The Joy of Finding an Old Stamp Set

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I have been collecting stamp sets for quite a while now, so there are always older sets that just get lost in the back of a pile. Since I have a limited budget to spend on the latest and greatest stamping/diecutting supplies, I have to rediscover stamp sets that I’ve had in my stash for a few years and never used.

The Hello Mason Jar set from Stampendous is one such set. It has a beautiful array of flowers and a wonderful mason jar. There are a few sentiments that are small and perfect to fit in a small space on any busy card.

My Empty Nest Creations using Stampendous Hello Mason Jar set and Zig markers For this card, I just used the flower grouping that I colored with Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers and a waterbrush. I die cut it with the matching die. All that was left was to figure out the right background.

I seem to be obsessed with ink blended backgrounds lately. I think it’s because they are so easy to make, and you end up with the perfect custom background for your card. I blended Salty Ocean and Peeled Paint Distress Oxides for this background. Once that was done, I thought that the card still needed a little something else to help frame the flower image. Again I reached for something that I rarely use, my Spellbinders diamond dies, to create the frame. After popping the floral image up with foam tape, I die cut happy birthday from purple card stock using the Simon Says Stamp Happy Birthday Script die.

Thanks for visiting!

Computer Signature

26Jun2017

Just Loving the Stampendous Fronds Stamp Set

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I have had this set for quite a while now, and I just love how versatile it is. For this card, I used several of the stamps to create a wreath. First, I lightly drew a circle using one of my circle dies as a template above center on an A2 size piece of white card stock. I chose a few of the stamps in the set giving the wreath a little more unique look and stamped in various shades of Distress Ink (Fossilized Amber, Abandoned Coral, Pine Needles, Forest Moss and Crushed Olive). The berries stamped in Abandoned Coral looked a little washed out, so I took a black fine tip Sharpie and outlined those.

For the circle die cut, I decided on using Crushed Olive and the watercolor “smooshing” technique. I pressed the ink pad on my mat and sprayed it with water. I “smooshed” the circle die cut around until I got the coverage that I wanted. After it was dry, I sprayed a little more water on it to give it a more distressed look. To define the circle, I used my ink blending tool and blended some Vintage Photo lightly around the edges.

I popped the circle die cut up with some fun foam, and used the My Favorite Things Many Thanks die to cut out my greeting. I twice gold heat embossed the die cuts to get complete coverage, and glued them to the circle die. The card front need a little more balance, so I trimmed a little off of the top and bottom of the wreath card front. I gold heat embossed the top and bottom edges of a new A2 sized card front and glued the wreath card front on top. I think that last step just finished it off nicely.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂

21Jan2017

Freshly Made Sketches #271

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Once again, I’m enjoying the sketches from Freshly Made Sketches. I just love how they are simple, but allow for a lot of interpretation. It truly is a great site. Be sure to check them out!

Here is the most recent sketch…

and here is my interpretation…

I used two different stamp sets for the floral piece—Altenew’s Adore You and Stampendous’ Fronds. I stamped them in Versafine Black (my favorite crisp black ink), and did just a little Copic coloring. I didn’t intend to do such a large gray outline with my Copic marker until it decided to just leak on my image. I’m not sure why that happened, but it has definitely happened before. Oh well…I think I camouflaged it pretty well.

I then cut my piece apart to allow for my greeting. I knew I wanted a white embossed greeting on black, so I played around with various greetings until I decided on this one from My Favorite Things Delicate Pretty Poppies. I cut my black mat and then cut a little more off of my floral image in order to fit the greeting. Using my powder tool to help define the area, I stamped with Versamark ink and embossed with white embossing powder.

You can’t tell from the picture, but I adhered the white floral image sections with foam tape to raise them up from the black greeting area. For final touches, I added some white dashed lines to help define the greeting and some Nuvo Crystal Drops in Red Berry. The card base is a light gray to compliment the gray floral outline.

I hope you like it!