by Susan Itell | Sep 27, 2017 | Christmas, Uncategorized |
Good morning to you and Happy Hump Day! Can you guys all see me smiling from ear-to-ear with this card? I call this is a Susan kind of card!
You know me by now that I just love simplicity and I am just giddy over fonts/sentiments.This card sums it up and in my opinion….it needs nothing and it is soooooooo rich and classic that I would be as “proud as a peacock” to send this to my family and friends.
I have shared with you before that I absolutely adore the Watercolor Christmas Kit as well as this stamps set in the new catalog. I have blogged about it before and it can be found on page 34 in the new catalog.
Today’s card is showcasing this fabulous stamp set with two amazing words “Oh Joy”…..so powerful, so meaningful.
I have to admit I was a bit sad that my pictures did not turn out as well. Sometimes it’s just hard to get a great picture when you have shiny metallic.
Today’s card focuses on using the gold heat embossing technique.To me, there is nothing more satisfying and fun as heat embossing but please remember not forget to use the embossing buddy…There’s nothing more frustrating than to pull out your heat tool to only find out that you have stray powder on your project!
Can you see that today I did something differently than I normally do?I kept the height of the card as tall as a regular A-2 to card and just made the sides of bit shorter… – the the piece was 4 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches tall.
How about this amazing embossing folder? Stampin’ Up! has truly been throwing out some great ones lately…Here’s a tip. Make sure you mist your paper with water before you run it through Mr. Big. This allows the embossing part to get very deep and rich!
Isn’t it amazing that this card just uses very simple and clean cuts and the wow factor is there! I did add the gold thread behind the sentiment before I popped it up.This gives such a fresh and fun flair to the card.
I know that many of you do not like to have a bunch of Christmas DSP in case you did not use it all.This card shows you how you can take a very thin strip… Actually 1 1/4″ wide to add a pop.
I also used from Crumb Cake as my card base… Something I haven’t done for a while but I think there’s just something very warm and comforting about from Crumb Cake and Real Red for the holidays…how about you?
That’s it my friends…I hope that I was able to inspire you today. I must admit….”Yours truly Susan” is getting a little tired with pinky…I actually was having a bit of a pity party yesterday that I took a break and went to the movies…..something that I have not done F O R E V E R…..but I was just feeling like “butter-fingers” with everything I was doing…..
Just a couple more weeks…..thanks to YOU for hanging in there with me – I am trying to continue to inspire and I DO LOVE this card!!!! Enjoy the day…..
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by Susan Itell | Sep 25, 2017 | Paper Pumpkin |
Good Morning! I hope that you had a great weekend, I sure did!
I have a post for you that I hope you will let “sink in” and see if it is something that you can see the benefits from. You know me well enough, I like to share with you “real things” that I use for myself, my family and friends.
I know that you all are familiar with the Stampin Up Paper Pumpkin Program. It’s the little box of surprise that comes delivered to your door each month. The cost of it is $20.00 (unless they are running a special) and each month it is a total mystery what is inside.
I admit….sometimes I love it and sometimes I don’t. The beauty of the program is you can sign up anytime you want… You can drop it anytime you want… You can actually put it on pause if you want to take a break from it for a month or two.
The magical date of ordering the paper pumpkin program is the 10th of each month.
That is the date that you can make a decision to pause it or cancel it. When you are a paper pumpkin subscriber you have the opportunity to purchase past kit refills If they become available, and that’s what this post is about!
The paper pumpkin kit for September is called Layered Leaves.With being limited with my hand I decided to open it up and put it together exactly as the kit was intended. Many months, I have tried to reinvent the wheel and do something different than what the suggested instructions are from Stampin’ Up!.
This month,I did it straight from the book.I absolutely enjoyed the experience of putting this kit together and I was so excited with the possibilities.My fingers have been crossed that they would be offering the kit refills and today, my wishes have come true.
In the below picture you will see all of the elements that are included in the refill kit for just $8. I realize that the refill kit does not come with a stamp set but I am sure you have many stamps that you could stamp a sentiment on to create in amazing project…we all know how to make things “work” for what we have.
After having so much fun and feeling so rewarded by putting this Kit together I was thinking… if refills become available I will not only continue to make fall projects… What about things for Christmas! In the picture you can below you can see what I have come up with.
With a refill kit coming with eight of the pillow boxes… These are perfect for holiday gift giving. I also do several craft shows and I thought these would be a great offering.
The only catch about being able to purchase these refill kits is… You need to be a current paper pumpkin subscriber. This is what I would do– if you are interested I would purchase the paper pumpkin for one month.
This way you would be able to get the kit for next month (which is also supposed to be super special as it is geared for the holidays) and then you would be able to pick up this refill kit or two.
Here is a quick video of the upcoming promotion.
After you receive your paper pumpkin kit and if you feel like you do want to not continue… No worries– all you need to do is cancel your subscription by the 10th of the month. (I don’t think you’re going to want to as this upcoming two months are to coordinate together for the holidays.)
Here is another peak of the Kit put together. What am I going to do with mine? Well… In a couple of weeks John and I are taking the peeps away for a beautiful fall weekend in the mountains.
I plan to use the pillow boxes as a part of my weekend fun with my children.I am going to use them on the table for our dinner one evening and tuck a special note inside of each one’s boxes with some yummy chocolates.
Wouldn’t these be wonderful for Thanksgiving?
Think about this….let it soak in and then hopefully that you will see that not only being able to purchase this refill kit will be fantastic, but seeing and getting a “feel” for the next kit will be exciting as well.
Enjoy your day and let’s all get this week rolling….Remember, these refills are WHILE SUPPLIES LAST and yep, mine are already on order!
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by Susan Itell | Sep 23, 2017 | Fall Cards |
Good morning and happy weekend to everyone…Well, the calendar says that it’s fall but it sure still feels like summer on the East Coast! I don’t know about you but hands-down – fall is my favorite time of the year. When I simply hear the words “Fall” I automatically think of beautiful leaves, apples, cooler temperatures, and comfort food!
Do you remember back in the spring… Sarah had a paper pumpkin called it’s a Sarah thing! It was one hot paper pumpkin and I sure did stock up on the refills.It was so much fun because she used a technique with clear embossed images and then using watercolor crayons to blend colors together.
In today’s card I am doing something something similar but I’m using ink pads instead of the watered colored pencils today and I will show you how you can stamp the leaves from the Colorful Seasons Bundle to make the fun!
Below you can see the beautiful colors that truly remind you have a spectacular Fall scene. The colors that I used were Cajun Craze, Cherry Cobbler, and Crushed Curry. Today, I did use the watercolor paper as using watercolor paper is essential to have super blending.
Very Vanilla is my card base color as I like the softness of the the very vanilla with the fall leaves. when I see this card I smile as it truly reminds me of doing projects with my children when they were younger with coloring. Let’s get going!
I bet you’re looking at this picture and going YIKES – this looks like a MESS!!!! Hang tight as we all know there sometimes that you need to make a mess to make a beauty 🙂
All I did was stamp the leaf image on watercolor paper and heat set it with clear embossing powder. I do recommend using the embossing buddy to make sure you do not have any stray powder going where you do not want it!
Now for the fun… Grab yourself a little cup of water and a paint brush.
1 – Wet the entire area that has been heat embossed with clear water.
2 – Now, dab your paint brush into a little of the ink and simply tap it over the embossed image as shown below. This is where the magic happens as you will see the colors blend together.You will have to just play around with color combinations to get the look that you were going for.
The one color I absolutely adore but you have to be careful with that is the color of yellow.You need to “protect the yellow” as it has a tendency to get muddy and change color if you add too many other colors right next to it.
This is such a fun technique to play around with and just have fun with color. After I have colored my images I then cut them out with Mr. Big – super easy and fast.
Hopefully you can tell in the pictures that I have allowed some movement to the top of the leaves. I achieved this look by just simply using glue dots towards the bottom of each leaf to anchor them to my card. This way you can kind of pulled the ends of the leaves to make them look more natural and free-flowing.
By now you know I adore sentiments and simplicity. I could not resist using this sentiment which is from the Dragonfly Dreams stamp set. I invite you to make sure that you remember to blend stamp sets together to achieve a fun look when you are creating a card.
To me it is the sentiment that makes a card special and unique. I felt that the font typeset went well with the feeling of fall and “movement of leaves” cascading down!
If you or anything like me, we tend to use stamps that are super current like from our new catalog… (naturally that makes sense) but please do not forget we have so many good “old faithful’s” that have carried over and they need love as well!
Now I ask you,imagine if I did not use the embossing folder with this card. True… It would still look beautiful but the feel from the embossing folder gives it a rustic and natural look. This embossing folder is called the pinewood planks. They sure do add a lot of texture to a card with minimal effort and they’re so affordable.
Another tip I wanted to point out to you is look how your eye takes the whole card in from the top to the bottom. By creating different focal images throughout the card it allows your eye to naturally go up and down and take it all in.
Also, grouping images in clusters of odd numbers also help to make your eyes naturally take it all in! Are you wondering about the embellishments? These are called “dew drops” that I have in my embellishment stash that I think are fun to add a bit of bling.
Well….thoughts? I hope I’ve been able to explain to you that using a technique like this is not only fun… It is easy. I think sometimes it is great to be able to pull out an old technique and put it back into use.
I invite you to look at your stamp sets and images to see other Images that leaves and figure out a way to use it with this technique. Here’s an idea… What about taking a large heart and stamping either a geometrical image or possibly some for small flowers/hearts to it and then use this technique. Hmmmmm…..I think I have an idea for a future post!
Enjoy your day, and many thanks for popping in! I hope you have a fabulous day…
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by Susan Itell | Sep 21, 2017 | Uncategorized |
If it’s Thursday… it’s time to play tic-tac-toe! Take a peek at this weeks game board and then put your thinking cap on and see what you can come up with!
Having a challenge like we have on Thursdays with playing tic-tac-toe really brings out the “Inner Picasso” within us all. Make sure you take time to pop by the challenge to see what the other designers came up with as well!
I just think it is super fun to see how we all can look at the same game board and then have so many different interpretations of it!
For today’s challenge I took the far right… Straight down – Persimmon, dimension and rounded corners. I wasn’t quite sure about the color of persimmon so I decided to throw in two colors… I used Calypso Coral and a little peek of Peek-A-Boo peach.
The fun thing about this card is you could make it rather modern (like I did today)…you can use a multitude of colors… and you can put many different types and styles of sentiments on your card.
In the below picture you can see how I simply placed the framelits randomly on the thick white card stock before I ran it through Mr. Big. The beauty of this card design is you can use any of the shapes in any direction and also the fact that the stamp is a photopolymer it makes it super easy to stamp.
I used versa mark Ink – the clear water marking ink that we use for heat embossing to do a very subtle tone on tone stamping.I highly encourage you to try this type of tone on tone stamping as it truly is amazing the effect that it gives. I think sometimes we just think of this ink for actual heat embossing but it truly does give you a wonderful effect that is very subtle.
Can you see the gold the splatters of ink that I flicked all over the card?I wish you could see it in real life as it is truly stunning… sometimes the camera just doesn’t give it justice! (Actually the whole card is hard to photograph as the Lemon Lime Twist always throws the lighting/color off a bit)
I have been asked many times how I do that… I use these metallic paints and all I do is get them nice and wet with the paint brush and then tap my index finger against the paintbrush to let splatters hit the paper. It is a great touch with little effort but the WOW is there!
Now we can chat about heating embossing…I used the sentiment from the stamp set and stamped it in Bermuda Bay against the Pool Party card stock. Right after I stamped it I added clear embossing powder over top of the Bermuda Bay Ink and heat set it.
Again, the camera doesn’t pick it up wonderfully but I will say it is very pretty in person.The color of heat embossing against the pool party is just so bright and cheerful.
It’s time to pull this party together with a beautiful envelope.You can see the colors that I pulled together to take from the card. Today I decided to adhere all of the colors together and then run it through Mr. big with the Sparkle embossing folder.
I realize making your envelopes beautiful is an additional step but I do think we all can agree that it truly pulls it all together. Trust me, once you get started giving your envelopes some love – you will never break the habit. It not only does it make you smile you, the recipient will beam with excitement to receive such a pretty piece of mail! 😀
Below you can see that I rounded to the corners of the card.This is something that I rarely do and I am not sure why and in the end I like the effect!
I find it best to use the corner rounders that comes on the envelope punch board to give the best results. Again, a little simple step that gives you a fun look and feel.
There you go…Another card for the challenge. I do hope that you pop over to the Tic Tac Toe website to see what everyone else came up with this week. If you would like or need help in how to upload a picture please shoot me an email and I’ll be glad to walk you through the process.
Enjoy your day and I hope you’re able to find some creativity time.We all know that is the best dose of medicine that anyone could offer to us. Yesterday I felt like you all were in my house… As I was busy organizing my craft area. I felt like I was Chevy Chase in the Christmas movie as I was finding all sorts of memories – brought lots of joy to my heart!
All I can say is… It’s amazing what we collect!
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