Charlotte Paper Pack, Springtime Wishes Stamps

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Kristie Sloan

Here is a sneak peek at three of the cards that will part of the new set I’m working on from the Charlotte paper pack. The paper pack will only be available through the end of April. These cards are also part of a new One Sheet Wonder I’m working on, and I will have that up as soon as it is finished.

Charlotte Paper Pack and Springtime Wishes stamp set and Springtime Wishes Thin Cuts.

To tell you the truth, I really struggled with selecting which sheet I was going to use out of the Charlotte pack. I finally decided to use a sheet that neither side would really be the star of the show, and outshine the embellishments I wanted to create. The Springtime Wishes stamp set and Thin Cuts were what I had in mind.

The matting has been done with an additional sheet from the pack, instead of using a sheet of solid color card stock. This way, the sheet I am using also is a double-sided print, and allows me a choice for the matting!

The flowers and leaves were stamped with the Springtime Wishes set, and then I simply sponged some color from the centers out. I just received word that the corresponding Thin Cuts set is sold out. So I’ll take that into consideration as I finish up this set of cards to show you!

Remember that the Buy 2, Get 1 Free Stampaganza is now in full swing at Close To My Heart. Get the details in this post about the Stampaganza event.

Charlotte Paper Pack and coordinates

Springtime Wishes Stamp Set

Springtime Wishes Thin Cuts, sold out.

Until next time…

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures,

Stamping for All Occasions

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Kristie Sloan

Sentiment stamped when you know what you want!

For some reason, it seems like I never have enough birthday cards! Sometimes it seems like I could just get by with a ‘Happy Birthday’ stamp and leave it at that. Just kidding! You know I couldn’t do that. Yet it brings up the question of selecting greetings if you are trying to make up a batch of cards in advance. How do you decide what and how many to make of your greetings? Actually, you don’t have to make it such a hard decision!

One way to deal with this problem is to go ahead a make a bunch of cards and leave off the greetings! When you find a stamp set that has a lot of different greetings or sentiments they usually tend to be a similar size. That makes it easy to make cards and just leave off the sentiment, and stamp it later! Then all you have to do is have the stamp set easy to find, grab your ink pad and stamp an appropriate sentiment!

Here is an example of using this technique, using a double-sided, printed paper.

Cut the paper to fit the front of the card. Cut a strip 1″ to 1.25″ wide. Make sure your strip is large enough for the sentiment if your stamp set has larger stamps. You could also use the busier side of the paper for your bottom strip, leaving plenty of space to stamp above the dividing line of your papers.
Now you can use both sides of the paper on your card, and coordinate the top and bottom.
An additional strip was added from coordinating paper on one card, and some shimmer trim on the other. I love shimmer trim! It has an adhesive side, and quickly jazzes up a project!
Next, add any other embellishments. The flowers and leaves were made using the Springtime Wishes stamps and Thin Cuts.

Bottom section is left blank, to stamp sentiment on later.

If you want to stop here, you can put your cards away, and keep you stamps and an ink pad handy to stamp an appropriate sentiment as needed.

NOTE: When using this technique, you’ll want to leave the area to stamp as flat as possible. Don’t add layers and layers with paper and adhesive, because you’ll want to make sure you get a good image when you stamp. These cards only have the printed paper on top of the card base. When ready to stamp, open your card out so that you are stamping on as few layers as possible!

The bottom has enough space to stamp a variety of sentiments, as you need them.These flowers have a bit of colored pencil in the centers, as well as a little pearl accent.

Sentiment stamped when you know what you want! Green shimmer trim and little pearl accents finish off the embellishments.

Here are a few great sets you may be interested in because of all the occasions they will cover. Plus, Close to My Heart is having their Stampaganza during the month of March. It’s a buy 2, get 1 free. You all know the rules… the free one can’t cost more than the one’s you purchase. But this would be a great time to stretch your dollar for purchasing some of the larger sets.

Close to My Heart, D1646 – Finding Words

D1525 Casual Expressions, Close to My Heart

C1633 – For Family, Close To My Heart

C1605-Happy to Be friends, Close To My Heart

B1504, Sending Love

This could also be a great time to share stamping with a friend. Make up a few cards and help her get comfortable with basic inking and stamping techniques. Then she could use a set of greetings and an ink pad to take this idea home. What is better than a new crafting buddy? You can’t convert everyone to enjoy your favorite hobbies, but you never know who will find out they enjoy sharing in a fun pastime with you!

Be sure to come back to see another One Sheet Wonder this week! We’ll take one sheet of printed paper to create a stack of cards! Links to products used today are below, for your convenience. But first….

It’s Make it Monday! Alison, over at AlisonDayDesigns.com, is prepping for Easter. Remember it comes kind of early this year, March 27th! Hop on over and see what she’s doing!

Here are some quick links to the main products used on today’s cards:

Kaleidoscope paper pack

Springtime Wishes stamp set

Springtime Wishes Thin Cuts

Green Shimmer Trim

Finding the Words Occasions stamp set

Until next time…

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Quick Folded Shirt Card and Gift Card Holder

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Kristie Sloan

Welcome back to Make It Monday! Here is a great idea for a quick card, perfect for the guys. You will even have a built-in gift card holder using this method. Let’s get started!

Folded shirt card with gift card inside, on 5x7" card base.

Folded shirt card with gift card inside, on 5×7″ card base.

Please don’t let all the photos scare you. It won’t take you long! Instead of creating a video, I have taken still photos of the process.

Take a piece of patterned paper, 6 1/2″ x 9 1/2″.

Patterned paper, 6 1/2″ x 9 1/2″

Fold in half, lengthwise.

Fold in half lengthwise.

Flip the paper so you have the “valley fold” facing you, and fold the outer edge to the center fold.

Bring edge to center fold

Repeat, so that you have both outer edges meeting in the center.

Repeat, bringing other side to center fold.

Flip the paper over, and then fold about 1/2″ over on one of the short edges.

Flip over and fold half inch on top.

Flip the paper back over so that the loose edges are facing up again. To create the collar, bring the right top folded corner in to meet the center. Place the point about 1/2″ down from the top.

Create collar by folding edge toward center.

Repeat with the other corner, so the two corners meet along the center.

Repeat, bringing other corner to meet in the center.

Fold the bottom up, so that the edge will slip under the collar points, and will meet where the corners meet in the previous step. Crease the paper to make the bottom of the shirt.

Fold bottom up to tuck under collar.

Open the bottom flap back down. From the crease you just made, fold back the center edge of the paper, and fold out, making a triangle from the center fold to the outer fold.

Fold bottom back down and create triangle from center to edge.

Repeat on the other side.

Repeat on other side.

You now have an area where you can slide in a gift card.

Slide gift card in opening.

Slide card in above the fold.

Fold the bottom section back up, and tuck under the collar to secure!

Fold bottom back up and tuck under collar.

Did you realize you just created an origami shirt? Now you are ready to add any other details you’d like. I just added pen details to suggest buttons and the front edge of the shirt. I cut out a tiny pocket and sponged the edges before adhering with a dimensional glue dot.

Details added to shirt. embellish as desired!

You could stop here and just use this for a gift card, but I wanted to create a card. Using the paper sized here, it makes the shirt a bit too large for a standard 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ card base, so I opted to create a 5″x7″ card. If you want to use the smaller size card base, you could easily trim the sleeves a bit.

Card base of 4 1/4″ by 5 1/2″.

A 5×7 card will fit into an A7 size envelope, also known as an invitation envelope. Here is the final card, with sponged edges to grunge it up a bit. If you are using this for a gift card, be careful whether you add your adhesive on the shirt. You’ll want to leave the sleeves free, and don’t forget to let the person not a gift card is hidden in the shirt!

Folded shirt card with gift card inside, on 5×7″ card base.

MAKE IT MONDAY

Next up on the Make It Monday blog circle is Alice from Scrapbook Wonderland, showing us how to make Dad a mini album for Father’s Day, with tips to keep it simple and get it done quickly!

Have a great week, and be sure to share your projects with us on the Artful Adventures Facebook Group!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Camper Crazy Valentine

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Kristie Sloan

It is Make It Monday blog hop! If you are stopping by from Connie Hanks at Clicky Chick Creates, you’re in the right spot. Our theme this week is Valentines. She had some great ideas for cupid, kisses, and heart banners!

Sometimes you just want to try something different. Why not take a more traditional valentine/love themed paper, with hearts and flowers, and combine it with a not so traditional set of images — like campers!

The Camper Crazy stamp set from Close to My Heart is adorable, and yet I still had not ever used it. These little campers would be easy to create if you would like to draw them. So if you like this idea, get started!

The campers were stamped on white card stock and colored with alcohol markers.

Since I was away from home this weekend, I had limited supplies. I totally forgot a lot of my embellishments! Oh, no! I had some shimmer trim in several colors, but nothing I wanted to use on my project. Then I remembered I could color the the silver shimmer trim almost any color with the alcohol markers! I decided to create a heart, but I wanted it wider than my trim. I just stuck down three rows of the trim on a piece of plain card stock.

Shimmer trim strips adhered to card stock.

Next I colored it red with an alcohol marker.

shimmer trim tinted with alcohol markers

Alcohol markers used to tint the shimmer trim.

Finally, I just cut a heart out of my colored trim!

Cut heart out of tinted shimmer trim.

Here are “ingredients” for this card:

Heartstrings paper pack, using Lagoon and Whisper card stock
White card stock
Camper Crazy stamp set
Silver Shimmer Trim
Touch Twin Markers: Peacock Green, Turquoise Blue, Carmine, Golden Yellow, Warm Gray-WG4, and the Colorless Blender
Ink pads: Lagoon, Whisper, Archival Black
Adhesive tape runner, foam dimensional dots, glue dots

Now, your next stop on the Make It Monday adventure is over with Jen Wright, to check out the Valentine collage she has for you!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures,

Celebrate Winter – Card and Scrapbook Layout

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Kristie Sloan

Winter can seem like a LONG time when you live somewhere cold and snowy.

Fun in the snow

Every year seems to take on a personality of its own, and you never know what it will be like. You may have a year with a lot of snow, or maybe not much. There are places in the USA that have had more than their share of snow this winter. Ours hasn’t been too bad, so far. We haven’t had a lot of snow, and it hasn’t been nearly as cold as it was last year, so far. No matter what it’s like, there will still be many days to figure out something to do, and if there’s enough snow, it is so fun to watch kids go sledding! I was reminded of this as I was going through some photos. Once again, I realized there was a story that needed to be told and saved!

When I first started scrapbooking, I wanted to get as many photos on a page as possible! I couldn’t image why anybody would use up a whole page and only put one single photo on it. I guess I felt like it was wasting all that precious scrapbook page real estate! Now days, I often have a story that only has one photo to go with it. Sometimes there is a lot to the story, and other times it is just one sentence or paragraph. In the end, it’s all about the photos stories!

I have really enjoyed the Close to My Heart Snowhaven papers and embellishments, and thought it would be fun to create a winter layout using that set.

When I decided to print out my photo, it just wasn’t coming out right! I finally gave up and decided to use the Snowhaven kit in the Studio J online digital scrapbooking website. All the papers and Complements pieces were right there online, and I was able to still use them all together. In the end, I was able to create my page, and ended up having my physical products to use for something else. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them!

Here is the page:

Snowhaven kit in Studio J used for winter scrapbook layout.

CTMH Snowhaven papers and embellishments are available in both physical or digital!

Why can I not catch the typos until I am already posting my layout here for the world to see? I really do know how to spell “friends.”

I hope you will take time to celebrate each season of your life, and those who are close to you! Capture even the little stories that will be fun to look back on and remember.

I promised a card in this post. The SnowHaven card kit was so fun to use to make some Christmas cards. All the materials were gathered and directions put together so I didn’t even have to plan them out!

There were left overs from the kit, and I thought they would be fun to use in part, for a card.

A few scraps can be pulled together for a quick card.

White card stock was the base of the card, and snowflakes from the SnowHaven card kit stamp set were stamped in Glacier.
A little strip of red and white design from one of the kit papers made a great accent.
Silver Shimmer Trim and the red heart were left over from the kit as well.
I stamped the “Have a day filled with…” and “Fun” from one of the stamp sets that accompanies the Cricut Art Philosophy bundle.
I used a shimmer mist on the card, and got too close.
Then I added some bling by attaching some little sparkles to the center of some of the snowflakes.

I think it still needs something, but I’m not sure what. Moving on…. What do you think you would do it at this point? Comments are welcome!

If you are following the Make It Monday blog circle, you arrived here from Jen’s site, where she is sharing a template for another one of her 52 week pocket pages.

Next, stop by and see how to Celebrate 2014! Create a layout with your top photos from last year. Alice shows you how!

Feel free to shop my Close to My Heart online store!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Artful Adventures

Ideas for scrapbooking, art journaling, mixed media, card making and stamping projects.

Category Archives: Cards

Charlotte Paper Pack, Springtime Wishes Stamps

Stamping for All Occasions

Quick Folded Shirt Card and Gift Card Holder

MAKE IT MONDAY

Camper Crazy Valentine

Celebrate Winter – Card and Scrapbook Layout