Easy, Breezy Holiday Cards with Pinkfresh Goodies!

Hi guys!

I’m back with some more Pinkfresh flowery cards today. For these cards I have used the colour scheme from the December challenge but mixed it with the Blooming Branch set. I’m slightly in denial about Christmas being so close so any excuse to use flowers and blooms, I’m in.

First of, I heat embossed the Blooming Branch stamp set with Opaque Bright White embossing powder on one panel, and with Rich Gold embossing powder on a second. Both of these are from WOW! Embossing.

First off I used the Cottontail Embossing Tool from The Rabbit Hole Design, all over my card stock. Then I stamped the Blooming Branch outline stamp with WOW! Embossing ink, with the help of my Mini MISTI.

The idea was to get a softer look on the white and more vivid on the gold. The opacity of the ink blending is actually about the same, but it does make the colours pop or soften up, with the different colours. My fave is the Rich Gold.

To add colour I have used the Blooming Branch layering stencils and the inks I used are Sparkling Rose, Berrylicious (the colour in the graphic is closer to Candy Apple, but I went slightly lighter) Sunshine, Meadow and Aquamarine.

All of these have been ink blended with blending brushes, because that is the blending tool that works best for me to get a smooth blend.

I wanted a bit of a rainbow look still (surprise, surprise, I know… ) so I started with the Sunshine in the middle, and then went pink and red towards the top and the teal and turquoise towards the bottom.

You don’t actually need that many colours to get a rainbow look, as by blending the colours together you get more than the actual numbers of inks you use. For example, yellow and red/pink, will make orange and yellow and blue makes green, and so forth.

To get this look, you add the colours in the same areas on each layer of stencil. Think in terms of lines across your stencil, if you will. You just keep building it up as you go through your stencils, and eventually you end up with this fun rainbow look.

With the colours all added, I cut them both out with the coordinating diecut and on the back of these, I added foam tape to raise them up on the card. However, I had to make my backgrounds first and the sentiments too, of course.

I’m totally obsessed with the Abstract Triangle hot foil plate, so I used it on two panels with my Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil system. One with Matte Gold and one with Opal, which I at first thought I might have actually hot foiled the plate with instead of the paper…

Luckily for me, it was foiled to the paper, but the Opal hot foil is very subtle. It looks more like an embossing folder, than hot foiling. Which is another use for your hot foil plates! You can actually use them to add dry embossing, and add pattern to your card stock as well as use them for hot foiling.

While I had the Glimmer Hot Foil system out and hot, I decided to use the Thrill Of Hope hot foil plate for the sentiment. On these I used gold foil, and then I cut these out with the coordinating diecut. I also cut out an extra piece to layering up the hot foiled piece to make them slightly sturdier.

The background pieces were trimmed down a little and then directly adhered to a card base each. On top of these I added the Blooming Branch pieces, the sentiments and then I just had to add some Jewels to add even more pizzazz! I can’t help myself, I love these Jewels and they are such a perfect finishing touch.

The colours I have used are from top to bottom: Ballet Slipper, Sunshine and Ocean Breeze. If you like jewels like these, you might as well grab the Essentials Jewels Mix, which has 12 different colours in it.

That’s it from me for today, but I hope you found some inspiration here and don’t forget that you can still take part in the December challenge. You can win a $50 gift card to the Pinkfresh Studio shop just by taking part, so what are you waiting for? Go on, have some fun and play along. The deadline is December 28th, so plenty to of time and you can enter 5 projects!

Right, I will stop jibber-jabbering now and let you go. Thank you so much for stopping by, lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

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Fluttering by for the Pinkfresh Studio July Challenge

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog!

As some of you might have already seen, or heard about, I’ve joined the Pinkfresh Studio design team for the rest of the year! I’m SUPER EXCITED about this as I’m such a huge fan of Pinkfresh Studio!

Just look at this collection of amazing crafters, and then spot little ole me in there too! It’s such a dream come true!

Pinkfresh Studio run monthly challenges, both for the scrapbooking side of things and the card making side of things, so no matter what your preferred way of crafting and creating is, you can join in!

For the month of July the theme is ‘Butterflies’, and you can interpret that however you like. Below you can see the challenge graphic, maybe glean some inspiration from that or just let your creativity loose and see what happens!

For my card, I decided to first make a flowery background, something for the butterflies to be attracted to, so to say.

I absolutely adore the Miss Your Smile stamp and coordinating layering stencils set, so I really wanted to use them. My first impluse was to make yellow flowers, with turquoise/teal leaves.

The colours of ink used are Lemon Whip, Sunshine and Sweet Mustard for the blooms. On the leaves it’s Ocean Breeze and Aquamarine. At the top of the card I used a little bit of Sky Blue to soften all that white space, and give a summery sky look to the card.

I toyed with the idea of using Black Ink for the outline stamp, but in the end I heat embossed it with Gold Rich from WOW! Embossing. I’m really glad I went this route, as it gives the petals and stems more definition, without being too harsh.

For the butterfly part, I used, no surprise, the biggest from the Butterflies stamp set. I heatembossed it on vellum, again with Gold Rich embossing powder. After using the coordinating diecut, I adhered it to the card with a bit of foam tape to create the illusion of it hovering above the flower.

To keep the card cohesive, I used a heat embossed sentiment from the Perfect Sentiments set. I made a ton of these as the stamp set is so clever, and you get the whole bunch in one go. The coordiating diecut for these is equally brilliant!

That’s my card for the challenge, and over on my Instagram you can find a reel for this card too. Or, well, you would have, if I hadn’t managed to delete it, like a total IDIOT!!!

Now it’s your turn! Hop on over to the Pinkfresh Studio blog and enter your card in the July challenge for a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to the shop!

I have used compensated affiliate links throughout this post, for your convenience, at no extra cost to you. If you shop using these links, I get a small commission from the company it’s linkted to, and it doesn’t cost you a single penny/cent/öre/ruble extra. Any earnings I get from these links go directly towards the running of my blog, YouTube channel and Instagram. If you are shopping anyway, I’d be so grateful if you’d chose to support me by using mine.

Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

PS There is still time to sign up for the Card Maker Success Summit! You can attend it completely free, and watch all the presentations for 24hrs after they have gone live. If you want to get a whole load of extra content, I’d highly suggest you sign up for the VIP All-Access Pass! Currently the total value of the VIP All-Access Pass surpasses $2000, and there is more content being added all the way up until the summit kicks off on July 14th! It’s yours for $59, or if you sign up within 15 minutes of clicking the link it’s only $39!!

It’s four days of Christmas In July EXTRAVAGANZA, you are not going to want to miss it! Sign up now by clicking HERE!

Card for MFT Stamps Camp Create Day 1: Wonderful Watercolor

Hi, hi, hello!

Today’s card is a quick one I made for the very fun Camp Create event MFT Stamps are hosting on the MFT Stamps blog. I’m way behind but Day 1’s prompt is Wonderful Watercolor and I do love a little bit of water colouring so I decided to jump on the fun-waggon!

I’ve also made a YouTube video for this card, so if you want to skip ahead to that, click on the highlighted link which will take you to my channel.

On a panel of water colour card stock, which I had taped down to an old cutting plate with masking tape, I swirled around lots of Gansai Tambi water colours. The object was to create a galaxy background.

When that was done and dried with my heat gun, I used the Shining Stars dienamic (which is apparently discontinued, wahhh), one of my favourites from MFT Stamps, to cut out one each of black card stock and gold mirror card stock. The one I find myself reaching for over and over is Honey Gold from Tonic Studios and the black one I use is Black Licorice from Lawn Fawn. These I layered up with Lawn Fawn gluetube and set aside.

On black card stock I stamped a few sentiments from the Written In The Stars stamp set, another MFT Stamps goodie which has been discontinued, with VersaMark ink and heat embossed them with Metallic Gold Rich from WOW! Embossing. I can’t do any stamping with my MISTI so of course I used that for this part. I also cut out the ‘Good Friends Are Like’ sentiment part out with the Essentials Fishtail Sentiment Strips dienamics. I have so many goodies from MFT Stamps, I’m a proper dienamics fan. Lol!

With all my bits and pieces ready, it was time to assemble the card! After adhering the background panel to the card base, I added the other pieces and finished it off with a very generous helping of Nuvo Drops in Banana Split, from Tonic Studios. They glow in the dark and add such a fun twist to the card!

I have used some compensated affiliate links in this post and for my YouTube video. Affiliate links do not cost you anything extra at all, that wouldn’t be cool at all. The company will pay me a small commission directly, at zero cost to you. If I have inspired you today, I would be so grateful if you’d consider using mine as I use anything I make from them to run my blog, my YouTube channel and to create fun content.

Thanks for stopping by today. Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

 

Happy Pawlidays + MFT Stamps Sketch Challenge #408

Hi guys!

Today’s card is for this week’s Sketch Challenge over at MFT Stamps. We are already on Sketch #408 and my fourth, and penultimate, post as a guest designer. The sketch looks like this:

I am a certified CDL (Crazy Dog Lady) and I have two little cheeky doggies at home. I just love dogs and couldn’t go the whole spell as a guest designer without using some kind of doggo on a card, now could I? As Christmas is looming closer and closer it’s starting to become crunch time making Christmas cards but doggos… awww *insert soppy sounds here* Problem solved by using the adorable Happy Pawlidays stamp set!

The little cheeky rascal all tangled up in the Christmas lights remind me of my little doggies so I decided to use him. I used so many Copics to colour this one tiny image but he came out quite cute in the end.

I also stamped up some baubles for the small dots element on the sketch. These I coloured with Copics first and then heat embossed a snowflake on them with white WOW embossing powder.

To make the hat appear a bit more furry, I drew on lots of different sized dots using a white gel pen. To make the christmas lights pop, I used some Glossy Accents on them, after cutting the doggie out with the coordinating die-namic.

On a card base I stuck down two 1″ wide strips of stripy patterned paper, one along the top and one along the bottom, using double sided tape. Genius stuff that!

As this is a Christmas card, I decided to use the Christmas Background stamp for this card too. Only for this one, I heat embossed it with WOW Rich Gold embossing powder. It’s a gorgeous shade of gold this one. While I had my heatgun out and hot, I also heat embossed ‘Merry Christmas’ on a banner. The sentiment is from the Trio Of Trees stamp set and fits perfectly on the banner.

To bring in the circle element, I cut one out of vellum to adhered behind the dog. Kind of like an aura on innocence, despite the clear evidence he’s been rather naughty, lol!

The dog and the baubles are all adhered using foam tape, but the vellum and the sentiment banner are adhered using double sided tape to keep them flat.

That’s it for this card! It wasn’t as smooth sailing as it may appear, there was a lot of over-thinking and changing things around as I went along, which seems to be my usual MO. The finished card came out quite sweet in the end and that’s all that matters.

I have used compensated affiliate links in this post at no extra cost to you. Please do consider supporting me and other crafters when you shop, by using affiliate links. It really does make our day and if you use mine, thank you so much!

Thanks for stopping by today, lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

One last Hurrah for Butterfly Reflections Ink blog with a couple of pop-up cards

Hi guys!

Today is the last day for my term on the Butterfly Reflections Ink design team and I have made a pop-up box card for my final blog post. I made a few mistakes along the way and decided to make another one, with the mistakes in mind, to try and improve on the design. 

Before I get to that one, let’s have a quick look at the first one: I went with a blue colour scheme, for no other reason than that I love blue.

To take out all the guess work out of dimension for the box card itself, I used the Scalloped Pop-up Box card Lawn Cut. I’m rubbish with numbers and calculations so this is a life-saver for me. Two quick cuts and you have your standard box! Easy peasy! I decided to use patterned paper to make it a bit festive, and got out Hearts & Stripes from MFT Stamps. I added four dividers in the box, but this might have been a bit ambitious in hindsight. I also cut out rectangles in the same colour card stock as the outside of the box, to add to the inside flaps of it. I was in a very coordinating mood, lol! The patterned paper packs give you so much choice when it comes to colours and patterns, you can pick and choose to suit the occasion or the recipient favourite colour.

To keep the colours cohesive and to match the patterned paper, I decided to use some of the many balloons I had already coloured up from the Simply Celebrate stamp set, which were all done in blues with some grey added to a few. This was a set I wanted from the moment I first laid eyes on it! All the balloons are cut out with the coordinating diecut too.

In order to keep the balloons stable, I cut out lots of the ‘sticks’ from the box diecut and layered them two and two. These I adhered to the dividers and stacked the balloons to make them all show.

Sentiment-wise I have used a combination of Happy Happy Happy stamp set plus coordinating diecut as well as another Lawn Fawn stamp set called Home Sweet Home I stamped up the banner from the Home Sweet Home set and added ‘Birthday’ to it from the Happy Happy Happy set. The Happy bit is coloured in with Copics.

To add sparkle, I cut out lots of stars and glued these onto “paper sticks” which I then added to the box. A couple of them also got added to the banner to frame the ‘birthday’.

As I had gone a bit mad with the dividers inside the box I actually ended up with an empty one as the balloons in the back are adhered to the box itself. To cover this front divider up, I stamped up the candles from the Simply Celebrate stamp set and coloured them in with Copics too. I had to trim off two candles to make it fit inside the box and not cover up the ‘Happy’ bit and I did this by fussy cutting before glueing it down.

 

Well, all in all, it’s not too shabby but you know when you just know it’s not perfect and it bugs you? Yeah, that’s how I feel about this one… So, to combat that, I decided to make another one and hopefully learn from my mistakes on this one.

For the second box I decided to go for rainbow colours! Another MFT Stamps patterned paper stack came out: Party Patterns. At the time of writing this blog post, it’s sold out everywhere (no wonder actually as it’s gorgeous!) However, if you can’t wait to get something similar, MFT Stamps has a fabulous selection of patterned paper packs. As does Scrapbook.com, their selection of patterned paper deserves a ‘wow’, there is a dizzying amount of choice there, Doodlebug Designs amongst others. I have a bit of a patterned paper hoarding problem myself but I know for a fact I’m not alone with this “problem”, lol!

Right, I kind of lost the red thread there for a moment, ogling all the pretty papers. The Lawn Fawn Scalloped Box Card cut came out again and two times through my BigShot later, I had my box pieces.

The paper I picked out for the second box is a lovey bright, rainbow striped pattern. Just gorgeous. If I could get a pack with just these stripes, I’d probably get like 5 packs right away. I love it!

So the box itself came together quite quickly and I added four dividers to this one too, which you might think was a bit mad seeing how I thought it was too many for the first one. Well, there is an explanation for sure: I wanted to make it almost identical, just fix my mistakes from the first one i.e. better placing of the balloons and sentiments.

I stamped up another three sets of balloons, as well as the candles, from the Simply Celebrate stamp set and got my Copic markers out again. These I coloured in with rainbow colours too and then cut them out using the coordinating Lawn Cut. The ‘Happy’ image from the Happy Happy Happy set was also coloured in with a rainbow colour scheme and cut out with its coordinating Lawn cut.

Assembly isn’t that time consuming when you already know where most of the images are going to go and you have all your bits and pieces done. After cutting out gold glitter stars for this one (with one of the little dies that comes with the Box die), and making my ‘paper sticks’ as well as cutting out the ones meant to lift up the balloons it was just glue-add-glue-add job and it should have been done. You’d think anyway… well, it is I, Erica the Crafting Drama Queen, lover of a good crafty twist so no. That is not how it went *facepalm*

After deciding in which order the balloons were going to go, I added the balloons in the back to the first divider rather than the back of the box. OH! Twist no1!

Twist no2 came when it was time to place the candles in the box. Instead of trimming these down and tucking them in, I added it in full-size and covered up the “holding sticks” with gold glitter stars.


Twist no3 came soon after that. The ‘Happy‘ bit was adhered to the back of the candles rather than behind them, as on the first card.
I’m not sure that adding loads more gold glitter stars will qualify as a twist as I’m not known for holding back on the bling? Nah, let’s just say that I added… a fair few… more to this box than the first one. Eh, what can I say?


Anyway, with that, I’m done for the day but I would like to wish my dear friend Pernille a very happy birthday! We used to go for a birthday brunch in between her birthday, today, and mine, on the 11th of May, whilst I lived in Denmark but sadly that’s not going to happen this year. Next year, I might need to plan ahead and make it happen.

I have used compensated affiliate links where possible in this post, to Scrapbook.com where there is a huge selection of Lawn Fawn and MFT Stamps amongst others, thank you in advance if you use these to purchase anything. I get a small commission from the company directly if you do this, at NO extra cost to you whatsoever. Every time you use someone’s affiliate links, you help them along on their crafting journey so please do make sure you use them when you can. It really means the world to us all!

I’m going to submit both these cards to the current Lawn Fantatics Challenge #27 as it’s 3D cards.


Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

Lawn Fawn Challenge 22 -two cards with You Octopi My Heart

Hi guys!
I’m popping in with a couple of cards I made for the Lawn Fawnatics Challenge 22-Inky Fingers

My take on this challenge was to stamp up my little Octopi My Heart stamp a couple of times in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colour him/her in with Copic markers and then create the backgrounds using inks, stamps and Lawn cuts. These cards came out quite ‘Valentine’s Day-ish’ but can be used for anniversaries, birthdays or generally soppy moments. Or change the colour scheme and the sentiment to make it a boy-ish birthday card.

For the backgrounds I’ve gone in different directions, technique-wise, for each card to make them individual, yet matchy. The design is very simple yet each element help make the card pop in it’s own way. For example, a) I used the same Distress Oxide ink colours Candied Apple, Fired Brick and Iced Spruce and b) the only stamp set is the Octopi My Heart yet and c) the Lawn Cuts are the same however, the finished cards do not look too similar.

OK, that sounded a lot less complicated and less contradicting in my head… I think I’ll skip out on trying to explain it any further and will just show you instead.

To create my own patterned paper I got some Strathmore Bristol Vellum card stock out and the inks I had chosen for these cards. On a piece big enough to cut out the biggest of the Lacy Heart Stackable Lawn Cuts I blended Fired Brick and Candied Apple together for a rich red. Using a natural sponge I had dipped in water and wrung out, I dabbed this in a random pattern all over it to activate the oxidation of the ink. For my second piece of patterned paper I dabbed my mini inkblending tools on the ink pads and simply dabbed these to create circles on my card stock. I should have taken better photos of these before I cut them up but oh well.. Hopefully it will give you an idea of what I meant.

After I had cut out the hearts I wanted using the Outside In Stitched Heart Stackables I decided to frame them using the Lacy Heart Stackables. I cut out a red one out of Chili Peper card stock, for the ink blended heart and one gray, out of Storm Cloud card stock, as well as one white for the circle heart. The gray one I stacked slightly off to let the white one be seen through the gaps. It created a lovely contrast to the red card base. This picture is with just the dark gray card stock.

On the card bases, one was white (Neenah Classic Crest Solar white 110#) and one was red (Lawn Fawn card stock in Chili Pepper) I decided to add some fun interest by dabbing some Candied Apple Distress Oxide ink with the same natural sponge I used to oxidise the ink on the ink blending piece, on my white card base. On my Red one I stamped a pattern using the little bubbles that comes in the stamp set using Iced Spruce.

I used the same sentiment for both cards, ‘You octopi my heart’, both stamped in Candied Apple red, one on a strip of white card stock and the other one directly onto the heart, with the dabbed ink circles.

The hearts themselves I added to the card bases using foam tape and the octopi were both added with foam tape too, because what else? *Foam tape addict* One of the cards only got the sentiment strip and a few Sparkling Clear sequins added to it after that. It didn’t need anything else actually. Which is unexpected coming from me, I know, lol!

The second card got five extra hearts, which I cut out of the red inkbleneded piece as well as clear drops in different sizes added. The hearts are added with foam tape but I think I went with one too thick for these actually. Best remember that for next time. Oh and some Glossy Accents on the octopi’s eyes to make them stand out a little bit.

Well, with that, I’m all done and will be submitting these to the challenge as there is a $25 gift voucher up for grabs for the randomly drawn winner!

OK, just one last picture before I go! I hope you like these cards and will feel inspired to try any of the techniques I’ve used here.

Happy crafting from Erica