Tag: My Favorite Things

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.

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.

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.

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? 😉

Ho Ho Ho {Lili of the Valley}

Elin2 Comments

Hi, everyone!

I’ve got a super simple Christmas card to share with you today, featuring the Penguins Ho Ho Ho digital stamp from Lili of the Valley. This is such a fun stamp, and the size and orientation make it perfect for a portrait A2 sized card.

I colored my image using Copics. I don’t often use red on my Christmas cards, and I never pair it with green, but I love the look of red and gray or red and teal. For this one I went with both gray and teal, and I did my best to make the leaves in the image as “un-green” as I could by choosing the BG90s to color those in. A great little trick to coloring with red is to color in all the other colors first. That way you don’t run the risk of transferring red ink onto the other sections of your image if you accidentally color over the line into the red.

I diecut my colored panel using the largest of the faux stitch dies I have from My Favorite Things (I’ve used the Stitched Rectangles STAX Set 2) and glued it onto a cardbase of Tropical Teal cardstock, also from My Favorite Things. I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from the Sweet Holiday Penguins stamp set from My Favorite Things, diecut that using the Fishtail Flag Frames die set from MFT and mounted it onto my card with 1 mm foam squares for a tiny bit of dimension.

Here are all the Copics I used. The Es are all used to create my red color. I find that the actual reds (the Rs) in the Copic range are either too orange or too pink for my liking when it comes to Christmas reds, so I always use the Es for my base before going in with a couple of Rs at the end to make the color pop.

Merry Christmas

Elin2 Comments

Hi, everyone! I know you’re thinking it’s too soon, Christmas is still four months away, but I like getting my Christmas cards started early, so I’m not swamped when November comes around and there’s enough to get done as it is.

Today, I’ve got snowmen for you. I colored up these snowmen from Mama Elephant for Kathy Racoosin’s 30 day coloring challenge… in June last year. I wasn’t able to do all 30 days of that round of the challenge because of a shoulder fracture, but I got a few days in before I had to throw in the towel. Blue Christmas cards are my weakness, so I colored in all the accessories for the snowmen in the stamp set using blues and browns.

I fussy cut my snowmen and made myself a little sketch, to make the actual cardmaking process easier. I find sketches help make me more productive. I used the Tag Builder Blueprint 5 die set from My Favorite Things to create my frames, and layered 3 diecuts together on each of the four frames to make them more dimensional. I kept the interior pieces to use with the remaining snowmen for an additional two cards. I dry embossed my cardbase using the Falling Snow stencil from Simon Says Stamp. It’s not easy for the camera to pick up in photos, but there’s a subtle bit of texture to the background.

I glued a panel of Enchanted Evening cardstock from Papertrey Ink straight onto the card front using doublesided tape, and stamped my sentiment repeatedly next to it using Enchanted Evening ink, also from Papertrey Ink. The stamp itself is from Norsk Stempelblad AS. I glued my frames down onto the blue background in a wonky, whimsical arrangement, mounted my little snowmen inside each frame using 1 mm foam squares and embellished very simply with snowflake sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

You’re the best! {Mo’s Dream Team}

Elin7 Comments

Hi, everyone!

I feel like every other day is Wednesday, and today’s another one. Time just goes by so incredibly quickly, it’s hard to keep up and keep track of the weekdays. I colored up Mona from Mo’s Digital Pencil on Saturday, that much I know. I’ve now turned her into a happy card. I diecut a panel with my image as I often do using the largest of the Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 2 dies from My Favorite Things, it’s probably the one die I use the most out of all the dies I own. I used double sided tape to glue it to a cardbase, which I made from Ocean Tides cardstock from Papertrey Ink.

I haven’t made one of my cluster cards in quite some time, but I really enjoy the process of putting these clusters together, so I decided to do it for this card. It’s a great way to use some patterned paper scraps, and one of these patterned papers is actually from 2007! It’s from Autumn Leaves. Remember them? I think it’s been a while since they ceased to exist. Now, when you go to autumleaves.com, you get to a site for assisted living communities for those with dementia. It’s a Texas based company, and definitely not a maker of pretty patterned paper. The other papers I’ve used are also what we’d call old in the card making world, the yellow one is from My Mind’s Eye and was released in 2011, and the remaining two were both released in 2013, they’re from Maja Design and Inkido, respectively.

I use a couple of different dies to make these clusters, I make the banners using the Fishtail Flag Frames set from My Favorite Things, and I use the Happy Days Ticket Stubs die from Xcut for all those tickets. It’s one die that cuts nine different tickets, and I love that I get that many from one run through my diecutting machine. I mounted some of my diecut pieces on 1 mm foam tape, and glued others down using just double sided tape. Behind the whole thing I put half a mini paper doily from Doodlebug Design. I used the other half for the card I posted yesterday. On top I added a sentiment from Norsk Stempelblad AS stamped in Ocean Tides ink from Papertrey Ink. I mounted that on foam squares, and tripled up the foam squares on the left side of the banner. Finished off with a few pink dots from Papirdesign.

I have so many tickets left over, and with this kind of cluster you don’t even use whole pieces for all of it, so I have the off cuts from some of these also. I added half a ticket in the bottom left corner, too, and glued another dot on top. And that finishes my card for today.

I leave you with the colors I used for the adorable little girl. Not too many today.