Love You So Much | Valentine’s Day Series #1

Hi Friends and Happy New Year! Today’s blog post is the first in my small series of Valentine’s Day cards that I am creating for 2023.

It wouldn’t be a Valentine’s Day card from me without including shades of red, pink, or even purple and for this card red won the prize. I used Simon Says Stamp’s Schoolhouse Red for the decorated card front and Sizzix’s “Mark Making Hearts” 3-D Texture Impressions embossing folder for the base of this card front. After embossing the red cardstock, I used a gold Pentel Sparkle Pop pen and the gold metallic pan from the Prima Shimmering Lights watercolor set to add the golden highlights that are on some of the raised areas of the embossed cardstock.

I used the Paper Rose’s “Stitched Rectangles” die set to cut all three of the cardstock panels for the card front – the A2 size panel is Cardstock Warehouse’s Stardream Gold cardstock, the next smaller size is Ranger’s Black Alcohol Ink Cardstock, then my decorated panel. I glued all three of those together using Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive.

For the sentiment, I selected Honey Bee Stamp’s “Bitty Buzzwords” dies both the love word die and the shadow for it. For the “love”, I cut one from mirrored gold cardstock and two from the black Ranger cardstock and glued those three together followed by cutting the shadow from the black cardstock and gluing the stacked word to the shadow. For my sub sentiment, I used Paper Rose’s All Occasions Sentiment Sheets and trimmed the first word off the sentiment that originally said “LOVE YOU SO MUCH” so it would better fit my card’s design. I popped both the sentiments onto black Simon Says Stamps 3D Foam Squares to add a bit of dimension.

Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so! Hope you have a wonderful 2023!

Until next time…

Christmas Wreath Card | Christmas Series #5

i friends! I created this card with a wreath making die set that I've owned for quite a while, but I enjoy using it to make wreaths for holiday and non-holiday cards. With the creation of this card, I've finally completed all of my Christmas cards. The majority have already been mailed and this one and one other will be hand delivered. Happy Holidays to all of you!

To create the front card panel for this A2 sized card, I used Gina K. Design's Masking Magic and cut four strips and adhered them to the right-hand side of the card front to mask off areas of the white cardstock that I didn't want to get watercolor paint on. Then, using my Kuretake watercolor pans, I painted a red, green and silver stripe down the unmasked areas on the card front.

Next, I utilized the Rubbernecker Stamps "Wreath Set" dies to cut all the elements for my wreath from a light and dark color green cardstock. I also cut some of the twig wreath elements from some chocolate brown cardstock. After gluing all the little leaves and twigs together to form the wreath I set those aside to dry while I created the sentiment.

For the Merry Christmas sentiment, I used the Spellbinders' "Christmas Mix & Match Sentiments" die set. I cut two copies of each die from white cardstock and one of each from black cardstock. I glued the two white layers together and then glued the black ones on top of the white ones to add dimension to the Merry Christmas.

Assembly time: I used liquid glue to adhere the wreath and the sentiment to the card front. After that was completed, I used Ranger "Cranberry" Stickles to the tips of each of the twigs to create the look of holly berries. Once those were dry, I adhered the card front to the A2, top folding card base and this card was complete.

I hope you enjoyed my take on a Christmas wreath card and it inspires you to create one yourself. So much fun!

Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so!

Until next time…

Holiday Gift Tags | Christmas Series #4

Hi Friends! Today I’m sharing some easy-to-make holiday gift tags using a variety of products from various companies.

Each year I gather all my tag dies and the Christmas-related stamps and dies and I’ll spend a couple Saturdays making an assortment of tags to attach to my holiday gifts. I thought I would share a few of them with you to possibly provide some design inspiration. I love creating the tags, each one is its own little piece of quick to create art.

This one was created using the Sizzix / Tim Holtz die set called "Yuletide" (666073). I die cut the wreath elements from some Simon Says Stamp gold metallic cardstock, Cardstock Warehouse Stardream Silver matte silver cardstock, and some green cardstock scraps I had in my stash. I completed the little wreath by adding some Honey Bee Stamps white pearl embellishments to make a cute little wreath tag. I glued two tags together so I would have a place to stamp the To and From lines on the back.

The nutcracker tag was created using the Pawsome Stamps "Crackin' Christmas" nutcracker stamp colored with Copic markers. The background of the tag was made by running a white piece of cardstock through the diecutting machine with the Simon Says Stamp "Scandinavian Christmas" embossing folder. After the paper was embossed and cut into a tag, I used the Altenew "Almond Butter" ink pad lightly across the raised areas to highlight the embossed design. For the greeting I used the Merry & Bright sentiment from Altenew's "Holiday Tag Sentiments" stamp set. The final touch was simply adding a few gold-colored sequins placed here and there.

I hope you found a couple ideas for creating your own tags, they are really quite fun to make. Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so!

Until next time…