Thursday, April 19, 2018

IO Challenge- All that Glitters

Greetings friends.  Today's challenge is all about glitter.  Normally when I use glitter on a card, I put an intricate die cut onto strong, sticky tape and then add white glitter on top of all the open areas.  That then allows me to color the glitter with any color of Copic marker I choose.

Today I decided to go much simpler and to use up some of all my glitter tape scraps.  To make the card, I cut out my happy birthday sentiment and stuck it onto a strip of double stick tape.  Then I covered it with dark blue glitter.  For the rest of the decoration, I added strips of tape in varying widths and covered them with an assortment of glitters.   Here is a close-up of the card to see the sparkle better:


The nice thing about the card is that it uses up scraps, it is fast to make, and you can easily adapt it for the recipient using colors that they will like.

I also wanted to talk a bit about the sentiment die I used.  It is from the Greetings Top Edgers set.  The set includes dies that say happy birthday, thinking of you, and thanks so much.  When you cut out the die, it leaves the cardstock attached at the bottom to layer onto the card.  Normally I leave the sentiment attached to the cardstock, but for this card, I chose to cut it off so that it would fit onto the tape strip.  Here is a close up of what it looks like when you die cut the sentiment:


Don't forget to visit the other designers for more glitter inspiration:

Thursday, April 5, 2018

IO Collor Challenge- Pink and Green


Greetings friends.  Today's challenge was to use the colors pink and green.  It is a perfect color palette for Spring!  For my card today, I want to share a bit of what I did wrong as well as what went right.  After all, isn't that information just as important?

To make the card, I used one of my Colorburst backgrounds that I have on hand for cardmaking.  It is 140lb watercolor paper with an assortment of green Colorburst powders that were spritzed with water to get a splattered watercolor look.

Next, I stamped my Rose Leaves onto the green background using Impression Obsession Shamrock ink.  I put it in my MISTI for stamping because watercolor paper is notoriously difficult to stamp on, and I had a feeling I would need to stamp the leaves more than once.

The butterfly is where things went a bit wonky.  I cut out the butterfly in white cardstock and then again with one of my pink Colorburst backgrounds.  I pieced the pink parts of the butterfly onto the white butterfly outline, and I was done.  I should have stopped there.  However, I didn't.  I added some Stickles to the wings for sparkle, and the glitter glue started removing all of the Colorburst color.  The wings looked terrible.  Note to self...  Stickles and Colorburst powders don't work well together.  I removed the pink pieces that were ruined and looked for another background that would work.

To finish the card, I cut out another pink pieces from a background I had made using a couple of Cover a Card backgrounds.  Here are the pink pieces I used on the butterfly.  The original pink Colorburst background on the left and the pink patterned paper I made on the right:


So, my butterfly ended up being a combination of Colorburst pink pieces and patterned pink pieces.  The patterned paper didn't match the other paper, so I added some Copic marker on top of the pattern to make it look like all the pieces were meant to work together:


Whew!  I wish I hadn't gone one step too far and given myself  all that extra work.  However, as I tell my students, cards always seem to go wrong.  It is always about the fix.

Impression Obsession items used:
Rose Leaf Branch F1899
Butterfly 2 die DIE507-V
Hugs die DIE516-A
Shamrock ink

For the pink patterned paper:
Cover a Card Distressed Denim CC051
Cover a Card Flourishes CC027
Bubblegum ink
Ruby ink

Need more pink/green inspiration?  Don't forget to visit the other designers (Especially Dina...she has a stamp set give away on her blog)