Thinking of You – Winter Wishes – Simon Says Stamp January 2015 Card Kit Idea – Bo Bunny 6 x 6 Altitude Paper with Paper Smooches 9 Lives Cute Cat Stamp

I had a very quiet night at work the other night, so I started making another winter wishes card using the materials in the Simon Says Stamp January 2015 card kit. I started by cutting a card base from some of the gray cardstock included in the kit and folded it using the Martha Steward Bone Scorer.

Then I chose out some pieces. The initial idea was to have a strip of the purple on the left-hand side of the grey card stock then I built on there by adding a coordinating piece that has the same purple and snowflake pattern in a zig-zag chevron pattern design.

I first adhered the chevron pattern paper down on the right-hand side simply using a glue runner. I prefer the Scotch Advanced Tape Glider. I’ve got the large pink one and I love how easy it is to use and the fact that you can buy refills for it which makes it really good value for money because you don’t actually have to purchase the refills very often at all and they aren’t very expensive so you get a lot of bang for your buck.

Next I adhered the purple strip on the left-hand side and I really liked this but didn’t know where to go from there and I didn’t want to make another card with a tag design. I tried some of the postage stamps included in the kit but none of them looked good anywhere so they were put back on their sheet and put away. I went over the entire purple strip and the purple zigzags on the opposite pattern paper with the wink of stella clear glitter pen. I decided I wanted even more glitter so I added the clear glitter to a couple more random zigzags, but not many more.

Finally I decided to turn the card horizontal. I stamped out the nine lives cute cat from the Paper Smooches 9 Lives Stamp Set onto some of the Authentique Classic Beauty grey pattern paper that is from the Simon Says Stamp March 2015 Card Kit, which has been my favourite kit so far. I fussy cut the cat out and sat him on the border line between the two pattern papers. And then I used the Tim Holtz Distress inks in the Seedless Preserve and Peacock Feathers hues to stamp some love hearts and snow flakes from the Simon Says Stamp Hand Lettered Winter Wishes stamp set that is included in the Simon Says Stamp January 2015 Card Kit. I also stamped the sentiment ‘winter wishes’ using the white Simon Says Stamp ink on the bottom purple banner. After I had the snow flakes and love hearts on and dry, I went over the hearts and dots on the snow flakes with the stickles diamond glitter glue. I don’t know why but I wanted this card to really shine and sparkle!

The Simon Says Stamp white ink looked really terrible on the pattern paper when it dried and it was a horrible light pink and so I thought the best way to fix that was to go over the ink with white paint. I completed these next steps at home as I didn’t have the materials at work to do so. Going over the winter wishes sentiment in white acrylic paint made the white a lot crisper and also gave it a more hand-written/hand-made quality. You can really see the difference between the white paint on the ‘w’ and the rest of the sentiment.

I had some white paint spare after finishing the sentiment so I decided to make some bright dots all over the card as some snowflakes and added interest and I went a little nuts with it, I’ll admit.

The last thing to do was to finish the cute little grey kitten off and adhere him to the card. My standard technique of using the gunmetal grey colour from the Derwent Studio Pencils to add some value to his tail, body and face. And then I went over all the black lines using the Memento Tuxedo Black ink pen and coloured in the red of his tongue using the red Memento ink pen.

 

I adhered the cute anime style cat to the card using foam squares for a little extra pop and dimension. I stamped on the inside of the card ‘Thinking of You’ from the same Simon Says Stamp Hand Lettered Witner Wishes stamp set using versafine black ink as it is really crisp. I plan to gift this card to my partner’s mother.

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp with Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Paper Birthday Card Idea

My partner’s father also has a birthday in March. March seems to be a popular month for birthdays. This is great as it’s forcing me to make some birthday cards! But I was stuck for ideas. I really felt as though I had exhausted my creativity. After a little sook and throwing my papers in the air in an overly dramatic display of exasperation, my partner come over to the table and sat down and started playing with the supplies while giving me a pep talk.

I had just finished cutting out a little cat in a bit of a play pose and was starting to cut out another one while I was racking my brain for ideas.

My partner laughs and I look up at him and he’s says simply, ‘look he’s playing with the birds’. His innocent view on life and the boyish cheekiness is why I fell in love with him. I couldn’t help but laugh and smile. He thought I was laughing ‘at’ him initially, but I was so amazed that he had come up with such a great idea for a card. He was really chuffed that he’d actually come up with a great idea so he gave me a kiss then went back to his video games. Anyway, that’s how this card design came about!

While he was at work the next day, I started to piece together the card. I decided that it’d be great to have a whole lotta sparkle and wanted to go over the white pattern paper with the wink of stella pen. And ooops! I squeezed too hard…

Luckily I had a second piece of the pattern paper with the birds on it so I tried again. The first piece was already adhered so I cut an eighth of an inch off each end of the second piece and adhered it with foam tape to give the card a bit more dimension.

So sparkly!

For the sentiment I white embossed ‘you are’ and ‘loved’ onto a scrap piece of orange pattern paper. The sentiment stamps are from the Simon Says Stamp ‘Thinking of You’ stamp set. The inspiration for placing the ‘loved’ sentiment over the ‘you are’ sentiment comes from Vicky Papaioannou. I adhered the orange pattern paper with foam squares and used a Derwent Studio pencil to give a touch of shading to the playful kitty.

I am really pleased with the simple clean look of this card and my only input was to put glitter all over it. ^-^

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set Birthday Card Idea – Cute Happy Cat Stamp

My partner’s younger brother has a birthday in March and I wanted to make him a super cool card.

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll have noticed I use the Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set and the Paper Smooches Spectrum Stamp Set with the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine pattern paper quite a bit. This is because I’m on a budget so I can’t buy all the new trendy items every week. I save up and a make a purchase of the items I need (with a couple wants mixed in hopefully) once every couple of months. I prefer to buy online and have the items shipped out. I’ve had the best service from http://www.123stitch.com and they have very reasonable shipping costs from US to Australia.

With all that said, I tend to make alterations to an already tried idea to try and make something new and unique each time while using minimal supplies. I love the adorable happy cat stamp in the Nine Lives Stamp Set and I thought, the more the merrier!

So I stamped (using tuxedo black memento ink) the cat twice on the orange pattern paper and once on a scrap piece of grey pattern paper with the idea of creating three cats. I stamped the mouth area three times on plain white card stock.

Using memento ink markers I shaded the tongue and mouth with black and red and then I fussy cut the three mouths out. I adhered the cut out mouths on top of the two orange cats and the one grey cat. I fussy cut the cats out and shaded them with Derwent Studio pencils. I went over the outline of the cats with a tuxedo black memento ink marker. I accidentally made a mistake on one of the orange cats so in attempt to fix the mistake, or camouflage it, I drew lines to create a striped cat.

I gathered together some scrap strips from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine paper pad.

I arranged them on the card and adhered them slightly askew to give the card a more fun and casual flair. I trimmed the excess with scissors.

When I was arranging the kitty-cats onto the card I found I wanted to have the grey cat slightly higher than the others, but it looked odd to have him sort of floating on the white pattern paper. So I cut a little scrap of blue pattern paper to place behind the kittens so that it looked as though they were sitting on a mound or cushion. Now all that was left was to stamp a sentiment! I chose the ‘you’re awesome’ sentiment, I stamped it onto white card stock and then drew a speech balloon around it. I fussy cut the balloon out and then using the memento ink marker, I traced the edges and drew a border. I adhered the speech balloon to the card using foam squares.

I was very happy with the final result. I wasn’t able to see my partner’s younger brother for his birthday but my partner informed me that the card was a smash-hit success!

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

I was really enthused after creating the cute happy cat birthday card for a friend, inspired by Vicky Papaioannou. You can check that post here. And I wanted to try something along the same lines but shake things up a bit to create something fresh. There are quite a few of my friends with birthdays in March so I thought it’d be a very practical idea to get a head start on creating some cute cards for these friends.

Keeping with the cute cat theme, I chose a different cat from the Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp set. I stamped the cat with tuxedo black memento ink on to a scrap of grey patterned paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine collection (my go to paper stack for birthday cards – I think I’m going to be sad when I run out).

With so many cards made using the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine papers, I had quite a few scraps left. So I gathered a few to coordinate together. The rainbow strips were already cut into workable strips so I didn’t have to alter those at all. The larger pink strip of pattern paper I used the Fiskars scalloped border punch on the long edges. And the yellow paper has ‘Hello Sunshine’ with a sun as a striped pattern on the paper so I cut two thin strips between the lines of ‘Hello Sunshine’ from a larger strip of scrap pattern paper.

To the larger pink pattern paper with the scalloped edge, I created an embossed background. The inspiration from Vicky Papaioannou starts to become evident in this step. I wiped down the paper with an anti-static pouch to prep the area for embossing. I used the range of smaller catty item stamps in the Paper Smooches Nine Lives stamp set stamped where I could fit them using Ranger’s embossing ink. I used white embossing powder then heat set the powder. Just like in the previous card, I used stickles on the bottles to create interest.

There was a gap left at the bottom when I was creating the embossed background, mostly because I had smudged a fishbowl and had removed it. I wasn’t fazed as I had planned to place the cute kitty cat at the bottom in that area anyway. I decided to use the ‘you’re purrty’ sentiment stamp and decided where I wanted to place it by using the clear acrylic block with the stamp clinging to it.

I decided to keep the sentiment simple and stamped it using tuxedo black memento ink onto plain white card stock. I trimmed the cardstock down and then adhered it to the card using foam squares. I decided to add a little shading to the cat as well using the Derwent Studio pencil in Gun Metal Grey.

I was really pleased with the final result and I can’t wait to give it to the birthday girl!

Link to Vicky Papaioannou’s Clips-n-Cuts website; the inspiration for this card:

http://www.clips-n-cuts.com/2013/03/how-to-video-and-giveaway/

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

This card I made for my cowgirl friend’s sister. They both have birthdays in February. Similarly to the previous card post, I was strapped for time and so once again fell back on Vicky Papaionnou to inspire me with her creations. This was another card I’ve been wanted to make. I didn’t have the ‘My Minds Eye’ paper pack that Vicky uses but I still had my go to papers, the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine 6 x 6 paper pack.

I really liked this card because it was simple and came together really quickly, but as well as that it was a way to use up some scraps that had been accumulating. I used a scrap piece of grey pattern paper with a polkadot pattern and stamped the adorable cat stamp from the Paper Smooches Nine Lives stamp set. I shaded him using my Gunmetal Grey Derwent Studio pencil. I stamped the cat again onto a scrap of white card stock and used Memento ink pens in black and red to colour the mouth and then I adhered it. He’s so cute and happy!

Using some scraps I had a wider piece of blue pattern paper already the perfect size for the card. I cut two strips of the yellow ‘hello sunshine’ paper and then using the Fiskars scallop border punch I punched a scallop border on two scrap strips of pink pattern paper. One of the borders I punched wonky, but it’s not to bad and the other side the punch had a hiccup and so a bit of the white paper showed through. I used my finger nail to tuck it under and hide it away after it was adhered to the card.

Speaking of adhering things to the card. I had to use black card stock as I have run out of white card stock but I think if anything the black enhances the colour as they’re so drastically bright in comparison and so the colours really stand out, in my opinion.

Once I had it adhered down I used Rangers Heat It Embossing Ink and I stamped the milk bottles, fish bones and bowls onto the blue strip. I possibly should have done it in sections as I was having trouble seeing where I had stamped, and better yet should have done it on the blue strip before adhering it on the card as I heat set some spots onto the black background of the card accidentally, but I that’s all hindsight and I was rushed! I used WOW white embossing powder and the Heat It Craft Tool to emboss and heat set.

Once the embossing was complete, including the sentiment ‘have a purrrfect day’, I used some stickles glitter to fill in the milk bottles. I cut the sentiment into a ribbon shape (I can never get the triangles equal) and then I adhered the cute kitty cat and the sentiment ribbon using foam squares. I was super pleased with the outcome and I really love the look of this card.

Just like the previous unicorn card, I’d love to recreate this card with a few variations. If struggling through my mistakes, this was a fun card to make.

Link to Vicky Papaioannou’s Clips-n-Cuts website; the inspiration for this card:
http://www.clips-n-cuts.com/2013/03/how-to-video-and-giveaway/

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches 9 Lives & Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Idea

This card I slapped together for a co-worker’s birthday. It didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped, but I think the finished result still looks fun and happy. I used papers from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine card pack.

I cut the multi-coloured spot paper to fit within the card dimensions as the main background then using scrap papers. I cut strips to make the middle orange and blue stripes and I cut balloon shapes. I used Ranger Inkessentials Glossy Accents on the ballons to try and give them a bit more interest and dimension. The paper just kind of curled and looked weird though, haha.

I adhered the balloons to the orange strip of paper and drew the strings in a stitch pattern using a white gel pen. I used a versamark embossing ink pen to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on another scrap bit of paper and then I used embossing powder and heat set the powder with a Heat It Craft Tool.

The happy, cheeky cat is stamp from the Paper Smooches 9 Lives stamp set. I stamped him onto the orange pattern paper and I also stamped his face onto white card stock. I cut the eyes and teeth from the white card stock then adhered it over the orange pattern paper. I adhered the cat using foam squares. I think the cat really ties the card together and makes it look like he’s let the balloons go by running past them.

This was a good card to use up scraps and I’m really surprised by how many cards a 6×6 paper pack can make!