Hello and happy Monday! Today’s an especially happy Monday for me, since I’m taking the day off of work. I’ve got errands to run and chores to do, but I’m hoping to squeeze in some bonus crafting time 🙂
Today’s quick and easy card uses supplies from a few different companies: Altenew’s Coffee Love stamp set, Studio Calico’s Coffee by One Little Bird stamp set, and My Favorite Things’ Sun Ray stencil. Continue reading “Good Days Start With Coffee”
Hello there! I know winter is digging in its heels in many parts of the US so I hope, wherever you are, you get to see a glimpse of sunshine today!
Today I’m playing with the new Rain or Shine stamp set from My Favorite Things. I’m a sucker for encouraging sentiments (and ducks!) and this set has a few great ones. I also pulled out a couple of stencils for the background, as well as some standalone dies for the clouds and sun.
I started by stamping out the girl, ducks, and water elements in Copic-friendly Hero Arts Intense Black ink onto Neenah Solar White 80# Classic Crest cardstock. I then brought out what is essentially my entire collection of Copics to color in all of the images, doing some very simple two-color blending. When I was done, I cut out all of the images using my Brother ScanNCut2.
For the background, I used another piece of Neenah Solar White. I used Tombow Mono Removable Adhesive to temporarily adhere the panel to a piece of scratch paper and then I used washi tape to hold the My Favorite Things Drifts & Hills stencil in place while I used a foam blending tool to apply a heavy layer of Salty Ocean Distress Oxide ink on the top half of the card to create a blue sky. Then, on top of the inked area, I used more washi tape to hold down the Simon Says Stamp Falling Snow stencil.
I misted water over the stencil using a mini-mister (Ranger sells these, however mine is from Tombow). My thought here was that the water would touch the paper at the open areas of the stencil and lift the Distress Oxide ink, creating lighter colored dots that would look like rain (I hoped) and not snow. I let the water sit for about 15 seconds, and then used a paper towel to wipe off the stencil and pick up any excess water.
Then I cleaned the Drifts & Hills stencil and re-arranged it over the blue side of the card and proceeded to ink up the remaining white space with Antique Linen Distress Oxide ink to create the ground. The curve of the stencil didn’t line up perfectly but I was able to make some micro adjustments to match the curve of the sky.
For the clouds, I used Lawn Fawn’s Simple Puffy Clouds die set to cut out clouds of varying sizes from some scrap Neenah Solar White. The sun is a piece of yellow Recollections cardstock die cut with My Favorite Things’ Sunny Skies die.
Next I laid out all of the elements onto the background and got a sense of where I wanted to stamp the sentiment, which I stamped in Versafine Black Onyx ink. I ended up using only one of the three little ducks that I’d made.
Then, I got out the adhesives. I used Tombow Mono Liquid Glue to adhere pieces flush to the background. For the splashes, I used Zots Bling Clear Adhesive Dots because I wanted just a bit of dimension but couldn’t bring myself to try to cut tiny pieces of foam tape. And for the the clouds in front of the sun I used foam tape. I left most of the rays of the sun glue-free so that they stand up a bit from the background. To finish, I adhered the card front to an A2-sized card base.
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Happy Easter!
I pulled this card together at the last minute using the only remotely Easter-themed item in my crafting stash: Simon Says Stamp Oval of Flowers. An oval is egg-shaped, right? This pattern is also available in a die, and I purchased the set that includes the stencil and the die.
To start, I lightly hand wrote the Happy Easter sentiment in pencil, erasing and adjusting until I had it properly centered. Then I went over the pencil with a Sakura Pigma Micron Pen (03, black). I let it dry before erasing the pencil.
I then used Post-It Tape to tape down the stencil onto an A-2 sized piece of Neenah Solar White 80# Classic Crest cardstock and to my work surface . This tape is less sticky than painter’s tape and won’t damage your paper when you remove it.
I used foam blending tools to blend three Distress Oxide Inks (Picked Raspberry, Wild Honey, and Squeezed Lemonade) over the stencil, taking care to blend carefully between the colors.
Then I removed the Post-It tape and stencil to reveal my flower “egg.” I used the largest die from the Lawn Fawn Outside In Stitched Rectangle Stackables set to trim the panel and add the stitching detail.
To finish, I adhered the card front to an A-2 sized piece of yellow Recollections cardstock, and then adhered the finished card front to an A-2 sized card base.
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