Thursday, January 29, 2015

A Craftsy Class, a Clean and Simple Valentine and Shopping our Stash Challenge

Happy Hump Day. This week has been crazy here in Connecticut. So far this week we have had three half days of school and a snow day. The forecast says there is more snow due tomorrow so who knows what that will bring.

In the blizzard that wasn't, (and I am NOT complaining nor blaming about this-just thankful) we had a water main leak in front of our house. It just GUSHED water in the middle of the clean up from the storm on Tuesday. Now we have a giant piece of muddy ice in front of our driveway that is quite lovely, as well as a large pothole to the side of the driveway. The water company did a patch and I am hoping they will come back and replace the pipe when the weather is a bit better. It was quite a process to watch, I have to say. I felt bad because the wind was blowing and it was COLD.

While the snowstorm was going on, I watched some videos from a Craftsy class I am taking called "Cards With Dimension" and is taught by one of my favorite paper crafters, Danielle Flanders. She is on the design team for PaperTrey Ink and a few other companies. I took this class because I have a TON of patterned paper and pre-made embellishments left over from scrap booking and love how she uses these type of products on her cards.

In this class, Danielle shows different ways to use these pre-made embellishments on cards, as well as goes over fun techniques for vellum, dry embossing, die cuts, using non paper embellishments and more. It has been fun to watch. I would recommend this to experienced and non-experienced card makers a like. It is helping me jog my mind to use products I have not used in years.

In the spirit of this class, I decided to make a quick card using embossing, some pre-made embellishments and die cuts.


The first thing I did was to emboss a piece of white card stock with a stitched heart embossing folder by Amy Tangerine for American Crafts. I wrapped the embossed panel with gold fiber that I have literally had for almost 15 years. (Yes, I am a hoarder!!) I then adhered this panel to a 5 1/2" by 4 1/4" top folding card.

Next, I used a die cut rectangle from Crate Paper's "Kiss Kiss" ephemera pack and adhered it over the card front using foam adhesive. The tiny heart popped out of this rectangle so I used a thicker foam adhesive to adhere the heart and covered it with Gold and Diamond Stickles for some shine.


I then used a die from Simon Says Stamp to cut out the lace heart from a scrap of red paper and a Paper Smooches die for the "love" sentiment. I adhered the heart over the rectangle and the love over the heart.


I know this looks simple but I have to admit that this was harder then I thought to design. I did not use ONE stamp!! I admire how Danielle uses her supplies. I think that I might go through my scraps and my pre-made die cuts now and match them up to make kits for future cards. A quick and fun way to create a plethora of cards for my stash.

I am entering this card into the "Shopping our Stash" Weekly Challenge Blog. The theme this week is "love."

Thank you for taking the time to stop by today. Be sure to stop by Danielle's blog and take a look at her beautiful projects. Better yet, take her class!!

Supplies: