Congratulations Cards

Today I'm sharing some cards I made for my cousins wedding shower / wedding. My mom asked if I could make a last-minute card for her shower, and so I made three because I knew I'd need another one for her wedding, and one for Jon's sister's wedding this summer.

I pulled out these frame cutfiles from iheartstudio.ca, my watercolours, some stamps and water colour paper. I tried to just go with it, and have fun with the watercolours. I didn't want to over think it too much, or try and be such a perfectionist.

For this first card, I used the frame with the hearts. I painted a square small enough to fit in the frame, with watercolours. Once it was dry I glued it to the back of the frame. Added dimension with foam squares. Stamped and cut out the congratulations sentiment, and used foam squares to adhere it over the crochet cotton. I hid the knot behind the sentiment. I love that it's clean and simple. This is the card we ended up using for her wedding shower at the start of February.

I painted a piece that would fit on the front of the card, and have a little white border around it. When it was dry, I stamped the cake and sentiment onto the card using this stamp set from Studio Calico. We decided we'd use this card to go with the gift for their wedding.

I never do anything with just yellow, so I made this card. I used some left over ribbon I had sitting on my desk, another frame from the cutfiles above, and another congratulations sentiment. This one is so bright and happy. It could be used for a baby, or a wedding. My plan is to use this one for Jon's sister's wedding. Her colours are blue and yellow.

Thanks for coming by to see these cards. Pull out your watercolours, or any paints you have, and make one card. If it's not fun, then put them away and do something else.

Have a great weekend!
-Alexandria

Studio Calico: Poet Society Card Kit

It's really starting to get colder here. I must admit I was excited about winter, because I wouldn't be so warm all the time, but I'm also very much not looking forward to being freezing cold all the time either. I hate socks, but my feet get cold so easily, and when I wear slippers they get too warm.

Today I'm sharing the cards I made using the Poet Society Card kit, and the Jar Stamp Set add on, the 4x3" Circles Stamp Set by Splendid Fiins, and the stamp from this Project Life Add-on Yeats. This is the first time I've purchased add-ons for either Project Life or Card kits, and I ended up making almost twice as many cards. I had so much fun trying different things with the stamps in this kit, and of course the member gallery was overflowing with great inspiration! I imagine these are stamps that I'll use again and again in the future!

First up, a card I made using the Jar stamp set. The one thing I dislike about it, is that the stamp for the jar is just the outline, there's no center part to help it keep it's jar shape. I'm okay with my jar having curves, it adds character to it. The "a pint of thanks and a quart of gratitude" portion was made to fit inside the jar, and it's the whole reason I love this stamp set so much. Not to mention the jar stamp would be beautiful for tags on canning that you were gifting, or selling.

I stamped this on the blue/white stripe paper, stamped the hearts in the jar in a variety of colors, then added the sentiment over top. I used the circles stamp set to add a bit of interest to the background, and tied some crochet cotton around the top of the jar.

I wanted to use the sentiment from the Jar Stamp outside of the jar as well, so I stamped it on a tag. My one goal is to use at least a small portion of each paper in the kit, and given that I was stumped by the diamond paper, I added it behind the tag to make the tag stand out against the background paper.

Here I used the stamps from the Yeats add-on. I love this Cyan color so much! I want to use it for everything I possibly can. I also added some little of the star gems, and a heart stamp. This was so obviously inspired by the member gallery because I don't think I could have come up with something so pretty on my own.

I wanted to use the Circle stamp with a hear in it as a background because I feel like one heart isn't enough. I randomly stamped them all over this card, and added "with love" in my favorite cyan color, and called it done.

I saw a card in the member gallery, that was similar to this, but it had stitching on it. I tried to machine stitch something similar, but it didn't turn out, so instead I drew lines to make the "hey" look the opposite of the rest of the card.

This card happened somewhat by accident. (It happened after the faded gem card), In the member gallery is this card, and I wanted desperately to try something similar. At first the colors I used, didn't work AT ALL. So I stuck with one color and used multiple shades of it to make it a monochromatic ombre. I trimmed it on an angle, mounted it on the grey paper, and added some crochet cotton.

Another card inspired by the member gallery. Didn't quite turn out how I wanted, but I wanted to try and make use of at least one of those plastic gems, and a wood veneer.

I hate this card so terribly much. But I included it because I know there are going to be those cards that you hate beyond words, but at the same time, you made it, and perhaps someone will like it....or not, and that's okay too. I'm not even quite sure what I was going for when I made this, but I don't think it was what it ended up being.

This was the first card I made with the kit. I was so excited about the gems, and there were like a dozen cards in the member gallery that did something similar to this, so I just had to try it. I love how it turned out!

Another card that I don't like. I trimmed the first page of the paper stack, you know the one that shows all the papers and who made them. I trimmed it so I had a small portion of each of the papers and made it a banner, and adhered it to the bottom, but it looks like it doesn't belong because it goes with nothing.

This happened completely on accident. I stamped the purple one first, and the bottom half didn't stamp quite as dark as the top half. Then I got the idea to make two-tone gems!

I added ink to the top half of the gem in a darker shade, and the bottom half got a lighter shade and then I stamped it. I made sure the ink overlapped a little bit to get the full fading effect. To do this with three colors (like the hooray card from earlier) you start at the top and stamp about half of it with the darkest color. Then you stamp the bottom, going a little above the halfway point with the mid-tone color, and then stamp the bottom portion with the lightest. You can also do this the opposite way, or with completely different colors.

I used the little diamond stamp to make a background, and stamped "you're a gem" with silver ink on the blue paper, and attached it to the grey/white stri[e and adhered both to the card with foam squares.

There were so many papers in this card kit, that I knew I could never use them all, but this card helped me make use of a few of them. I love the colors of this card and how simple it is.

Originally this card just said hello. But Jon told me it was missing something, so I added the lines to the bottom, and the extra sentiments.

My favorite card from this kit, (aside from any using the jar stamp). I love the blog of papers in the middle so much.

Thanks for coming by to see these cards I made. I hope they inspire you to make a bunch of cards. Now I wish I had some time to work on more cards, perhaps unrelated to the card kits.

Have a great day!

-Alexandria

Studio Calico: Hello Hello Card Kit

Good Morning! Today I'm sharing the cards I made using the Hello Hello Card Kit from Studio Calico. This kit was easier to work with than some of the past kits, and that makes me happy. I have enough left over to make a few more cards if I want.

This card was inspired by a sketch on the Studio Calico blog. The sketch was inspired by a card Maggie Holmes made. I added circles to the doily patterned paper to make it more visually interesting. This is my favourite card from the kit by far.

This card was inspired by the gallery. It took me two attempts to get the dot stamp lined up the way I wanted it, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I trimmed the bottom because I didn't care for the extra white space, though now I wish I'd left it.

This was inspired by another of Maggie Holmes' cards. This was my first ever time stamping on vellum. It was successful. I just used ColorBox ink, and regular vellum. I left it to dry for a few minutes before trimming it and adhering it to the card with a staple. 

Another card inspired by the gallery. I don't currently have a manual die cut machine (it's on my birthday wishlist) so I stamped the woodgrain frame on white cardstock and trimmed it by hand. Same with the heart.

Another card inspired by the gallery. I swapped out the string they used, and added white alphas to the red banner.Overall I'm pretty pleased with this one. It was challenging to get it to look the way I wanted, but luckily I could position the paper to hide most of my mistakes.

This card was inspired by the gallery. I made it monochromatic, stamped on some vellum, and added the blue dots. Punching through the felt was a bit of a challenge, but I imagine it would have been easier with a die cut machine.

Somewhat inspired by the gallery. When I saw these stamps I knew they'd be perfect together. I also knew these papers would be beautiful together.

This card was inspired by one from my last kit. I used some leftover herringbone vellum, and a gold tag leftover from the other card. I used the green buttons and blue dots to make two triangles of embellishments around the tag, and make a wish sentiment.

This card was made using some left over strips and the pink string in the kit. My goal was to use as much of the kit that I could. I've always loved when people stamp something more than once, and get the faded/ombre look, so I tried it here. Who doesn't think saying thank you more than once means more.

I hope you're all enjoying these last few weeks of summer! I can't believe it's almost over! Soon work will be open again, and I'll be trying to be crafty in my decreased free time, but I'm sure I'll find a way to make it work.

 Have a great day!
-Alexandria