Saturday, December 6, 2014

Snow Penguin




Welcome to another Jacksonville Starz Blog Hop!
This month our challenge is a sketch challenge! Here's our sketch:



And here's the card I made:


Oh boy!! I squeaked myself into this blog hop at the last second and had to make my card in next to no time at all! I usually like to rethink my card designs about 12 times with 16 different paper and color options so it was really tough for me. I had to force myself to stop messing with my card and just let it be. 

I used the owl punch to make the penguin and I used the mosaic punch to make his cute little beanie. The background is the smallest snowflake from the Letterpress Winter stamp set and it's stamped in Silver Ink. The snowflakes in the foreground are cut from the Dazzling Diamonds paper with the Snowflake Card Thinlets. Then I colored them using the lightest shade of my Night of Navy blend abilities to give them a little contrast with the white of the Dazzling Diamonds. It's hard to tell from the picture but the Dazzling Diamonds paper is SO sparkly! It really makes for a fun card! 

Thanks for joining us on our blog hop! I hope you liked my card today. If you have any questions or are interested in purchasing any of the products that I used please feel free to contact me or to comment here on my blog. For a list of products that I used please scroll down to the bottom of this post.

Have an amazing day you all and thanks for hopping along with us!

Now you're off to see Rose Ann Marr's sketch creation! Enjoy!


In case you've gotten lost along the way here is a list of this month's Blog Hop participants:

Saturday, November 1, 2014


Welcome to another Jacksonville Starz Blog Hop!
This month our challenge is a color challenge! The colors are:


Basic Gray and Pool Party are two of my favorite Stampin' Up! colors and Hello Honey is one of the new In Colors for 2014. Here's what I came up with...


I used the Hexagon Hive Thinlit to cut out the background in both Hello Honey and Pool Party. Then I layered the Pool Party on top of the Hello Honey, offset just a bit to show off both colors, and popped it onto the Basic Gray card base using Dimensionals. The Pool Party is inked in Smokey Slate using the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set. The flower is from Backyard Basics and was cut using the Backyard Basics framelits (get these framelits now-they're in the Clearance Rack!).  I colored the flower using Melon Mambo Blendabilities, Old Olive Blendabilities and Old Olive and Pear Pizazz Stampin' Markers and then mounted it using glue dots.


I stamped the sentiment, "Just Because," from the A Dozen Thoughts stamp set onto Smokey Slate cardstock and cut it to a nice size using my Stampin' Trimmer. I used the Hexagon Punch to make it a banner and then mounted it on a strip of Melon Mambo paper (also turned banner with the Hexagon punch) using Snail Adhesive. A candy dot in Basic Gray finished off the sentiment banner which I fixed to the card using Dimensionals.


If you look closely you can see that I have embossed a couple of cute little bees onto the card base. I wanted to add something subtle but beautiful to the background and I was happy with how these bees turned out.

Thanks for joining us on our blog hop! I hope you liked my card today. If you have any questions or are interested in purchasing any of the products that I used please feel free to contact me or to comment here on my blog. For a list of products that I used please scroll down to the bottom of this post.

Have an amazing day you all and thanks for hopping along with us!

Now you're off to see Sheilah Stamper's color creation! 


In case you've gotten lost along the way here is a list of this month's Blog Hop participants:



Here is a list of the products that I used to make this card:

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

YeeHaw!

This might be my new favorite stamp set! I love the cactus and the lasso but it also comes with barbed wire and lots of great sentiments too! This is a quick birthday card I whipped up for a friend's 13th birthday. She's a cowgirl so this set is just perfect for her.


Here's a view from the side of the card. I hand cut the lasso and the cacti out to give the card a little dimension. Then I added twine to give it a little more texture.


Here's a view from the front.

 I hope you like it! Thanks for stopping by!
-Maria


Wednesday, October 15, 2014

You Little Furball
Here's a birthday card I made today for a client. The request was for pink, lavender, lace and with a cat theme. The cats in this You Little Furball set are really fun and I can't wait to play with them again!


Sunday, October 12, 2014

Butterfly Anniversary Card

I made this card a while back for someone who wanted a special card to give to his wife on their anniversary. It really is a treat when someone trusts you to make a card for their special occasion and I was grateful for the opportunity.



Amazing Birthday... Again!

Well folks, I showed my husband the Amazing Birthday card that I had made for his friend (Basic Black, Smoky Slate and Tempting Turquoise), and he loved it! But....He thought how great it would have been if I had made the card with red instead of turquoise! 

My husband is a professional motorcycle racer and his biggest sponsor is a company called SRT. SRT's colors are red and black. The birthday boy happens to be the owner of SRT and my husband's sponsor. Naturally, my husband thought it would be cool to give him a card with the SRT colors.

Luckily, this card was easy to make so I quickly made another one, this time substituting Real Red for Tempting Turquoise. Here's how it turned out.


Amazing Birthday!!

I finally had a little time to get crafty today and it's a good thing because I had a birthday card to make! Actually it's the first of many Birthday cards I need to make this month so I guess I better get crackin'! 

I used the Amazing Birthday stamp set to make this card for one of my husband's friends.


The paper colors are Basic Black, Tempting Turquoise and Smoky Slate. The stamping is embossed in white. I also used Basic Black candy dots and little silver brads to embellish the card. 
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like this simple birthday card!
-Maria

Monday, October 6, 2014

Monster Card
 If you would like detailed directions on how to make this card please see my last post from
Saturday, October 4th.

Here's the front, inside view of my Monster Card.


And another view slightly angled.

And finally, here's what the card looks like folded up.


Have a great Monday everybody!

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Jacksonville STARZ Halloween Blog Hop

Woo Hoo! 
Welcome to the Jacksonville STARZ Halloweeen Blog Hop!


This is the first blog hop that I've ever done and I am so lucky to be doing it as part of the Jacksonville Starz! It also happens to be National Card Making Day so what a day for a blog hop! So exciting! We decided on a theme of Halloween cards for this blog hop and of course the cards will be made exclusively with Stampin' Up! products. If you are hopping along with us then you should have arrived here from Priscilla Thoreson's Blog.  Priscilla is very creative and I always love her cards! If you haven't visited her blog yet I recommend checking it out. 

Now, on to my card--I call it, the Monster Card! The short story behind this card is that I initially got a little stumped because I needed to use only CURRENT Stampin' Up! products to create this card. Well, that doesn't seem too hard, but, I kept looking at retired Halloween DSP and last year's Halloween stamps (Yes, I still love them all) and knew I couldn't use them. I recently posted a Halloween card that I made using the Fall Fest Stamp set so I wanted the challenge of doing something totally different. I looked, and looked, and I finally found a fun card design that I could make my own. I sure hope you like it because it was a blast to make!

This is the outside of the card. It's held closed by a belly band. The belly band is 1.5" wide, cut from Basic Black, stamped with Gorgeous Grunge and Mingle All the Way, and, embossed with both clear and white embossing powder. 



When you open the card up it looks like this... a Monster!




Here are step-by-step directions on how to make this Monster Card.
First, here are the directions for the card base. At first it seems tricky but it is actually pretty simple.



Cut out all of your pieces for both Layer 1 and Layer 2. Emboss the pieces of Layer 2 any way that you like (or use DSP). I used the Positively Chevron background stamp and some black embossing powder to make my own fancy paper. I also embossed three pieces of Layer 1 (1 of 3.75" x 3.75" and 2 of 1.75" x 1.75"). Those three pieces are part of the inside of the Monster card and the embossing isn't shown in this picture (you'll see that in the next step). After embossing you will cut 2 each of the 3.75" x 3.75" and the 3.5" x 3.5" in half on the diagonal. Then you will adhere the layers together with Layer 2 fitting on top of Layer 1. 




After adhering the layers to each other you will adhere the layers to your card base as shown below. The outside back of the card will be blank with no colorful layers. The inside of the card will be covered by those three extra pieces of Layer 1 (pictured in the bottom right corner of the above photo).
Do not adhere the "face" yet! There is work to do before you do that.




After getting all of your double layers adhered you will work on your Monster's face and any embossing you'd like to add to the inside of the card. I used Gorgeous Grunge to add some background to all three pieces of the inside of my card. I used both Clear and Wild Wasabi embossing powder to make those stamps pop a bit. I stamped my Monster's belly with the Halloween stamp from the Mingle All the Way stamp set and embossed that in white. 

To make the Monser's Eyes I used the 1" Circle Punch to punch out two circles in Basic Black. This is the first layer of the eyes. Next, using the 3/4" Circle Punch I punched out two more circles in Whisper white (Eye Layer 2), and, one more in Basic Black. I cut the 3/4" Basic Black circle in half to make the third layer of the eyes. The final layer of the eyes was done using the 1/8" Hand-Held Punch. You only need two of these (one for each eye), but, I actually used three on each eye and built those pupils up so they had a little bit of dimension. You can't really see that in the picture but it did make a difference in person. 

The Monster's Fangs were punched out in Whisper White using the Petite Pennants Punch. The smaller teeth were made by using the Word Window Punch and then carefully snipping the little teeth out with paper snips. When you glue the teeth in it is really important to glue the fangs in first and to only adhere them to the back of the face (glue them to the Island Indigo layer and not to the card base). This will ensure that your teeth will have dimension and will move with the card instead of tearing or sticking to the card base. Make sure that you place the small teeth above the fold in the card base. If you don't, your Monster will have a serious case of Snaggle Tooth and we just can't have that! Haha!



When you are happy with all three pieces for the inside of the card go ahead and glue them in! 
WA-LA! Your card is done! Fold it up and secure it with the belly band. No one will know there is a Monster hiding inside!


Thanks for checking out my card. I hope the visuals helped to show how I put it together. If you're interested in making it yourself I have listed the products that I used below. I'm happy to answer any questions and to hear any feedback so please leave me a comment!

Happy National Card-Making Day and Happy Halloween!

Now you are off to see an amazing creation by the talented Cari Verschueren. Enjoy!




In case you've gotten lost along the way, or, would like to go straight back to someone's blog:



Monster Card Ingredients:
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