Using My Silhouette Cameo For My Latest Card

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

It’s been far too long since I’ve used my Silhouette Cameo for anything. I decided to check out some designs that I purchased a while ago and that have just been sitting in my design library. I chose a beautiful sunflower design by Sarah Bailey (design #320672). Here’s what I came up with:

I started by cutting 3 of the outlines with some scrap brown card stock. Rather than dealing with individual petal cutouts, I just cut out a solid yellow piece to use as the background. For dimension, I glued all of the brown outline pieces together, and then I attached the yellow background piece.

To create the card background, I simply taped off a square portion (I just eyeballed it…no measuring here 🙂 Using a blending brush, I blended Distress Oxide Mermaid Lagoon. I wanted a bit of a fading effect, so I just applied the ink with a heavier hand at the top of the square. After the blending was done, I spritzed some water and blotted it off with a paper towel.

Before I adhered the sunflower to the card front, I decided that it looked a little dull. I blended some Distress Ink Ground Espresso to the center of the flower and added a bunch of dots with a black fine tip Sharpie. To give the petals more life, I just added some golden orange color pencil. Wink of Stella over the whole flower was the last touch. I attached the flower with foam tape.

The sentiment is from Taylored Expressions Simple Strips stamp & die set (This is one of the most clever sets I’ve seen in a long time), and it’s heat embossed onto black card stock. For balance, I added the corner frames with a fine line black marker and some Nuvo Drops in Bright Gold.

Thanks for visiting 🙂

17Aug2019

A Celebrate or Birthday Card Using a DIY Stencil

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

It’s really funny how most everything old becomes new again. Card making is no different. Stencils are back, although for some, they really never left. I love stencils because they are a relatively cheap way to add to your craft stash, and there are so many ways that they can be used. Even better, you can actually make your own for almost nothing if you have a cutting machine.

(Side note…to make my own stencils, I use dollar store plastic notebook dividers and my Silhouette Cameo machine. You can find so many basic shapes in the design store, or even make your own. This plastic material cuts beautifully using the stencil material cut settings already set in your machine.)

I had already made a few stencils several weeks ago, so I decided to give one of them a try…a balloon stencil.

Here’s what I came up with…

My Empty Nest Creations DIY Stencil Celebrate Card

This one was really simple to make, but I just love the bright colors with the black & white sentiment.

Using my home made balloon stencil, I ink blended 5 balloons using Worn Lipstick, Peacock Feathers, Squeezed Lemonade, Spiced Marmalade and Wilted Violet Distress Oxides. I love the fact that no masking is needed. It’s perfectly okay, in fact it’s more realistic, to have the balloons peeking through. Once the balloons were dry, I drew the strings with a Micron marker and a ruler.

All that was left was die cutting my Celebrate sentiment using Neat & Tangled’s Celebrate die with black and white scrap card stock and stamping the smaller sentiment using Winnie & Walter’s Sentimental: Gift stamp set. The final step was to pop the Celebrate die cut with some dimensional tape.

Thanks for stopping by!

Computer Signature

8Jan2017

Freshly Made Sketches #269

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

It’s been a little while since I’ve participated in a card challenge. I love the simplicity of Freshly Made Sketches, so I thought I’d give it a go today. Here is the latest sketch…

When I saw this sketch, I immediately thought of those oh so popular birch trees. Unfortunately, I don’t own any birch tree stamps or digital files, so I went to Etsy to see what I could find. Lo and behold, I found a lovely set of PNG and vector files from Amanda Ilkov’s Etsy shop. Using my Silhouette Cameo, I created a few cut files for this card (the birch trees and the cardinal).

Here’s what I came up with…

After cutting my files, I used Mermaid Lagoon (my new favorite) Distress Ink to ink blend the background. I didn’t go with complete coverage because I wanted to mimic the sky. I used a Copic marker to give some gray shading to the tree trunks. I glued the trees to the base and used some dimensional glue dots to adhere the cardinal. I black heat embossed the sentiment from the Hero Arts Stamp and Cut Yes set. To balance the black greeting, I added a thin black strip down the left side of the card. I sprayed some shimmer spray to give it a little extra (even though you can’t see it in the photo)! I settled on a light gray card base and attached the panel.

I hope you like it!

3Jan2017

My First Valentine of 2017

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Edited to Add A Slight Modification…

As you can see, I made some slight changes to my original version of this card. The only thing that I changed is the size of the dashed flight path lines. In the original version, I felt that they kind of overshadowed the background a little too much. That’s the beauty of this creative outlet…I can make any change that I think improves the card by just making a new one!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I’m going to use the typical excuse…the holidays got in the way of my creating. Because I’ve had so little crafting time, I’ve kind of lost my mojo. It’s been a little difficult getting back to it, but I did have fun creating this cutie.

As soon as I saw the stamp and die set Fly By from Avery Elle, I knew I had to get it. The airplane and little puff formations are so adorable!

This card is pretty simple, and I have to admit that I’m still struggling with trying to add a little more something to it. My daughter convinced me to post it just like it is. Sometimes simple is truly best.

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The base is Neenah Solar White 110#. I used a small cloud Silhouette cut file to create the sky background by placing a few clouds over white card stock and ink blending the background with Mermaid Lagoon Distress Ink. I stamped the airplane and several heart shaped puffs and cut them out with the coordinating dies. I drew a curvy path in light pencil and used a black marker to highlight the path. The airplane was colored with Copic markers, and mounted with foam dots. The heart shaped puffs were mounted with the same foam dots.

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For the inside, I drew another curvy path and connected it to the “love you” stamp. I placed a few cut out heart puffs along the path, too.

I hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by!

5Nov2016

My First Holiday Card for 2016

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Freshly Made Sketches #261

I have just found another card sketch blog that I really like. It’s called Freshly Made Sketches. You should definitely check it out here.

This is their latest sketch…

and here is my take on it…

This one was very simple to make and would be very easy to mass produce for the holidays. I love the less traditional colors with the kraft card base. All I did was cut the Christmas trees on my Silhouette Cameo (my own design) and rolled them through my paper crimper tool. I wasn’t quite sure how big to make the horizontal paper pieces until I placed the trees on the card. I decided that the thicker size looked better than the narrower size from the sketch. The plaid paper is from an old 6×6 Basic Grey Lauderdale pad. (I just love it when I can use some of my older stash.) I popped the trees up with some fun foam to give it a little bit of dimension. The stamped greetings are from Waffle Flower’s Merry stamp set.

I hope you like it!