Cards inspired by Jennifer McGuire

September 10, 2013

It’s ok to be inspired by others and copy their work to understand a technique. That’s what a colleague told me and after much frustration about failed attempts with some techniques, I took his advice. I had been watching Jennifer McGuires videos with awe and I find her work absolutely inspiring. Therefore, I decided to pick her as my muse and copy some of her cards, just to see if I could actually do it at all.

This first card I made on the day Jennifer published her video “Creative Use of Background Stamps“. I didn’t have any other patterned stamp except the one I’d used and even though I’m not entirely happy with the result, I at least learned a lot about trimming papers to the right size and combining different distress colors. That’s something, at least.

Simple Card inspired by Jennifer McGuire

My second card was also inspired by Jennifer, even though by a much earlier video. I don’t have any of the Distress Markes (they are number one on my christmas wish list, though), but I have Distress Ink pads, so I was eager to try her method of creating a rainbow-cheery background. This is a card I made for a colleague of mine who helped me out with some stuff I couldn’t achieve by myself.

Thank you Card inspired by Jennifer McGuire

I like both techniques I tried, the first one a little bit more than the second one, but I’ll give both another whirl, just to see what I can come up with by myself now (and I have more background stamps now). Thanks, Jennifer, for the inspiration!

This Week’s Haul #2

September 8, 2013

A week has gone by again and here’s what the mail delivered to my doorstep (or I had to pick up at the local post office).

First of all, my Simon Says Stamp September Kit arrived! YAY! This is the only kit I subscribe to and it’s my first time receiving it, so I was incredibly excited.

I decided to subscribe to SSS because in all their card kits, there’s always a stamp set, which to me means I have made a lasting invest. While I might use up paper quite quickly, I can always re-use stamps; and in this kit, there was also a mini ink pad and mask, so these will go a long way.

Also from Simon Says Stamp, I received a stamp set with matching dies. There are some nice sentiments for when people are not doing so great, so this Stitched stamp set will be nice to have.

And again from Simon Says Stamp, here came a Hero Arts cling stamp and some super fine black embossing powder. I ordered the stamp because it was features in one of the Online Card Classes lessons of Clean and Simple Card Making Part 2. Excited to try it and remake the cards shown in class.

For those wondering: even though some of the Hero Arts stamps are available in Europe, ordering them from the US via SSS eBay is cheaper and faster than ordering them from some of the European stores. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that ordering from the UK or from some other European countries takes as long as ordering from the US.

Last, but not least, I ordered from Stempelküche, a small but really nice German online shop. Carolin is one of the few I found that stock Avery Elle and Lawn Fawn products. Unfortunately, she also sells out fast, so when I received her newsletter about the new Lawn Fawn products, I ordered immediately. And received the goodies, like, 2 days later. Fantastic service!

While the background stamps were an older model, I thought one could never have enough of them anyways, so in my basket they went. The Stitched Leaves dies – OMG! They are AWESOME! I had seen them demoed on Lawn Fawn’s YouTube channel and immediately fell in love with them.

As for the ink pads: Jennifer McGuire praised the Memnories White Pigment Ink (and it is really nice) and I’m in love with the Hero Arts Shadow inks, so I am slowly building up my collection and it was time for an intense green.

That’s my week’s haul. Did you guys get anything exciting?

Coffee & Friends are the Perfect Blend – Birthday Card

September 6, 2013

My very best friend’s birthday is coming up and since we now live almost an entire country apart, what could be more fitting than a beautiful, hand made birthday card? And since we always get together at Starbucks to chat and enjoy some coffee, I just had to make a gift card holder for a Starbucks card to fit inside the actual birthday card.

Since I really had to get this right, I started out with a sketch of the card. It had to fit around a gift card holder (Kristina Werner has a great template here), so I had to deviate quite a bit from standard card sizes. Also, I wanted multiple panels at the front, which meant I had to calculate the sizes of the panels beforehand so I wouldn’t screw up.

As it turned out, my Fiskars paper trimmer is completely incapable of cutting straight lines (insert swear word of choice here), so my panels ended up being smaller and I had to re-calculate everything. Bah. These are the paper pieces I ended up with:

From left: envelope, kraft card base, yellow panel for the front, patterned paper for the gift card holder, and some Neenah card stock for the stamping

I was absolutely delighted with my new stamps, by the way. I had found a Stampin Up demonstrator close to where I live and Ramona Appenzeller from Scrap Stueble delivered the stamps in record time! Definitely someone to enjoy doing business with.

I was excited to use this wonderful stamp set from Stampin Up (left) and the cupcakes from Lawn Fawn

Layout and orientation attempts

If you look at my original sketch, I had drawn it in portrait orientation. While stamping out my layout on scrap paper, I realized I didn’t have enough room for cupcakes in this orientation and also, the top of the card would look scarily empty. So I spontaneously switched to landscape orientation.

I did practice the coloring on some leftover Neenah cardstock first … I wanted to make sure I got the coffee cup right, that was the most important part of the card.

Practicing coloring the coffee cup. Stamped with Memento Tuxedo black, which doesn’t bleed when colored over with Copics.

Here are all the colors I used for the cupcakes

With the front finished, I went on creating the gift card holder. Thanks to Kristina’s template, this was super easy.

Yellow: base for the gift card; Kraft: top front panel; patterned paper: bottom front panel; brads to hold it together and a piercing mat to make the holes for the brads

Top: gift card holder with all the panels attached. Bottom: gift card holder assembled and properly creased and folded

After this, I wrote a greeting on the inside of the card with a white Signo pigment pen and attached the gift card holder with some non-permanent glue so it could be removed easily.

I also added some Glossy Accents to the cupcakes to make the front of the card pop a bit and then decorated the envelope to make it even prettier and the recipient eager to open the card 😉

Hope you enjoyed. See you around!

More Distress Ink Pads – You can never have enough, right?

September 4, 2013

Apart from the Hero Arts shadow inks (to be obtained from Stempelküche or Dani Peuss in Germany) my favorite ink is by far the Distress Ink by Ranger and Tim Holtz.

Oysterstamps in the UK had an amazing deal where I got 4 ink pads for £12. Even including the shipping costs that was still cheaper than buying them in Germany, so I ordered 8 more colors to extend my collection.

I was so happy when I got them. My colleagues thought I was crazy, but I think this yumminess deserves some cheers, right? 🙂

This (Last) Week’s Haul #1

September 4, 2013

I’ve seen posts like this around the web, so I thought I’d share what I added to my supplies in this last week. Also, this might help some German stampers/card makers find great shops.

My haul is mainly supplies this time. I was craving for Kraft paper since I first saw it used for a card. I was happy to discover that Berostore on eBay had some in stock in 12“x12”. Also, they were the first shop in Germany I saw had the big Glossy Accents bottle in stock, so that one had to come to. You can never have too much Glossy Accents.

After watching a fantastic video by Jennifer McGuire, I absolutely needed to have the Parker Lower Case Alphabet die set. I always wanted one, but was never sure which size to get. English words are short, but spelling something out in German is looooooong and if the dies were too large, they’d be of no use to me. Again, eBay came to the rescue, this time through niedlichstempler. They delivered blazingly fast (24 hours). Also included was an embossing folder by Spellbinders (can’t get started on Christmas supplies early enough).

Nicole from niedlichstempler was darling; not only was she super friendly, but also included a little extra in my envelope. Thanks so much, Nicole!

Last, but not least I ordered from Paper Memories. I needed a 1/2″ punch and they were the only shop I found it at. To my surprise, it was delivered one day after I had ordered – awesome!

So, that was my week in supplies. I hope yours was just as awesome!

Paper Smooches Digi Stamps and how I forgot the rules of the Challenge

August 27, 2013

So, I wanted to take part in a recent Paper Smooches challenge but since I only started out with this hobby, I didn’t have any of their stamps. Fortunately, Paper Smooches offers some great free digi stamps.

Unfortunately, I can’t print on my Copic paper, which forces me print it to transparency paper, then trace the lines on Copic paper. Not having a light table, I had to be a bit more creative (and physical):

To be honest, after a while my arm got quite heavy and my eyes started to tear since I was staring right into the setting sun, but I ended up with quite some samples that I could color, so all was good.

I was so excited to use my Copics and especially my new brown colors that I completely forgot that the challenge was not just about using Paper Smooches stamps, but also about using a certain color scheme. So, I happily colored all my cards and only realized in the end I didn’t follow the rules. Duh.

But I’m still happy with these pretty clean and simple cards (I know, they are beginner cards, but hey, everybody needs to start somewhere, right?!).

Just One More Card

Discovering the world of card making. One Project at a time.