CoronaCrafts - Making Multiples

Now if every day at home could be the perfect sunny spring day today was, all would be well...

In my card-making life, usually I'm making single cards at a time for letters, thank you notes, birthday cards, and the like, or many, many of the same card at holiday times.  During this CoronaCrafts era of my card-making, I'm mostly staying away from multiples and trying to make cards that suit the intended recipients.  But not always, and not this past weekend.  I'll talk about one set of multiples today and one tomorrow.

Yesterday, I made three more of my Dangerous Business cards, bringing the total up to eight.  I wrote about the first two about two weeks ago.  I'm this series a way to test out some Distress Oxide color combinations and play with some of the background stamps I don't use very often, but love having in my collection.

Since the design of these cards is all the same, I've done some things to make the process easier.  First, I use my favorite Lawn Fawn Outside In Stitched Rectangles die to cut the card panels to size so I know they're all rectilinear.  Second, I took the sentiment stamp off of its wood block so I could use a stamp positioning tool with it, and rather than putting it on cling foam right away, which is a sticky business at the best of times, I'm trying out a Purple Onion Clear Mounting Stamp instead.  Lastly, I set up the mounting stamp and the sentiment stamp in my Mini MISTI and played with the placement until I knew it was right.  I'm going to leave the stamp in place until I'm done with this series.

Here's a look at all of the cards so far, starting with the first two you've seen before:

Top Row:  L - My Favorite Things Marble Background; Colors - Tattered Rose, Abandoned Coral, Seedless Preserves; R - Simon Says Stamp Circle Doodle Background; Colors - Shabby Shutters, Peacock Feathers, Faded Jeans

Row 2:  L - Hero Arts Ocean Waves Bold Prints; Colors - Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans; R - My Favorite Things Balloon Strings Background; Colors - Cracked Pistachio, Broken China, Faded Jeans

Row 3:  L - Technique Junkies Sudsy Stuff; Colors - Antique Linen, Tumbled Glass, Broken China; R - Impression Obsession Cover-a-Card Fluff; Colors - Iced Spruce, Peeled Paint, Chipped Sapphire

Row 4:  L - My Favorite Things Radiating Half Tone Background; Colors - Wild Honey, Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves;  R - Hero Arts Pearl Strings Bold Prints; Colors - Milled Lavender, Victorian Velvet, Aged Mahogany

It's fun to see them all together!  So far, in each group, two the first time, and three each of the other times, I've been surprised at which is my favorite.  Click on each picture for a closer look.  Which do you like best so far??

Tomorrow - Spring Multiples

CoronaCrafts - Ready for Spring

I mean, it must be spring, right?  My lawn service showed up yesterday to begin mowing for the season.  I'm not exactly sure what they found to mow, but whatever.

Today is a better day.  There's sunshine at last, and I was able to get to both Trader Joe's and the supermarket in just under two hours this morning.  I'll take it.

I have a lot of stencils in my craft room.  I love the designs I have and the cheaper price point, and I don't use them nearly enough.  Recently, I bought a set of tulip layering stencils from Simon Says Stamp, and I knew they'd be perfect for one of my cards.

Of course, me being me, I wanted to know exactly the right way to use these stencils - what order, color ideas, etc., before just trying something, so I watched a few videos online.  And, like the videos show, these stencils are not hard to use, easy to line up, etc.  But it's that second stencil that's the kicker.  That's the one in the upper right corner.  Notice that it has both the flowers and some greenery that need to be inked in different colors.  Perhaps everyone else can do this neatly without covering up the unneeded portions, but not me.  I am far too messy for that.  So I dutifully got out the painter's tape and ripped it into a million tiny pieces and got a decent result.  But I didn't love the colors I chose, so I wanted try again.  This is where the trouble began.

I didn't like my first try, but the thought of covering over all of the unneeded bits, first for the top half, and then for the bottom half of stencil 2 made me want to abandon the whole project.  This is exactly a thing I am trying to unlearn.  Then it hit me - I could use another stencil in the set as a mask.  Eureka!  Here's what I did:

1.  Ink Stencil 1 (lower right corner) with the base layer of the flowers.

2.  Leave Stencil 1 in place, layer over Stencil 2, and ink the detail layer of the flowers.  Stencil 1 keeps the greenery covered.

3.  Remove and clean off Stencils 1 and 2.

4.  Ink Stencil 3 (upper left corner) for the base layer of the leaves

5.  Leave Stencil 3 in place, layer over Stencil 2, and ink the detail layer of the flowers.  Stencil 3 keeps the flowers covered.

6.  Ink Stencil 4 (lower left) with the stems

Here's how it turned out:

I began the whole procedure using a Taylored Expressions Square Masking Stencil and a couple of Distress inks to add some color to the background.  I left the masking stencil in place to make sure my tulips would stay confined, and added a Simon Says Stamp Thinking of You die for the sentiment.  I even managed to retain the dots over the i's.

Slightly askew photograph aside, I'm delighted. And I'm even more delighted I came up with this stencil/masking technique which increases the likelihood that I'll actually use the stencil set again!

Tomorrow:  Staying at home means everyday can have a tea time!

CoronaCrafts - Day 8

I got a bit stuck in my card-making yesterday.  Over the weekend, before I got distracted by the coffee and tea shop dies I wrote about yesterday, I started two cards, and came to a stopping point on both of them for different reasons.  I mean, I will finish them, but I have to figure out how, and that feeling of not knowing how to get out of the rut was starting to take over, combined with that feeling of dread that if I don't make a card, and don't send it, I'll have nothing to blog about, nothing to post in Instagram, and by skipping one day I will get out of the habit of sending and writing and I will have failed miserably.

I'm tired of this disruption to my life, can you tell?

I took a deep breath.

And I tried to remember what the heck I was trying to do with this project to begin with - send cards to friends I can't see right now, use bits of things cluttering up my craft table, and try out some ideas and use products I've been meaning to forever.  Oh, and it's Woodblock Wednesday coming up.

As I'm very slowly unmounting my woodblock stamps, and incorporating all of my cling stamps into my main catalog, I have occasion to look through my stamp drawers, which I love doing.  I was getting out another stamp when I found this one by Stampers Anonymous: 

I have no idea when I got it.  I don't think I've ever used it.  I know this font is one of my favorites (what is it called?  do you know???), and I'm drawn to every stamp that uses it.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it was perfect for my CoronaCrafts cards.

I went for simplicity, and the original tenets of the project.  I pulled out a bunch of background stamps I've been wanting to use, dug out the notebook pages where I'd jotted down some of the Distress Oxide combos I wanted to try, and diecut a bunch of panels.  Here are my first two cards in the series:

 

Top:  Background - My Favorite Things Marble Background; Colors - Tattered Rose, Abandoned Coral, Seedless Preserves

Bottom:  Background - Simon Says Stamp Circle Doodle Background; Colors - Shabby Shutters, Peacock Feathers, Faded Jeans

When I make more of these in the next day or so, I'm going to use the technique from the top card:  Ink the panel, and then stamp the background stamp using the lightest color from the background.  Because the ink has pigment qualities as well as dye ink properties, the light color will stay visible on top of the darker shades.  Unexpected!  I think it makes a better, subtler backdrop for the words.

And I had no idea until I told my husband about these cards that this phrase is really a paraphrased quote from Tolkein.

Tomorrow:  Super-quick cards!

Becoming less socially distant - Day 1

So everything is cancelled, and we're just home forever, or at least until the dire threat of dread disease passes.  And you would think that with all of this time on my hands, all gigs off, and work scarce this week, that it would be prime time for crafting.  And you would be right about that.  But amidst all my craft room organization tasks, and the millions of things I have to play with, I still need something to focus on - a project, a goal.  Enter letter writing.  Remember that?  And why not, while I'm at it, look at those pieces of cards lying on my table, the backgrounds I'm going to use some day, the techniques I'm trying to get better at, the new stamps I want to use, and make a daily card and send it to a friend I miss seeing in these days of isolation.  Okay, here goes...

Stamp:  Ornate Background by Simon Says Stamp
Sentiment:  Little Halo Hello by Poppystamps

I love this background stamp.  Months and months ago, I stamped it a bunch of times in a bunch of ways just to have pieces ready:  white embossed on white card stock, gold embossed on black cardstock, Versamark ink on white with pan pastels over top, etc.  This version is black ink with clear embossing on bristol paper, I think.  I used my watercolor markers to highlight a portion of the design and stopped there.  I don't know if I planned to come back to it and keep coloring, but this is how I found it.

The other morning, I watched a Jennifer McGuire video where she was demonstrating a technique with alcohol inks - a product I don't own, and don't really intend to explore, even if the results are stunning.  In one of the cards she made, she used a colorful, busy background, and just added a die-cut sentiment, with only a little more embellishment to make a lovely card.  And I thought, hey, I have a million background stamps, and a million sentiment dies, let's give it a go.

I took my possibly unfinished background, decided to use a Hello sentiment die I've had for over a year and not touched, and went crazy and broke out some metallic paper and even some tiny gems (so on-trend.  Yes, I am).  I learned something important about my metallic paper:  it's too thin to manage if you don't mount it on cardstock first - excellent lesson, especially since I've owned that paper pad for years and not used it before either.  It took three tries, but I eventually got a dark pink, metallic Hello that I didn't tear.

I really like how my card turned out.  I need to work a bit on gem placement, but the relative simplicity suits my style, and I succeeded in my goal of using bits and pieces of my stash.  And I even wrote the letter and put it in the mail!

What are you doing to stay busy?