Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

ElinLeave a comment

Hi, everyone!

I’ve got another blue Christmas card with the adorable snowmen from the Little Snowman Agenda stamp set from Mama Elephant.

I colored up these snowmen for Kathy Racoosin’s 30 day coloring challenge in June of last year, so it felt good to finally put them to use. Another thing I put to use? Those die cut squares. They were left over from this card where I stacked die cut frames for a dimensional look. I used a little bit of a trick with graph paper and Press’n Seal to make sure my squares were straight, evenly spaced and centered. Worked like a charm, it’s a trick I’ll definitely use again in the future!

I had 12 snowmen, but I needed room for a sentiment, so I stamped one from Norsk Stempelblad AS onto one of the die cut white squares using Papertrey Ink Enchanted Evening ink and glued the last snowman to the inside of the card instead.

I used the largest die in the Stitched Rectangles Stax Set 1 from My Favorite Things on some Enchanted evening card stock, and glued it to my Stamper’s Select White card base before adding all the squares with 1 mm foam squares. I then used more 1 mm foam squares on the back of the snowmen. Dimension is life, as Laura Bassen says. I didn’t want this card to be too thick, though, so I stuck with the 1 mm. Added some snowflakes die cut with the Hero Arts Snowflake Confetti die, and my card was finished.

Big birthday wishes {Mo’s Dream Team}

Elin1 Comment

Hi, everyone!

I’ve got a seemingly simple card to share with you today, but looks can be deceiving. Those letters? They’re stacked six tall. There are 17 of them. You do the math. Lets just say it was a lot, and definitely a labor of love.

I needed to make a quick card last night, and decided to color up three of the small monsters from the Cupcake Monster set from Mo Manning (I have the separated version, there’s also a merged version, which you can find here). I made them super tiny, they’re about 1/2″ tall. Small surfaces, quick to color, right? Right! However, I didn’t take into account the fact that the rest of the idea I had for this card would be way more time consuming.

When my little monsters were all colored in with my Copics, I pulled out the Big Balloon stencil from My Favorite Things along with four different colors of distress ink. I created three balloons that overlap. All the balloons are ink blended using two colors. The yellow one is Squeezed Lemonade with Spiced Marmalade toward the base of the balloon, the orange one is Spiced Marmalade with Worn Lipstick at the base, and the top one is Worn Lipstick with Picked Raspberry at the base.

I die cut the Big Birthday Wishes die from My Favorite Things five times from Stamper’s Select White card stock from Papertrey Ink, as well as from the blended piece, which is also Stamper’s Select White. It’s my favorite white card stock, I haven’t found one that’s more white than this, and it’s also wonderfully sturdy at 110 lb. I did a layered inlay, then fussy cut my monsters and placed them strategically on my card. I love that the top one looks like he’s balancing on the top of the H, and the one on the right is leaning on the E while dangling his feet from the top of the S.

God jul fra meg til deg {Lili of the Valley}

ElinLeave a comment

Hi, everyone!

I’m still working on my holiday card, and this time it’s all about penguins AND a snowman.

This image was part of the Christmas release from Lili of the Valley that came out a few weeks ago, you can find the stamp here on Etsy. There’s a new release coming tomorrow, and it’s full of more Christmas goodness. And they’re png, which makes them so easy to mask and layer. I’ve shared my coloring of one of the new images over on Instagram. It was a polar bear, I couldn’t help myself. For this one, however, I colored up my little scene with my Copics and added white flock to the hats of the penguins for a little bit of fluffy texture.

I diecut my panel using the largest die from the second of the two sets of Stitched rectangles from My Favorite Things and glued my card to a top folding card base I made from Enchanted Evening cardstock from Papertrey Ink. It’s my favorite dark blue cardstock, and that was the last little bit that I had, I’m now out of pieces large enough for cardbases. I used scraps of the same color cardstock to diecut my sentiment three times and stack them. The die I used is from Papirdesign. I added a stamped sub sentiment stamped in the same color ink and finished off my card with a few diecut snowflakes that I made using a die from Marianne Design.

And last, but not least, the Copics I used on this image. I’ve also made myself a BG71 that I used on the snowman in addition to the BG70.

Gratulerer med dagen {Hobbykunst}

Elin1 Comment

Hi, everyone! I have a super simple card to share today, featuring patterned paper from a new (to me) company.

This beautiful floral piece is part of a 12×12″ patterned paper from P13, which is a Polish brand. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. I find that most patterned papers are very thin, but this is right up there with Maja Design, which has long been a favorite of mine because of their colors and their quality. I didn’t want to do too much to this, so I used a slimline die from Pinkfresh Studio to diecut the panel.

I used a die from Papirdesign to diecut my word from several pieces of white cardstock that I stacked together. I added some Copic coloring with my RV95 to the top diecut, then put a sticker (also from Papirdesign) on some foam tape and added it below the word, before finishing off with a couple of enamel dots. Super simple, right?

Do you think Santa’s coming soon? {Mo’s Dream Team}

ElinLeave a comment

Hi, everyone!

Mo has drawn up some really cute penguins, and once again, I simply couldn’t resist. This time, I went for 2 Penguin Chicks and had a great time coloring them in, as always.

This was a bit of an experiment for me. I usually start with my background, I find that the easiest. For the background of this, I went way out of my comfort zone. I had planned on using these purples, pinks, oranges and yellows for no line coloring of some florals, but by the time I knew what exact marker colors I wanted, it was too late at night to start no line coloring, so I took the same markers and started on this sky instead.

Once the sky and ground were done, I colored my penguins. My last penguin coloring had very textured, fluffy penguins, and I wanted a different look on these and kept the coloring more flat and added white bellies with a little hint of yellow, and even some purple added in. I used the second largest die from the Stitched Rectangles STAX Set 2 from My Favorite Things to create a panel, before going in with a texture paste from Kreul and a stencil from Simon Says Stamp to create snow.

I mounted my panel onto my card base using lots of foam tape, and decided to diecut a speech bubble for my playful sentiment using a speech bubble die from Altenew. I mounted that on some 1 mm foam squares for a tiny bit of extra dimension, and my card was complete. I love the playful, cartoon-like look I ended up with.

I used quite a few Copics for this. The first 10 colors in this graphic were used on the sky, so maybe it’s not that weird.

Christmas blues

Elin2 Comments

Hi, everyone!

I have another blue Christmas card to share today using the Little Snowman Agenda stamp set from Mama Elephant. These are tiny and oh, so adorable.

It’s no secret that I like a narrow border around my card, 1/16″ suits me perfectly. For this card, however, I changed things up a bit. I diecut the Snowflake Confetti die from Hero Arts from my beloved Enchanted Evening cardstock from Papertrey Ink, before going in with the largest of the stitched rectangles in Set 1 of the stitched rectangles die sets from My Favorite Things. I usually use Set 2 that has slightly larger dies (1/8″ larger in each direction for all dies in the set), but the largest of the dies in Set 1 creates a 1/8″ border around the entire front of the card. I wanted more white to show on this one, and this was perfect.

I had loads of diecut squares left over from my previous card, they were the interior pieces of the stacked frames I used. Instead of letting them go to waste, I thought I’d put them to good use. I took four squares and mounted them to my blue snowflake panel using 1 mm foam squares. Believe it or not, but this was the part that took the longest. Getting them centered perfectly near the top with equal spacing between them all and equal distances to both sides and the top of the panel took…. well, it felt like forever. With this kind of design, though, you have to get it just right, or it’ll throw off the balance of the entire card. They’re equally distanced down to 1/32″, that’s about as good as it gets.

I mounted four of my little fussy cut snowmen onto the squares using 1 mm foam squares and white heat embossed a tiny Norsk Stempelblad AS sentiment onto a strip of Enchanted Evening card stock and mounted that with a 1 mm foam square on the bottom right of my four squares.

Merry Christmas {Rachelle Anne Miller Studios}

Elin4 Comments

Hi, everyone!

I’ve got a pretty clean and simple card to share with you today. Some coloring, blue cardstock, a die set and some snowdrift sprinkles were all I used on this one.

I started by printing my little snowman scene from Rachelle Anne Miller onto X-Press It blending card, before coloring with Copics. I then used the shadow die from a die set from Papirdesign to partially die cut the shadow at the bottom of my scene. I trimmed off about 1/16″ on either side and glued it straight onto a card base made from Enchanted Evening cardstock from Papertrey Ink that I’d trimmed down to 4 1/8″ wide.

I die cut god jul (Merry Christmas in Norwegian) three times from the same color cardstock and stacked them for dimension, before adding the final touch of a few snowdrift sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

I used quite a few colors to color in this image. This was my first try at creating a glow in an image, and as far as first attempts go, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

You need more friends like me {Hobbykunst}

Elin2 Comments

Hi, everyone!

I colored up Victoria and Juliette’s Night Out from Stamping Bella for day 15 of the most recent round of Kathy Racoosin’s coloring challenge on Instagram, and the image has now made its way to a card.

I colored my image with Copics on X-Press It blending card and added Stardust Stickles from Ranger to the pink dress. The image is quite tall, so I decided to just trim the panel on either side a bit.

I put a piece of patterned paper from the Party Patterns paper pad from My Favorite Things on the card front, and mounted the image on foam tape. Lots of foam tape, I was not shy!

I stamped and white heat embossed a Mathia design sentiment (You need more friends like me) on True Black cardstock from Papertrey Ink and mounted that with black foam tape from Gina K., before finishing off the card with a couple of sparkling clear sequins from Pretty Pink Posh.

Merry… penguins? {Mo’s Dream Team}

Elin2 Comments

Hi, everyone!

Another Wednesday, and another Mo Manning creation around here. This time I’ve made a slimline card featuring the 3 Penguin Chicks stamp set, which is one of the newer ones, and those penguins are a must have, don’t you think? Slimline cards are tricky to photograph, and I need heaps of practice, but I did my best. After printing and die cutting my image, I went in with mostly gray Copics and colored in my little penguins. Pat has colored up the sample in the store, and while hers is light grey on the bodies of the penguins, I wanted to create a really textured look on mine, so these are a lot darker.

I used a little bit of color for their cheeks, the snowballs and also the sky around them, but that was it. I stamped a Norsk Stempelblad AS Christmas sentiment onto one of the snowballs using Papertrey Ink Blueberry Sky ink and glued my panel onto a card base of that same Blueberry Sky color. I finished my card by adding a few snowdrift sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

Like I said, I mostly used grays for this image. Here are most of the colors I used. I also used BG71, which is a color I’ve made myself.

Hooray, hooray, hooray!

ElinLeave a comment

Hi, everyone!

I have a fairly simple birthday card to share with you today, featuring this cutie pie from Tiddly Inks. I colored up this image for day 21 of Kathy Racoosin’s 30 day coloring challenge in April, so it was about time I turned it into a card (though to be honest, I have images that have been sitting colored and unused way longer than that).

I like printing (or stamping) my images close to one corner of a quarter sheet of X-Press It blending card. That way, I know I’ll have lots of white space to play with and for the final card to breathe, I don’t like cards that are too busy and “crowded”, if that makes sense. I die cut my panel using my favorite stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things, then actually went in with Memento Dandelion ink over my Geometric Landscape stencil from Altenew using a blender brush from Taylored Expressions. I rarely use yellow, and I rarely use stencils, but I wanted something other than my regular half mini doily behind my cluster of diecut scraps, and one of the hedgehogs is carrying a yellow heart, so I thought it was only fitting.

For the actual cluster I used scraps, which is a great way to use up all that oooold patterned paper (some of this is ten years old) I have laying around. These pieces are small, so it’s going to take me a while to use everything in my stash, but I’m working on it, one die cut at a time. I used the XCut Happy Days Ticket Stubs die for my cluster pieces. It’s one die that cuts nine different sized tickets in varying shapes, and I use it a lot on my cards. The papers are from (bottom layer to top layer) Imaginisce, Kaisercraft, and StudioLight. The little swirly line at the bottom of the cluster is a piece of paper from Fancy Pants, diecut using a die in the Tag Builder Blueprint 5 die set from My Favorite Things, the banner with the sentiment is from the same die set. The sentiment itself is from Norsk Stempelblad AS, stamped in Memento Bamboo Leaves ink. I thought it matched perfectly with the cardstock from My Favorite Things that I used as my card base. Those enamel dots from Papirdesign matched also.

Green is not a color I use often as my main color, but I’m trying to be better at using the entire rainbow and not just those gorgeous blues that I love so much. Even though blue IS the color of the year. Beautiful color for a crappy year, how’s that fair? 😉