Hi, crafty friends! Today is Mother’s Day in Norway, and I probably should have thought ahead enough to make a Mother’s Day card to share today, but I’m not always a good thinkaheader and have a birthday card to share instead. My design is pretty generic, though, and it would be easy to swap out “birthday” for “Mother’s Day”. I even think the color scheme is perfect for mother’s day.
So many things went wrong in the creation of this card, but I fixed/covered up most of my mistakes and I’m pretty happy with the end result. I started by stamping birthday from the All the birthdays stamp set from Concord & 9th onto an A6 panel of Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink, as well as onto a piece of Nectar cardstock from Concord & 9th that was large enough to cover the shaker area. I didn’t want to stamp it directly onto the card base, that would have made it harder to line up. More on that later. So far, so good, right? I then die cut the HAPPY from the Happy Birthday words dies from Kristina Werner into my white panel, and kept the counters of the A and the Ps to put back in later. Things were still going according to plan. There’s a small asterisk looking stamp in the All the birthdays stamp set. I wanted to stamp that randomly across my white panel and pulled out an acrylic block. We used to stamp with acrylic blocks all the time before the Misti was invented. I’m not a ding dong, surely, I’m capable of stamping this tiny stamp a few times with an acrylic block without messing up, right? Turns out I AM a ding dong and royally messed up on the Eucalyptus colored asterisk above the A and P. Pretty much in the middle of the card, isn’t that typical? I knew I was going to add sequins, and I could strategically place one to cover up my boo boo. I cut off 3/16″ on all sides to allow the card base color to work as a frame once the card was complete.
I then adhered a piece of acetate behind my letters, glued the counters (interior pieces of the letters) back in onto the acetate, flipped the panel over and added tons of foam tape around the shaker window pretty close to the window, even putting tiny strips behind the counters of the Ps, before putting a few sequins from Altenew into the shaker well before sealing it shut with another piece of acetate. I made sure to add the sequins the right side up. That was not a good idea, but I didn’t realize at the time and adhered my shaker piece onto the stamped piece of Nectar cardstock to line up the stamping on the two pieces. The problem with the sequins all facing the same way is that once they shook around, they clumped together like stacks and were pretty much impossible to separate by flicking the card. The other mistake? Adding the foam tape so close to the letters and behind the counters, my sequins didn’t really have a chance to move much. I had adhered everything to the card base at this point.
I’m not shy with glue when adhering things, but I was able to slide a thin 6″ steel ruler under my shaker panel and basically used it as a saw to cut it away from the card base, cutting horizontally so I would preserve the card base as well as I could. I didn’t have another sheet of Nectar cardstock to create a new A6 card base, so this was the way to fix it. I then pulled off the nectar piece with the stamping, then the back acetate piece, which took with it a few of the small pieces of foam tape that were in the way anyway, and then I emptied out the sequins, made sure there were no sticky pieces left behind, put sequins back into the now rectangular shaker window, this time randomly with some upside down and some right side up – and I added way more sequins too, before sealing it shut with a new piece of acetate. The piece of Nectar cardstock I’d stamped on initially had crease lines after being pulled off, so I had to restamp birthday on a new piece of Nectar. Evidently, I didn’t put the stamp into the Misti the same way as I had the first time, because the new stamping wouldn’t really line up with the old stamping – part of the nature of photopolymer stamps, they’re soft and can be curved. The loops on the b and h don’t perfectly line up with the stamping on the white panel the way they initially did, but this is me embracing imperfection, I wasn’t redoing the white panel too.
I adhered my shaker panel to the card base and cut a couple of additional white panels to put on the inside of the card. This means I have a white panel to write my personal message, the card is a little sturdier because it’s now thicker, and the piece I adhered on the back of the front covers up the fact that I could actually see through parts of the card base after my little sawing earlier. Not shy about glue, remember? Yeah, the glue does its job, and I tore parts of it down to almost printer paper thickness. I added sequins to the front of the card (one covering up my stamping mishap) and I was done. At least I thought so… I was happy with the card, but then noticed as I was writing up the blog post for Papiria that the counter of the second P had slipped a little and wasn’t in the right spot anymore. It was bugging me. It was *really* bugging me, so I peeled it off, die cut a new one that I adhered in the right spot and took a couple of new photos. You can still see the droopy counter in the first two photos here, but that’s my card. I got there in the end.
These images in this scene are all from the Winterwood collection from Purple Onion Designs, illustrated by Holly Mabutas. We have 
I colored the scene with Copics, then stamped the critters and the snowman again, this time using Obsidian ink from Altenew to get crisp black lines. This is a pigment ink, which doesn’t play nice with Copics, but as long as the coloring’s already complete, using this ink is totally fine. I sprinkled on Chunky White embossing enamel from Stampendous, melted the granules from the back of the paper and finished off the card with a sentiment from the 
Not a whole lot of colors used given the large scene, but I did use 7 for the fox alone. But he came out so cute, it was totally worth it!
I haven’t done any coloring since December, so I felt rusty. Thankfully, these images from Lili of the Valley are easy ones for jumping back in! Once my coloring was complete, I fussy cut him, leaving a thin white border around the edge. I didn’t want to cut away the “fuzzies” that are so typical of LOTV images, so by leaving a white border, I could preserve the look. I used an embossing folder (Quilted embossing folder from Concord & 9th) to create some interest in the background without being too distracting.
I cut down a few colors of cardstock from Concord & 9th to 3/16″ wide strips and glued them together on a scrap piece of white cardstock. The colors I used are Oceanside, Aqua Sky, Buttercup, Grapefruit and Honeysuckle. I mounted my stripped up panel at an angle, put a few foam squares behind the monkey and added him on top. I die cut hugs (Quilted die set from C9) three times from white cardstock, stacked them and adhered them on top of my strips next to the monkey. I then stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from the Itty Bitty Gifting stamp set from My Favorite Things onto a black piece of cardstock from Concord & 9th. I added a couple of layers of black cardstock behind for strength and dimension and adhered it on top of the die cut word, before finishing off with a few sequins from the Starry Night mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.
Simple color combo this time.
Speaking of the card, I tend to go for spring/summer themed card and color palettes when we’re in the dead of winter. I want summer so badly, it’s not even funny. Last summer was cold and dreary, the summer before that all rained away. Can we get a proper summer this year? Please? Anyway, I used a floral image from a cut out sheet and paired it with a new die from Kort & Godt. New products help with mojo! This die cuts a circle sentiment, and what I didn’t realize before I actually used it was that it cuts an inside circle, too. It makes the die more versatile than if this were one large sentiment circular panel, but I wanted to use the flowers, so I puzzle pieced the two back together, added another circle panel on the back for a little bit of strength and a place to adhere the thin frame to.
I ran a quarter sheet of Ballet Slipper cardstock from Concord & 9th through my die cutting machine using an embossing folder, which gave this fun dimensional background. I mounted the die cut image in the center, cut down a couple of sentiment sticker strips and mounted those as well, before finishing off the card with a few faceted pearls.
I love Stacey’s images, they all work so well together to tell stories. I colored my scene with Copics and cut my panel down ever so slightly.
I stamped a sentiment from the 
Even with a fairly limited color palette on the card, I used quite a few Copics.
i colored the scene with Copics, before using a die in the Additional A2 Layers die set from Waffle Flower to trim down my panel. I stamped a sentiment from the 
I used the Snowflake Oval Frame embossing folder from Simon Says Stamp to create some texture on a panel of white cardstock which I adhered directly to a top fold card base, before mounting the panel on foam tape to finish the card. Super simple, right?
A lot of Copics for this one.
I started by die cutting the sentiment. I cut the shadow layer from True Black cardstock from Papertrey Ink and the top layer from gold glitter cardstock from Kort & Godt. I love their glitter cardstock, it’s so smooth and nothing rubs off. I used the largest die in the Additional A2 Layers die set from Waffle Flower on a piece of Eucalyptus cardstock from Concord & 9th, before using the faux stitch die in the Festive Blooms die set from Concord & 9th to dry emboss the panel, which I then adhered to my black card base. I love that there’s a tiny little black border.
I die cut leaves and sprigs from the Festive Blooms die set and the Joyful Season die set (also from Concord & 9th) to frame my sentiment. I used Sprout and Juniper cardstocks from Concord & 9th for the leaves and sprigs, and a little bit of Rustic White cardstock from Papertrey Ink for the berries. I curled up the ends of the leaves, added foam tape on the back of the berries and adhered it all to flank my popped up sentiment. There you have it, a Christmas card with what I believe to be a very modern palette.
This is one of those super simple cards. I stamped the image using Extreme Black ink from My Favorite Things and masked it before stamping the 
I stamped a sentiment from the 
I stuck to a pretty limited color palette, I feel, but there’s still a lot of markers.
This scene is created entirely with images from last years holiday collection from Stacey Yacula. 
I colored the entire scene with Copics, stamped the sentiment from the 
I used lots of Copics for this, and all the different gray families, actually.
I used a large pennant die (
I took some white cotton thread (
Papirmølla 