the Card Ladies

Hi Friends and WELCOME to today’s blog hop!

Today we are all showing off our favorite PINK projects since October is Breast Cancer awareness month, of course.

So I expect you are going to see several projects using the wonderful Stampin’ Up! Ribbon of Courage set this month.

Well, my card is no exception, but hopefully I am doing a little something different here today.

There is a fun new style of card going around the FB groups called an ‘eclipse card’.  But I wanted to do something a little bit different… a DOUBLE eclipse card!

This all started with my normal team gathering and play night, TaDa! Tuesday.  This past week was kinda special because Stampin’ Up! has just brought back their version of alcohol markers in our signature color pallette.  These are called Blends, and oh my!  They are fabulous!

So the coloring got started and we all actually got quiet for a few minutes… lol.  Yes, some serious coloring was happening.  The Blends will be available to our customers very soon, so we needed to check them out!

After playing with some old DSP from last years Sale-a-Bration that was made to color in with the watercolor pencils, I was already in love with these super smooth markers and ready to work with something new.

Time to pull out the new specialty DSP called Just Add Color.

These papers are so nice and heavy and super smooth.

The color goes on these papers so nicely… like they made it just to be colored in with these markers.

Hmmmm, maybe they did!

Gotta love Stampin’ Up!… always thinking ahead!

So how will I incorporate the PINK into my design?

Support Ribbon Framelits Dies item #143749 Price: $22.00

I decided to cut the big ribbon from the Support Ribbon Framelits Dies out of my DSP before I started coloring.

This will allow me to color it totally separately which works out well for the card in my head.

I chose the design with the leaves all over it, thinking that keeping the number of colors used to a minimum would work well for this design.

The coloring of the base color went so fast!  I went with the light Old Olive marker for the leaves and will got back with the dark to add the shading in a bit.

Then the background was the light Soft Sky.

SO smooth!  I love how there are NO  brushstroke marks with these alcohol markers.

Some subtle shading where I want it, sure, but no pesky lines and the paper won’t pill from going over the same spots.

I thought I didn’t like to do a lot of coloring… might have to change my mind about that with these new Blends.  

Now it was time to cut the other parts of this design.   I had already cut a couple of the big support ribbon shapes out of some pink fun foam.

You could also cut your pop up pieces from cardstock and layer several pieces to get the height.

Either technique works, but I had some fun foam here already and that is quicker.

Using the Large Letters Framelits,  I laid out the PNK on my focal piece and it was all going to have to overlap a tad.  I laid down one of the pink foam ribbon shapes and cut the letters out of the paper and the pink foam all at once so the letters will fit properly on the card front.

Then cut the letters again out of some black fun foam.  Time to start assembling all the pieces.

Since the background was colored in with a light Pool Party marker, it looked great on a Pool Party card base.

The fun foam glues in it ‘holes’ easily with the green top multi-purpose glue.  The pink ribbon with the little cutouts fits in to make a solid and smooth first layer.

The colored top letters now get glued onto the top of the black foam, and I offset them very slightly so the word was a little more readable.

Then another pink foam ribbon on top of the first one for the ‘double’ part of this double eclipse card.

The top ribbon cutout I had colored in using only the Blushing Bride light and dark Blends markers.

Isn’t it cool how the design continues on across the card but some is just in PINK?  I just loved that this layer was higher than the letters, too!

This just needed the extra word ‘THINK’ and I found just what I wanting in the set ‘Count My Blessings’.

When you need a special word, remember you can selectively stamp a portion of a word by inking the stamp with your markers.

You have SO many words available to you like that!

(click to see bigger)

So here is my final ‘Think PINK’ card with the awareness ribbon incorporated into the design.

The letters are readable but subtle, like the eclipse technique is supposed to be.

But the pink ribbon really jumps out at you.

What better way to have folks start to ‘Think PINK!’

Now I want to share with you a Breast cancer awareness project that I am involved in again this year.

My friends and fellow demos in the Boston area, Selene Kempton and Tami White, host a ‘Stamp Out Breast Cancer’ event every year.

I am a little far away from Boston here in NC, but I wanted to help in my own way.

Since another passion of mine is designing fun tees for crafters and their teams,  I design their event tee for them each year and sell it in my Etsy store.

I am giving a percentage of each tee sold to my friends’ event to help with their fundraising efforts.

(click on the picture to see the designs larger in my Etsy store)

Not only will folks get a great tee and look cute at their own events this month, but that will also be a part of a donation for Selene & Tami’s fundraising event!

A true win-win right there!

This year I added the fun phrase ‘I Pink I Can’ inside the heart and a version of the tee in black.

I know from my cardmaking that pastels really POP when paired with black cardstock, and the same is certainly true of the light pink design on the black tee.

The bling is in Light Pink, because or course we had to have bling on this baby!  BUT, I can leave the bling off if you want or for a tee for that supportive man in your life.  Real men will ROCK a black and pink tee for the cause!

Click on the picture to go directly to this listing to see better or purchase. (thanks for looking!)

Other groups are joining in, too!  Our friend Raquelle Clifton is using this tee for her event in Denver, too.  This is a great tee for ANY of our stamping events to help raise awareness this month.

This is also available in long sleeves in another listing, so look around and see what other designs you might enjoy wearing for your crafting.

The products I used to create these cards are at the bottom of this post.  Thanks for looking and enjoy the rest of the hop!

Product List

Welcome to this Halloween themed hop by members of some online training groups that are looking to grow in their Stampin’ Up! business.

One of the best things about Stampin’ Up! for me is the friends and even more crafting with friends.

Since you can’t always do that in person when your friends are all around the globe, a blog hop is a great way to come together and share our love for creating.

This month, it is all about Halloween, one of my faves!

I am using a combo of new and old Halloween stamps for my card, and here they are.

Sweet Home Photopolymer Stamp Set #140936 Price: $21.00

Graveyard Gate Clear-Mount Stamp #144765 Price: $22.00

(click to see larger)

This is actually a  motion card, but having trouble uploading the little video for it.  ARGH!

In the meantime, here is the card closed, and then here is the card open.

(click to see larger)

I added a ‘stop’ in the works to keep it from coming out too far, which is a interesting option.

It keeps the illusion alive if they don’t see the ‘guts’ of you animated image.

It also allowed me to hide the ‘Happy Halloween’ sentiment at the top of the pull up piece.

The video will show it much better… still working on it, please check back!

The motion cards are so cool and Halloween ghosts are just a perfect thing to have move!  I am also envisioning twinkling Christmas lights, moving wise men, so many more options!

I did a tutorial in the summer on all the tricks and tips I learned from many hours of playing with the ‘you Move Me’ bundle and how to add motion to any stamp.  If you missed it, here it is for purchase (and instant download) and some card videos that actually work . lol  pdf tips for adding motion basics

Here are the rest of the hoppers and their projects, have a great week and make something that MOVES you!

Welcome to the Blog Hop for the members of my extended team.

It is so fun to hop along and see what your friends are making and FALL is my favorite time of year for sure!

The stamp set Painted Harvest is just so much fun to play with and it does just seem like fall.

So many options of different color combo to give that little flower whatever personality or season you wanted it to have, really, but we are doing FALL now.

At a recent Tuesday team gathering,  we were playing with glossy paper and different ways to get ink on the paper and how it layers on this different cardstock.

It just made sense that we reached for this Painted Harvest set yet again to add the focal pieces.

We were also playing with using a little different way to add some watercoloring to the card, using ink first applied to our clear blocks.

Yes, the stamp holder becomes the ‘stamp’… think of those possibilities!

For this first card I did, I took the ‘I’ block and inked it up with markers in ‘fall’ colors…  Cajun Craze, Crushed Curry, Pumpkin Pie.

(I have markers I use for classes, but I have a special set just for ME that I keep on a rolling cart by my side when I craft.  I highly recommend all crafters just bite the bullet and get a full set of the Many Marvelous Markers even if you save them just for you… so convenient!)

We had a water bottle and were spraying the blocks for the water in the watercolor look.  But it made HUGE droplets!

Turned out the best way to get tiny droplets of water in a more controlled way on your inked up block was a stampin’ Up! tool… the spritzer!

Another benefit of the spritzer, you don’t soak your whole table or floor… geez, didn’t realize what a mess I was making.

Definitely use the spritzer!

(click to see bigger)

Here are these cards in process, I was making them for a swap in one of my uplines groups, so I was doing several.

It was really fun to have them all laid out like this because no two were the same!

One thing I did after I had ‘stamped’ the I block on the glossy cardstock for the base color… I inked up the leaves in the set and stamped them carefully within the boundaries of the ‘block’.

I really like the Old Olive of the leaves in that space!

(click to see bigger)

An Early Expresso sentiment and then playing with the colors of the flowers until they were to my liking.

The glossy paper allows for some fun layering of the colors in a way regular cardstock will not.

For most of the flowers, I did a the ‘back’ flower stamp over top of several layers of a ‘completed’ flower in tangerine tango.

I just wanted it to be more orangey… is that a word?  lol

So some linen twine across the card for texture, then mounting on an Old Olive narrow cut mat piece and then that on a Cajun Craze base card and the card is done.

I continued to play with this set that night and we made some other fun cards, and learned a few things we didn’t know before about working with the glossy paper, but that will be in another post.

If you made it through this whole post, I hope you play with this ‘inky block’ technique yourself.  It really is a bunch of fun!

Come back soon and enjoy the rest of the hop!

Product List