went the gold/grey route instead of browns.

The goal was to keep the cards flat (so they would be easily mailable and not cost extra postage) and simple (because simple is the preference of this sender and, well, they’re for a bunch of guys who aren’t going to care anyway). I finally reconciled myself to using the smaller sentiment, and then it was just a matter of filling the space left over. That’s where the rummaging bit comes in. I knew I had some key embellishments, so I started digging in my “fun” drawers. But I needed them to stay flattish. It turned out that the Tim Holtz grungeboard keys worked best for the requirements, though I’d need to change the color of them. I didn’t want to use the only two I had on one card, so I settled for a keyhole plate as a companion piece to the smallest key and grabbed some Distress Inks to dirty them up a bit, as the original grungeboard color was too light to match.

I’m still pretty new to working with the Distress Inks even though they’ve been around awhile. I only have a handful of colors and half of those are borrowed. I really wasn’t sure what to do with them besides the standard ink-it-up-and-stamp. Enter E, one of my crafty friends who often works at the same time. We’ve spent hours sending chats and pics back and forth for feedback as we craft. She’s an awesome resource on things I’ve been too afraid to try, so she was my first obvious stop. (If she hadn’t been awake, I would have hit YouTube.)

She gave me a few instructions, so I gulped and tried to do what she said. Got out a little cup of water and a paintbrush beside the two colors I chose (Iced Spruce and Black Soot) and hesitantly started trying to combine them on top of the grungeboard – and the edges, later. I’m not altogether sure I did it the way I was supposed to, and I went back once after it was half dry and added more, but I like the result. And then I bounced over to do some editing while I waited for it to dry fully. I was still thinking through the rest of those thank-you cards.

After the key/plate set was done, the rest was easy. Candy brad bases, pushed through the paper to hold the sentiments (Stampin’ Up, retired), Dark Chocolate Liquid Pearls (Ranger), double-sided matching paper behind the keyhole (K and Company), and gold embossing powder (Hampton Arts) for the sentiments. I thought about running a ribbon behind everything to tie it together but didn’t like the placement of the key with it, and I worried that it would make things look too congested.

I’d found a miscellaneous round raw chipboard frame (possibly Colorbok?) while I was digging in my embellishments that fit the smaller sentiment perfectly. I covered it with gold metallic paper from DCWV…and I used the flip side of the keyhole paper from K and Company behind the frame and for the small banner that held the second part of the sentiment, “for your kindness” (also previously approved). Plaid again, of course – it matched.

Both sentiments are from Stampin’ Up (“One Big Meaning,” current, and “So Very Much,” SAB set, retired). I had the perfect ribbon that reminded me of a chain and it even matched – the idea came to me as I was doing the dishes. No idea who makes it, but I love it. I had to pop up the key a bit with a 3D foam dot because of the ribbon (that I also had to cut to lay flat).

So that was it. After a lot of mental agony, the first one was done. Here you go. 🙂 The others will come in successive blog posts since I’m sure this one is already too long. (I did say I wasn’t editing, right?)