Stamping for All Occasions

Sentiment stamped when you know what you want!

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.

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.

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!

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

 

ctmh stampaganza, buy 2 get 1 freeHere 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

Close to My Heart, D1646 – Finding Words


D1525 Casual Expressions, Close to My Heart

D1525 Casual Expressions, Close to My Heart


C1633 - For Family, Close To My Heart

C1633 – For Family, Close To My Heart


C1605-Happy to Be friends, Close To My Heart

C1605-Happy to Be friends, Close To My Heart


ctmh b1504 sending love stamp set

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….


make it monday-pink logo

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!

KS

Easy Birthday Card with a Scrap of Patterned Paper

A card inspired by a scrap of paper from the Chalk It Up paper pack.

A card inspired by a scrap of paper from the Chalk It Up paper pack.

Often we’d like to make a birthday card, but really don’t have a lot of time. This birthday card went together rather quickly! The whole idea came from a scrap of paper! I knew the recipient liked orange and I saw this scrap of paper on my desk and thought it was close enough to orange. It is from the Chalk It Up Close to My Heart paper pack. I liked it because it already had some other colors and it would make my color choices fast and easy. The color along the left side is the decorative “zip strip” I told you about the other day. It is the extra 1/2 inch on one side of a patterned 12×12″ paper, which is a bonus decorative strip that coordinates with the paper pack.

Since I was in a hurry (and maybe a bit lazy), my plan was to just use this scrap and try to get as much mileage from it as possible. So I cut it into strips and then arranged them across the width of the card, and adhered them.

One thing I like about using clear acrylic stamps is the fact that you can pull them off the backing sheets and arrange them before you ever stamp them. If you don’t like the look you can move them around until you are happy, or entirely swap out the stamps. When you begin to accumulate stamp sets, it’s fun to mix and match. I decided to use the cupcake and candle from the Birthday set from the CTMH Cricut Artiste collection, and the Happy Birthday sentiment is from the Build A Cake set.

D1618 Build a Cake

CTMH – Build a Cake, # D1618

CTMH D1529 Birthday_Artiste

CTMH, Birthday – Cricut Artiste Collection

I stamped the “Happy Birthday” on white card stock, in Lagoon ink to match the color at the left side. This helped pull the Lagoon color across the entire card. The white card stock was matted with at piece of Sorbet card stock to coordinate with the color from the scrap of paper I started with. The cupcake and candle stamp were stamped in `black and were colored with the Touch Twin alcohol markers in Peacock Green, Barely Beige, and Golden Yellow. Then I added some glue to the cupcake to and sprinkled with glitter to make the icing look like it had been dusted with sugar.

Glitter was added for a little sparkle

Glitter was added for a little sparkle!

I was happy with the way it turned out, and extra happy that it didn’t take too long! Isn’t it funny how inspiration comes in many ways? This was simply because I only wanted to use one scrap of paper I found on my desk! What inspiration will you find today? Come over and share it with us on our Facebook Group! Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures! KS       If you are in the US, please feel free to shop in my online Close To My Heart store. Here are handy links for the products in this featured project.

Easy Birthday Card with Candles

Today is the grand opening day of Take Heart Ideas! I’m so thrilled to be a part of the new site and contributing ideas. The site is meant to share inspiration and ideas, as well as others sharing their ideas by participating in challenges. The first challenge is “Anything Goes” with the stipulation that you use at least one Close to My Heart product. If nothing else, you could always go into Studio J digital scrapbooking online software and create something, because you don’t even need any physical products! Be sure and submit your project, because we’ll select a winner. You can see the prize on the Take Heart Ideas site.

Although the first challenge is Anything Goes, we decided to coordinate our efforts by using a color palette inspiration piece from Design-Seeds.com. I love the color combos that come right from photographs!

watermelon hues_via-design-seeds

July color inspiration from Design-Seeds.com

With that in mind, I found the perfect Close to My Heart paper pack! Honestly, I had no idea this paper pack had perfect colors for the challenge when we selected the inspiration color palette! It is the Ivy Lane selection, #X7178B It is retiring this month so grab it now if you like it! There are six sheets of patterned paper, and six sheets of coordinating card stock!

take-heart-ideas-ctmh-challenge-01-Kristie-Sloan-1

CTMH, Ivy Lane Paper Pack

I never seem to have enough birthday cards on hand, so why not use this time to make one!   The hardest part about this card is just cutting pieces of paper! Now that I’ve come up with the measurements, you’ll be good to go make of these rather quickly!

take-heart-ideas-ctmh-challenge-01-Kristie-Sloan-3

Happy Birthday Card with minimal effort!

Here’s the “recipe”:

  • Cardstock for base of card: 8.5″ x 5.5″
  • Patterned paper: 5.25″ x 4″  – distressed edges with black ink
  • Dark card stock: 4.25″ x 3″
  • Cardstock to stamp your greeting on – lighted edged with black ink
  • Happy Birthday was stamped in Hollyhock CTMH ink
  • Candles were strips of patterned paper 1/4″ wide and 1 3/8″ tall, perfect for scraps!
  • Flames were drawn with a white Signo ink pen.
  • Black faux stitching was done with a fine tip black pen.
  • DONE!

I was afraid the candles were going to be a nightmare to stick down straight and fairly even, so I applied adhesive and then stuck one end on a ruler to line them up and then get them on the paper!

take-heart-ideas-ctmh-challenge-01-Kristie-Sloan-2

Stuck “candles” on a ruler to line them up!

Quick reminder, if you like the Ivy Lane paper pack, run over and get it before it’s gone! Here is a quick link to all the Ivy Lane items.

The CTMH stamp of the month is this fun Circus Alphabet set. It is $5 with a $50 order.

CTMH 2014 July SOTM

 

I have also entered this card in this challenge:

Totally Gorjuss – Pink and Green

Cards Galore – One Stamp

Crafty Hazelnut’s Patterned Paper – Patterned Paper

Heart Punch Cupcake

Heart-Punch-Cupcake_KristieSloanIt’s my birthday and here is a no calorie cupcake just for you! Plus I wanted to show you this nifty way to use a heart punch or die cut.  Who knew you could make cupcake frosting out of hearts?

Heart-Punch-Cupcake_KristieSloan_2

At least 3 punched or die cut hearts, 1 square.

Take your hearts and flip them with points at the top instead of the bottom and layer at least three of them.  The number you use will depend on how big your hearts are.

I sponged a pink colored ink onto the bottom of the hearts, starting outside the heart and dragging it to the inside. That way it gave more definition around the outer edges.  I liked it best with the sponge having less ink and being more dry.  I was able to better able to control the depth of the color, by layering it.

Heart-Punch-Cupcake-Kristie Sloan_1I layered and arranged the hearts and glued them to each other. I then used a 2-way glue pen and ran glue around the bottom edges of my “frosting” layers, and applied glitter.

I ran paper through the Big Shot in an embossing folder before I cut it into a 2″x2″ square, so that it had vertical lines to resemble a cupcake paper.  You could just as easily score lines for a similar effect.  Then I used the same sponging technique on this piece.

Simply adhere your square cupcake paper, and then your frosting hearts!

Next, I punched a small red circle and adhered it to the top of my frosting, and used Crystal Effects to give my “cherry” a shiny finish!Heart-Punch-Cupcake_KristieSloan_3

Black cardstock with white sponged and distressed edges, and a white ink message finish off this card! This is an easy way to make a cute cupcake for any card!

Please come share with us over at our Artful Adventures Facebook Group!

Here are some supplies you can pick up over at my Stampin’Up! store.

Heart Punch – #119883

Stripes Embossing Folder – #123128

Assorted Card Stock Pack – #12094

Stamp Sponges – #101610

Ink Pads

Basic Black – #126980

Melon Mambo – #126948

Anywhere Glue Stick – #104045

Dazzling Diamonds Glitter – #102023

Crystal Effects – #101055

Big Shot Die-Cutting Machine – #113439