Simple Cards

The theme for this month's SmArt-Word Challenge is "Simplicity." I had this idea for a CAS card for the holidays, and this was a perfect chance to make it. It couldn't be simpler, really. It's a one-layer card. The angel's dress is paper pieced with vellum, and there's a little piercing around the edges. I used glitter pen on the angel wings. That's it for embellishments.

Stamp credits -- sentiment is from Serendipity, angel is unknown to me.

Girly Christmas

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness (OTWC33) colors are springy pink and grass green. (See the inspiration photo below -- it sounds like Kim is trying to put winter off as long as possible.) Nothing says Christmas like pink and green, right? OK, I just have Christmas cards on the brain, but I also had this plaid paper that worked perfectly for the challenge, so I paper pieced the tree. The card is also for a VSN challenge calling for "floating sentiment" (the sentiment is popped up on pop-dots and "floating" into the main image.)

Once I'd gotten all that done, I needed something down in the lower right corner corner, and added a few ribbon tabs. And since it still needed something, a little paper piercing. (Seriously, I so rarely go into these things with a plan, it's amazing anything ever comes out useable.)

I kind of like it, non-traditional colors and all.

Let's try "elegant"

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness challenge (OTWC31) challenged us to use the "Halloween" color combo of orange, black and white. But Halloween is history now, so I got as far away from Halloween as I could. Instead, I went elegant, focusing on the black and white with just a hint of orange. (And elegant realy seems more fitting for the inspiration photo at right, especially the chandelier.)

The flourish is from Purple Onion Designs, embossed with black detail EP. The layout is CASEd from a recent "queen for the day" challenge at SCS -- she used a long quote in place of an image. The sentiment is stamped on a tiny acrylic oval, adding just a touch of orange to the color scheme.

Non-traditional Christmas colors

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness Challenge (OTCW30) uses the colors of brown, white and green (you can see the inspiration photo below). I used them to make a Christmas card in somewhat non-traditional colors. The card is also a CASE of this week's Queen for the Day at SCS.

The stamps are really old ones -- the tree is from SU and the other a cheapy from Hobby Lobby. I used winter wonderland (sparkly white) EP. I love how it shows up on dark colors, and I use it a lot instead of white ink (which I have no luck with). The lace is an adhesive paper lace from K & Co. and the snowflake is actually a button.

Early holiday card

To me, it's really WAY too early to start thinking about Christmas (even though I end up doing a bunch of holiday-themed writing assignments about now every year). However, I kind of got in a Christmas groove for VSN over the weekend at SCS. I used the current CPS sketch (CPS 189) as the layout for one of my VSN cards.

I went with a silver and navy color scheme. Angels stamp is Stampabilities, and the stars are an SU background stamp. I used a detail silver EP, though I got a little more stray dots than I like. The ribbon is a quick way to work in a sentiment.

In a way, this echoes one of the first Christmas cards I made after I started stamping. I used the angel stamp and the star background stamp for it, and there was blue involved. I think I stamped the angels in navy blue, matted on navy and then matted with white stamped with navy stars. (Back then, I did production style Christmas cards, but I find that boring and make everyone different now.)

In honor of fall

It's finally starting to feel like fall, my favorite season of the year. A couple of different challenges inspired me to make a fall-type card.

This week's inspiration colors for Off the Wall Craftiness (OTWC28) were goldish yellow, white and brown. (See the inspiration photo at right below.) And this month's SmArt Word challenge is "brown" so those colors immediately made me think of doing fall leaves.

I used this week's CPS sketch (CPS188) for the layout, which made me want to use a quote in the center. I chose this one from SmArt Works -- it's actually part of a birthday set, but "revel in the gift of time" seems so appropriate to fall to me. The sentiment is stamped in chestnut roan chalk ink

I stamped the oak leaf (SU) in cadmium yellow chalk ink repeatedly on white paper, then cut the curves. I decided to distress the edges, both to add texture and because hand-cut curves look, well, uneven.

I stamped another oak leaf in the chestnut ink, colored it with pencils and added gold microbeads to the acorn. It's cut out and popped up (see detail photo).

Piercing to the rescue

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness (OTWC27) challenge colors are light blue, and medium and light brown/tan. Awesome colors -- seen in the inspiration photo below.

I used the colors in a card I CASEd for the Queen for the Day challenge at SCS. The stamp is by Hero Arts -- isn't she cute? I got the ribbons ages ago in a fiber swap, and actually was able to find them right away when I wanted them. (Can't tell you how unusual that is.) I had finished the card and taken photos of it, but I kept thinking that it looked unfinished. I decided to add the piercing around two panels. Piercing to the rescue, once again. It's a great way to finish a piece, especially when layers aren't matted. Just my 2-cent advice for the day.