You know I cannot sit and watch TV without doing something else at the same time. Tonight I started the process for creating 8 cards before, during and after "American Idol" (I am a Danny Gokey fan!). So far, I've made 2 cards. Let me show you what I've done so far.
Set used = Flower Fancy, page 80 of the catalog. Super versatile as it can be for birthday, thanks, just a note, anniversary, sympathy, etc… At convention, a seminar speaker featured this set because it was so "demonstratable" which means that when she demo'd it, she could do a zillion things with it. So I bought it!
First, there is this way of creating 10 cards out of one sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 card stock and it's called "One Sheet Wonder'. I am not doing this but I am doing a variation of sorts. What is the same is that you start by stamping a regular 8 1/2 x 11 piece of neutral card stock (I used Confetti White) with a pattern of your choosing. I used two color combos: Certainly Celery & Apricot Appeal (from the Soft Subtles family) and Tangerine Tango & Pacific Point from this year's In Color line. All the images are from Flower Fancy except the sentiment which is from On Your Birthday (page 141 of the catalog). Oh, and one very important tool that I used is the Stamp-a-ma-jig (page 189). You do not need a degree in rocket science to use it. It is SO easy – trust me!
Here goes:
Notice that on the top-right of the Tangerine one below, I stamp-a-ma-jigged incorrectly. Oops, but who cares? This is hand-made and perfection is NOT required.
The basic card is half a sheet of card stock. The card front will measure 4 1/4" x 5 1/2". You can trim the stamped sheet any way you like but what I wanted was to make the stamped images pretty dominant. To do that I just decided to just make each successive layer have a 1/8" border on each side.
Have I lost you? In theory, if the base of the card is 4 1/4" x 5 1/2", then the next piece on top of that should measure 4" x 5 1/4" and the piece on top of that is another 1/8" narrower or 3 3/4" x 5". You can trim it any way you like including making many pieces out of that one sheet of card stock. I chose to make 4 but you could cut 6 or 8 or 10… and they could be strips and squares and rectangles, etc…
I then mounted the lighter stamped pieces onto Certainly Celery and the Tangerine stamped ones onto Pacific Point.
It needed just a little something so I got the sewing machine out and, lickety-split, I had a little more interesting piece. No thread. Just evenly spaced holes all around the edge of the stamped piece using a method much faster than punching them out by hand.
They are all now "holy". Had to throw that in – I'm Catholic.
Then, what to do? Where to start to dress them up? I just started with punches and I found some scraps that I had stamped on. Why not punch out of the stamped side of the scrap – cool! The background stamp is retired (it was either Canvas or Linen or something similar) but I just have to use my scraps. I started with the 5-Petal Flower (page 185 of the catalog).
I then got my spool of So Saffron 7/8" Poly-Twill Ribbon (page 179) and which I won playing bingo on a bus during my Stampin' Up! Founder's Circle in September. When I tie a ribbon, I just tie it around the card (I know, wasteful) but when I want to just use it as a strip, I tape it on. Tape it on the front a little to keep it straight then on the back using Snail Adhesive.
I punched flowers from the stamped card stock and from non-stamped card stock. One finished card uses Rhinestone Brads (page 174) and the center of the punched 5-Petal Flowers was made with the Trio Flower Punch (page 185). The sentiment was stamped on a strip of card stock and punched with the Large Oval (page 184). It really was quick and easy. Two cards done, 6 more to go. I'll post as I work on them.
