Inkflair | make great cards

Greenery card: blog hop

Written by amanda on July 8, 2020

Hello, welcome to the Stampin’ Pretty Pals’ Blog Hop! This month our Design Team is showcasing “Gifts From the Garden.” We hope you enjoy and will be inspired by them! Don’t forget to leave comments! We love hearing from you. At the end of my post, you will find the full line-up to help you “hop” along from Pal to Pal.

Today I’m sharing a 3D card that I made with the Forever Greenery Suite from Stampin’ Up. I’m using the Forever Greenery Designer Series Paper, the Forever Gold Laser-Cut Speciality Paper, the gold hoop embellishments, gold cord, and the peacock/olive reversible ribbon.

The card is made from three “boxes” made from garden green, pretty peacock, and shaded spruce card stock, with little tabs inside to stick all the leaves in place. Also, this card is actually meant to fold up into a somewhat-mailable state:

I don’t know if you can see it because it ended having a lot of flowers kind of in the way, but the front of the card, all folded up, was all cut from a single piece of patterned paper so all the edges on the four sides visible from this closed state all line up.

And then, as the recipient opens the first 3D box, the second part is revealed. That sentiment on the lower left, “Your friendship means the world to me” (from the Free as a Bird stamp set) will actually end up at the bottom of the mid-size box that the gold hoop hangs from, but I wanted it to have a message to see as the card is unfolded.

And then here is the what the whole card looks like once it is completely unfolded:

This card is, once again, using a whole lot of fussy cutting, some of which, I suspect (can anyone confirm for me?) could have been avoided if I actually owned the Forever Flourishing Dies, which I think actually would have cut a bunch of leaves from the patterned paper for me. It took me a couple hours to cut everything I needed.

This uses stamps from a bunch of different sets–Free as a Bird, which I mentioned above, and then on the front of the folded card the “hello” is from Timeless Tropical and the “friend” is from Forever Blossoms, and “The best moments of my life happen with you” is from Daisy Lane, just kind of re-arranged so they fit on the box and then in the hoop:

This uses all of the smaller branch-shaped pieces from one sheet of the gold laser-cut paper. I sponge-daubed the reverse side with old olive, pear pizazz, and pretty peacock ink, because a bunch of those pieces actually get seen from both sides as the card is opened. I really like this color combination–the gold looks just spectacular with all the bluish-green tones, and I’m also loving this patterned paper–I think I used every pattern somewhere on this card!

More inspiration awaits! Use the Blog Hop Line-up below to visit the rest of this month’s Design Team. My fellow Pals are excited to show you what they’ve created! Mark your calendars for our next blog hop, which will be August 12th when our theme is “My Happiest Season.” The Design Team will showcase projects inspired by their favorite seasonal time of the year. Don’t miss the fun! Until then, please stay safe and have fun in your craft room.

clean + simple birthday

Written by amanda on July 4, 2020

I’m trying to get back into card-making after taking a break for a couple of months, so I’ve been making a couple of cards for upcoming birthdays. This one is super simple to make but looks so pretty! I cut out the candles on a sheet of white cardstock, sponged a scrap of cardstock in rainbow colors to be the background for the candles, and put a strip of gold foil behind the flames. Then, stamp “happy birthday” underneath, and pop the whole thing onto a white card base, and done!

bird ballad card for the Pals Blog Hop — critter edition!

Written by amanda on March 11, 2020

Welcome to the Pals’ Blog Hop! We’re so glad you’re here. You may be starting the hop here or coming from a previous Pal’s blog. Either way, you’ve come to the right place. This month we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Pals Blog Hop with “Critters” from the Stampin’ Pretty Pals. Many of the design team members are offering “Mystery Blog Candy” of their choice to 1 lucky winner. To play along, just leave a comment on as many blog posts as desired. A random winner will be announced on a subsequent blog post by each participating design team member. You’ll find the full line-up below to help you “hop” along from Pal to Pal.

Fussy cutting! Everybody’s favorite papercrafting technique, am I right??

Today I’m sharing another card made using the Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper. Making this card is super simple: first, spend hours and hours fussy cutting birds and flowers from your DSP! (Moderately helpful note: as it turns out, you will probably need way more flowers than birds. Less helpful note: as it turns out, flowers are trickier and more time-consuming to cut than birds!)

About a month ago I was looking to make a non-traditional Valentine’s Day card and I ended up making one with a lot of elements cut out from the DSP and arranged in a heart shape. But actually I was super-indecisive about what birds to use and what colors I wanted, and once I started cutting things I just couldn’t stop (it’s an addiction!) and I actually have a whole pile of cut-out stuff that I finally picked from to make the card.

This meant, naturally, that I had a ton of leftover cut-out birds and flowers (handily sitting in the exquisitely-themed Bird Ballad tin that the laser-cut cards come in) and so I went a little crazy making another card with them. The technique is quite similar; building up the card in this diagonal layout with layers and using dimensionals to pop up some of the birds and flowers.

This card is for Mother’s Day (I feel so ahead of the game for having this done already) but since the sentiment is just this super simple thing I stamped in Pool Party on a scrap of white cardstock and attached to the top corner, you could change it up and use it for any sort of vaguely-bird-related occasion! (Another advantage of the diagonal layout–no fiddling around trying to get all these uncooperative birds into a heart shape like I had to do for the Valentine’s card! Diagonals–in style for every occasion!)

I added a few of the Bird Ballad Trinkets (just the flowers because I thought they fit in the best, and also I used up all the keys making my Cherry Cobbler Key Cards) and that was it! Though, also, I should add, I think this kind of card looks great with a few of the leaves sticking off the edges of the card, but that introduces some complications if you want to send it through the mail.

More inspiration awaits! Use the Blog Hop Line-up below to visit the rest of this month’s Design Team. My fellow Pals are excited to show you what they’ve created! Mark your calendars for Wednesday, April 8th, for our “Special Occasions” blog hop when our Design Team showcase projects for weddings, graduation, anniversary, baby, Mother’s/Father’s Day or any special occasion. Don’t miss the fun!

Mary Fish at Stampin’ Pretty First Hop – January 2010
Rae Harper Burnet at Wild West Paper Arts First Hop – May 2011
Brian King at Stamp with Brian First Hop – June 2012
Peggy Noe at Pretty Paper Cards First Hop – September 2012
Katy McGloin at Just Fun Stamping First Hop – March 2013
Debbie Mageed at Secrets to Stamping First Hop – March 2013
Lisa Ann Bernard at Queen B Creations First Hop – August 2013
Amanda Merrill at Inkflair First Hop – April 2014
Wendy Klein at Doggone Delightful Stampin’ First Hop – May 2014
Beth McCullough at Stamping Mom First Hop – September 2014
Jennifer Michalski at Stamping Serenity First Hop – January 2015
Pamela Sadler at Stampin Pink Rose First Hop – January 2015
Tricia Chuba at ButterDish Designs First Hop – June 2015
Debra Simonis at Deb’s Stampin’ Grounds First Hop – July 2015
Karen Hallam at Karen’s Stamping Habit First Hop – September 2015
Jeanie Stark at Just Stampin’ First Hop – August 2016
Mary Hanson at Up North Stampin’ First Hop – September 2016
Jackie Beers at Blue Line Stamping First Hop – April 2017
Stesha Bloodhart at Stampin’ Hoot! First Hop – May 2017
Su Mohr at Aromas And Art First Hop – June 2017
Leah O’Brien at Ink, Paper, Stamps, Oh My! First Hop – February 2018
Lori Pinto at LollyPop Paper and Ink First Hop – June 2018
Jen Roque at Stamp Camp with Jen First Hop – October 2019
Ann Murray at Murray Stamps Ink First Hop – November 2019
Sue Jackson at Just Peachy Stamping First Hop – January 2020
Deb Walker at Deb Stamps Life First Hop – March 2020

Parisian Blossoms rosette card

Written by amanda on March 10, 2020

Just a quick post today about a decidedly non-quick card to make! I started this card in January when I decided to play around with the Forever Blossoms stamp set and some vellum card stock.

From the beginning, this was a troubled card! I stamped the largest of the stamps in the Forever Blossoms stamp set over and and over in Memento Tuxedo Black onto vellum. Here the Stamparatus was a great help, and because it is vellum you can see exactly where the image is going to be on the paper, which really helped for making the front of the card with the large flower images quite close to each other. Afterwards, I filled in the smaller blank spaces with some of the smaller flower and leaf stamps from the same stamp set.

However, the Memento ink never dried on the vellum! At least, whenever I tried to color in the stamps with alcohol markers, they started running and now I have some black ink on a bunch of my fancy markers. This is why this card, started in January, is only making an appearance on my blog now. I got totally fed up with it and tossed it to the side for a month or two.

But the good thing about vellum is, it’s transparent! It took me an embarrassingly long time for me to realize the implications of this–I could just turn it over and color the other side!!! Which had a clear impression of the stamp, but which the black ink had never touched! Good-bye to all my ink-bleeding problems!

After that, it was fairly simple. I put some of the iridescent green ribbon on one side to add a stylish flair (i.e. because I smudged a bunch of ink coloring and needed to cover it up) and then gathered up some of this petal pink ribbon to make a rosette and stamped the sentiment in matching petal pink ink and put it all together and it was done! But, by the way, those rosettes do not stay on easy. I know some people have fancy adhesive tricks that I so far have failed to master, but I already had a needle and thread out from making the rosette so I just sewed it onto the card.

parisian blossoms suite in pale pink and blue

Written by amanda on February 11, 2020

With this card I went a bit wild using a lot of the elements of the Parisian Blossoms Suite from Stampin’ Up: there is the the Parisian Blossoms Designer Series Paper, of course; the Forever Blossoms stamp set; the Petal Pink 1/4″ metallic-edge ribbon; and the champagne rhinestone basic jewels.

I love the color combination of the pale pink and pale blue with the champagne colored accents. I think I first saw it on Mary Fish’s blog way back last December.

And, as you can see in the close-up picture above, the petal pink metallic-edge ribbon makes these great little bows that look wonderful with the pale blue paper. And on the piece on the top with the pink paper and ribbon, I’ve added another bow, also from pink ribbon. Technically, the Petal Pink 5/8″ Organdy Striped isn’t part of the Parisian Blossoms suite but it works perfectly together.

Since this was made to be a Valentine’s card, I added in a vellum heart die-cut, sponged with Pool Party and Soft Sky, underneath the top layers. I had some old Pool Party shimmery ribbon to hold it in place, and then I added all the other bows and ribbons and sentiment and rhinestones. I really love the soft, romantic colors of this card!

bird ballad Valentine

Written by amanda on February 4, 2020

I wanted to make a Valentine’s day card that is a bit of a departure from the usual pink and red color scheme, and this ended up nice with a Shaded Spruce card base.

Fortunately, I’ve been fussy-cutting birds and flowers from the Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper on and off for the past couple of weeks, so I had a lot of them to layer on top of each other for this card. They’re just kind of tucked into each other, with a few popped up on those foam hexagons to give the card a bit of texture and dimension.

Making a heart shape from scratch is a little daunting, so if you look closely, you can see that I actually built up the birds on top of an intricate heart die that I cut out of vellum. The leafy edges of that die look all matchy-matchy peaking out from the edges of the heart, but I imagine any heart shape would probably work just as well–the idea is really just to have a guide for making sure the heart shape is relatively even.

Doing the heart is the complicated part of this card; I stamped some of the flower and leaf images from the Free as a Bird stamp set in Shaded Spruce ink onto the same color card stock for the background, and then added a scrap of whisper white with the sentiment (also stamped in Shaded Spruce) and finished the whole thing off with a strip of Old Olive/Pretty Peacock reversible ribbon.

cherry cobbler cards with keys

Written by amanda on January 28, 2020

I admit I was not completely won over by the Parisian Blossoms Designer Series Paper when I first saw it in Las Vegas last November. I am ludicrously influenced by shiny things, and I thought that a lot of this paper simply was not shiny enough. And especially this paper! Not a foil accent to be seen! But I have given it an honest chance:

This is mostly-simple card construction: Cherry Cobbler cardstock for the base, a 4″x5.25″ piece of the designer series paper, the sentiment from the Forever Blossoms stamp set–black ink on Whisper White, a little bit of vellum underneath. Scrounging around for suitable ribbons I found a bit of old Cherry Cobbler seam binding ribbon and some red twine or thread or whatever we are calling these things now.

I also tried a vertically-oriented variation, above, with the sentiment from the Timeless Tropical stamp set, but the same basic idea, especially the three keys from the Bird Ballad trinkets. (I also added in a few of the champagne rhinestones to this card.)

I am of the opinion that it is just no good to stick an embellishment on your card and send it off–no, embellishments ought to be used with generosity, with profusion! (That, or hoarded far past timeliness and use, which has, I admit, been my normal practice with these things.) I got the Bird Ballad trinkets last spring and I used some of the flowers, but I confessed myself puzzled at these keys. Keys? Birds? Yes, anyone can see that they naturally go together, I did not think. But when this similarly-themed paper turned up in the spring catalog, I thought of how well they worked together!

The only downside to this sort of abundant use of embellishments? Well, I used 3 keys on the first card, and 3 keys on the second card I made. Those Bird Ballad trinkets come with 6 keys. Now I’m reduced to making these plain cards with no key trinkets at all!

Perennial Essence card: unmailable

Written by amanda on January 21, 2020

I’ve been experimenting recently with what I call un-mailable cards (very impractical because I actually send most of my cards through the mail), because they do look so interesting when elements kind of slide off the edge of the card stock.

This card uses the Perennial Essence designer series paper as the base. One of the images from the Floral Essence stamp set is stamped on the petal pink vellum card stock and punched out with the Perennial Flower punch, coupled with the matching floral centers. The sentiment (also from the Floral Essence stamp set) inked in Blackberry Bliss and set off-center.

Then, getting a little crazy: start by digging into the Magnolia Lane ribbon combo pack: the linen ribbon across the bottom of the card, and then about a yard of the Mossy Meadow linen thread looped under the flowers and off the edges of the card. And the final touch: I used the leaf punch to make six sets of vellum leaves and tucked them all around–I think this is the key to the card: not just one or two leaves for little accents, but an over-the-top, ridiculous number of them! (And also, not just a loop or two of the thread, but an abundance of it.)

Now, just to find someone conveniently nearby to deliver this to….

Aquapainting Christmas

Written by amanda on November 2, 2014

Time to make Christmas cards!

(Except I kind of get the feeling that everybody who makes Christmas cards does it either super-early, like July, or really late, like Christmas Eve…)

The stamp set is “The Newborn King,” from the Stampin’ Up Holiday catalog, and I fell in love with it the moment that I saw it while I was flipping through my newly-acquired holiday catalog on a bus to Riverton.

Why? Because of these glorious freaky trees:

I love these trees! And I have been trying to think up a card using this stamp for a while now.

I was playing around with aqua painters trying to make something that looked nice.

Aqua painting is hard.

I cautiously stamped the image in Crumb Cake on watercolor paper and tried to color it with aqua painters. The original plan was to do some competent painting of the image, then overstamp it with Versamark and pour on gold embossing powder and it would look fabulous!

I did not paint competently.

I splashed on some Daffodil Delight in the middle. I surrounded it with Pumpkin Pie. I slathered Tempting Turquoise and Pacific Point all around the rest of the image. Used some very concentrated Pacific Point to paint the Holy Family.

And the result was…um…shall we say…not pretty.

But this, I think, looks pretty good:

So what’s the secret ingredient?

Vellum!

I layered a sheet of vellum over it, and the colors went all soft and artistically blurred and beautiful. My harsh incompetent brush strokes magically looked beautiful. I stamped the image again on the vellum with Versamark, put on gold embossing powder, and layered it over the original watercolors. And now everything had sort of a stained glass effect, and when you tilt the card the gold goes all shiny, and by playing with how close the vellum is to the card stock underneath you can make everything look all bright and brilliant, or soft and muted:

Also, aqua-painting is kind of soothing. I did the painting part of this card while I was in a meeting at the library. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I am very stressed right now, so I am going to need to paint through this whole meeting.” My water dish was the lid of a Starbucks cup.

Thanks for reading!

Fall thank you card

Written by amanda on October 8, 2014

Welcome to the October Pals Blog Hop where we are celebrating an early Halloween and Harvest season. This month we are sharing Halloween and fall projects using our wonderful Stampin’ Up! supplies.

You may just be starting the blog hop or may have come from Nicole Watt at Pixel Maven’s Retreat on the Pals Hop. If you get off track at any time, the full lineup below will help you move along from blog to blog so you see all of the amazing creations.

#cardfail!

(Again, Amanda? Just how many of your Pals blog hop posts are going to involve a tale of woe and how you had to make the the best of things after your first card attempts didn’t work out as planned?)

Originally I had this whole fall-themed card planned out! Lovely As A Tree! Aqua painters! The whole scene framed by delightfully-aqua-painted-fall-colored leaves!

And then, I thought, maybe I should try actually aqua-painting some delightful fall-colored leaves first.

No, wait, actually, I was foolish and impatient and tediously created a subtle sky-ish background from carefully painting on Pacific Point and Soft Sky ink onto a damp sheet of watercolor paper.

And then I started happily painting leaves on top of it.

What’s that you say? There’s only one leaf on that finished card? Well, that’s because I messed up all of the rest, and then had to cut the card into that weird tall shape to cut out all the bad ones.

I used the outlined leaf from the Autumn Wooden Elements (Holiday catalog, p. 46) as a stencil to get the shape, but the leaf in the Fun Fall Framelits seems to be the exact same size and could work, too.

It’s painted on in Crushed Curry, and then I kind of outlined veins in Pumpkin Pie, Real Red, and Blackberry Bliss and let them blur out a bit on the wet paper.

And then I dithered about how to turn it into a proper card for a couple days, forgot about it, looked at my calendar and—“Aaaahhh! Blog hop tomorrow!!”–hastily stamped one of the sentiments from the Wetlands stamp set in Blackberry Bliss on a piece of vellum and folded it on, and now I have an actual card-ish type of object!

The next stop is Beth Beard at My little craft blog on the Pals Blog Hop! Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you next month.