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

16Feb2018

Another Way to Use Papercrafting Dies

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I have a limited collection of dies, so I’m always looking for new ways to use them. Since it’s feeling like spring here in North Carolina, I decided to use one of my most favorite die sets–Waffle Flower’s Pretty Butterflies. This is the card I made…

My Empty Nest Creations Multi Color Ink Blended Butterflies card

I started off by cutting the large butterfly twice out of some card stock scraps. I made two stencils because I knew that I was going to ink blend, and I didn’t want any ink transferring when I changed colors. To give the border a little character, I used Avery Elle’s Wonky Stitches dies. I was able to fit 3 butterflies onto my 4×5.25 piece of Bristol paper with very limited masking. For my ink blended butterflies, I used Distress Oxides in Picked Raspberry, Fossilized Amber, Salty Ocean, Seedless Preserves and Spiced Marmalade. The butterflies looked a little too muted for what I had in mind, so I pulled out my Zig Embossing Marker and outlined the butterflies. I stamped the sentiment from Hero Art’s Stamp & Cut Yes set, and black heat embossed everything.

I’m going to be honest here…I wasn’t very careful when I heat embossed. Black flecks were small but noticeable, so I had to somehow camouflage them. I just splattered some watered down black paint and now they look intentional 🙂

To finish it off, I matted the card front with black card stock and adhered it to a top folding card base using foam tape.

Thanks for visiting!

Computer Signature

17Nov2017

Non-Traditional Christmas Colors for the Latest Freshly Made Sketches Challenge

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

It’s been quite a while since I joined in on a card challenge. I’ve been busy making my Christmas cards for this year. Since they are almost finished, I thought I’d create a card for one of my favorite card challenge sites, Freshly Made Sketches.

Here is the latest sketch…

and here is my entry.

Any holiday card that I’ve made usually has red and green on it, so I decided to leave my Christmas comfort zone and do something a little less traditional. How about light blue and light green? I really like that color combo, so I went for it.

I started with Ellen Hutson’s Mondo Poinsettia stamp set. I gold heat embossed the images onto Bristol paper, and water colored them with Peeled Paint and Broken China Distress Oxides. I really love the Distress Oxides. They stamp beautifully, and they are wonderful as watercolors. After the leaves and flowers had dried, I cut them out with the matching dies and put them aside.

My Merry Christmas sentiment is from WPlus9 Hand Lettered Holiday stamp set. I just love the pairing of the script and capital letters. I cut Merry out of some silver metallic card stock and heat embossed Christmas with silver embossing powder onto a velum strip. Once that was done, I needed to do a little something with my card base. Plain white just wasn’t going to be right. I decided to do a little light stenciling using the Broken China ink and a Gina Marie Designs stencil. All that was left was to put the card together. I adhered the velum strip just between the two flower groupings and popped up the flowers with some foam tape. The final touch was to add a few sequins and some Nuvo gold drops on the flower centers.

I hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by. Happy Holidays!