Boo! {Lee Holland Designs}

Hi, crafty friends. I’m back with another Halloween card. I don’t make many Halloween cards, and the few that I do make are more on the cutesy side than the scary one. This little Dragon Scared of Spider image from Lee Holland Designs definitely fits my kind of Halloween card. I’m not sure who’s really scaring who in this stamp, the spider is running away, after all.

Halloween isn’t really a big thing in Norway, but this image was so cute I just couldn’t resist. I colored up the ground, pumpkins and leaves before asking my “twin” Liz for a color suggestion for the actual dragon, thinking in my mind “please don’t say purple”. What did she choose? It was inevitable, I knew she’d say purple, she even said which purples to use. I actually think he’s cute in purple, and I don’t think I’ve colored one of Lee’s dragons purple before, so I guess it was about time.

Once I finished coloring, I embraced the purple, stamping the Boo! sentiment from the Itty Bitty Boos stamp set from My Favorite Things using Deep Iris ink from Altenew. I then die cut the largest frame in the Scallop Frames die set from Pretty Pink Posh from Amethyst Allure cardstock from Papertrey Ink, adding two additional white die cuts behind it for dimension.

The outside dimensions of the die cut frame are 4 x 5″, so I cut 1/4″ off the height of my card base, making it 4 1/4 x 5 1/4″ instead of the normal A2 size to get an even white border on the outside of it.

The sentiment is tiny, and to draw the eye to it I decided to add a couple of gems. These are from the Meraki Sparkle Red Illusion jar. They’re color changing glass rhinestones, and this color was perfect for this card.

If you look at the various photos in this post, you’ll see that these rhinestones appear to have different colors depending on how the light hits them, it’s a really cool effect. In this photo, you can also see the dimension added by using stacked die cuts.

Fairly simple color palette for this card. It was a pretty quick image to color too!

Hugs {Lee Holland Designs}

Hi, crafty friends! I have a super clean and simple card to share today, featuring the Polar bear and penguin image from Lee Holland Designs. The coloring took a while, but the rest of the card only took a few minutes.

I printed the image with a 10% opacity onto X-Press It blending card before coloring. Whenever I want to color things that are supposed to look close to white (ice, snow, polar bears +++), I prefer doing a no line version. To me, there’s something very distracting about black lines on an image that’s supposed to look white, so I prefer the softer no line version. I colored the image with Copics, starting with the sky, then ocean, ice floe, polar bear and finally the penguin and his little scarf. I prefer doing the black towards the end, it’s just good practice to avoid getting it into nearby areas where you don’t want it.

Once I finished the coloring, I die cut the panel using the second largest die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 set from My Favorite Things, before mounting it on foam tape onto a white card base I created from white cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I die cut the word klem (hug) twice from white cardstock using a die from Kort & Godt. It’s actually a Christmas die that says juleklem (Christmas hug), but by using only the latter part of the word, I have a completely different use for the die, which I love. That’s the whole card, I decided not to add any embellishments, I wanted to keep the focus on the image.

Loooots of Copics for this deceptively simple scene.

Have a magical bday {Lee Holland Designs}

Hi, crafty friends! Lee Holland’s dragons are one of my favorite things to color, and when I can color a dragon holding a balloon, I almost do a little happy dance.

This is Dragon with big balloon. Isn’t he adorable with his big balloon and party hat? I couldn’t resist, and colored a warm yellow dragon this time, with bright green details.

I stamped a sentiment from the Scripty Bday stamp set from Mama Elephant using Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide ink, then trimmed my panel down slightly and mounted it using foam tape onto a top fold card base I created from Green Parakeet cardstock from Papertrey Ink.

Using a die from the Tag Builder Blueprints 6 die set from My Favorite Things, I die cut a piece of patterned paper from the Party Patterns 6×6″ paper pad, also from MFT. I did partial die cutting to make the tag smaller than the die will cut in one pass, then used a heart die from the same die set to cut a heart shaped hole in one end. I adhered this strip onto the colored panel using clear foam tape from The Rabbit Hole Designs. This tape is great, because you don’t really see it from the sides, and it’s also very thick, giving lots of dimension.

I finished the card by adhering some sequins and a gem from the Seashore mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

Similar color palette to yesterday’s card, but I colored this dragon weeks ago and had forgotten him when I colored yesterday’s balloon image.

Hello friend {Lee Holland Designs}

Hi, crafty friends. I have a clean and simple, yet dimensional card to share today, featuring the Peony Dragon 1 digi stamp from Lee Holland. This was one of the first of Lee’s images I colored up a couple of years ago, and this tiny dragon hugging these peonies is just sooo adorable.

I printed the image onto X-Press It blending card and colored it with my Copics, before trimming it down. I mounted it on foam tape to a top fold white card base I created from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink.

I felt the need to add a design element that would break the rigidity of the rectangular panels, and decided to add some twine going across. I wrapped Green Apple Divine Twine around the card front three times and tied a knot. The green goes well with the green in the image.

Onto a piece of Eiffel Tower cardstock from My Favorite Things, I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from the Mini messages stamp set from Mama Elephant, before using a 1″ circle punch from EK Success to create a quick circle from it. I added strategically placed pieces of foam tape on the back of it and adhered it directly onto the knot I had tied on the front of the card.

To finish off the card, I added sequins and gems from the Urban Chic mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards. They’re kind of scattered in a trail going from the bottom left to the top right of the image.

The card is simple, but has lots of dimension, and that dragon hugging his peonies will always steal the show.

Mostly analogous color palette, with a little bit of pink and yellow (!) for the peonies.

Hugs from the heart {Lee Holland Design}

Hi, crafty friends. I’m back with another dragon card to share. This time it’s Dragon with three flowers from Lee Holland that is front and center on my card.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Lee’s Dragons, and this one holding sunflowers was begging for a blue/yellow combo. Once I’d colored the image with Copics, I used the second largest die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 die set from My Favorite Things to give the panel a nice finishing edge. I adhered it to a card base I created from Cornflower cardstock, also from MFT.

I die cut a heart from Bright Buttercup cardstock from Papertrey Ink and stamped a sentiment from an Inky Wings stamp set in the center using Cornflower ink from My Favorite Things. I added the heart using foam tape and then a few sequins from the White Orchid Sequin Mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards to finish off this simple card.

Hipp-hipp hurra {Lee Holland}

Hi, crafty friends! I have some super exciting news to share. A few weeks ago, Lee Holland had a design team call. It wasn’t widely advertised (only four spots were up for grabs), but I have the best crafty friend in the world (Liz Vefall), and she sent me a link. I dropped Lee a quick line saying I was interested in joining his team and he responded right away and said yes. I was over the moon, I love his images. And even though I may be on enough design teams as it is, I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity.

My first card as a Lee Holland design team member HAD to be a birthday card for the wonderful friend that sent me the link, thereby letting me know that this amazing opportunity even existed.

I first fell in love with Lee’s images because of his dragons, but all his critters are adorable, and I thought this woodland squirrel was perfect for this birthday card. Liz and I often go for walks in the woods (when there’s no ice or snow), and we’ve spotted a few squirrels on our little outings.

She loves teal, so I knew just what color to use for the balloons. I made sure to print the image towards the bottom left corner of my quarter panel of X-Press It blending card, which is what I use for nearly all my Copic coloring. I used the largest die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 die set from My Favorite Things to give my panel a slight trim and that faux stitch edge I love so much, before adhering it directly to a card base I created from Tropical Teal cardstock from Papertrey Ink.

I die cut the letters to spell HURRA three times from the same color cardstock using the Connected alphabet die set from My Favorite Things. I stacked them for dimension and stability and adhered them to the right of the top balloon.

I also stamped a couple of sentiments from the A06 stamp set from Norsk Stempelblad AS onto strips of Sea Glass cardstock from Concord & 9th using Caribbean Sea ink from My Favorite Things. I added a few additional strips behind each and glued them to the card, before finishing off the card with a few sequins from the Seashore mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

I used a lot of colors for the coloring of this. I used 16 colors for the squirrel, which is kind of nuts (pun intended).