Fusion: Crepe Paper Flower

 

 

Welcome to another fun Fusion Challenge! This week I was taken with the amazing texture on those purple flowers. Totally reminded me of crepe paper.

 

  

So that's what I did! I colored a strip of white crepe paper with purple copics, cut rectangles with rounded corners for each petal, and colored the middle in with a darker purple. Then I gathered each petal and adhered it around a small circle which I used for the base. The center is another purple circle, topped with glossy accents, and sprinkled with clear seed beads.

  

The scripty Big Bold Happy sentiment from winnie & walter makes a nice stem for the flower. To finish the sentiment, "birthday" is stamped several times in different colors to make up the ground. 

Here are some fabulous cards by our design team!

 Betty J.

Jeanne Jachna

Julia Aston 

Katie Brooks

Lynn Mangan

Kimberly Wiener

Lyndal Higgins

Michelle Williams

Michelle Lupton

Stephanie Severin

Winners: Will be chosen by all of our teammates in two weeks. We each will choose one favorite. The winners will be announced at 4 am (PST) in two weeks!

Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

CFS Release: Happy Mail

Hi Folks! There are two new CAS-ual Fridays sets being released today! The first set has a really fun mailbox theme. The Mailbox Fri-Die comes with a super-cute mailbox flag that you can make operational with just a tiny brad. Here I also made the mailbox door operational by hand cutting a door from another layer and adhering it to the card at the bottom. 

Here it is in action, with the flag coming down and the door opening up. Love how the sentiments fit on each section of the mailbox. The text background from Outloud is stamped down the mailbox pole.

Then the fun part is deciding what to put in your mailbox. Going along with the "Sending you hugs" sentiment, I slipped a heart from the Tic Tac Toe Fri-die inside. It's the perfect size!

You're not going to want to miss checking out the other Ink Squad girls:

Marcie | Jingle | Virginia | Deepti | Zoey | Angie

  

Tomorrow we'll be revealing the other new stamp and die set, both of which are released right now in the CAS-ual Fridays store! 

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

MFT Challenge: Know your Audience

In my life before kids I worked as a 401(k) consultant to fortune 500 companies. Early on, one of my responsibilities was to send out 50 tabbed and bound reports to my client on a monthly basis. I hated it. It took me a whole day to complete. I still remember sitting on the floor of my office, in my suit/pantyhose/heels, surrounded by piles of paper and metal binding supplies.

A couple months in, I asked my client what they did with all these reports. One they kept on their desk, and the other 49 they just buried in the filing cabinet. Arrgh! All that work for nothing. I was sick, but ultimately happy because the next month I just bound one report and the other 49 were sent on fiche (microfilm). That was my first big lesson in knowing your audience and what they want.

How does this relate to cards?

Many of my cards are sent to kids under 10 years old. I've found (mostly through my own kids) that they usually don't care if you send them a card with the latest trend, hottest stamp set, or most difficult masking technique. What they do like to see is themselves. Plain and simple. They like to see their name and/or a picture of them.

Because we're stampers, we still like to dress things up a little. So you know I was beyond excited when I realized the TV set from My Favorite Things Die-Namics Stay Tuned was the perfect size for framing 2x3 photos. If there's anything kids like to see more than themselves, it's themselves being famous on TV!

This is the card I made for a birthday party my son went to this weekend (he's the crazy hugger in orange). Love how it turned out, and love how the sentiment from Stay Tuned supports the photo.
 
Then I thought of something else kids like ... seeing themselves on the fridge! So I turned it into a magnet.

After mounting the framed photo on chipboard, I die cut a self-adhesive magnetic sheet ($10.50/dozen at Oriental Trading) and adhered that on the back. Ta-da ... now they can look at themselves ALL YEAR LONG!

I made one for my son using the sketch at the My Favorite Things Sketch Challenge. To adhere the TV magnet on the card I used magnetic disks. Two disks hold the TV in place (otherwise the TV slides around with just one magnet). You may also see a glare on the magnet. I die cut a piece of acetate to put on top of the photo so it looks more like a TV screen.
 

Since I had some photos left over, I thought why not die cut those as well. Now he can "change the channel" by switching the photo ... hahaha!

I was just so darn excited about this idea that I ended up making end-of-year Thank You cards for their teachers (this would be great for coaches too!) I used a 2x3 photo of the class and thought the teachers would enjoy the small magnet as a memento of their school year. To make the dresser the TV is sitting on I just cut randomly-sized rectangles from woodgrain paper and inked the edges for more definition.

Then to save on time I just used a strip of woodgrain paper for the remaining two cards. I picked  background papers that reminded me of wallpaper.

This may be my new go-to birthday card concept. I've already got the card started for next weekend's birthday party. It's so easy these days to just grab a picture off FB if you don't have one. My son is pretty laid back about most things, but he really lit up when I gave him the card and he saw himself batting on TV. So worth it!
 

Anyway, thanks for sticking with this long post. I'd like to also direct your attention to Kathy Racoosin who is joining the MFT challenge this week. She is currently hosting a 30 Day Coloring Challenge, where you're encouraged to color something everyday for, umm, 30 days! You can comment to win the dye inks in the attached photo over at her blog.

Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

Functional Friday: Layered Looks

 Hi all! Time for another Functional Friday installment. In case you missed this post, I'm featuring one die from Top Dog Dies each month, and each Friday I'm sharing a different way to use the die. My hope is that even if you don't own that exact die, the ideas will translate to similar dies you do own.

This technique layers the holey part of the die cut to make different secondary patterns. This is great for when you need to make a teen boy card, like this one, but really want to use your heart border die. You don't necessarily want him looking at all those lovey-dovey hearts! Let's take a look ...

First I cut the Heart Border Die in four different colors.


I layered two colors at a time and cut them into squares. Some of the edges overlap to give it more of a random, rough look. The squares are all just attached in the middle of the card underneath the word balloon. The curled edges add to the teen-boy-look as well. The word balloon and cheeky sentiment are from My Favorite Things.

 

Here's a closer look at the different patterns you can get just by changing where the dies overlap. Starting from the top left and going clockwise, we have:

- full coverage, where the bottom orange layers fills most of the holes;

- eyeball effect, where looking at the two holes together, you see gold where the whites of your eye would be, black irises and blue pupils;

- diagonal stripes, with black and blue diagonal lines; and

- sweater pattern, with tiny black horizontal dots in between two rows of blue and one row of black.

Even if you think my pattern descriptions are goofy, the point is that you can really get a lot of different looks just by playing around with how the layers are positioned. You can create a nice patchwork effect this way, and get more mileage out of your left over die pieces.

Thanks again for stopping by! I've got one more heart border card for next week, using the actual dryer sheets that have gotten so much use around here this month.

-Kelly

My Favorite Things Sketch Challenge: Guest Designer!

I was beyond thrilled when Susan Opel asked if I'd like to join the amazingly talented My Favorite Things challenge team for the month of March. I absolutely love My Favorite Things products (they have some of the best dies around!) and of course everyone loves Susan, so it was doubly exciting for me. 

 

 Here's the sketch for this week's challenge.

   

Here's where my project started from.

 

And here's where it ended up. 

I'm only supposed to share a sneak peek, so please head on over to the MFT Challenge Blog to see the real deal. I sure hope you get a chance to join in the fun this week. A randomly selected winner will receive a gift card to spend (easily) at MFT!

Thanks so much for looking! Please stop by next Wednesday for a new MFT Sketch Challenge : )

-Kelly

Functional Friday: Simple Stained Glass Effect

   Hi all! Time for another Functional Friday installment. In case you missed this post, I'm featuring one die from Top Dog Dies each month, and each Friday I'm sharing a different way to use the die. My hope is that even if you don't own that exact die, the ideas will translate to similar dies you do own.

I'm calling this a "stained glass" technique since some of the holes are filled in. Let's take a look ...

I cut the Heart Border Die in blue and, using the amazing dyer sheet technique, made sure all the pieces came out of the die. Then I cut the die in purple without using a dryer sheet and left some random hearts in the die.



When these are layered, it reminds me a little of stained glass, how some of the sections are filled.

  

I really like how this adds a see through element to the card without there being an empty hole. Definitely not rocket science, but just a little something different. The negative space was cut with the side of the Gift Tag Die Set. The transition from white to yellow looked a little abrupt, so I wrapped some gold thread through the area. When in doubt, add gold thread!

. I sure hope you don't mind, but I'm going to be cutting the heart border die at least two more weeks. Then I'm really going to have to move on to another die cut! Seriously.

Thanks for sticking with me on this one!
-Kelly

A Week to Die For: One Minute Wonders

Welcome back to the last day of spotlighting winnie & walter cutaways! Lulu Fringe is the cutaway I was the most excited to get from this release. SO many possibilities!!


 

For this post I just focused on making flowers with it. It couldn't be easier.



Julie and Shay are, again, quite the thinkers ... the die does not have a cutting edge on the sides. !!! That means that you can keep cutting for as long as your ribbon/material/felt is. I'm thinking home decor projects, pillow embellishments, party banners, oh my!!



For this flower I cut 2 1/2 times the die size.


Then you simply fold it over,

and roll. Seriously could NOT be easier!

Add a little hot glue on the end to secure it and you're done.

Not bad for one minute's worth of work, right?!?

Here it is on a present. I used the same velvet ribbon for the band around the present, so it's a perfect match to the bow. With it being so large it really holds its shape well and doesn't flatten.

For the fabric tag backed with cardstock I used the Essentials: Katharine Cutaways. The stars are from Big Bang Confetti Cutaways. I made my own banner and folded it around the tag so the tails show from the bottom as well.

OK, what else?


 
You can change the material and cut just about whatever you can think of. The flower on the left is from a 25 cent sheet of felt (I'm sure I could have made at least 10 more out of that sheet). The flower on the right is from a really thick fleece. You can also force the loops to stay down by using a large brad in the center like the one on the left, or leave them up like the one on the right.

Here are more examples. The small green flower is from canvas material, the gold flower is from a very thin lame, and the larger green flower is from a bunch of leftover baseball print fleece (you'd never know, I just used the sections in between the baseballs).



I really had to stop myself and walk away from the fabric bins.

This flower is probably the most practical for card making. It's made from the super thin gold lame fabric so it flattens easily, but it's also stiff so it bounces back into place. Perfect to be flat for mailing and then dimensional for the person after opening it. Also, instead of rolling, I just adhered it to the bottom of my circle (cut from Essentials: Katharine and stamped with The Write Stuff: Love Story) to form a single layer.

 Here it is on a card. I was so excited about this one! The In a Word: Love Cutaways are in the background, a piece of gold star netting on top, and then the gold lame flower. It's all stapled together, just like the "hello" from The Big, the Bold and Happy Cutaways.

I love the kraft, gold and mint (inside) combination. The large word cutaways REALLY make it easy to cover a background quickly. I can definitely see doing this again. Originally I just had the flower and the gold star netting but I thought it needed something else. Adding more layers with the "love" cutaways and the "hello" cutaway really helped.

Anyway, thanks so much for joining us this week as we had fun with the new Winnie & Walter cutaways! I'm SO glad you stopped by!!!
-Kelly