Caffeine-fueled iPhone Case Background

Now that we've moved on from Easter and the weather has taken a turn towards Summer heat, my phone was in need of a new custom case. This new case design was inspired by the awesome example from Nichol on the Lawn Fawn blog.

I first die-cut the letters from quinn's ABCs, and then stamped them (as suggested from Nichol's video!), which helped with positioning the stamps correctly. For the Love You a Latte stamps, I stamped first and then die-cut. Once I had all of the elements stamped and die-cut, I arranged them on the pre-cut phone background insert to determine placement, so I determine which colors I wanted to use on each element. I opted for a rainbow effect, using watercolor pencils to color each item in and then using a waterbrush for the watercoloring.

The watercolored letters and mugs were attached to the background insert with a tape runner to minimize the dimension since it has to fit between the case and the phone. I also added two of the stamped steam elements above the two open mugs. The background insert was cut from a 6x6 paper pad I'd purchased long ago. I chose the paper specifically for the ombre coffee color.

Here's the final product! I'm definitely going to keep this insert for awhile! :)

Happy (b)Earth Day!

My friend Chris was born on Earth Day - the perfect excuse for using Lawn Fawn's Wish You Were Here set!

I started by stamping and die-cutting the globe, heart, and letters from Owen's ABCs. Once dry, I colored in the globe with watercolor pencils and used a waterbrush to watercolor the image. I wanted the end result to look like the speech bubble was coming out of the globe, so I used the die-cut globe to determine my placement for the speech bubble before die-cutting.

The Paper Source Superfine White folded card's top fold was cut with the speech bubble border, and a corresponding Paper Source Lake blue coverweight notecard was cut with the same border, and the negative space was mounted on the inside of the card. The negative space shows when the card is shut, too, as the speech bubble is now the only part of the card that opens (a technique I borrowed from the amazing Jennifer McGuire!)!

The sentiment was created first by stamping earth using quinn's ABCs with versamark ink and heat-embossing it with orange powder from Paper Source. I then added the other words from Let's Bokeh and the arrow from Wish You Were Here with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink on the outside and inside of the card, and drew in the parenthesis on the inside.

After adhering the blue negative space to the inside fold of the card and laying out my pieces where they would go, I felt like it needed something more, so I stamped with the Argyle Backdrops image in Versamark Ink. I then finished the card by adding all of my die-cut elements with foam squares.

Happy Earth Day, y'all (and Happy Birthday, Chris!)!

PS- Lawn Fawn is also celebrating Earth Day today with a 15% off sale on some Earth-themed items.

Floral wreath card

The current Lawnscaping challenge asks that we use floral stamps. Lawn Fawn has some fantastic and beautiful floral sets, and the few flower stamps I have are small flower embellishments that came in other Lawn Fawn sets, making for a fun challenge! I opted to make a floral wreath, using the small leaf stamp from Sweater Weather for the leaves stamped directly on the Paper Source Paper Bag coverstock panel, and the flowers from Sweater Weather and Stuck On You, stamped and die cut. I began the card by tracing a circle with light pencil where I wanted my wreath. The leaves were stamped with first and second generation stamping to give more depth without changing colors. I opted to heat emboss the Stuck On You flower to add more depth, as I felt like using foam squares would add too much depth.

I stamped the Thanks sentiment from Thank You Tags in the wreath's center with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and rounded the two opening corners of the card base and panel before adhering the panel.

I finished the card off with a superfine white satin ribbon, adhered with a glue dot (zot).

This card is being entered in to the current Lawnscaping Challenge #127: Beautiful Florals.

Stuck On You Birthday Card

Jenny had a birthday! :) For her card, I tried to stick with just a few colors with the ink and paper used. I started by stamping the tall cactus and round cactus randomly on the panel with Grass green Pigment Ink, and then added in the spiky succulent with Ocean mint pigment ink and the cactus flower with peacock pigment ink, which was the most important detail for this Lawnscaping Challenge. I mounted the panel to a Paper Source Peacock custom-sized folded coverstock card, as I wanted to have a taller card than usual so I could include a lot of the cacti in the background.

I stamped and heat-embossed a banner image from a Paper Source rubber stamp in my stash with gold embossing powder on Paper Source Mint coverstock paper, and fussy cut it out. I then stamped, heat embossed and die cut the spiky succulent long leaves stamps from the Stuck On You set, and adhered them to the back of the banner to have them popping out at the top. I first tried stamping and embossing these guys with the Ocean ink, but found that I didn't like the contrast with the embossed Ocean ink and the mint banner. I opted for a different lighter green ink, which ended up contrasting better, and standing out more from the busy background I'd created.

This card is being entered in to the current Lawnscaping Challenge #127: Beautiful Florals.

Party Animals! Expanding Card for New Baby

One of the pastors at our church just had a baby (Everly Grace), and gave me a great reason to create a fun expanding card! I'd never made an expanding card before, and I wanted to use all of the great little party animals I have in my stash, as I just got the Party Animal and Holiday Party Animal sets in recently. I also wanted to try the partial die-cutting method again, as my previous attempt yielded poor results and I learned a new technique for getting it right from Jennifer McGuire's "Rainbow Stamping and On the Edge Die-Cutting" tutorial.

The card I made is a little longer than 11 inches long, but folds down to a standard A2 size so it'll fit in a standard A2 envelope. I cut an 8 1/2" x 11" Superfine White coverstock paper from Paper Source in half lengthwise, to create a 4 1/4" x 11" panel, then scored it at 5 1/2" for the first fold. I then determined where I would want my racoon, and completed the partial die-cut using the tutorial from Jennifer McGuire. After the partial die-cut, I scored the card and ran my bone folder over both score lines I'd created to make crisp folds.  I then stamped all of my fun party critters across the full card, being careful to stamp the raccoon over the die-cut portion effectively. I had to mask off the raccoon stamped on the inside in order to fit the stubborn skunk from You're Stinkin' Cute in there, as their tails go different directions. 

With the card folded shut, I then picked my colors for the bear, raccoon, and skunk and colored them in with just the pink, purple, blue, and grey colored pencils. I stamped and die-cut the gift from Holiday Party Animals for the Raccoon and colored it in, too, before adhering with a foam square. I opened the card and continued to color in the remaining animals, deciding to add in orange and green for some of the critters that were hidden inside the card to help make it pop more when you opened the card. (sidenote: All of my stamping for this card was done with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and the coloring with various Prismacolor colored pencils.)

I initially planned to have the critters holding letters from Owen's ABCs with maybe the baby's name, or "Welcome!" or something, but realized quickly that I needed to ensure the three animals showing before the card opened would need to spell something out with their three letters alone before opening it up, or it would look weird. That's when I realized I could use the baby's middle name and still ensure the letters didn't show until you open the card. :) Once I'd decided on this, I stamped and heat embossed white letters on Peacock Paper Source coverstock paper, then die cut and adhered them to the card with foam squares. I then stamped the baby's first name, Everly, in Quinn's ABCs, being careful to keep the name from showing when the card was shut (which resulted in that slightly squashed ev at the start...). I opted to color this in with orange and pink to ensure the new colors still popped inside the card once opened.

I decided to add the party banners from Birthday Tags after looking at the card and feeling like something was missing. I added them so that the first banner would only show when the card was opened, and I colored this banner in with all five of the colors, and decided to only use pink, blue, and purple on the other banner so that when it was closed, it still kept the orange and green on the inside only. I added the Cheers to a happy life! sentiment inside the card, and then decided to add "Let's Celebrate!" to a strip of Peacock Paper Source coverstock paper, and adhered this to the back of the top flap (which is what makes this card a little longer than 11" when opened). At this point, I thought I was finished, but felt again like something was missing, mostly when the card was shut. I settled on adding the two birds to the card, which show when the card is open and closed, and colored them in with pink/blue/purple once again, since they're on the unopened portion.

This card is being entered in to the Lawnscaping Challenge #129: Calling All Critters. http://lawnscaping.blogspot.com/2016/05/lawnscaping-challenge-calling-all.html

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.

Buffalo Check Birthday!

One of my best friends turned 30 recently, and is obsessed with buffalo check, so of course, I had to make her a card with the pattern!

I taped off the rectangle on the card with blue painter's tape before using a wide paintbrush with red and black watercolors to create the background. I wanted to ensure the background would pop so I went with a black-and-white skunk from Stinkin' Cute instead of a more colorful creature, and decided to use glitter paper to die-cut the heart it was holding, since my friend loves a little bling! I added a black-and-white party hat from Hats Off to You, sticking with the simple B&W theme from my skunk. The sentiment is from Avery Elle's Party Animal.






My friend is also a big fan of social media and hashtags, so I made sure to incorporate this with the #awesome images inside the card, die-cut and popped up with foam squares, placed around the curvy sentiment from Pizza My Heart. I also kept up the hashtag fun with the envelope liner, using a # stamp from Paper Source. This stamp is my newest obsession for making backgrounds for cards and signs, envelope liners, and I'm sure some wrapping paper soon! The card and liner are from superfine white text-weight Paper Source paper, and the envelope is Paper Source persimmon.

If/when I make another card with the buffalo check background, I'll probably either make a larger card and/or make the checks a little smaller, so there's more of the pattern to see. (I'll also work on my taping and tape-removal, as you can see that the ink bled slightly and the paper ripped a little...)