Cardtopia

A new start

2009-12-30T17:41:00.000-05:00

I have moved!

I have created a new website to host my cards instead of using this blog.

http://www.sharedcards.com/

There is a new blog as well, under the sharedcards.com name, that will follow changes on the website and my cardmaking efforts.

http://sharedcards.blogspot.com/

Finally, you can get short occasional updates on the state of the web site by following twitter now:

http://www.twitter.com/sharedcards

My Three Tags

2009-12-21T22:18:00.003-05:00

If you read the last post, I have been playing with gift tags and the CuttleBug Beautiful Boxes Embossing and Die Cut set. Here are three more tags using a different embossing folder. The last one is the same technique as before except on blue cardstock. The first is also the same but just uses a turquoise metallic broad tip pen on white card stock. For the middle one, I took a gold dew drop ink pad and tried to just color the embossing. I ended up with gold mostly on the embossing but some in the background too which was fine. In person its looks like a metallic gold but the scanner turned in a sunshine yellow. The backs are all plain white piece of cardstock you can write on that have been die cut to shape and glued on with some stick glue.

Beautifully Boxed Gift Tag

2009-12-21T01:32:00.005-05:00

I brought a bunch of neat Cuttlebug die and embossing sets on sale a while back and set them aside to make sure I revisted them after Christmas cards were done. The sets includes a 2"x2" die and 4 matched embossing folders so you can emboss what you just cut out. A lot of the things I create actually start with me wanted to use something I brought. This is the first project using them.

I used some scraps of green I had left over from another project. The die cut and embossing folder are from the Cuttlebug Beautifully Box set. I then went over the raised dry embossing with a broad tiped silver gel pen. I had wanted to use the gold one but it was dried out while the silver one from the same set was not. I then added red glitter glue to the bows hoping to add some strength to the paper where I plan on putting a ribbon. I also wanted to bring in some more red so when I fill in names with a red gel pen they will stand out better. I made this one with the Xmas Red Stickles but switched to a cheaper product for the rest of them because the stickles bottle is mostly used up from the 3rd Christmas card I made this year and it's difficult for me to get it at a good price. Not sure what I an using for ribbon yet but I punched a small hole for it in the top bow lace. My original thought was some very thin silver cord.

If you are looking for that 3rd Christmas card that uses the red stickles, try back next year. I decided to send out the snow globes this year but had already produced enough of the other card. Unless I design something better, it's next years card right now. It's the same deal with the first two I made as well, I may send them out one year so they are secrets until then.

TSOL Cut It Out Snow Globe

2009-11-28T02:18:00.003-05:00

This card is fairly simple to make once you get the digital file created. Take the snow globe from the Stamps of Life Nov 09 Digital Set and enlarge it to about 4 inches high. The pixels in the image start to show but you can sharpen it to get rid of most of the effect. Position it on the paper so when you print it you have enough paper left above it to fold over to make a card. The rest of the images on the card are from the same set. Simply position, color and resize them. After you print it out, fold the card so part of the globe ends up on the back and you have a hinge at the top. Cut around the outside of the remainder of the globe to make a 4" globe card. For the trees I left them black and white on the print out and colored them by hand with green. The red on the trees is Stickles glitter along with the gold on the base and the white on the snowman. The snowman is sitting on top of some of the white foamy snow you can get in the craft stores. Spread a thin later out and texture it and then let it dry until it hardens. It you are careful enough, you can put the snow and glitter on in one sitting. Otherwise, you might want to let the glitter dry before you do the snow.

The Stamps Of Life Digital Snow Globe Blue Shaker

2009-11-28T01:04:00.004-05:00

Update:
This card has been featured on The {Stamps} of Life Blog and I have written up a project sheet with many more details than I blogged about that is available as a {Stamps} of Life Web Site Free Project.

Use the Stamps of Life November 2009 Digital Stamps to create a snowglobe about 3" high.
Add the snow man to the middle of the snow globe.
Create the Merry Christmas image by stretching the Christmas stamp to slightly under 3" and shrinking merry to fit in the resulting width.
Change the image color to a blue that will match your papers.
You should be able to copy and paste these images so you end up with 4 snow globes on one sheet of paper.
Print the image/sheet out. I printed it out on a laser printer so the ink wouldn't run when I glittered the snowman.
Cut out two of the snow globes as a square, like you see above.
Glitter one of the snowmen with a white/clear glitter glue and let try overnight.
Carefully cut out the interior portion of the globe. It is possible, even easy, if you use a knife/tool with a swivel blade. You should end up with a globe image with no snowman in it. (Actually its easier to do this and then cut the square but its easier to explain this way.)
There isn't much room to spare so check your sizing of everything at this point by dry fitting onto the card. Cut out the blue pieces now if you need them to check the sizing.
Mount a square of plastic on the back of the cut out snow globe. You can use a sheet protector, recycled blister packing, transparencies or the clear plastic craft sheets they sell for clear cards. I used the latter and Scrappy glue to do this so I could slide it around into the right place without fingerprinting the plastic too much.
Stamp snow flake images using the clear stamp from the same set on the whole snowglobe and the inside of the window sheet. Make sure snow flakes on the plastice and the paper are different place and be aware of where the snowman is going to be when stamping on the plastic.
Use your favorite dimensional tape to create a square on the outside edges of the whole snowman. It depends on what you fill it with but you will want something fairly dimensional to give enough room for the contents in the shaker to move around. Whatever you use make sure the corners fit very snuggly with no gaps or else the glitter inside will fall out.
Place some glitter inside the dimenstional tape. You want enough so that when you hold it upright it looks like the ground is covered but not so much that snowman is covered up too. I used a Martha Stewart snow glitter that looks like little mica flakes that I found at the local craft store this year in a good sized bottle. You could use any other glitter you like.
Carefully place the windowed globe sheet on top and make sure all the edges are sealed.
Mount the snow globe on dark blue and mount to card.
Cut out and mount Merry Christmas on dark blue and mount with the same dimensional material you used to make the shaker snow globe.
Color the base of the snow globe with blue marker.

Digital Stamps Of Life Halloween Card

2009-11-14T18:03:00.002-05:00

This is a purely digital card front I created a few weeks ago. It was created using FotoFusion and the Sept 09 and Oct 09 Stamps of Life Digital Stamps. It's fairly straightforward to create. You just create an empty photo frame filled with black and then a smaller one on top of it filled with magenta to get the background. For the digital stamps, you just import the images, place and resize them then adjust the fill colors. Most of the stamps in the center have been enlarged. The bat only came in one size but I adjusted each one to make it appear they were at different distances. The only difficult thing about creating this card was that I ended up with so many objects on the screen and on different layers that it got difficult to grab the right one to make changes.

The Stamps Of Life November Christmas Card Color Challenge

2009-11-14T15:05:00.007-05:00

Here's the entry I came up with last night for this month's The Stamps Of Life Color Challenge. All the stamps are from the November 09 Set. Here's how I created it.

Stamp the snow globe in black on Stampin' Up! Old Olive cardstock. Try to stamp it as straight as possible or else it will show later when you mount the white/rose strip.
Color the base of the snowglobe using the Stampin' Up! Rose Romance marker. Since you are coloring on green, it comes out a brownish color, but it ends as a great match for other colors.
Stamp the snowflakes onto the background using Colorbox Frost White stamp pad. Start with the largest one first and space them out and then randomly fill in with the smaller two snowflakes in the set. This ink is extremely wet and juicy and you may need to let it set a while before it completely dries so be careful with the card after this step. The stamp pad is also very spongy so you only need to use very light pressure in inking the stamp.
Stamp the snowman on white cardstock.
Fussy cut out the snowman (and his little arms).
Secure the snowman to the front of the card well because its gets glittered later and you don't want it to crinkle up. I used a light coat of Scrappy Glue.
Cut a strip of Stampin' Up! Rose Romance cardstock just wide enough for the Christmas stamp.
Cut a strip of Stampin' Up! Rose Red slightly larger to go underneath that.
Cut a strip of white paper to go under the Rose Red.
Stamp "merry CHRISTMAS" on on the Rose Romance paper in black.
Mount the Rose Romance paper on the Rose Red and the result onto the white strip.
Now you get to see how straight you stamped the snowglobe. Without adhesive, line the mounted strips with the bottom line on the snow globe and check how things will work out. Mine looked straight but was off by just enough that 5 1/4 inches of paper magnified the error enought for it show. If this happens, there is a simple way to correct it - place the strip straight but slightly above the bottom line and it won't be visible to the naked eye.
Mount the strip onto the card.
Cover the snowman with as light of a coat of the Crystal Stickles as you can manage. The crystal color looks like a white when it is reflecting well but up close you can see it has a lot of a rose colored fine glitter mixed in with it so works perfectly for the colors on the card.
Lightly run the Crystal Stickles along the white edging on the top and bottom of the strip. The glitter makes the card really stand out in person, but doesn't seem to scan all that well and survive the jpg image conversion process.
Let the card dry overnight.

One Birthday Card, Hold The Sentiment

2009-10-20T00:01:00.001-04:00

Here's a quick and simple gatefold card that uses 4 different papers from the Nana's Kid stack. The party hat and balloon are whale punches with some kid's glitter on them. The present is just a square cut out with a paper trimmer. Someone forgot to tie a bow on it though. The white dots on the paper come pre-embossed so the card has a lot of texture in person. The hat and balloon are bumped up.

I tried the card with green paper in the background and different colors for the hat, balloon and box but this was the color layout I liked the best. If you want things to match better instead of pop, use a more muted background color that more closely matches one of the colors in the card and the embellishments. Since there are already multiple shades of orange/peach, putting it all on the darker muted orange helped to frame it all an make it pop more.

The Differences Give This Simple Card Appeal

2009-10-15T00:09:00.003-04:00

Here's another male card using paper from Nana's Kids stack. The dotted circles in the background are a large Stampin' Up! background stamp that I used to make my own red themed designer paper. Adding the background stamp added just enough extra that even though this a very easy card to make it looks complete. The only other real trick is that every one of the squares is mounted differently so there is no obvious pattern. This confounds you and makes you look at it longer. The squares were intentionally placed. The first two on the left lead you toward the sentiment and the final one on the right is horizontal simply to make it more different than the one its next too.

More Circus Animals

2009-10-13T23:36:00.001-04:00

If you couldn't quite get a good look at the animals on the train in the previous two cards, here they are in large print. This was different paper but it's really inspired by the tools and stamps I already had out from making those. The light green here is the green I suggested using in place of the blue background paper on the simple train. The circle punch got used again but this time I punched a circle in the top layer to make a window. Next I stamped the image on vellum and let it dry and stamped it on white paper. You then take these two images and overlap them perfectly. This creates a softer looking image than you get with just white paper but a much bolder image than you get with just stamping on the vellum or white and adding the other layer without an image on it. Mount that in the window and then mount all that on the brown to hide the sandwich layers. I keep thinking the card is missing something but all the stars on the paper come pre-glittered and I don't want to cover up the mostly complete animal images that are left.

The Quick and The Complicated Birthday Train, part 2

2009-10-13T22:32:00.002-04:00

This is the same train paper from the previous post but this card is a lot more complicated and brings in most of the colors from it while still being very male oriented. It's much more complicated and time consuming to construct than the previous one but when you look at the quick one and the complicated one, which one would you buy if they were side by side in a store?

This card plays very heavily on geometric relationships. Every piece of paper attached to the front has been inked along the edge in brown to stress the shapes and lines.

The happy birthday and cupcake are from Stampin' Up!. If you have the whale punches, its easy to stamp this and then punch it out upside down. By that I mean you hold the punch in your hand so you are looking at the bottom of it and place the paper inside the punch upside down so you can see where the image is through the hole. I guess any circle punch you can turn upside and manage to squeeze closed or even a circle template would work but the big expensive whale punches are the fastest way to get it done when they fit in my opinion.

If geometry skills eluded you, the only way to get the circle to fit perfectly like it does is to cut a square (all 4 side are the same length) about a half an inch larger than the diameter of the circle. You get the green to overlap perfectly on all 4 sides by cutting another square with sides that about half an inch short than the diagonals in the green paper. If you miss geometry class, you can use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the lengths you need.

The Quick and the Complicated Birthday Train, part 1

2009-10-13T21:54:00.001-04:00

Here's a super quick kid's card using the train paper from Nana's Kids cardstack and two clear stamps.

Instead of picking up the blue and using it for the background paper I could have just as easily picked up the green. A light green that would go with the brown would probably slant the card away from being something you could easily give to a little boy and more toward a nuetral or even female bias.

Pretty Paper, A Flower Button, A Fastenator, Ribbon and Glitter

2009-10-03T00:44:00.002-04:00

If you have been following my previous posts, this is the same paper that served as the inspiration for the previous card. In fact, this one came first and the previous card was actually made from the leftover strip that was cut off the top of this one. You can get a much better appreciation of the paper on this card - it was really designed to show off the paper. Can you guess what my two other goals were? Using the fastenator and incorporating a button are the correct guesses. In order to tie the elements together, I ended up covering a square of the white paper with silver glitter glue to set off the button and adding a line of silver glitter glue right above the scalloping. The ribbon border at the top is pretty thick so the whole strip of white paper is bumped up. This also helps hide the fastenator's prongs if you attach it just to the white strip of paper. The Happy Birthday stamp was just as hard to use as it was on the previous cards, but it gave an image that had the right height and width and most importantly, it was still sitting on the craft table from the previous card.

A Green Flower Can Be the Perfect Accent

2009-10-03T00:15:00.002-04:00

This card and the previous one share the same design inspiration. This one was designed around a different sheet of paper from the Nana's Kids stack though so it looks very different. The paper has a lot of pink in it, so the card background needed to become pink with white and green as the accent colors. The scanner didn't pick it up but the paper has a lot of glittered accents like the flowers and various clear vertical lines.

With the ladybug paper, I was trying to keep whole ladybugs visible. Because this paper was basically vertical stripes with flower accents, I didn't feel the need to keep as much of it visible even though it is very pretty paper and helps make the card. This allowed me to use a Happy Birthday stamp that had a lot more weight to it. Since that had more visual weight, I was able to use a larger green flower to add texture and dimension and bring out the green more. I have to honestly say I never thought I would find a use for the green flowers in this set but it really sets the card off and makes it a perfect blend of all the colors in the strip of Nana's Kids cardstock that I started with to make this card. The green flower came preshaded and preveined in a clear box of flowers from Oriental Trading. The Happy Birthday stamp was from a clear stamp set.

Nana's Laddybug Happy Birthday

2009-10-01T22:25:00.003-04:00

If you are following the date and times on these post, you might be wondering how I am making them so fast. I actually made them and scanned them in August and September and have just gotten around to creating this blog so I have a backlog of over 45 original cards that will be appearing here in the near future. They are all original creations, or at least the combinations of products and the layouts are an original creation. I will try to document where the different parts originate from and construction issues as best as I reasonably can while I can still remember them. If I get time, I may go back and edit these posts with more exact details on the title of the stamp set or the exact paper or ink color.

Now back to the cards....

The pink and green ladybug center strip comes from the Nana's Kids stack. The Happy Birthday sentiment is a clear stamp that has been stamped on the embossed line paper I used for the flower stripe card. The center strip is also mounted on that paper. Remember how I said that stamp was hard to use? Well this is where the paper that ended up with unreadable circles went. Finally, its mounted on a piece of Stamin' Up! pink card stock - that was the only pink I had that matched the ladybugs. The flower is out of a generic clear box of flowers I got from Oriental Trading. The flower center is just a big drop of glitter glue. The ink was a Tsenukio pearlescent ink. It was the only ink I could find that the clear Happy Birthday stamp would take. I love how you can see where you are stamping with them but all of the clear stamps seem to made from different materials and many of them seem to be ink phobic. It worked out in the end though. The ink I was forced to use gave the words a nice shimmer that really sets off the card when you see it in person. The bottom sentiment is a Stampin' Up! stamp inked with the same ink.

A Simple Yet Bold Happy Birthday Card

2009-10-01T21:38:00.003-04:00

Here's a super simple card. The white paper is from the local big craft store. The JPG image conversion removed the embossing detail, but it is embossed with lines, adding to the cards horizontal feel. The flowers are part of one of the sheets in the Nana's Kids stack. I cut it off the sheet and matted in onto yellow then black cardstock to give the center strip a strong visual appeal against the black letters. The black letters are from a clear stamp set I have. The stamp is difficult to use because if any extra ink seeps into the narrow letter area, you can't make out the letter so you have to ink it just right to get a a good impression but not so much that you get black circles instead of a negative image.

Nana's Kids Get Well Card for Men

2009-10-01T21:06:00.000-04:00

Why let a good idea go waste? Here is a version of the previous pink get well card using a different version of the bubble paper from the Nana's Kids stack. The colors in this one are guy friendly.

You can't tell from the picture but the red backing the sentiment is attached to the ribbon only. The same was done on the pink card. This allows the sentiment to float a little bit without introducing any bulk that get in the way of mailing it a normal card sized envelope.

Nana's Kids and Grandma

2009-09-30T23:37:00.001-04:00

Like most papercrafters I have a ton of paper and seem to just keep buying more. I decided it was time to start using some of it up, instead of making a hobby out of buying it. My strategy to do that - pick one paper product and use it until it was gone. The product I choose - a Die Cuts With A View 4x6 Nana's Kids stacks. It has a lot of designs that feature glitter or colorful fun kid themed ideas. This is one of those cards. This particular card was done for my Grandmother when she was in the hospital last month. It doesn't show well here but the bubbles on the paper are also embossed. The words are a Stampin' Up! image that has been cut and embossed out using Spellbinders dies.