Masculine card using die cut soda cans

Stop recycling soda cans! You need those soda cans for your crafts!

Here's a masculine card I made using distress ink and die cut soda cans. The front is made using a distress tool with a foam pad to pick up distress ink from a distress ink pad and them blend it onto the card front. The embossing causes the higher areas to naturally pick up more color.

The gears are die cut from aluminum soda cans using Spellbinders dies. Aluminum is a much softer metal than steel so any steel tool will easily cut it without damage. This is why knife manufacturers like to cut up soda cans and then cut up something delicate like a tomatoes.

Here's the card:

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

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.

The beauty of nature

Here's a fairly straight forward 7x5 card I did with some of the new stamps I got at a rubber stamp convention this summer. The edge underneath the mountains is also a new Spellbinders Edgibilities die. The mountains have been colored with 4 shades of  nuetral gray Copic markers with a little bit of warm gray mixed in a few places. Rather than try and make a scene with the mountains, I opted to cut them out and mount them on dark blue cardstock since the words speak about the beauty of nature and giant mountain peaks are awe inspiring examples of nature that dwarf anything man has built.

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

Swing Card

Here's a new card type I haven't made before - a swing card. When you grab the left and right hand sides and pull outward the image in the center swings and changes. Technically, when it's folded up and comes out of the envelope you are actually looking at the image on the back and then when you open it you see the image on the front.

I'm using rubber stamps that were specifically designed for a card of this type but you could actually use any front and back images.

Here's the card - it should show as an animated image that shows the card opening and closing. If it's not working because of where your reading it from, you'll need the click on the image to view the web directions.

After trying to make this a few times, the easiest way I found to cut the paper was to use a trimmer with a cutting blade that has a mark on it where the blade has/will cut. This helps ensure that your lines are straight even if your template placement wasn't perfect.

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

That's One Sick Bear

Here's an image I stamped out a long time ago and just recently got around to coloring. Maybe subconsciously I was just waiting for the newest die set I got so I would have something large enough to fit the image without having to do a simple square. This is a 5 x7 card base so the image is quite large. The coloring is all Copic markers. I thought about putting a get well saying on the card somewhere but the image and worried look in the dogs face seemed to say it all already. The colors are on the instructions you can get by clicking on the image.