Good Glidings

I selected 3 great winter themed YNS stamp sets to create my cards today. I fell in love with Good Glidings, Fleece Navidad & Holiday Mice as soon as I saw them, and I also loved the cute little Skating Rink Scene die set, which was perfect to go with all the adorable ice skating critters in the stamp sets!

I started by stamping a few of the images from each stamp set onto Copic friendly cardstock, making sure I stamped all of the ice skating critters, plus a few extra that were too cute not to color, and colored them up with Copic markers, and then fussy cut them each out. 

Then I grabbed three 4.25x5.5 inch white card panels, the Nordic Snowflakes stencil by Clear Scraps (now sold out), and some Aileen's Glitter Snow paste. I taped the stencil over my card panel, and spread Glitter Snow over it in a thin layer, just like embossing paste, using a palette knife. For the first two panels, I just used the white paste on the white cardstock wanting texture rather than contrast, but for the third, I decided to try something different and pulled out some Distress Oxide ink in Salty Ocean. I blended it on the top half of the remaining panel, using a heavy hand, and then splattered some water on the ink using a distress sprayer, picking up some of the color with a towel. Then I added the same snowflakes using Glitter Snow and let all three panels air dry for about 30 mins. Just to be sure, I blasted them with my heat gun for a few seconds, which caused the snow to bubble and expand a bit. 

Using the tree and ice rink dies from the Skating Rink Scene die set, I cut the rink three times out of Lawn Fawn Pixie Dust Sparkle Cardstock and cut a bunch of each of the two sizes of pine trees out of Spearmint Petallics shimmer card stock, inking the edges with Bundled Sage Distress Oxide ink. I cut 2 hillside dies from my stash, 3 times each, out of white cardstock. 

To assemble my card fronts, I adhered two hillsides on top of each of the snowflake panels, then an ice rink toward the bottom of each one, and a generous scattering of little pine trees using Double Sided Sticky Tape and Aileen's Quick Dry Tacky Glue from the Try Me Size Tacky Pack. Finally, I added the adorable images I had colored, and a cute sentiment to each one, stamping them either directly on the card panel or an Oxide stamped banner of cardstock that I adhered using Woodware 1mm foam mounting tape. 

Winter Wonder

For my project today, I decided to try out one of the new to me and new to White Rose Crafts stamp designers, Little Acres Creations. I decided to go back to one of my favorite techniques & do some stamp masking with the Piles of Smiles stamp set & colored with Spectrum Noir Markers. I added a ton of Sakura White Souffle pen to the colored image, making it look as though there's heavy snowfall, leaving a coating of fluff on all of the cute critters and that adorable mail stump. I added Dovecraft Crystal Clear Glitter Glue to the snow, giving it lots of gorgeous sparkle. I used a white gel pen to liberally add dots of snowfall, all over my design, even over the colored images so they appear in the snow, rather than in front of it. Then I built a custom sentiment using Heffy Doodle's Elfing Christmas Words stamp set, stealing an ampersand from the Your Next Stamp Totally Narly set,  stamping it with Versafine Clair Nocturne ink. As a final touch, I added a few snowflakes from my Doodles Paper Playground Frozen Sparkle Blend, scattered around. 

I selected an ice blue card base from my stash & cut a mat of plaid paper from the Lawn Fawn Perfectly Plaid: Winter paper pack, adhering it with Double Sided Sticky Tape. I trimmed my colored panel to 3.75x5 inches and adhered it in the center, popping it up with Woodware UK 1mm Foam Mounting tape, for a tiny bit of dimension.

I always love to bring the outside of my cards to the inside, so I cut another panel of Perfectly Plaid: Winter paper  and a white panel, measuring 3.5x4.75 inches, layering them with Double Sided Sticky Tape. I again built a custom sentiment, combining the large "Happy Holidays" stamps from Lawn Fawn's Winter Penguin mini stamp set, stamped in Salty Ocean Distress Oxide ink, with "to you and yours" from the Holiday Helpers set using Versafine Clair Morning Mist ink. For a final touch, I added a few Lawn Fawn snowflakes, and the envelope and mailbox from the original Little Acres set, also in Morning Mist.

4 Cards, 1 Decopage Sheet

I'm over on the White Rose Crafts blog today, sharing 4 fast, easy and beautiful cards made with one Craft Creations die cut, Decoupage Sheet, WRC sourced Holiday Paper, and because this week is all about Embracing your Embellishmental Side, a few different Sparkle Blends and some Glitter Glue!

I am smitten with the adorable Busy Penguins from Craft Creations UK, and I love that straight out of the plastic, you have 4 totally cute, dimensional card toppers for just $1.70! Can you say bargain? If you want to stretch this sheet even farther, use the first penguin layers from each topper as flat images on 4 additional cards, or use all of them on one to create a cute, interactive scene with all 4 of these cuties! I, of course, didn't realize this was a possibility until I'd already completed all 4 of my cards, but I love that there is potential to get 8 cards out of this one sheet! WOW! That's some amazing value!

These sweet little guys went together so quick and easy--I think it took me 15 minutes to assemble all 4 toppers! I wanted to keep my cards lower profile, so I decided to use the Woodware UK 1mm Foam Mounting Tape to layer up all 4 of the toppers. I love that I still get dimension without adding a ton of extra postage when I mail these cuties out for Christmas. 

I selected 4 sheets of paper from my extensive Holiday paper collection, trying to match them to the scarves of each penguin. I chose the green holly pattern and aqua snowflakes  from Wild Rose Studio's Holly Lane and Frosted Lace paper packs, respectively. The red and green snowflakes are from the Echo Park I Love Christmas paper pack, and the ornaments and script on black background are from the Be Merry and Bright 6x6 pack by Couture Creations. 

I cut four 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inch, 110#, white card bases and trimmed my background papers to 5 1/4 x 5 1/4 inches. I mounted the backgrounds using 6mm Double Sided Sticky Tape, centered on my square card bases. 

Next, I added the same Double Sided Tape to the back of the assembled toppers and adhered them on the backgrounds at an angle, for a bit of interest.

Using Stazon black ink, I stamped a different sentiment from the Heffy Doodle Elfing Christmas Words stamp set on each card. I love how versatile this set is, because you can mix and match all the different parts to build just the sentiment you need for your card!

Since this week is all about embellishments, I decided to double up on the sparkle! I chose Dovecraft glitter glue in Crystal , using it to go over the framed outline of each of the topper squares and over the scarves on each of the penguins--which added an awesome shimmer.

As a final touch, I selected 3 different Sparkle Blends from the Doodles Paper Playground, October Release to embellish my cards. I used Frozen on the holly and aqua snowflakes versions, Candy Cane on the green and red snowflakes and Vixen on the final, non-traditionally colored card. I adhered them in clusters of three, in three areas that created an eye pleasing, visual triangle.

I hope you've enjoyed my collection of cards, today! These were so fast to put together--approximately half an hour from start to finish! That's not bad at all for 4 really cute cards--especially in the midst of the Holiday crafting flurry!

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Create like no one is watching.

New Blog, just for me

Hello friends followers and family. I wanted to just pop a little introduction post in here, before the real stuff starts coming. I decided I wanted to create a second blog, in addition to the Doodles Paper Playground business blog, as a place to share just my own projects. I'll try to keep up with it, and often they will be copy pasted from the DPP blog, but I like the idea of having all of my creations in one place, easy to find. I may end up being my only follower over here, but it will be nice to be able to go back and see how I've grown as a cardmaker and crafty human.

I'll be backdating previous blog posts I've written for WRC and other design teams so they're on a linear timeline.

I hope you enjoy this collection of my work & that you will subscribe & follow as I continue to grow and create.

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Create like no one is watching.