My new swaps!

Welcome, thanks for stopping by!  My new swaps were finally shipped out the door and here they are!!!  Now they may look a bit familiar, but I cased myself from the same swap last year because I really liked the layout!!  I also took the ice cream parlor awning and turned it into a curtain valance. 


Stamp Sets:
* Greeting Card Kids
* Scenic Season

Techniques:
* Brayering
* Masking

Cardstocks:
* Whisper White
* Early Espresso
* Baja Breeze

Ink Pads:
* Stazon Black (Girl)
* Early Espresso (Trees)
* Real Red (Greeting)
* Baja Breeze (Skyline)

Markers:
* Marina Mist
* Wild Wasabi
* Real Red
* Daffodil Delight


Accessories:
* Brayer (skyline)
* White Gel Pen (snow)
* Punch
* Scallop Trim Corner
* Big Shot
* Textured Impressions - Vintage Wallpaper
* Vanilla Shimmer Smooch (all over for snow) & Color Catcher
* Frost White Shimmer Paint (dress trim)
* 5/8" Grosgrain Real Red Ribbon
* 1/8" Taffeta Marina Mist Ribbon
* Dimensionals
* Mini Glue Dots
* Grid Paper
* 1 1/4" Circle Punch
* NSU - Post-it Notes

General steps below, I can post up more detailed steps/dimensions later if anyone is interested.

1. Mask the moon & tree line then brayer skyline - I went to Michelle Zindorf's brayering classes - so awesome and I wanted to incorporate it some how!!
2. Stamped the trees, added snow with white gel pen
3. Spray the shimmer smooch in the color catcher
4. Stamped the girl in the very bottom left corner - love clear mount!!
5. Colored the girl and used a tiny paint brush to apply shimmer paint to trim - let dry!!
6. Cut into quarters
7. Punched holes for her ribbon scarf and looped it through
8. Stamp greeting on the bottom right corner piece (again love clear mount, I cut my greeting in half and mounted them on the same block in the format I needed)
9. Added folded ribbon to back of the bottom right corner piece
10. Mounted on to Early Espresso layer using dimensionals
11. Embossed Early Espresso strip, punch, cut to size, score, mount on card layer
12. Mounted to Marina Mist
13. Voila! :)

To make it easier for myself, I had drawn up some guides on my Grid Paper.

1) This is most of it, shows my top part indicates my marking spots and also where I did so much brayering for the swap that it ultimately ripped through.  The bottom part is where I stamped, and the right had my cutting notes.

2) Close up of the brayer / masking section.

3) My stamping section where I had my cut lines marked so I could get the tree into a bit of the bottom left panel but leave enough room for the girl's head.

4) This shows where I even draw lines for where my white CS and clear block would go.

I hope you enjoyed this post and my first (of hopefully many) creation in quite awhile.  I am considering making more of these for the Baltimore Regional swap - if you are going and would be interested, let me know.  

100 Card Swap - Scenic Season

Scenic Season

Stamp Set: Scenic Season

Card Stock:
• Whisper White 8.5 x 5.5 (A2) and 3.5 x 4.5
• Bordering Blue 3.75 x 5
• Night of Navy 4 x 5.25

Ink Pads: Bordering Blue, Night of Navy, and VersaMark

Accessories: Paper Cutter, Brayer, Stamping Sponge, Bone Folder,
The Tearing Edge, 1 3/8” Punch, Iridescent Ice Embossing Powder,
White Gel Pen, Dimensionals, and ¼” Night of Navy Grosgrain ribbon

NSU: Post-It Notes

Inspirations:
This card was inspired by a combination of items on the SCS gallery. The colors were from items in the Lovely as a Tree section and the layout from a 5th Avenue Floral card. I'll try and find time to pull some specific links and references here so I can give additional credit.

Halloween Prep & Stuff

So here is a picture of the card I made for the 100 card swap that I had joined. I didn't think this was going to be hard to make, but after making 100 - I realized differently!!! Wow, the swaps I got back though were just AMAZING. Everyone did such a fabulous job. I actually had issues getting mine done and wouldn't have if my husband hadn't actually ended up helping me assemble at the end. I had started having really horrible morning sickness (all day!) after I signed up for the swap and was sick for over a month and then ended in a horrible cold / cough / chest congestion for over another month (which I'm still recovering from).

Okay- so here is the picture of the swap using the new SU set Two Cool Dudes. It was based on the sample shown in the catalog with a bit more embellishment:

Here are some of the other stuff I made to send to the hostess as both a thank you and an apology because I was short 2 for the swap (I can't count) and it took me forever to get them out the door because of said illness above.

Top Note - Halloween - this is the front and back of what I did with the top note. The ribbon is more green, but it didn't show up in the picture too well. The front was from the SU samples using the new stamp set and the back is using a Sizzix Halloween Die. I think this is what I'll be using to give to my son's classmates for Halloween.

Halloween card we made at my UL's camp and I CASE'd it. I love this card and the candy corn is made with Crystal Effects for dimension. I really like CE - just takes awhile to dry!


Simple Card - This was based on a card we made maybe a year ago at my 5 level up's event. I liked how simple it comes out, although its not quite as quick to make!



The colors of this card was inspired from the same event as the card above. I would never have thought to do this combination on my own. The different layers were inspired on cards on SCS. I love those ribbon sliders!




This card I just gave away as a birthday card. We made this at my UL's house a long time ago when Crab & Co was first in a mini. I'm so glad they brought this set back - I didn't buy it when it was in the mini, but you better believe I have it now! Now that I've given this card away, I've gotta make another one to replace it :)

Swap Details

The Swap:
(I think I need to put a SU trademark or logo on here though - going to research now)

I'm pretty excited about this swap - I worked really hard on getting the design right and putting a lot of effort into making a good convention swap quality. I hope the recipients are not disappointed. If you are here visiting my page as a result of receiving my card as a swap, please drop me a comment and let me know how you liked it (but please be gentle with my feelings)!

Idea:
The first challenge was finding a stamp set that wasn't retired in my collection that I could work with. I debated between Priceless and this set. Eventually this set won out with the design idea.

Inspirations:
So the inspiration for this swap came from two different sources. It was originally supposed to be a a traditional size card for 4.25 x 5.5 based on a card I had received from my SCS Demo Secret Sis in one of the rounds. Michelle is just awesome and I love her work!!!! Try as I could, I could not get this card to really work with the bigger layout as it left a lot of space that I was trying to fill with things such as the little star in versamark or in more blue. Neither really turned out too well so I did some research on SCS and read up on square card sizes which is what I ended up with. The 3-D effect of the boat came from the SCS gallery for this stamp set.

Supplies:

• Stamp Set:
• Nursery Necessities
  

• Cardstock:
  
• Bashful Blue (4.25 x 4.25)
  
• Certainly Celery (4.25 x 1.25)
  
• Chocolate Chip (3.25 x 3.25)
• Whisper White (3 x 3)
• Brilliant Blue - Textured (3 x 1.25)
• Whisper White or So Saffron for the moon cutout.
  

• Inks:
• Real Red
• Brilliant Blue
• Certainly Celery
• Chocolate Chip
• So Saffron

• Ribbons:
• 1/4" Grosgrain: Whisper White
• 1/4" Grosgrain: Bashful Blue

• Miscellaneous:
• Word Window Punch
• Snail Adhesive
• White Pen
• Paper Snips
• Stampin' Dimensionals
• Green Bead Duo (only on some cards)
  

Variations:
This card was pretty easy to use for covering up mistakes. For instance, some of the cards have the small beads from the green bead duo on the bottom piece of the boat as the white pen didn't provide consistent coverage. I also used So Saffron on either Whisper White or So Saffron for the sun. I ran out of textured Brilliant Blue CS for the last few so some of them may be just pain Brilliant Blue.

Tips, Tricks, and Lessons Learned:

• Dimensionals were easier to use when they were cut up in half and the edges also were not wasted.
• Better trick is to actually cut up a whole strip of the dimensionals in half before even unpeeling the first layer.

• Make a guide for the word window punch on a bigger sheet of cardstock and just secure the smaller wave ones onto it and punch.

• Mark the bottom of the punch with a small piece of tape/cs so the waves can be punched at consistent places easier.

• It took a LONG time to cut and assemble all of the pieces, way more then I was thinking it would.

• So I don't usually use my textured CS (I'm more of a hoarder of supplies then a user), so I didn't realize until I was half way through that there is a front and a back of the textured CS. So some of the Brilliant Blue may be using the wrong side - sorry!
  

Last thoughts:
I did show my husband my card and he wondered A) why I was spending all this time on these swaps instead of doing my graduate homework. B) Why I used a moon when it looked like it was day light out. This second piece has really made me question the design. I had to explain to him that I didn't have any Sun stamps that weren't retired. He said you didn't have any circles? Anyway, it was difficult to explain. I debated using the star stamp and star punch which would've been a lot easier then cutting up those moons, but I liked the moon better.

Thanks to Marilyn for being such a good friend to take my swaps for me!!!!

My Convention Swaps

Well, I'm not going to Convention this year. My UL and I thought very hard about this and we were very tempted to go as this was the 20 year celebration and we wanted to see the new catalog! However, after we priced out - we decided that the money would be better spent on new stamp sets! I do have a friend that is going and I'm very thankful that she was willing to do some swapping for me. I've spent the past few days doing nothing but making these swaps and boy am I exhausted. I'm only sending 45 off to be swapped and keeping 2. The original goal was to make 50 but this was close enough. The output is above and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, I'll make another post with the instructions and details.