Altenew Marker Release Blog Hop + Giveaway!

Hi and welcome to CaCaCraft!

Today’s post is to celebrate the release of Artist Markers Set B and Set C from the awesome Altenew and I’m so excited to be part of it as a guest designer! I couldn’t quiet believe it when May got in touch and asked if I wanted to join in! Oh YES, that was pretty much a no-brainier and I’ve been floating on a little pink, fluffy cloud ever since! And today is The Day!

You should have arrived here from Therese Calvird but no matter how you got here, WELCOME! If you loose your way along the hop, there is a list at the bottom of this post and you can always go back to the Altenew Card Blog to find your spot again.

To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $50 gift certificate to SIX lucky winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and Altenew Scrapbook Blog by Monday, November 27th for a chance to win. Six winners will be announced on the Altenew Card Blog and Altenew Scrapbook Blog on Wednesday, November 29th.

GIVEAWAY: You can also win a $30 gift voucher to the Altenew shop by leaving a comment right here on my blog post by Tuesday, November 28th! Winner will be randomly chosen and announced very shortly after that so don’t forget to comment for your chance to win!

Now, it’s entirely possible that I got a little bit carried away in all the excitement. I’ve been on a bit of a card making frenzy since all my goodies arrived and I’ve got eight cards for you today. Yes, you read that right. Eight. I will try to keep each description short and sweet but for those of you who know me, you know that I can ramble on for ages and ages with my jibber-jabbering (that’s Erica talk for ‘talking lots’) but please, do hang in there!

Right, let’s not beat around the bush anymore. Let’s dive in: Card number one, two and three all came out of the same idea. I got my blue markers out, that will be SET C, and on an 8.5×11 inches piece of Neenah solar white card stock, I drew thick lines of each colour over and over. I love how alcohol based markers just blend into each other and it’s quite mezermising to watch them getting on paper.

The idea I had was to make a striped back ground for one card and then cut out letters using the Bold Alphabet Die to spell ‘pappa’ (Dad in Swedish) as well as ‘dad’ for my British father-in-law. I really struggle with masculine cards and to be honest, I have absolutely no clue as to why I decided to punish myself by making a few for this blog hop. I do love blue though, and swishing those markers around made me happy like a kid in a candy shop!

Once I was happy with the background piece I cut it down to 4.25×5.25 inches. I wanted a little bit of the black card base I decided to use to peek out on each side of the panel, and I adhered it using foam tape. The Bold Alphabet Die makes a quick job of cutting out the letters I needed, I used shiny gold card stock as well as doubled sided adhesive foam, to raise the letters up and create dimension. The letters were adhered to the card and on a slim strip of black card stock I heat embossed the sentiment ‘You are amazing’ (from the set Amazing You) with the exclamation mark masked off, using Platinum Crisp Embossing Powder . The strip was added to the card with some foam tape and a few matte gold sequins were added with Glossy Accents.

For card number two I used the Bold Alphabet Die again to cut out another ‘Pappa’. These I added diagonally to a white card base, that I had previously stamped the swirly cloud from the You Are stamp set using Glacier Cave Oval Inks to create a mixed blue look. I also added ‘you are the best’ to the top of the card using Sapphire blue ink.

To make the blues on the letter pop a bit more I filled them in with Glossy Accents and set aside to dry. Sadly I smudged the bottom cloud a little but decided to leave it as it is, rather than try to fix it. Sometimes you just gotta cut your losses, right? You can see it in the first picture but in the second one, I sneakily put my watermark over the boo-boo.

Card number three is very similar to card number two, done with the You Are stamp set, except the card base is a light grey and I used Caribbean Sky for one of the clouds and Persian Blue (from the Glacier Cave Dye Inks Set ) for the other one. I also used my markers, at first just the greys (this would be the ones from SET B ) to fill in the clouds a little bit, but it looked too flat so I added some blue too (that would be from SET C)
The ‘dad’ letters for this card were adhered to the card using foam to raise them up and underneath them I added two swirly bits from the You Are stamp set which I had heatembossed on vellum using Platinum Crisp Embossing Powder and cut out using the coordinating dies . These also got a little bit of blue added to them and the card got finished off with a few matte gunmetal grey sequins.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love flowers and not just like ‘like them a lot’, oh no. I L-O-V-E them! I’m a trained florist and although I don’t work these days, I happily would if it meant being around flowers all day. Flower stamps hold a special place in my heart and it would be rather weird if I didn’t use a few for this blog hop, right?? Well, without further ado, here is my next card:

For this card I used Camellia Build-A-Flower stamp set and coordinating die, as well as some leaves from Adore You, Rose Gold Crisp Embossing Powder and Warm Sunshine Metallic Shimmer Ink Spray
I started by spritzing my background panel with Warm Sunshine Metallic Shimmer Ink Spray and then setting that aside to dry whilst working on the flower. My no-line colouring isn’t the best but I really wanted to try it using the Camellia Build-A-Flower stamp set and the yellow markers from SET B. To begin with, I stamped the outline stamp of the flower using Warm Sunshine Oval Ink and then got to work. For the colouring I used a flicking technique with the markers.

Using the coordinating die I cut both the flower out and a piece of foam to raise the flower up on the card and set these aside whilst I carried on working on the background. The leaves I chose to use are from the Adore You set. I used the cut out flower as a guide to place the leaves on the shimmery background panel and then stamped them all using Embossing Ink  and heat embossed them using Rose Gold Crisp Embossing Powder . I also stamped the sentiment ‘I adore you’ on a strip of vellum and heat embossed that in the same Rose Gold Crisp Embossing Powder.

Putting the card together took no-time at all at this point as all the components were done. I didn’t get the vellum strip completely flat on the card but all in all, I really like how this came out. I will definitely be adding more Metallic Shimmer Ink Sprays to my stash!

On my next card I have used the same stamps as the last one, but on this one I stamped the leaves from Adore You in Morning Frost Dye Ink ink first and then filled them in using the grey markers from SET B. Then I placed the card back in the MISTI, sprinkled it with my anti-static powder tool, stamped the leaves with Embossing Ink  and then heatembossed them using Platinum Crisp Embossing Powder. I also added a few little leafy branches using the base layer of the leaves from the Ranunculus Build-A-Flower stamp set with Morning Frost Dye Ink ink.
The sentiment I stamped in Jet Black Dye Ink and then used Crystal Clear Embossing Powder on top to make it stand out a bit better.

The flower itself I stamped up with Coral Berry Dye Ink ink and coloured it in using red markers from SET C as well as some of the darker yellows from for the middle. Instead of going for a smooth look, I used a flicking technique to create lots of highlights and lowlights. This is my favorite way to colour in flowers.
To finish the card off I cut out another bit of foam to raise the flower up from the card base and that was it.

This next card is quite quick, it might not look it but it really is. I spritzed a little Frosty Pink Metallic Shimmer Ink Spray and Coral Berry Metallic Shimmer Ink Spray on a piece of water colour card stock and set aside to dry. You can use your heat gun to speed up the drying process if you are in a hurry.
I stamped up the Camellia Build-A-Flower outline stamp using Coral Berry Oval Ink and then I used the lightest of my red markers from SET C all over the image. With the two darkest markers I added some shading to the petals. This is super easy as you don’t have to figure out where to do it, just use the outlines as a guide and hey, presto!
In the middle I used both the darkest red and the two darkest yellow markers in a dotting fashion to create a natural look.

I cut out the flower using the coordinating die and quickly assembled the card. I used a card stock in as close to Coral Berry as I could find and trimmed down the spritzed glimmer panel a little bit to make sure it showed on all sides. This is of course added using foam tape. I love that stuff!
Sentiment wise I wanted to keep it simple but effective. I quickly used the purple markers (from SET B) to create an ombré effect on a scrap piece of card stock and then I die cut the word THANKS using This die. I added this to the card with more foam tape to raise it up and that was it!

This card is done in a similar fashion, only yellow. On a piece of dark grey card stock I spritzed Warm Sunshine Metallic Shimmer Ink Spray and set aside to dry. The flower is done in a no-line colouring technique and I used Warm Sunshine Oval Ink  before colouring it in with the yellow markers from SET B. On this flower I tried blending the colours a bit more than I did on my first yellow card, without loosing the depth and texture of the petals. I definitely need more practice when it comes to this technique.

This one is also a ‘thanks’ card but this time I used shiny gold card stock with the Thanks die  and layered it with a black one to create a shadow. I also stamped and heatembossed ‘You are incredible’ on a slim piece of back card stock using Embossing ink  and Rose Gold Crisp Embossing Powder . This little strip I added with foam tape to the panel and the whole shebang went on a dark yellow card base.

My last card (and this really is the last one, I promise!) I use the lovely Bamboo Rose stamp set to make a ‘get well’ card. Using my MINI MISTI I stamped two sets of the flowers with Morning Frost Dye Ink and then using the Four Scoops markers from SET C I coloured them in quite loosely. For the leaves I used the green Artist Markers from SET A.These I ordered as soon as I was asked to take part in this blog hop as I have a very serious and chronic case of Full Set Syndrome. It’s awfully contagious and there is no known cure, apart from getting the full set of whatever it is that gave you the FSS to begin with. I’m serious!

When I was happy with the colouring I dusted the pieces of card stock with my anti-static tool, popped them back into the MISTI to be stamped with Embossing Ink and sprinkled with Rose Gold Crisp Embossing Powder. I melted it with my heat gun and set them aside to cool down a bit before cutting the flowers out using the Coordinating die cut.

For my background I decided to use a couple of green inks (Frayed Leaf Dye ink and Forest Glade Dye Ink) to do some ink blending. I had a bit of a disaster with this though, my first attempt ended up having to be scrapped as I did the ink blending first and no matter how much I dusted it with my anti-static powder tool after, the embossing powder I wanted to use for the sentiment stuck to the entire panel! The only thing I could do what reverse course and start again and this time do the sentiment first, so that’s what I did. I used the same Rose Gold Crisp Embossing Powder for the sentiment to keep it cohesive. Once that had cooled down I used the inks I had chosen and blended them until I had a nice green background. A spur of the moment decision had me adding a few leaves in Forest Glade Dye Ink on top of the ink blending to frame the sentiment a little bit more.

The die cut flowers I arranged in a rectangular shaped wreath around the sentiment and adhered them to the card using foam tape to raise them up and create that lovely layered look. Once that was done, the whole panel was adhered to a white card base and that was that!

Right, if you have made it all the way to this point, you pretty much deserve a standing ovation! I did warn you that I have gone completely mad and made lots of cards due to all the excitement, there was simply no stopping me once I got going… #sorrynotsorry my people!

Now the next person in the hop is Vicky Papaioannou and just for your reference, here is the full blog hop list:

Altenew Card Blog
Kathy Racoosin
Laura Bassen
Mindy Baxter
May Sukyong Park
Agnieszka Malyszek
Lydia Evans
Tammy Tutterow
Lilith Eeckels
Suzy Plantamura
Nicole Picadura
Jessica Frost-Ballas
Enza Gudor
Sveta Fotinia
Erum Tasneem
Altenew Scrapbook Blog
Kelly Latevola
TaeEun Yoo
Kymona Tracey
Yoonsun Hur
Kristina Pokazaniev
Therese Calvird
Erica A-B <——— You are here!!
Vicky Papaioannou
Svitlana Shayevich
Nina-Marie Trapani
Virginia Lu

Thank you so much for stopping by today and I hope I have inspired you to try these markers (and all the other goodies I have used) as I had an absolute blast making these cards. Don’t forget to leave a comment here on my blog as well as on the Altenew blogs for your chance to win a gift voucher to the Altenew shop!

That’s it from me today!

Happy crafting and hopping from

Erica

 

 

Flower extravaganza with Altenew Build-A-Flower: Ranunculus stamp

Hi!

Today I have a rather big blog post to make up for the quiet week I’ve had here at CaCaCraft by Erica. If you are not interested in my jibber-jabbering, scroll on down to the first card picture, the crafty stuff starts around there.

I been really sick for the last couple of weeks now. There is some horrendous cold/flu like/knock you on your butt sickness going around in my neck of the woods, several of my friends have also been affected and been out for the count as long as a month! Even The Man got it and was confined to our bed this last week. This is the man who doesn’t take days off from work due to sickness for all the time I’ve known him, which I took as a sign it might be time to update the will, it really was that bad!

Frustratingly, I didn’t get well miraculously just because he got sick, so we have both been absolutely hanging. My week didn’t just consist of recovering and trying to look after The Man and The Chicas the best I could. Oh no, a run-away doggie resuce took place too! On Wednesday I felt somewhat better and decided to take the Cheeky Chicas out for a decent walk as they had only had short ones for a while. Well, it all went a little bit wrong as Mar-Mar out-stubborned me when it came to which route to take (for such a tiny little thing, she’s surprisingly stubborn!) so we ended up taking a longer walk than I had originally planned. On top of that, when we were at the furthest point away from our house, we also encountered a loose dog with no owner in sight. He took an instant shine to the Chicas and followed us all the way home. No amount of ignoring him did any good. You see, here in Poland it’s quite common to see dogs loose, especially here in the country side where we live. They have homes but are free to go around wherever they want during the day. I’m not used to this and found it very hard to leave him outside our gate, all alone, hoping he’d find his way home again. He refused to leave and was jumping at the gate, trying to open it and worse of all… he was crying for attention. It might not come as a big surprise that I was sitting inside the house crying myself, feeling awful for this poor boy!

As he wouldn’t leave, I bundled up again and set out with him in tow to see if we could find his home and owners. We walked all over the village but has no luck whatsoever so the only thing I could do, was turn back home and come up with a new plan.

Despite the Chicas having major reservation about other dogs, we ended up letting him in the house, fed and watered him, gave him lots of fuss and would you believe it? The Chicas were actually quite ok. Good thing too as I was ready to adopt him on the spot. In good conscience I couldn’t just keep him, obviously, so I put him in the car and went to the vet to scan him for a microchip, which he had but there were no owner details registered on it! The vet said I could either take him home with me or drop him off at a shelter. Erm, shelter?? No, he came home with me. Step 1 towards my plan of adopting him was taken in my mind already. I mean, look at that little face!

As I know how heartbreaking it is when your dog runs away, Gem-Gem once ran away and it was awful, I thought I at least had to try and find the owners and where better to start than close to where I first saw him? It was a bit of a needle in a haystack situation (understatement are still running rampant here) and I’m not going to lie, at this point I was ready to collapse from exhaustion but I thought I at least had to try for like half an hour or so, and take it up again tomorrow if I had no luck today.

The very first house I stop at, and I still can’t quite believe my luck, that’s where this wayward boy lives! No joke, the first house! How is that for lucky coincidence?? The man of the house was just arriving home and I showed him a picture of the dog and asked if he knew him. The man looked at me a bit funny and said, yes he knows this dog. Excitedly I asked if he knew where he lives, to which the man replied ‘He lives here’! Turns out he had no idea the dog was missing as his wife hadn’t called him to let him know, hence the confusion! I’m pretty sure there were words exchanged that night about efficient communication. One thing that made this whole ordeal worthwhile was when the man said his 10-year old son would be very happy to have his dog back, which made me so pleased. It must be said that Step 1 in my plan towards adopting him was quickly taken back!

In the end, a dog was reunited with his young owner and the Chicas had a very positive experience with a dog so all in all, not a bad day for the furry, four-legged individuals in this story. Myself on the other hand, I had walked over 12000 steps in cold weather with a bad cold and I was in bed by 8.40pm/20.40 o’clock that night and slept until 11 the following morning! My cold was thriving again and I felt awful.

The bare minimum has been done around the house for a while now, I really should clean rather than craft to be honest! But crafting doesn’t require as much stamina as cleaning does and crafting is way more fun. You are probably more interested in my crafting than my cleaning schedule anyway so let’s get to it, as I have been babbling on for ages already. If you are still here, give yourself a pat on the back and a cookie!

Right, so I recently added the Cherry Blossom Oval Set ink pads to my growing Altenew ink collection and I also got the Build A Flower: Ranunculus stamp set. They seemed like a match made in heaven so I got those out and started stamping, using my MISTI naturally. It makes mass-producing easy and take out the guess-work when it comes to lining the stamps up every time you stamp. I usually stamp up a scrap image that I use solely for “proof stamping” so to say, to make sure all the other images come out perfect. It’s definitely worth doing, especially when you do one-layer cards and any little mistakes will be glaringly obvious.

I have a habit of stamping up lots of images without having a clue of what to do with them, especially with layered stamps and I did just that with this one and had enough flowers to make three cards. The challenge here is making each card individual and unique whilst using the same colours and image. Well, I accepted the challenge… proposed by myself… erm.. well… because I’m a craft-aholic?

For my first card I stamped directly on a card base, and I used Simon Says Stamp 120# white card stock for this. I love this card stock, it takes the ink beautifully and is so smooth and lovely. I’d use it for everything if I had enough of it but as I have hoarding tendencies I try to make it last. The outline I heatembossed in The Ton stamps Rose Gold Embossing Powder and would you believe it… I managed to mess up the stamping despite using the MISTI, I was so annoyed with myself…

I stamped the sentiment ‘Sending Love & Hugs’ from the Build A Flower: Ranunculus  Set in an ombré way using the inks in the Cherry Blossom Oval Set to keep the colours the same. To keep this card CAS/Clean And Simple, I only added a few sequins from Pretty Pink Posh Sparkling Clear mix using Multi Media Matte.

For card number two I again stamped up the flower, the exact same way as with card number one: I used the inks on the SSS white card stock and heatembossed the outline in rose gold (and got it perfect this time) but for this card I used the coordinating die and cut out the flower.

The card base is the very same SSS white card stock, cut in half and then scored at the half way mark to create an A2 card measuring 5.5”x4.25”. On this, using the die cut flower as a guide, I stamped a few leaves in the lightest pink in the ink bundle. I used only the first layer to keep the design simple but couldn’t resist adding a little bit of interest by using a flowery branch stamp from the set Beautiful Day, which I stamped with VersaMark before heat embossing it with the same Rose Gold embossing powder I used on the flowers.

I used the same sentiment for all three cards and on this one I used the two darkest inks to again create a slight ombré effect. The flower I adhered to the card using foam tape to make it a bit more different from card number one.

Card number three is much more elaborate… The flower is done in exactly the same way as card number two, stamped and die cut. For this one I also stamped up the leaves but instead of using greens, which didn’t really fit my colour scheme, I used Coffee Break Oval Set to get a bit of a gold/vintage look. I did three with the first three colours and another three with the three darkest colours to get some variety.

The sentiment I heat embossed in the same Rose Gold embossing powder I’ve used for the flowers. It’s important to dust your project with an anti-static powder tool before using any type of embossing powder as you don’t want it sticking in places you don’t want it. I like this one.

This flower I also used foam tape to raise up from the card base, but this one is cut out of double sided foam sheet using the die so it fits perfectly under the actual flower. To get the leaves placement right, I again used the flower as a guide before removing the protective layer from the foam tape and pressing down onto the card base. In order to get a bit more ‘life’ into the card I also added small pieces behind some of the leaves to lift them up from the card base.

As this card was meant to be rather elaborate, I added some The Ton Stamps Rose Gold sequins in different sizes, using Multi Medium Matte adhesive.

With that, I am finally done. It’s over, you made it to the end, no matter how far away that goal seemed in the beginning, you made it! LOL! Another cookie might be in order to regain your strengths. Just saying.

Take care and thanks for stopping by today!

Happy crafting from Erica

Copic coloured birthday card with Modern Peonies from WPlus9

Hello and welcome back to CaCaCraft!

Today it’s the one-week-iversary of my little blog and I am popping in with a birthday card, cue celebrations! This week I have been so poorly with a bad cold and just to top off my misery, I also got a painful visit from Mother Nature, because apparently I wasn’t suffering enough…! Oh well, might as well get it all out of the way in one fell swoop, eh?

I’m feeling a bit better today, luckily for me as now The Man has taken a turn for the worse and it’s time to swap roles. He’s been my nursemaid this week and taken very good care of me and The Cheeky Chicas despite being tired from being at work all day. Sure sign it’s true love when he loves you even when you are an absolute raggedy mess… who whines like a two-year old having a tantrum… I must admit I am perhaps not the easiest person to be around when I’m sick and in pain *cough, cough* (understatements galore!)

Right, anyway, so whilst The Man is off for a nap, dosed up with medicine, water and some muffins, I slunk off to the craft room. I decided to finish a card I have been working on for, gosh, coming on to three weeks now? I started it on Oct 12th and back then I was suffering from lack of mojo and thought I’d just colour without anything really in mind. Flower stamps usually get me out of a crafty funk quickly and peonies are one of my favorite flowers so getting the WPlus9 Modern Peonies  stamp set seemed like a good first step.

I cut a stitched rectangle panel out of Copic friendly card stock, I used the largest one from Lawn Fawn small Stitched Rectangle stackable set. This one and the Large set are on my ‘must have list’. I use them all the time.

When it came to the stamping, I placed the panel in my MINI MISTI (also an absolute must have!) and placed the largest peony just off the panel in the top left corner. I use Memento Tuxedo Black ink when I colour with Copics. You can also see my selection of colours for the flower in the picture, for those who are curious. I also added the stem and coloured that in with some green markers (scroll down to the third photo to see which ones I used)

Four days later I added another flower. Yep, just the one. I thought I might do some masking at this point and stamped up a few flowers on masking film and cut them out. For whatever reason, I didn’t end up using them so they went in the stamp storage pocket for use in the future.

Before I added anything else to the card, nine days had passed! I made lots of other things during these nine days though, my mojo had returned and I was making the most of it. It seems it was this card that had me slightly stumped. Another large peony and lots of leaves got coloured as well as fussy cut. I do have the coordinating dies  but used my scissors to avoid getting that white border around the images. At this point, I just couldn’t decide if I needed more flowers and/or leaves and instead of forcing a decision, I left off here and set it aside for another day.

So, this is where I picked up from today. I do find that sometimes I need a break from a project if I get stuck and come back to it with fresh eyes at a later date. That was just the thing with this card! I decided that it didn’t need any more flowers or leaves, it was pretty nice as it was. I did add some “shadowing” around the flowers with my C Copic markers, just to dull the bright whiteness of the card stock a little bit. This part didn’t need to be overly perfect so I spent just a couple of minutes to line out the shadow and then by using lighter and lighter markers worked my way out until I felt it was enough.

The placement of the flowers was easy enough, the big one had to go in the middle where the stem ended and the leaves were placed in a frame around it. By placing another piece of paper over the whole shebang, to keep everything in place, and turning it over, it was a simple case of adding some foam tape cut to size to keep them together and to add some dimension at the same time.

To put the card together, I got some Simon Say Stamp Slate Gray card stock out, cut it in half and scored in the middle using my scoreboard. In an attempt to bring together some of the colour I also added another layer to the card, a scalloped frame in plaid paper, it’s just big enough to peek out behind the flower panel. The scalloped frame is Mama Elephant and the plaid paper is from Lawn Fawn.

Now it was time for finishing touches and sentiment! On a 1 inch wide strip of vellum, which I dusted with my anti-static tool beforehand, I stamped and heat embossed the words ‘Sending happy birthday wishes’ from the WPlus9 Modern Peonies set. The embossing powder I used is my current favorite: The Ton Rose Gold Embossing Powder.

The vellum strip I wrapped around the flower panel and adhered directly to the foam tape I had already added on the back of it. This was then adhered to the plaid paper panel and then the whole thing went on the card base.

I almost left it like this but couldn’t resist seeing how it would look with a few Pretty Pink Posh Sparkling Clear Sequins. Of course I ended up loving this so much I had to add them. Is there such a thing as ‘sequin fever’ because I think I might have it.

 

You might have noticed my new snazzy watermark on the pictures here? My dear friend Sandy Boone of Three Room Studio is the clever cat behind it! She also made me a banner for the blog but I haven’t added that yet, but watch this space. Now, Sandy also has her own range of stamps which you can find on Etsy or Right here! She also has her own blog Three Room Studio Blog  and if you are on Instagram you should definitely follow her account which you can find here.

Here is the final card. Now, this might have taken me quite some time to make but it doesn’t matter, I enjoyed making it and that’s what matters. This is my hobby, it’s supposed to be fun and if something takes hours, days, weeks or even months to finish doesn’t matter in the slightest as long as the process is enjoyable, right? And with those wise words, this craft nerd is now off to be a nurse maid and check in on The Man.

Happy crafting and see you next time!

 

 

 

The Ton challenge blog card Oct-17

Hi!

Yep, I’m back already with my first actual crafting blog post even though my blog isn’t even 24hrs old yet. If you were to look up excited in the dictionary right now, I would not be surprised if there was a picture of me there! Very excited indeed!

I am a big fan of The Ton stamps and have been since from the beginning, so it feels very right that my first blog post on my very own blog (I might repeat that a few times, it sounds so great!) is a card made with stamps from them. A few days ago I received a rather large order I had placed and I was absolutely giddy with excitement! There isn’t quite anything like opening a package full of happy mail *cue craft nerd squeak* If you don’t believe me, I have video proof right here. Consider yourself warned though, there is a lot of shrieking and squeaking.

The current challenge over at The Ton Challenge Blog has a gorgeous mood board and using that for inspiration, I started picking out Distress Oxide inks to do some ink blending with.

 

Now, this is a heavily coffee inspired mood board so you’d think it’s right up my alley considering what a coffee addict/snob I am. Funnily enough, I just saw the soft colours like yellows and pinks… nuts, isn’t it? Well, the month isn’t over, I might actually make another card using this mood board.

The stamp set I decided to go with for this post is called Brushed Hello and is a big, bold scripty ‘hello’ and some great sentiment builders which makes this a very versatile stamp set. Using my MISTI I placed the stamps so it wrote ‘It’s been a while, hello friend’ and on Strathmore Bristol Vellum water colour card stock I stamped it in VersaMark ink. Then I drizzled a very generous helping of Rose Gold Embossing Powder over it and shook off the excess. Before I had done any stamping I used my anti-static tool all over my panel to avoid any stray bits of embossing powder sticking to it. A quick melting job with my heat-gun later and it was time to decide what colours to use.

Ink wise I used Antique Linen, Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, Worn Lipstick and Picked Raspberry. I blended these in an ombré way over the panel and then splattered a generous amount of water all over it. Dabbing a paper towel on it I made sure it was all picked up before all the colours were bleached off. I simply love this look with the random droplets on the panel and I do this pretty much every time I do ink blending. I also trimmed off a bit of the panel so it’s now 4” wide. It was 5.5”x4.25” to begin with.

For my card base I used my favorite soft gray card stock from Simon Says Stamp called Fog, it’s a lovely shade of gray and I probably use it too much. Especially for project where I feel bright white is too harsh. I have a load of pre-cut and pre-folded card bases ready to be used as I have a terrible habit of making the card panel but not putting it on a card base if I don’t have one pre-prepared. It sounds silly but it’s one of those things I really don’t like doing… cutting and scoring, cutting and scoring… meh, it’s boring. #firstworldproblems or what??

To add a little bit of height and some dimension to the card, I adhered the panel to the card base using 1.4mm thick foam sheet that I had cut to size.

Now, no card is complete without a few sequins, right? As the sentiment is bold I thought a few clear sequins would be just the thing. Now, I say ‘a few’ but this is my idea of a few. Other’s may have a different opinion on what qualifies as ‘a few’. Seven might, in all honesty, be more than a few… so sue me, I love sequins, lol!

Using my pointy tweezers and some Glossy Accents I got to work adhering my few *cough cough* sequins. As a one last touch, I also drew a curved line with a white gel pen under the word ‘friend’ as it was kind of fading away with it being rose gold embossing powder and having pink inks all around it. With that, the card was done and I have my very first blog post done for my very own blog! I know, I know.. I’m repeating myself over and over! I’m sure the excitement will fade a little… soon.. ish… with time… eh, give me a few months, would ya?? 😉

Happy crafting and thank you so much for stopping by, you have no idea how much it means to me! Mwah!

Erica