Sponging | Stamping.Cards

Guy Stuff

Posted On: 15. 03. 16

I taught a class recently that was all about the guys we love. Husbands, fathers, boyfriends, sons, grandsons, grandfathers, pastors, nephews, you name them and we created a card for them. LOL We used Guy Greetings, The Wilderness Awaits and Traveler Stamp Sets, to create some great masculine cards.

Here are a few of them.

Guy Greetings Stamp Set in Old Olive and Very Vanilla

The Wilderness Awaits – Watercolouring Technique

Traveler Stamp Set – Distressing and Heat Embossing Background stamping with Timeless Texture Stamp Set

Happy Stamping! Inspire, Create and Share!

First Card of 2016

Posted On: 10. 01. 16

What was your first card of 2016? My 5 year old son and I created this card for his sweet little bestie who turned 6 not long after the beginning of the new year. My son loves to sit with me and scroll through Pinterest and look at Punch Art Cards. He is obsessed and always is asking, “Do you own that punch Mom?” (The answer is usually, Yes!) Then he responds, “Yes, that means we can make it.” He really is totally adorable and you can see a picture of him on my Stamping.Cards pinterest page, I photobombed him on his birthday last year. LOL

Here is what we came up with after some huge Pinterest Inspiration.

I loved it so much, I made a second one, to keep and display. Happy 6th Birthday C-man!!!

The number and stamp on the card are from our brand new product suite: Number of Years Bundle – $60.25 (stamps and framelits at 15% off). It was one of the first products, I had to have from the new Occasions Catalogue.

Happy Stamping! Inspire, Create and Share!

Hello You Thinlits Card

Posted On: 14. 09. 15

It may seem like I have been on a bit of an anti stamping binge lately, but the truth is that I have been outside enjoying summer and when I did come in to stamp, I wanted to complete my projects quickly. I am playing catch up with you all here, so that you can see what I was creating over the summer months. Not much time to blog when the kiddos (and I) wanted to go to the beach. I did still teach classes over the summer and most of the cards you will see in the next few blog posts will be about those cards.

It is a rainy fall day here and my hubby took the kids to go ice skating, for real!! It was a quick transition to winter sports for my family. LOL Our youngest is starting to play hockey in a month or so and we want to make sure his skating skills are on point. We have a terrific wellness centre in this area and we take full advantage of it .

On to my Hello You thinlit card. Isn’t it cute? The Hello You thinlits are a set of three words; hello, thanks and you, that you use with your Big Shot. They also coordinate with the Crazy About You stamp set – also available in wood mount and photopolymer. I chose to use the Papillion Potpourri stamp set and stamp a butterfly repeated on on the background paper in Basic Black ink. I am using some Irresistibly Yours paper that is retired, but you can get the same effect with the Colour Me Irresistible Designer Series Paper.

I then sponged Pink Pirouette ink all over the background paper to soften the black butterflies and to colour the paper, as it was originally white.

I added a strip of White Satin Ribbon, punched out a Bitty Butterfly and an Elegant Butterfly and layered them together, with Pearls as an embellishment on the body of the butterfly.

Cardstocks used are: Pink Pirouette, Basic Black and you can substitute the Colour Me Irresistible as your background paper.

Punch Art – Minion and Mario Birthday Card

Posted On: 13. 09. 15

We celebrated some big birthdays over the past few weeks at our house. Our son turned 5 not too long ago and my daughters and I created a couple of punch art cards for him. He is in love with Mario Kart and the Minions, of course, so our choices were quite simple. If you Google punch art cards, you will be overwhelmed with images. We chose to keep our cards simple, focus on the punch art faces and go from there. Some punch art is over the top intricate, totally beautiful but time consuming. These were a pretty quick craft.

The fun thing about punch art is that anyone can do it. In fact, my son always wants to create a punch art card for all his friend’s birthdays. We look at a few pictures on line, he chooses one he would like to attempt and we recreate our own version of the card.

The Minion card uses the following card stock Daffodil Delight, Pacific Point, Basic Black, Soft Suede and Whisper White. We used 5 different punches to make the minion eyes and coverall straps. They are: 1/2″, 3/4″, 1-1/4″ and the 1-3/8″ Circle punches. The straps were made using the Word Window punch.

If the Minion card is all circles, the Mario card is all about the ovals. The eyes were made with the Large and Extra Large handheld punches, you need to trim the Large oval down a little for the smallest oval in the eye. The nose is the Extra Large Oval and the mustache is made with the bird body and wing from the Bird Builder punch, just trim the top portion of the bird to the shape of an oval. The half oval on the hat is made using the second smallest oval in the Oval Framelits collection. Cardstock used in the Mario card is Real Red, Basic Black, Soft Suede, Blushing Bride, Pacific Point and Whisper White.

A little bit of sponging around the edges of the card stock with the matching colour ink adds a great deal of depth and dimension to your project. I love to use Stampin’ Up’s Sponge Daubers for this job, makes it super simple and mess free. No inky fingers here. Well, not much anyway.

Love the Four Feathers Stamp Set – I know that you will too!

Posted On: 26. 05. 15

I was working hard toward a promotion a few months ago and I had some wonderful customers to thank for helping me earn the promotion. Yay!! To show my gratitude, I create a set of these cards, using the feather stamp, added a variety of sentiments and gave them to my customers. They were very well received. Thanks again to all my wonderful supporters and co-enablers, who love stamping and paper crafts as much as I do.

Punch Art

Posted On: 11. 03. 15

Dare I say it??? I think Spring might, just maybe, probably, possibly, hopefully… is just around the corner. Knock on wood! Before we all bid a fond? farewell to Winter, I thought that I would share this cutie pie card with you all. I have been intrigued by punch art lately. The intrigue is driven by – 1) my handheld punch obsession, 2) my 4 year old son who loves to use my punches and 3) I was looking for a new class to add to my monthly schedule.

I saw a version of this Polar Bear card on Pinterest (another obsession), and with a few changes I re-created it. I wish I knew who originally created this card because it is amazingly cute and I would love to give credit where credit is due.

I used a couple of Circle Framelits, the Owl Punch and an Oval Punch on this card. (And a retired, but still usable, Thank You stamp.)

The key to making punch art pop, literally, are Stampin’Dimensionals, sticky double sided foam tabs that you layer behind key elements that you want to pop off the page/card. Another tip is to sponge ink around the edge of the punch art pieces. This creates shading, depth and adds interest to your punch art. The beautiful snowflakes in the background are created by using the Northern Flurry Textured Impressions Embossing Folder and highlighting them with Dazzling Details Silver Sparkle.

Next time I make this card, I will also sponge ink onto the edge of the ‘snow’ and add a touch of Dazzling Diamonds glitter there as well.

Thanks for allowing me to create , inspire and share with you. Happy almost SPRING! 🙂

Ornamental Pine in Lost Lagoon

Posted On: 12. 01. 15

Christmas cards in non-tradional colour schemes are a big trend right now. So I thought, this card in Lost Lagoon cardstock would be a terrific kickoff to the beginning of December. This is a pretty simple card to craft, only two layers with sponging to add depth on the Lost Lagoon Layer, After heat embossing the pine needles and pine cone stamp in white embossing powder, I used a silver stamp pad and a stamp from Gorgeous Grunge Stamp Set to add ‘flecks’ of silver snow to the front of the card. Add a sentiment and a little ribbon and an All is Calm Embellishment and you are done. This is a super pretty card and sparkles a bit in person.