Cardmaking With Diecuts. No Stamps, Inks, or Machines Needed

As a cardmaker, I love using anything and everything in my cards. I’ve written before that you don’t have to have a fancy schmancy machine to create shapes that add variety and texture to your cards. Heck , you don’t even have to stamp. All you need are pre-packaged die cuts that are available wherever scrapbooking supplies are sold.

For this project I used:

• Diecuts. I used ones I had in my stash and coordinated my cards around them
• American Crafts papers: green and white floral, teal and green
• Coordinating ribbon and rhinestones

You can use your diecuts as is or you can embellish them. For the card with the big butterfly, I layered in onto the teal paper and trimmed around it to give it a border. Also added some Stickles glitter glue and rhinestones.

For this card, I also ran a teal panel through my Cuttlebug using an embossing folder but you could also .leave the paper plain.

I added a piece of coordinating ribbon to my embossed panel.

Covered the front of the card with the green and white floral paper and added a floral diecut embellished with a clear rhinestone.

For the second card, I layered a panel of the green and white floral onto the teal paper, tore a scrap of the teal and wrapped with the ribbon and added the diecuts which I embellished with rhinestones.  I used my Cuttlebug to emboss paper for the first card, but I also wanted to show you can make cards just using the paper as is.

Waste not, want not so for this one I used leftover strips of the embossed paper from the first card to accent the second card.  So see? No stamps , inks, or die cut machines needed!

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Just The Ticket Card

Happy Monday all. I'm over at the CutCarstock Blog today sharing how I made this fun ticket themed card and matching envelope. Hope you'll drop by!

Tree of Life Sympathy Card

Another Sympathy card. I try to strike a balance recognizing the solemnity of the occasion, celebrating the life of the deceased, and honoring and comforting the living who mourn. This one is for a friend of mine who lost her brother after a long illness.

I decided to use a tree in this card, representing the Tree of Life. My Cricut “Wall Décor and More” cartridge has a great tree image so I used that to cut my image from a neutral cardstock. The cardstock is double sided so I ran another piece of it through my Cuttlebug  using a honeycomb embossing folder.

I layered a gray panel across the middle, adhered the tree, bordered the gray panel with coordinating scrapbook borders and tied a black and white polka dot ribbon around the panel before adhering the embossed panel to the card.

Finished off the card with different sizes of black self adhesive rhinestones and a brass leaf charm.

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Mothers Day Cards in Pink and Gray

If I could have sent each of my bloggy mom friends a handmade card, I would have. Since I can’t, I’m sharing the ones I made for the moms in my non-bloggy life who have been shocked to see pink coming from me!

I am not known for being a pink person but for some reason I just felt like using pink.Maybe it was the washi tape I found? OK it was the pink washi tape!

I stamped on cream cardstock using a Hampton Arts rose stamp and black pigment ink then embossed with clear embossing ink. Some of the images I colored the area behind the rose with pink chalk ink. For others, I colored in the flower with colored pencil. Trimmed and layered with black and pink papers. I added a drop of pink liquid pearls to the center of each flower. I used  a combination of grey and silver floral papers, pink papers and embellishments including American Crafts glitter tape to finish the cards.

Wishing all the moms out there a very Happy Mother’s Day!

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Blogiversary Giveaway #3: $25 Gift Certificate to CutCardstock.com

Hope everyone is having a great week and participating in the giveaway fun. I'm thrilled to be a Design Team member for CutCardstock.com. The wonderful folks there are giving one of my readers a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to their site!

With upcoming holidays like Father's Day ( I'm sure you've all got Mother's Day taken care of by now) , graduation season, prom season and it's always someone's birthday, who couldn't use some notecards or invitation sets?  CCS has got you covered. Flat Cards, Gatefold Cards, Invitation Sets and more, ready for your creativity. 

If you want full size card stock, CCS has a variety of sizes and brands. In case you need some ideas on how to use the variety of products you can find at CutCardstock.com, pop on over to the blog and see what my fellow Design Team members and I are up to each month. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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April Birthdays Continue: Cards in Yellow and Gray

I wasn't kidding about April being birthday month for me. Here are two more cards for April birthdays. These use papers from Teresa Collins, Cosmo Cricket, and Recollections.

On a personal note, today would have been my daddy's 76th birthday so Happy Birthday Daddy.
For the first card I used:

• 5x7 white card ( made mine from heavy cardstock)
• Cosmo Cricket yellow leaf paper
• Teresa Collins yellow and gray floral paper
• Silver paper
• Washi Tape
• Baker's Twine
• Charm

I trimmed the yellow leaf paper to 4.75x6.75 then trimmed the silver and floral papers to 4x6 and tore the edges of the floral paper. Wrapped coordinating baker's twine around this panel and tied a small silver charm to the middle.

Stamped the birthday candle and sentiment ( also Teresa Collins) using yellow inks on white paper scraps, trimmed w/ decorative edge scissors and mounted on paper scraps. Assembled card as show using foam dots to add the candle and sentiment panels. Dotted the candles with silver liquid pearls and added coordinating washi tape.

For the second card, construction was the same. This time I used the reverse side of the Teresa Collins paper , a washed yellow, with a damask print gray paper For the focal I used dimensional stickers by K&Co, and a coordinating piece of green washi tape to match the leaves. Finished with silver and white polka dotted washi tape.

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Bird's Nest Easter Cards

Sometimes the least expensive materials have the biggest impact. I saw potential in this “nest of eggs” stamp I found on sale at Michaels for $1.  It was perfect for my Easter cards.

For these cards I went back to my card making roots and stamped the nest on white paper with clear embossing ink and embossed with gold tinsel embossing powder. I went back and forth deciding whether to color the eggs in or ink up some papers before stamping,  but ultimately decided on the simplicity of a white and gold heat embossed image. I wanted a fresh Spring look so decided on Robin’s egg blue and Kraft papers.

I cut my 5x7 cards from plain white cardstock, then panels of the blue and kraft. Ran the blue panels through my Cuttlebug using a honeycomb embossing folder and then a scrap leftover from the card through a border folder from the same package. All by Cricut.

I mounted my embossed nests onto matching blue glitter paper by American Crafts , scraps from the kraft paper, and added a strip of gold metallic American Crafts glitter ribbon to the white embossed panel. Layered as shown and finished with a strip of gold and white washi tape.

I thought my cards needed just one more thing and remembered this fun shabby Melissa Frances ruffled ribbon I picked up at a scrapbook show, and made a bow from some color coordinated ribbon I had on hand.

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Silver and Navy Sympathy Card

I feel like I’ve had to make too many Sympathy cards lately. Not loving that. But I did need to make one more so here ‘tis and sharing how I did it. 

I decided on my card color combo in a backwards kind of way.  I received a bunch of supplies for a sponsored campaign last year (David Tutera Celebrate) which included some decorative phrase stickers like the one I chose as the focal for my card . Then I went to my scrapbook paper and picked a coordinating blue and white paper  (DCWV Tradewinds Stack) to use. Picked a couple more pre-cut pieces from my Celebrate stash. Supplies used:

• 5x7 silver card
• Pre-embossed grey panel
• Pre-embossed silver panel
• Smpathy focal sticker
• White Border
• Decorative paper

I cut the printed paper to 4.5x5.5, the embossed silver panel to 3x5 and the white border to 5 inches and layered them as shown:

.

Then I mounted the Sympathy focal to a piece of the grey embossed paper, layered onto a scrap of the patterned paper and layered once more on grey paper. Wrapped black and white baker’s twine around this before adding to the card using foam dots.

Finished off by adding a couple of fabric flowers ( Prima) .

I know a card won’t make up for the loss but hope that the receiver feels the love put into it.

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Semi-Homemade Mom

Celebrate National Crafts Month With A CutCardstock Giveaway!

I'm doubly excited today. First, it's National Crafts month which, in addition to being a recognition and celebration of my favorite thing next to chocolate, is also usually a month with lots of wonderful ideas and projects shared by all of our favorite companies. 

But I'm even more excited that March begins my term on the CutCardstock.com design team! I'm honored to be part of a team that includes some very talented papercrafters. 

To kick off the month, CutCardstock.com is hosting a giveaway of some of their products. The giveaway is on now through March 5th. Available to US only. 

Prize pack is valued at $45, and includes:

• Brown Bag Kraft A2, square flap envelopes (50 pack)
• Brown Bag Kraft A2 folded cards (25 pack)
• Flavours Gourmet 8.5 x 11 sampler cardstock (16 pack)
• Curious Metallic Cryogen White 8.5 x 11 cardstock (25 pack)
• Mini Dot-N-Go Glue Dots in dispenser (300 count roll)
• Kraft Print Chiyogami Origami paper (48 sheets)

You can enter to win on Facebook here: 

Be sure to follow the CutCardstock.com blog  and Facebook pages to see my projects and those of my fellow design team members. This is also where you'll also  find news about specials on some great products. 

Sunflower Card in Orange and Green

One of the reasons I like making cards so much is because they’re a  way to show someone you’re thinking about them. I feel like I can send some of myself along with the card and hopefully the recipient feels that.

We have a family friend who’s going through some health issues so I thought this card might brighten her day. I started with a Magenta brand Sunflower stamp which I stamped on white cardstock using black pigment ink.

I filled in the flowers with colored pencils and then went over lightly with a complementary alcohol ink pen. I used Spectrum Noir alcohol ink pens.

I chose an orange damask print paper and a green script paper, (both Recollections from Michaels) and covered the front of my 5x7 card as shown. I guess tearing paper is my “signature” card style.  Mounted my sunflower panel to scraps of the same papers, and finished with pieces of self adhesive scrapbook borders, coordinating ribbon, and a piece of washi tape.

Since I hate wasting pretty paper, I usually add some of it to the envelope. No reason the envelope can’t look nice too right?

Kraft and Yellow Sympathy Card

Unfortunately, Sympathy cards are a fact of life. I decided that they didn’t necessarily have to be bleak . It’s a fine line to bring some color into them and this muted palette of browns and yellows seemed to work.

My inspiration for this color combo came from a dimensional sticker from the David Tutera Celebrate It card collection.

I pulled out a coordinating yellow paper from my stash, and used some more of the David Tutera pieces ( pre-embossed brown and tan panels) and some brown Colorbok rub-ons I’d picked up on clearance for $.97.

Covered a blank card with the yellow panel, applied the rub ons, mounted the brown and tan panels, applied a rub on to the Sympathy sticker, embellished with coordinating washi tape and finished with an embossed chip board bird from my stash. Waste not want not, I also used scraps from the embossed brown panel to decorate the card.