Tag Archives: card

Easy Birthday Card with Candles

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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

Guy Card

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If you’re like a lot of us, there are far more cards ready for females than for the men in your life. Here is a quick card that was made with the Timberline paper packet. I love the wood look of one of the papers and the outdoor theme.

Timberline Card Your the Best

Masculine Card

With just a few simple cuts of paper, this card went together quickly.

  • Base of card – 8.5″ x 5.5″ folded in half
  • Decorative paper for front – 5.25″ x 4″ – inked on edges
  • Wood look strip for border strip – 1″ x 5.25″ – inked on edges
  • Thin strip with text – 1/2″ x 5.25″ – inked on edges
  • Circle of decorative paper – 1.25″ – inked on edges
  • Circle of plain paper to stamp greeting – 1″ – inked on edges
  • Hemp twine for bow
  • Small stamp for greeting
  • Ink pad to distress edges
  • Liquid Glass for glossy effect on stamped greeting

close up of greeting circles

The stamped greeting circle was adhered using foam dimensionals to lift it up a little bit, and Liquid Glass was used to give it a glossy finish.

The text strip was a “zip strip” from the top of one of the decorative papers. I love how they give you a little something extra on some of the pages!

Timberline Paper Packet

Timberline Paper Packet by Close to My Heart

This is a perfect paper pack to have on hand for a more masculine look, or if you have anyone who enjoys outdoor activities such a camping, fishing, or hiking! The catalog will soon be changing with new items, so grab a pack of this while it’s still available!  Click here to shop the Timberline collection.

KS

Creating Hybrid Cards

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Mother's Day Hybrid CardFor those of us who love to create and enjoy making cards, sometimes we may not have as much time as we would like to get them done!  This past weekend, I was going to swap cards with my Stampin’Up! friends, and knew time was going to be tight to get my 17 matching cards completed.  You may not need 17 matching cards to swap with friends, but what about a holiday card, party invitation, birth announcement, or some occasion or event you want people to know about!

Making a hybrid card can be the best of both worlds, paper and digital. One idea is to just print out your digital image as a regular 4×6 picture which you have the option to print at many locations.  You can print them out at the drug store or wherever your favorite place is to make prints.  If you plan ahead, you may be able to order them or use an online coupon and save even more.  Of course, it will depend on how many you need as to how economical it will be to order and pay shipping, you’ll have to be the judge of that.

My Digital Studio (MDS) is a great digital software program which is easy to use and extremely economical.  It even comes with a Free Trial.  MDS has been recently updated and the price lowered to where I think it is such a value, especially for beginners!  MDS is what was used for this card, and it only took two digital “stamps” to create this card.

If you plan to print on 4×6 photo paper, make sure to plan your design around combining that photo with your card size.  Since we often create a card that is a half sheet of an 8.5×11″ paper, your finished card front is 4.25×5.5, so you’ll need to plan your photo accordingly.  I find it easiest to make the size of what I’m working on a 4×6 and just watch my rulers for the sizing I will use for the finished card.  After printing, they only need to have a little bit trimmed off, usually about

The digital images on this cards are:

  1. Vintage Overlay – Texture 8
  2. “Ex Libris” digital download (main image over the card)
  3. “Happy Mother’s Day” from All Holidays set

Also, during the digital design process, you can play around with adding embellishments and get an idea of what you want to do as you assemble the card.

The card base is a half sheet of an 8.5×11 piece of cardstock, folded for a final card size of 5.5 x 4.25 inches. After the “photo” portion of this card was printed, I trimmed the 4×6 because photo so that it would fit my card front, and adhered it.  Now the embellishments of a rhinestone in the center of the “o” in the word “mother,” and bit of ribbon simply knotted in the center and adhered with a glue dot!  That’s it.

Watercolor Technique, Ink Pads and Re-inkers

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Artful Adventures Watercolor Flower

Flower colored with watercolor technique.

As scrapbookers, stampers, carmakers and just crafters in general, we are often looking for ways to use products in our stash!  Join me on another artful adventure this week at we explore some water color techniques. Today we’ll  look at ink pads and re-inkers and using a water brush.

This is an easy way to add a little different look to some of your projects.

Artful Adventures card with watercolor technique on flower card

Stamped flower colored with watercolor technique, cut out and applied to card.

St. Patrick’s Day Digital Printable Jazzed Up

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Thanks for joining me again this week!  Our Artful Adventure today continues with ideas to jazz up a word art digital download. Digital downloads can make quick word of creating something special, whether you want a piece of decor or a card to send.

Here you can see the original version of the template.  Since this version is able to be quickly transformed, you’ll see that it was easy to tweak the color just a wee bit.  Only the green has been changed.  This makes it such an easy way to personalize it in a way that best fits your color needs.

St. Patrick's Day Template

Original colors of download

St. Patrick's Day Template Color Change

The green color was tweaked just a wee bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One way to change up your printable is to print it out and then use a fine tip marker to outline some of the words.  If you don’t really feel confident with your hand lettering skills, this is a perfect way to have a little practice.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect.  Note to self, don’t have so much caffeine before you do this again!  Some of my lines are less than desirable, but that’s okay.  I was rather pleased with the outcome.

This was meant to show you a quick project, so I only did some of the larger words, which I knew would be much easier to outline.  When you try something like this, you’ll begin to notice the little nuances of the particular font of the word you are working on.  That is what lettering is all about, the little things that each letter has in common.

St. Patrick's Day printable enhanced by outlined letters

Pick some of the words with larger lettering to outline! Glad this isn’t under glass yet, I see I forgot to do part of the “k” in “lucky.”

As long as you are going to print it out, why not make a smaller size and create a card?  Here is a card that was created from the same template.

Lucky Printable Card

Reduce the template before you print and you can create a card!

Lucky Printable Card with embossing

Just a little embossing can really jazz up a quick card! The Hollogram Effects embossing powder combines a bit of glitter in a clear embossing powder, which will let the ink color show through!

Card Recipe

  1. Half sheet of black card stock (cut 8.5″ x 5.5″), folded in half
  2. Lucky Limeade card stock (cut 4″x5.25″)
  3. Printable Template reduced to allow some of the white border (cut 3.75″x5″)
  4. Before assembling the card pieces wipe the printout with an embossing buddy
  5. Use Versamark marker over some of the letters.
  6. Sprinkle Hollogram Embossing powder and use heat tool to emboss!
  7. Assemble card pieces

TaDah!  You are done!

Okay, now that the card is finished, I realized that the Hollogram embossing powder is no longer available!  SO….. some other ideas to add a quick bit of sparkle or shine (these are options, not steps):

  • Use 2-way Glue Pen over selected letters and sprinkle with glitter.
  • Use Clear Embossing powder
  • Use Dazzling Details on selected areas
  • Try some Crystal Effects on a few letters!