Paper Lantern Congratulations Card

A good friend recently found out incredible news, and I needed to put together a congrats card for her. I hadn't used the Lawn Fawn retired Lunar Lights set in awhile, and loved how the shine bright sentiment from my recently purchased Let's Bokeh set fit perfectly with this set, so I decided to combine the two.

I'd previously made an in-laid die-cut congrats card for a different friend using mint letters in a white panel, so I was able to use the reverse pieces for this project. The letters were stamped with a light grey ink using Quinn's ABCs, and then die-cut and in-laid into the mint panel. The papers used are Paper Source mint and superfine white.

I stamped the small lamps on their strings with versamark ink to create the background, and heat set in order to get a darker watermark effect.

For the large lamps, I first used watercolor to create the soft colors I wanted, then stamped the lamps on the watercolored papers with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, and fussy cut them out. I stamped the lamps again directly on the mint paper where I wanted to position the lamps, using a masking technique, and adding in the hanging elements from the bottoms of two of the lamps. I then used 3M foam tape to pop up the cut out lamps on the mint panel. I finished the front by coloring in the hanging pieces of the middle lamp with a clear shimmer pen.

For the inside, I used a masking technique to stamp two of the lamps and their hanging elements, and then stamped the shine bright sentiment to finish it out.

Hand-carved Rubber Stamp Halloween Card

This week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is all about the letter O! I've chosen to showcase two cards celebrating my favorite day in October (Halloween, of course!), and using monsters carved out of "Oops!" brand erasers I bought from Walgreen's for $.50! 

I've been practicing my stamp-carving skills over the past few months, and these creatures were the result of that fun project! :)

Two of my four monsters in these cards were inspired by Lawn Fawn's designs, and the other two (the big green guy and the furry blue guy above) came out of my head. I used the stamp carving tools I'd gotten from Yellow Owl Workshop, along with an exacto knife, to carve these fun creatures and their accessories (the wand, the trick-or-treat bag), along with a handful of other fun stamps inspired by our recent trip to Boston, and other musings.

For the background of the cards, I used a technique I learned from a Lawn Fawn video, blending harbor ink and a purple ink that I don't remember the name of. The two moons were made from blending colors from a color wheel ink pad, and I used the masking technique to keep the colors crisp between the sky and the moon. Both cards were given a spooky tree, cut using Lawn Cuts from Sweater Weather, and were mounted on Paper Source cards (Persimmon and Peacock).

In this square card (my favorite of the two!), I heat embossed three tiny bats using a Paper Source stamp, and added the Happy Halloween paper cut from a 12 x 12 page. I also stamped the chartreuse paper (used as the hills in both cards) with a woodgrain stamp from Paper Source before mounting, and I liked the dimension it added to this card, over the Persimmon one.

These two cards are currently displayed as you walk in our apartment, and I'm not sure I will want to take them down after Halloween ends! :)