May Inspiration Station Blog Challenge!

 

Inspiration Station

Happy May crafty friends! Welcome to another monthly blog hop challenge from Inspiration Station! Above is this month's inspiration photo. Click the link below it to follow and join the challenge!

I was inspired more by the colors of this month's photo, rather than the the me, as I have no need for graduation cards this year. But that didn't stop me from doing a "Congrats!" card that could be for any occasion. I started with color selection. I wanted to use patterned reds and blues.

My idea was going onto a top folding A2 easel card from bright yellow cardstock with a pane on top to build the fun.

I chose a subtle red textured cardstock. unfortunately, it wasn't big enough to fill to the sides of my white panel, but since I had the idea to place a central piece of cardstock down the center of the panel, I just split the red scrap in two and butted the edges up to the sides of the panel
 

I found the perfect piece of celebratory cardstock on dark blue paper in my stash and laid it over the reds.

Using a simple "congrats" die I cut out the sentiment from a navy blue wood grain cardstock scrap.

I used retired Stampin' Up! label dies to lift the sentiment off the card face. This particular die was just a little too wide for the A2 card face width, so I did have to do some discrete trimming.

No worries on the label trimming. I think this project came out great for what it's future purpose will be. I hope you liked this simple way to make any "congrats" card fit to ant particular color patterned event or theme, just y using cardstock scraps. Good luck on the hop challenge and I'll see you next month!

Inspiration Station April Blog Hop Challenge

 

Click here to join the hop challenge!

My take on this month's inspiration photo. I was inspired by the soft colors in the inspiration photo. I wanted to do my best to reproduce this photo with what I had.

I started with a sheet of cardstock patterned like white-washed wood. I ink blended over it in brown.

I then took a grey ink pad directly to the brown tinted cardstock to give it more color and depth.

My project started life as a 5 x 7" card. I used a soft grey piece of cardstock to which I roughed up the edges. Over that I attached the wood cardstock at an angle, so it was more like the table in the inspiration photo. However, the embellishments I wanted to use were smaller than I expected, way too small to create good composition on a 5 x 7 base. So, I cut the card down to an A2 size. I had to rip off the grey background and instead went with this grey/brown mottled piece.

Now for the embellishments! I used the flower and leaf die-cuts from Altenew mini-delight sets "Apothecary Garden" and "Gardener's Corner." 

To bring in a yellow element, since I didn't have any rain-boot embellishments, I cut the crate from the Gardners' Corner set out of yellow wood grain cardstock.

Pro tip: I only glued it together on the sides so it would be open on the inside so I could put flowers in it.

I used a pale pink ink to stamp the vases from the Apothecary Garden set on pink ombre cardstock. I did have to fussy cut these out.

I applied white pigment ink over the vases to give them that milk paint finish.

Unfortunately, I lost the photos of cutting and assembling the watering can, but I used the Altenew mini delight set "Watering Daisies" and cut the watering can from some grungy metal cardstock scraps.

I used a dark Teal blue ink to stamp the sentiment on a scrap of the wood cardstock.

I hope this month's photo inspired you! If you do any of these techniques, please remember to tag me on social media @scrappystampthefunup I'd love to see your work! See you next month!

Click here to shop Altenew

Inspiration Station March Monthly Blog Hop Challenge

 This month's inspiration photo!!

Click here to join the challenge!

My take on the inspiration photo-I'm a cat person :)

I wanted an easy interactive card to showcase my Lepraucats so I headed over Sam Calcott's Mixed-Up Craft You Tube channel and found this one, which I modified by omitting the inside "hammock".

click here to check out Sam Calcott's tutorial

As in her tutorial, I started with two pieces of cardstock cut to 10 1/5" x 8". Each panel was then scored at 1 1/5" and 4 1/5" from down from the long side and attached to each other. The finished project in her video is 6" x 8" but I cut down my finished card base to 6" x 6".

Now for the fun part: auditioning all kinds of green scraps for all the panels.

Time to bring my characters to life. I auditioned some Tim Holtz Paper dolls, then hit my stash of cat stickers to find the right heads. To ground them I cut some large ovals from different tones of green glitter paper because I wanted to have options depending on how the characters came out.

I chose these little guys. I removed the cloth bow ties they had and cut green glitter bows with a die. I used Altenew Artist Markers to tint their socks and boots green-my favorite pro tip for adding vintage color to these black and white paper dolls.

For some festive fun, I used a retired Stampin' Up! stamp set-my absolute favorite:  Brewed for You. I did have to fussy cut the stein out. And of course it's filled with green beer.

I chose the green glitter oval that set off my characters the best and attached them to it,

Used more scraps and stickers to make a belly band for the card.

I used the sentiments from the same stamp set and chose Altenew's Obsidian Black pigment ink for a bold stamping.

I hope you enjoyed this project! It's fun to create stories with your embellishments in cards. If you try any of these tips, or this project, be sure to tag me on social media @scrappystampthefunup I'd love to see your take on this project. And don't forget to hop along and join the challenge! See you next month!

 

February Inspiration Station Blog Hop Challenge

 

Click here to join the hop!

Hello crafty peeps! Can you believe it' already time for another monthly Inspiration Station blog hop?? Welcome to February! Lets take a moment to take in all the soft colors of this month's inspiration photo :)

I wanted to capture the same soft tones of the inspiration photo yet tie in some lovey stuff for Valentine's Day. I hope you like this project, and if you try any of my techniques, be sure to tag me on social media @scrappystampthefunup !

I pulled out an old Darice embossing folder, a big branch with leaves. Anyone else still hanging onto those old embossing folders?? Here's a new way to use this one:

After embossing it, I used a light, medium and dark ink, rubbed the ink pad lightly and directly over the embossed image, using the three colors of browns.

I fussy cut the branch out, snipping off the leaves so I just had the sticks. Pro tip: when fussy cutting, flip the image over and press down the edges with a bone folder to soften the snipped edges.

I adhered the branch to a soft pink panel and attached the whole thing to a 5 x 7" card base.

Using another oldie but goodie, I used the Bold Blooms layering die set from Altenew. I cut the base shapes out of vellum scraps that had little white hearts all over it. The flower dies were cut from just plain white cardstock scraps.

I applied liquid glue to the solid white areas on the die cut flowers, but here's another pro tip: use a glue stick on the back of vellum to adhere it to your card without any glue marks showing thru the vellum.

To add some lovey bits, I used a super old, small, filigree outline heart stamp in a soft reddish pink color of ink. I made a bunch of them to use as centers for the white die cut flowers.

I went over the hearts with Altenew Artist markers in various shades of pale pink.

I used a small heart die to cut them out and adhere them to the centers of the white die cut flowers. For the sentiment, I die cut "hugs" from an old Altenew die set, out of white cardstock scraps. I cut this 5 times and layered them all up before adhering the sentiment. I used a very pale green Altenew Artist marker to color the top "hugs" then I went over the sentiment and the little hears with "glitter snowflake" Pops of Color from Scrapbook.com.

See you next month! Good luck with the hop challenge!