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A friend of mine has been having a tough time, so I made this card to encourage her.
I got the design inspiration from Leigh's pretty sketch for this week's CAS(E) this Sketch!
I made a DIY stencil using the color drop dies and a piece of acetate sheet. Then I applied glimmer paste over the stencil. I really liked the shimmery and subtle effect. The cloud's shapes and colors are peeking through the drops.
The clouds were stenciled with Distress Oxide Ink. I also used Distress Oxide Inks for coloring the die-cut heart and stamping the sentiment to match the ink tones.
I die-cut the front panel with a Wonky Stitched Rectangle STAX die to soften the look of the straight edges, and raised the panel with foam tape.
I'm entering my card in My Favorite Things' Card Design Superstar Contest too.
Thanks for visiting!
Stamp: Essential Sentiments (My Favorite Things)
Paper: Smooth White (My Favorite Things)
Ink: Distress Oxide Ink (Broken China, Abandoned Coral, Walnut Stain - Ranger)
Accessories: Die-namics Color Drops STAX, Wonky Stitched Rectangle STAX, Mini Mail (My Favorite Things), Mini Cloud Edges Stencil (My Favorite Things), Nuvo Glimmer Paste (Moon Stone - Tonic Studio), Acetate Sheet (Hot Off the Press)
I've been looking forward to the CAS Watercolour September Challenge since the August entry link-up closed!
This month's challenge is Silhouette. What fun!
I love Altenew's vintage roses stamp set, and I used it for making silhouettes for my card.
I thought it would be interesting to use a "not-very-pretty" color embossing powder for the pretty roses, so I chose pewter. It turned out that the roses got a "vintage" look as the stamp set name says.
Here's a tip to arrange small elements (roses & leaves) and keep the arrangement from falling apart:
- Stamp the roses and the leaves on card stock and die cut them.
- Adjust the positions of the die-cuts as you like.
- Once you're happy with the arrangement, put a piece of Press 'n Seal over the die-cuts and press them so that they stick to the Press 'n Seal. They won't easily move around any more. I learned this technique from Jennifer McGuire's blog.
- You place the stamps on the die-cut images, and you can get the stamped/heat-embossed images exactly the way you want. (Misti is useful for this kind of work.)
It required a few rounds of masking and heat-embossing to make the silhouettes, but it was totally worth it!
Actually, I made another card (pic below), but I overworked the watercolor background, and the surface of the watercolor paper got a little frayed. So I chose the carmine red one to link up to the challenge site.
Thanks for dropping by!
Stamp: Vintage Roses (Altenew), Create a Cupcake (Stampin' Up!)
Paper: Canson Watercolor Paper (140 lb), Whisper White (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Gansai Tambi (Kuretake), VersaMark (Tsukineko)
Accessories: Embossing Powder (Pewter - Stampin' Up!), Die-namics Wonky Stitched Rectangle STAX (My Favorite Things)
It's a little bit early, but I made a Halloween card this weekend.
My design was inspired by Chrissy's sketch for this week's CAS(E) this Sketch.
Let me share my story about how I came up with the spider web idea.
I was thinking about what image I want to use for the fun "fan" shape for the past few days - when I was taking a shower, driving to work, waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store...
My first instinct was to place layered modern graphic shapes. Then I started thinking about some more nature-theme images. Nothing really hit me. I'm sure you all understand my feelings. I had "this-works-fine" moments, but didn't have a "Yeah, this is it!" light-bulb moment.
I went to a beauty salon on Saturday afternoon (still thinking about the sketch image while driving to the salon), and told my beautician about the challenge I was having. Hairstyling is a kind of art, and his wife is a professional graphic designer, so we often talk about art-related stuff.
Then he shared a piece of advice his wife often gives him. She says "The design software (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.) is only a supporting tool after all. You should first draw a draft design with your own hand freely, and explore ideas."
So after I came back home, I started doodling with a pencil. It's true, I'd been thinking about the design a lot, but just IN my head, not actually drawing something on paper.
This is one of the designs I doodled on scratch paper:
I looked for a spider web stamp, but the one I have was a little too small for the layout, so I decided to draw it myself.
I didn't find good Halloween sentiment stamps in my stash to match the cute little spider, so I created one using MS Word (font: Octavia Script).
I test-printed the sentiment to make sure the position was right. I also stamped the spider to see how low it should dangle.
I drew the web with a black pen, and framed the front panel with the Halloween design paper.
I thought about adding a few Halloween color sequins or grey spatters to the card, but I decided not to. I wanted to keep the doodle-on-paper feeling. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Thanks for reading the lengthy post today! Do you have your own way of dealing with situations where you can't think of any good ideas?
Stamp: Googly Ghouls (Stampin' Up!)
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Pumpkin Pie, Witches' Brew DSP (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko)
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