Making Multiple Cards from One Stamped Image

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I’ve kind of been on a little creative slump lately. I always love making cards during the winter holidays, but that excitement always seems to leave around December 26th. Even Valentine’s Day doesn’t get my creative mojo fired up. That said, I just love it when I can get multiple cards using just one stamped image. Two for the price of one…who doesn’t love that!

I have a few of Simon Says Stamp beautiful background cling stamps that I always seem to go to. They are great for any kind of card. Stamps are expensive, so I love it when I can buy one that is so incredibly versatile.

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For my latest cards, I used Simon Says Stamp’s Emma Background. I white heat embossed it on Bristol paper, and ink blended over it using Worn Lipstick and Picked Raspberry Distress Oxides (I just love how the oxides blend so effortlessly). I die cut a heart out of the center of the image.

For my first card, I placed the background minus the heart onto my card base and lightly traced the heart outline. This helped me stamp my greeting in the right spot. Using one of my new fav stamp sets, Pretty Pink Posh Everyday Greetings, I stamped my greeting within the lightly traced heart space. After erasing the heart outline, I adhered my stamped background onto my card base with dimensional tape. The final touch was adding a few small pink hearts to finish it off.

For the second card, I embossed a piece of white card stock using the Doodle Hearts embossing folder from The Paper Studio. I then die cut that piece using a Gina Marie Designs double stitched rectangle die. Using Altenew’s Halftone Happy die, I cut the beautiful script Happy out of silver metallic card stock. To finish the sentiment, I die cut a banner out of white card stock and stamped “anniversary” from Altenew’s Halftone Happy stamp set. I matted the white background piece with the same silver metallic card stock. All that was left was to simply glue it all together. Once again, the final touch was adding a few tiny pink hearts.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Computer Signature

6Sep2017

Using Older Supplies for My Latest Freshly Made Sketches Entry

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

It’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything here. My creativity has taken a little bit of a back seat while we got our daughter back to college this fall. To give me some inspiration, I went to one of my favorite card sketch sites—Freshly Made Sketches.

Here is the latest sketch…

and here is my take…

I started with a 4″ x 5.25″ piece of white card stock. I masked off the top and bottom portions so that I could use some ink blending in the center. I used a light layer of tumbled glass Distress Ink and then used a more heavy hand with blueprint sketch. To give that area a little more character, I used an old toothbrush and splattered some watered down white paint. It still needed a little bit more, so I splattered some water, too. I just love how easily distress inks blend with water.

Next, using the Simon Says Stamp Funky Snowflake, I die cut it out of my ink blended panel. I knew that I was going to use the inlay technique, so I made sure to keep the center piece. I die cut the snowflake again, but out of fun foam this time. This was going to be the base for my die cut. I still needed a top layer, so I die cut it a third time out of shiny gold paper. Unfortunately, you can’t really see it shimmer in the photo 😦 After gluing them all together, I placed the dimensional snowflake in the die cut space on the panel, and glued it in place along with the blue center piece. The panel was then adhered to a top folding 4.25″x5.5″ card.

All that remained was the sentiment and some blue and gold sequins. The sentiment is from an older Hero Arts stamp set called Holiday Sayings. It was stamped with blueprint sketch distress ink a few times using the Misti stamping tool.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies Used:

Simon Says Stamp Funky Snowflake die
Tumbled Glass and Blueprint Sketch Distress Ink
Hero Arts Holiday Sayings stamp set
Sequins

1Jun2017

Simon Says Stamp Star Flower Stamp

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

My Mother’s Day Gift

This year my children gave me a Simon Says Stamp gift card for Mother’s Day. I have to admit, I was like a kid in a candy store. My Simon Says Stamp wishlist is incredibly long (I’m talking hundreds of dollars long), so I it didn’t take me very long to blow through that gift card 🙂 The Star Flower stamp was my first choice. I have wanted this stamp since they introduced it months ago.

The design is so intricate that I knew that the rest of my card design had to be very simple. I decided to gold heat emboss it onto watercolor paper. Using my MISTI tool made it easy to get multiple stamps onto the rough paper. Rather than use traditional gold embossing powder, I came across a jar of Zing Brown Sugar powder that I’ve had forever. While it looks like gold, it actually seems just a little less brilliant. I LOVE IT and will definitely be using it a lot more.

Using my waterbrush, I painted small areas of the flower image with Distress Inks (fossilized amber, crushed olive, blueprint sketch, wilted violet, abandoned coral and tumbled glass). To enhance the card, I added a small strip of metallic gold card stock along the left edge. I struggled whether or not to add some sequins or Nuvo drops, but decided that I wanted the flower image to be the star (pun intended).

I hope you like it. I’ve added this set of note cards to my Etsy shop.

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2Apr2017

Freshly Made Sketches Challenge #281

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I have been wanting to use my latest Simon Says Stamp Watercolor Friendly Flowers for a while now, and the latest Freshly Made Sketches sketch seemed like a good place to start.

Here is the latest sketch…

This is the card that I made…

I started by white heat embossing the outlined flowers in the set. I pulled out my Zig clean color markers and selected a few softer colors that worked well together. I used a water brush to disperse the color on each petal. Once they were dry, I heat embossed the center portions of the flowers with Zing Metallic Silver embossing powder using my embossing pen. They still needed a little something more, so out came my Wink of Stella clear glitter pen.

On to my card design…I knew that I wanted a little color on the white background where my flowers were going to go, so I lightly ink blended an area in the center with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. I liked the 3 horizontal stripes on the sketch, but I really wanted my flowers to be the highlight. I found a very old stamp set from TPC Studio called Dots and Stripes. (I’m so glad that I dug into my stamp collection because these stamps are fantastic!) I chose one of the dot border stamps and stamped it 3 times with Versamark ink and used the same silver metallic embossing powder as before.

I fiddled around with my flower placement until I liked what I saw. I glued 4 of the flowers on to the white base and adhered 2 with some fun foam to give the grouping some dimension. For my greeting, I chose the “just for you” stamp from a 3×3 set from Lia Griffith (Hero Arts) and stamped it in black.

I knew that the card base needed to be something other than white, so I went with my next favorite, light gray. I think it coordinates well with the silver embossing.

I hope you like it!

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3Feb2017

This Week’s Freshly Made Sketch Entry

Posted in Handmade Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Once again, I’ve gone to one of my absolute favorite card sketch sites to get some inspiration. Freshly Made Sketches is a great card challenge site that you must really check out!

When I first saw this week’s sketch, I immediately thought of washi tape. I don’t know where that came from because I don’t think that I’ve ever used washi tape on any craft item. My small stash tends to be used to hold card pieces down when I’m die cutting. I went with my idea, and I’m pretty happy with the results.

Here’s the latest FMS…

and here’s my card…

I chose 3 of my favorite washi tape designs that coordinated pretty well together. I simply ripped a piece (no measuring or cutting with scissors here) of each and placed them on a piece of white card stock. I then matted that piece with some blue card stock and then adhered that to my A2 top folding card base.

Using one of my favorite heart stamps, Hero Arts Patterned Heart, I heat embossed it with Recollections gold embossing powder. The heart is attached with dimensional adhesive. All that was left was the greeting. I decided on one of the greetings from Simon Says Stamp’s Hydrangea Blooms stamp set.

I hope you like it!

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24Jan2017

CAS(E) this Sketch #205

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Another one of my favorite card sketch challenge sites is CAS(E) this Sketch. Their sketches always challenge me to try and think outside the box (which is a pretty difficult thing for me).

Here is their latest sketch…

and here’s what I came up with…

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I started off with my favorite size card base–A2 4.25″ x 5.5″ made from kraft card stock. I then cut my patterned paper from 2 different 6×6 My Mind’s Eye paper pads by eyeballing it. I have to get better at being more precise when it comes to cutting paper 🙂

Using the Pierced Heart Stax dies from My Favorite Things, I cut the hearts out of the top kraft layer, the blue layer and the yellow layer, leaving the red layer alone. I adhered all of the layers so that the hearts lined up.

After seeing it all put together, I thought it looked a little dull, so I added the black strips along the outside cut edge because I knew that my greeting was going to be black. I triple cut the love greeting from the Simon Says Stamp Love die set and glued them together to give a little dimension to the greeting. Even after that, it still looked a little plain, so I pulled out my newly acquired black Nuvo drops and added those above the heart and below the greeting. I also added the small kraft heart in the center from the Pierced Heart Stax smallest die.

I hope you like it!