Saturday, April 30, 2016

Father's Day

Hey stampers, Anni here!
Today I have a father's day card for you.






Next week is Father's Day in Germany. So I had in mind to make a card for my father as I went through my stash of Create a Smile stamps. This cute lion  from the set Lovely Critters caught my eye.




I decided to go with no line coloring. I stamped the lion in a light color and colored him with colored pencils. After fuzzy cutting him I stamped the sentiment and added some alphabet stickers. I die cut a stitched rectangle and adhered the lion. On the card base I sticked some patterned paper. For the final finishing touch I got a tip from Christine. She suggested to add a small banner to the edge of the panel.





  • Alphabet stamps are perfect to create the sentiment you need and may not have in your stash.
  • Do you have creative friends? It is so helpful to swap ideas. Sometimes you've been looking at your card for too long and you need the opinion of somebody else!


There is a another kit ahead! You may know that the Create a Smile kits are very popular but very limited, too. You may want to subscribe to our newsletter and join the Facebook group for the kit.



   

Friday, April 29, 2016

It's a Party!

Hi there!
Samantha here with you, and today I'm sharing a birthday card! :)


I can't lie when I say that I am in total LOVE all of the flower stamps that Create a Smile Stamps has out there! But I wanted to play with a little more 'cartoony' images and make a cutesy card! 


To start, grab your favorite images and start coloring!
- color and fussy cut your images (I used Copic Markers)
- on your card front, add some watercolor (I used Pumice Stone Distress Ink and some water and I smooshed the watercolor onto the front of my card)


- once the watercolor is dry, add the embossing paste through a stencil
- on a strip of black cardstock, heat emboss the 'happy' portion of the sentiment
- on that same strip of black cardstock, die cut the 'bithday' sentiment 
- adhere to the card front and pop up the colored images



I used a BUNCH of different stamp sets here! Ha! The bird is from Jungle Fever. The balloons are from Monster Party and the bow tie is from Big Time. The top hat is from Cool Buddies. The sentiment was created using Mini Birthday and the Birthday Triple Cool Cut.


I really love that the Create a Smile Stamps work so well together! I used little images from a bunch of different sets, and they look so seamless together!

There's a big KIT RELEASE coming up! Be sure to stick around the Blog and Facebook group to catch sneaks, updates and ways to win! 

Thanks again for spending part of your day with me! 


     
      

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Effective White Space using Botanical Love


I wasn't too sure what I wanted to create for my video this month. I googled my favourite stamp - Botanical Love and cam across a card similar to this one. It had a red background and a black case and I loved the contrast of the white flowers on the background. I wanted to create something with more of a spring-feel, and then the card was born ;) 






Use waterproof ink (archival) when stamping the flowers, that way you can remove the mask and then add the water rather than add the water and remove the masks. The masks became saturated and fell apart so I couldn't use them again.




I used the Botanical Love and Time to Say Thanks Stamps from Create a Smile, the rest of the supply list you can see on my blog.


Don't forget to join our little Create a Smile family on Facebook in our own group. There are challenges and general artwork inspiration from all CAS lovers!





Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Happy Mail Collage

Hello Crafters! 

Before we get to today's card I 'm a bit sad to share that this will be my last post as a full member of the design team. My schedule is ridiculous and I just can't do these adorable stamps justice with my time constraints. However, I'm only  a bit sad because I'm moving over to the video team so I won't be completely gone :) I love Christine and the girls far too much to just leave! 

Now onto those adorable stamps we were talking about . . .


I spent the most wonderful weekend away with my girlfriends. While we there stamping and crafting I accidentally stole one of my friend's stamp sets! Eep!  
Since I stole her stamps I clearly needed to send them back to her but I couldn't do that without including a super cute card now could I? The Happy Mail set is perfect for this! I used every stamp in the set to create a collage on my card. 

I started by stamping and masking all the images onto my card base. I then used a very light hand and rubbed on some Salty Ocean distress ink. I laid down my swirly stencil and added more distress ink. This helps the design to be a bit more subtle. 


I removed all the masks and colored the images up with my copics. I used grays to create white objects and blues similar to my background color this really let's the red POP and I love that :) I stamped the sentiment and outlined the top with a white gel pen to set it apart from the rest of the images. Some sparkle on the hearts finished it off. 

Try a tone on tone look for some interest that isn't over bearing. To make one color pop keep the rest of your color subtle and similar. 


Thanks so much for joining me! 

Supplies: