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Hearts and Hot Air Balloons

By Cards

Hi all,

Welcome back for another day of Valentine’s day craft ideas! Today’s card features a rather simple card when broken down. This card is simple to recreate if broken down into geometric shapes. After I created the balloon I went searching in my stash for an appropriate background. I almost squealed when I found a sky themed paper in my crate paper stack. It worked perfectly! It makes this whole card look like it’s already flying. Another option would be to use a grassy type color for the background. I think in that case, the balloon would look like it just landed. I think either way you choose it’s fun!

hotairballoon

This card has a white interior for a sentiment and note to be written to the recipient. Also, it’s a great size and dimension that can be sent in the mail. Imagine opening up an envelope and finding this beauty inside. So cute!

Thanks so much for stopping by and see you next time for more crafty goodness.

Stitched With Love – Direct to Paper Inking

By Cards

CS4_participantHi all,

Today’s card features an inky background using a technique taught in class called direct-to-paper inking. The concept is to use white (or any neutral color) card stock and press your ink pad directly to the paper. This technique works great with pigment inks so that you end up with a nice smooth & even tone once the ink dries. On my card I used this technique to get that purplish/red tone card stock.

For this card, all elements were cut using a silhouette cutting machine. To achieve a solid red/purple background I pressed my ink pad directly to paper until the ink soak through to create a solid ‘faux’ colored card stock. Note: This process needs A LOT of drying time. Rushing the process will get you inky fingers & and dirty card (ask me how I know – ugh)! In the process of letting everything dry, I made a bit extra ‘card stock’ to use towards heat embossing my sentiment. Next, to create some dimension I used foam adhesive behind the white circles to pop them up off the card base. To finish off the card I just used some simple border stamps and coordinating ink colors for an embellished stamp design.

I love the fact that this card features a sewing theme. I’ve been searching for a way to use up some of my sewing sentiments! occ_button_card

Love You – Faux Embossing

By Cards

CS4_participantHi all,

We are well into the first week of Clean & Simple 4 and I am in LOVE with this class. There are so many techniques taught daily & many of them are entirely new to me. I love it! Today’s class featured a technique in faux embossing (which almost looks like reverse letterpress in my opinion). For this card I used a sentiment from Silhouette Studio and re-worked it a bit to fit the theme of the card. For the background I chose white-on-white and only have 1 layer of card stock for the sentiment. For the teal parts I stacked 3 layers of card stock so that it would pop off the page.  I love that it almost casts a shadow with so many layers.

The sentiment should read: Love you – Always Have Always Will.

occ_always

Valentine’s Day Mini’s – Hearts & Twine

By Cards

Hi all,

I’m back from a long weekend away and wanted to get back right into the groove of things and post up some Valentine’s Day card ideas for those of you looking to create (or buy) something simple. I’ve created these cards that I will post up on Etsy! I debated if I wanted to  make something colorful and thought it would be a nice change to simplify some cards down a bit. Nowadays, it seems that cards are so colorful and bright and over-the-top. Sometimes, it’s a nice change to mute things down a bit.

There are 4 different designs (3 featured here in the picture) with window cut outs for the image and the sentiment. Inside there is a “to” and “from” section for a quick note.

The cards measure approximately 2.5″ x 2.25″ and the windows were cut out using my silhouette cutting machine. The machine is such a great accessory for quick easy to duplicate cards.

valentine_with_twine

Thanks so much for stopping by.