Little Girl Cards

It's been a while since I've put any of the new cards I made up on the web, but here are a few I have gotten the directions and pictures for up on the website.

As always, click on the images for full directions including the exact stamps used, paper sizes and marker colors.

This one is a combination of a Penny Black stamp colored with Copic markers, a Heartfelt Creations die and some nice DCWV paper. The image has been cropped down but the stamp was large that this had to be a 5x7 card to fit all the elements.

Same 5x7 card as above, but redone in purple.

A 4x6 card using a Sweet 'n Sassy stamps colored with Copic markers. All of the oval mats are done using Spellbinder dies.

New Cards - If you didn't see them on the website already!

If you haven't noticed on the website yet, here is a new card design I made with as many masculine choices as possible, then with as many feminine choices as possible and then one that has elements of both.

	This the masculine version. The background stamp is a line pattern and none of the main colors are feminine.
	This the feminine version. Purple is just not a guy color for the most part and swirling heart pattern adds to that feeling.
	This the neutral version. The main colors are neutral or even lean toward being earthy guy colors but the swirling hearts are more feminine.

You can see how just a few simple choices made the card masculine or feminine and totally changed the card from something more formal into something more whimsical. Using tricks like that can help you get a little mileage out a card design you may have spent hours to get right.

The other thing I really like about this card front is that you can use it for almost anything. It could be a thank you, a birthday card, a sympathy card or a missing you card depending on what you put inside the card.

As always, click on any of the images to see the larger versions or the full directions if you want to know what stamp set was used.

Watering Can, Take 2

Here is Mom's take on the watering can image. She colored hers with colored pencils but used the same circle and scallop mat. She wanted her card to be an A2 sized card (4 1/4 x 5 1/2), which didn't leave much room for anything else on the card other than the scallop mat. To add more elements, she stamped the image a second time, colored some of the flowers on it again and then cut out and mounted some the flowers on top of the original image to give it more dimension. This proved difficult to do though because the colored pencil added a layer of wax that required a better adhesive than what was on the dimensional foam.

It makes sense, stickers are essentially on a wax paper and colored pencils use wax to hold the pigment particles together so you basically end up making a small area of waxy paper that resists dry adhesive when you color with them, although you may not be thinking about it at first. Some liquid glue solved the problem of the extra layer falling off.


As always, click on the card image if you want the full directions.

Masterpiece Watering Can

Here's a masterpiece I created. This is a masterpiece card because it's the kind of card you would see at a vendor booth at a stamping convention. It's beautiful and eye catching. It requires lots of expensive stuff to make - 4 different Spellbinder die sets, 3 different stamp sets and Copic markers. It takes a long time to create one, an hour or more, even if you are talented and even after you have designed it and know how to make one. If you were going to sell it, you would have to sell it for $15 or more just to get minimum wage for your time. It's not a card, it's a masterpiece.


As always with my posts, just click the card to get the directions if you want to know more about the stamps, die sets or just want to read more.

What do two Xryon machines, a Cuttlebug and a heat gun equal?

They equal this really quick amazing card that never made it online last year. I don't know why. The images were done for it. I just needed to find the name of the embossing folder and the cutting cartridge. It would have been easy to finish but it never gone done until now.





There's no stamping involved, but it uses 3 different machines, 4 if you count the heat gun, and two different embossing techniques - dry and heat.

Anyone remember the Xyron Personal Cutting system? It was one of the first generation electronic cutters and used 6x6 mats with LeapPad like books to select the image. It's discontinued now but that's where the large purple flower shape came from. It had some really nice shapes you're going to see coming up in some of the nicer simple cards that I made years ago that I'll be mixing in with some of the more complicated newer stuff in the coming months. I should probably update the card to use one of the newer cutting machines or mega sized punches but since I don't have a commercial sponsor to promote, I'll just stick with my original Xyron PCS flower since its got nice chunky petals that fill the card front.

The large purple flower is heat embossed with a rather unconventional technique that I came up with up that actually created a large glittered image that did not shed glitter all over the place. Essentially I made my own glitter paper, but just out of the image so there was no waste. How do you that? I'm going to leave that as an evil teaser. It's all explained in full on the direction sheet you can get by clicking on the image.

Pink Retro Bouquet Card

I am still working through some of the Purple Daisy Design stamps I've been using most of the month. This card is a play on an idea I had when making the Copic colored purple daisy one that was posted last week. I had the idea to extend the field of flowers all the way across the front of the card and mount the sentiment over them, but that would have required me to color and mount at least 25 flower images per card and added another hour or two of additional work per card so I stopped the flowers half way. For this one I tried to go for a similar look to my original idea of mounting the sentiment in the middle of the flowers but simplified it so it was easier to make. To try to speed things up a little more I glittered each flower with a quick thin coat of Stickles instead of coloring and shading each one. You do have to wait for this one to dry but takes a lot less effort to get this one done. The hardest and most time consuming thing on this one is peeling the backing off of 31 pieces of dimensional foam tape.


As always, click on the card image for complete directions. Often times the directions have some helpful tips and explain a few things I didn't here and that's especially true for this card.

Purple Daisy Bouquet

Here's my latest handmade greeting card and another one using the rubber stamps from Purple Daisy Designs that I've been catching up on this month. Fair warning though, this one takes forever to make. You'll have to stamp out 11 flowers and color and shade all the flowers using Copic marker, or your favorite coloring technique. You might want to have an ink refill handy for your light purple marker too if you decide to make a lot of these. One of the nice things about this stamp is that it's designed to fit into a punch. To punch them out you just turn the punch over so you can see the cutting parts and then insert your paper into the punch so you can see the flower through the hole. Line up the flower image with the die inside and squeeze the punch. It's much faster than having to fuss cut out each flower. The really time consuming thing is arranging the bouquet on the paper and putting pieces of the right height of dimensional foam under each leaf. The flowers are at three different heights on the card but taking the time to lay them out right at the three different dimensions makes the card look fabulous. Another really cool thing about this card is the design lends itself to being whatever kind of card you want - all you have to do is add the appropriate words inside.





Click on the card image if you want the full direction sheet from my website on how to make this card.