Thursday, September 28, 2017

Scrappy Little Butterfly

Hi everybody! It's Friday here in California and although I have a really long day at work I am excited because I think my husband and I get to go on date night tonight! Woohoo! It's been a while so it should be fun. Anyhow, that's not why you're here I'm sure so let's to get to today's card which I'm calling the Scrappy Little Butterfly. Not because he's a tough little butterfly but because I used a handful of scraps to make this card. Best use of scraps ever. I've done this kind of thing before and now I will make a point of doing it more often. 

Like most paper crafters I have a ton of scraps. I store them in a file with the corresponding full sheets of cardstock. Sometimes those files start to get full and it's mostly because the scraps all pile up at the bottom and make my files bulge. An easy solution is to grab a bunch of those scraps in a variety of colors and take them over to your Big Shot. Pull out some of your favorite dies and just start cutting away until you have beautiful die cuts and no usable scraps left. Then, head over to your desk and have a little paper party. Literally everything on this card is from my tub of precut die cuts (that sits on my desk at all times). 


Pick out pieces and colors that you may not otherwise have put together and layer them up with glue dots and dimensionals. It seriously fun and it is really nice not to have to interrupt the creative process to go cut more pieces because you will already have so many to work with. This is also helpful for finding new color combos as it's easy to add and remove die cut pieces before they are adhered. 



You can see that I used a punch to cut out some leaves as well. If you don't have a Big Shot it's no big deal. Use your punches or leftover pieces from Paper Pumpkin and other kits that you may have purchased. If all else fails, use your paper trimmer to cut strips or squares that you can have some fun with. I still have a ton of scraps so I plan on doing this again soon. I wonder how many cards I could make with all of my scraps... Hahaha!

Well, that's it for today folks. Thanks for stopping by and visiting my blog-you know it makes my day when you do.

Have a great weekend!
Maria.





Want to shop with me? No problem, just click the button below. 
Let me know if you have any questions!
Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com


Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!


A Paper Pumpkin Thing: September 2017 Kit

Hello Everybody and welcome to the September "A Paper Pumpkin Thing Blog Hop." If this is your first time visiting my blog- Welcome! I'm a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator from California in the USA and I'm glad to have you here. Today's Paper Pumpkin hop has a ton of amazing alternative projects so make sure to click the next button at the bottom of my post. 


This month's PP kit doesn't have any A2 sized card bases. It's got 3'x3" cards with envelopes, pillow boxes and everything needed to decorate them. I wanted to make standard sized cards today so I improvised by adding my own card bases.

For my first card I decided to go elegant. I added foiled acetate in the background over a Whisper White card base. Then I used a piece cut from a pillow box (check out the beautiful embossing) and wrapped it with the sparkly twine from the kit. 

I used my stitched circle framelits to cut a piece out of one of the beautiful, faux watercolored envelopes and stuck a gold leaf on it. 



I heat embossed the sentiment on to a scrap piece of the pillow box that I had already cut. I layered these pieces over some leaves and embellished it all with metallic gold enamel dots.

Do you see that little strip of gold foil trimming the bottom of the crumb cake/pillow box piece? Have you already guessed what it is? I cut that strip out of the scrap from the gold lined tags. After you pop all of the tags out of the sheet you can use the leftover sheet for some pretty useful scraps. The gold foil scrap was long enough to trim this whole piece. I love it when I can use everything from a kit including the scraps!
Oh! I almost forgot... I am entering this card in this week's Global Design Project Challenge GDP#106  Head over to their challenge blog to see more cool projects inspired by this sketch. I flipped the sketch to a horizontal layout and moved the circle from right to left... but it's the same sketch!


For my second card I decided to use the gold foil acetate again but this time I layered it on an Old Olive card base. Everything else on this card is from the kit except for Archival Black Ink and the enamel dots. 

Again, I used a piece of pillow box (same pillow box as the first card as they are embossed on both sides) as one of my layers. I slipped the yellow and gray leaves behind it added the Cajun Craze and Old Olive leaves to the top. The mini clothespin and fancy twine were the perfect way to fix the leaves to the piece of pillow box. If you look closely you'll see that I've got two elements from the PP kit that are modified. The beautiful gold trimmed tag was too long for my liking on this card as it was covering up too much of the leaves. I cut it down to a smaller size after stamping the sentiment and then I clipped the top corners off. Underneath that you can see some curly, metallic goodness... I pulled those pretties out of a piece of twine and adhered them to the back of the tag with glue dots. 


Well, it's getting late here folks and I need to head off to bed. I hope you liked my cards today. Please let me know if you have any questions-just leave me a comment below. Thanks for stopping by today. It was awesome to have you here as always.

Maria.




Continue along with us on this "A Paper Pumpkin Thing" hop by clicking "next" to visit the talented  Megan Thompson.



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Want to shop with me? No problem, just click the button below. 
Let me know if you have any questions!
Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com


Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!


Thursday, September 14, 2017

Paper Tole Tutorial with an Adorable Elf!

Hey everybody! I'm really excited today because I've just tried a new, and super awesome technique for the first time and I absolutely love it. The technique is called Paper Tole and it's a fairly simple technique that has a lot of wow factor. It's hard to see the 3D effect in this pic because the pic was taken straight on...


but check this pic out! See how the image is lifting off of the page? That's what Paper Tole is all about. 

I'm happy to say that I've got a full tutorial to share with you today. Here's what you will need...

Supplies:
·      Stamp Set: Festive Phrases
·      Cardstock: Basic Black, Shimmery White, Merry Little Christmas DSP
·      Ink: Basic Black Archival, Real Red, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Powder Pink, Soft Sky
·      Other: Aquapainter, Iridescent Sequin Assortment, Fast Fuse, Mini Dimensionals, X-acto  Knife

Measurements:
·      Card Base (Basic Black): 4 ¼” X 11” and scored at 5 ½”
·      Shimmery White: 2 5/8” X 4”
·      Basic Black Mat: 2 ¾” X 4 1/8”
·      DSP strip (black): 2”X 5 ¼”
·      Basic Black Mat: 2 1/8” X 5 ¼”
·      DSP (green): 4” X 5 ¼”
·      Basic Black Mat: 4 1/8” X 5 7/8”

Instructions:

1.     Stamp the image in Basic Black Archival ink on Shimmery White Cardstock.


2.  Use your Aquapainter to color the image using Real Red, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Powder Pink and Soft Sky inks.



Here's what it will look like...


3. Put your image piece on top of a safe cutting surface. I used a thick piece of cardboard.  




4. Using the X-acto knife cut carefully around the elf’s hat, right side ear, bangs, shoe tops and the four corners of the sign. These are the areas that will be raised on your finished card. Make sure that you leave space between the cuts (do not connect the cuts or the image will become disconnected from the page).



5. Flip your cut image piece over and add mini dimensionals to the areas that are to be raised. Add a strong adhesive to the rest of the background. It is important to make sure you have adhesive between the areas with dimensionals. If you don’t add enough adhesive then the image piece will raise up and become level with the cut/raised edges and you will lose the 3D effect.


6. Adhere your image piece to the appropriately sized black mat using Fast Fuse and do the same with the DSP pieces. Adhere the black strip of DSP vertically to the green DSP using fast fuse. Adhere the DSP to the card base using dimensionals. Finally, adhere the image piece to the card using dimensional and embellish with sequins.


This technique is so easy and fun! I can't believe that I haven't seen it used very often. I hope this tutorial will help you feel confident enough to give it a try. If you do give it a shot please let me know how it turned out.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. I always love having you visit. If you'd like to purchase the materials to make this card on your own please click the shop now button below or shoot me an email as I'd love to help with any of your questions. 

Have an amazing day!
Maria.




Want to shop with me? No problem, just click the button below. 
Let me know if you have any questions!
Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com


Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!


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