it's my oasis

Tone on Tone Trials

2012-01-20T09:58:00.000-05:00

I tried another card technique from the CAS class. This time multiple die cuts were cut from coloured cardstock and placed on a card front of the same colour- tone on tone. Jennifer said in her video that she cut one die cut from the coloured cardstock but cut the remaining die cuts from white so that she did not waste her coloured paper, but I had lots of red as it was recently on sale at Michael's so I wasn't worried about using a lot of it.
With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to make a few cards.
Here are 3 cards with slightly different approaches.

The card on the far left was made using multiple cuts of Je t'aime (from the Cricut cartridge Ashlyn's Alphabet) from red cardstock, then secured to a red piece of cardstock which was then adhered to a white card. I liked it but... The card on the far right was also cut from multiple layers of red cardstock but this time I covered the front of the die cuts with Ranger's Glossy Accents-nice and shiny. This gave it a little more pizazz. Because the die cuts were shiny I thought the card base should be as well so used a glossy piece of cardstock this time. Not too bad!

The most interesting and most effective card is the middle one. I went with card base and first layer cut from pearlized red card stock and cut the remaining layers from white cardstock as Jennifer suggested. Magnificent! The white cardstock is the way to go for under layers :) The Te Amo and butterfly are also cuts available on Ashlyn's Alphabet.

I will be using this technique again.

Hello Friend from CAS Day 5

2012-01-15T16:06:00.000-05:00

Thought I would give Jennifer's Wet Inking Technique a try. Here is the result.

I am unsure if I am going to add a banner sentiment or not... or just wait to see how the inside of the card develops.In this image it is hard to tell that the card has a pearlized finish. Below demonstrated this a little better.

Cheers!

2012-01-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

Although this looks like a New Years card (because I used the New Years stamp from Studio G) I think I may be able to get away with using it for an anniversary card. What do you think?

Clean and Simple Card Class

2012-01-15T12:03:00.000-05:00

I signed up for another one of Kristina, Jennifer and Julie's card classes called Clean and Simple Cards (CAS). I have not been able to participate as much as I would like because my school assignments are dominating my time. I did however, manage to escape to my scrapping room for a few hours last night. Here is what I came up with.

This is the inside of the card. I have recently changed my thinking about the inside of cards; I like to embellish them as well.

Merry & Bright

2012-01-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

DH's Christmas card My hubby wanted new sunglasses for Christmas, although I knew what type he wanted I didn't feel comfortable picking them out for him so I created this card that contained a gift card. I used the Doodlecharms Cricut cartridge for the multiple sun images and freehanded the remaining pieces. I added some Spiced Marmalade Distress ink to soften the edges. The doodle dots and smile were drawn with an embossing pen from Sukura.The sentiment on the inside was stamped with Versamark and the heat embossed with silver. The part of the card holding the gift card could have been better but I was running out of time and I knew it would not bother hubby at all that the holder didn't match.

Experimenting with stamps and embossing powder

2012-01-01T19:44:00.000-05:00

I recently bought a couple of stamps at my LSS because I liked the images but when I got them home I thought, "how do I stamp with these?" Well with a little bit of embossing powder, some distress inks and two kinds of paper- white glossy card stock and a patterned piece of card stock here is what I have come up with. When I make them into cards I will post again.

The image above was created by putting Versamark on my Cuttlebug emossing folder and then covering the image with midnight black embossing powder. My hope was that only the recessed part would have embossing powder but it didn't work out that way. However, I like the look that was left after heat embossing. I then used distress inks and rubbed various colours over the remaining white areas . Now to come up with a card design to apply it to :)

Frosty and the Christmas Trees

2011-12-17T21:39:00.000-05:00

Finally more time to make and post cards for Christmas. The crunch is on with a week left and still more cards to make... oh boy better get cracking!
The Frosty card was inspired by a Kristina Werner design here

The Christmas Tree cards were inspired from a technique learned at Holiday Card Boot Camp 2011

These trees are rally easy and are a lot of fun to make especially with double sided paper :)

peace

2011-11-14T19:56:00.000-05:00

One of the techiques from Holiday Card Boot Camp just wasn't working out for me. I was attempting as Jennifer McGuire suggested, to use the supplies I had at home instead of buying new stuff. The snowflake embossing folder I have is too busy for my liking, but I went ahead and tried to blend Broken China and Faded Blue Jeans distress inks and then spritz with pearlized water.

It doesn't look too bad but I just wasn't happy with it, so I altered it. I took a snowflake stamp stamped it with Versamark on water colour paper and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. I once again tried the two blue distress inks and spritzed with pearlized water. This I liked better.

I mounted the snowflake image on thick silver metallic cardstock and embellished with punched snowflakes using Martha Stewart punches. The "peace" wording was cut from the Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge.

I like how this card turned out but I have to wonder if I should of framed the snowflake image with blue cardstock. As you can see below it is very shiney, perhaps it needs to be grounded.

folded Christmas trees

2011-11-10T20:13:00.000-05:00

This is a cool way to make a Christmas tree using two sided paper. The trees were made from a 4" circle cut in half and folded back and forth. They really look great! This picture is rather dark- my camera I think is slowly dying. Perhaps Santa will bring me a new one ;) I was also disappointed on the embossed sentiment on the bottom, it was suppose to be white (it's called snow) but it looks more like dirty slush.
I'll try it again maybe I did something wrong or may be it's the paper.

Hanging Star

2011-11-10T19:28:00.000-05:00

Another Boot Camp creation. I am really having fun with these cards. I cut the branch and leaves with my Cricut using the Winterwoodland cartridge. The card base was embossed with the Cuttlebug but I cannot remember the name of the folder and it isn't written on the embossing plate. OOPS. The star from the George and Basic shape cartridge was cut from metallic red cardstock from Michael's. The bow is just a piece of silver cording I had in my stash.

Well off to finish some homework.

Cherish Family photo card

2011-11-09T19:37:00.000-05:00

Day Two of Holiday Boot Camp had us create a card with a family photo. The object was for the photo to be removable so that it could be put on the fridge, in a fame or a scrapbook after Christmas. My daughter took this picture of my brother, sister-in-law and neice at Thanksgiving. Cute isn't it?
I made my card so that it had a plastic pocket on the front to put the card in. This also allowed me to stamp a sentiment on the plastic. I also embellished it with some pearls and fir tree branches. The background of the main card was stamped using Versamark and a polka dot stamp.
I think I will try another one but this time with snowflakes.

Holiday Boot Camp

2011-11-08T11:04:00.000-05:00

I am participating in the Holiday Boot Camp put on by Kristina Werner and Jennifer McGuire. Here is my interpretation of card one. I don't have a Silhouette so I couldn't use the file supplied by Kristina but I do have a Cricut. I used the doily cut on the Reminisce Accent cartridge (available from a Creative Memories consultant).
If I was to create this card again I would make the border on the Kraft cardstock a little darker as it dried lighter than I anticipated.

so happy for you

2011-08-26T17:49:00.000-04:00

My friend Elizabeth just got a new job so we are going out to celebrate. This warrants a card :)
Here is another technique I learned from the Summer Card Camp.

I stamped the butterfly with versamark ink on white cardstock and then applied white embossing power. Next I used make-up sponges dabbed in orange, yellow and green chalk inks and kept blending until I reached the desired effect. I cut the butterfly out and added pop dots to the back. The background is a piece of pale yellow vellum which I ran through the cuttlebug using swiss dots folder. The corners of the card are adorned with pearls and connected with a squiggle line using a white gel pen. I frayed the ends of the grosgrain ribbon to add texture and the top ribbon was just adhered to the card. I am very happy with the way this turned out and most likely I will be making more of these.

Sweet Friend

2011-08-20T10:13:00.000-04:00

I have been absent from my scrapping room for far too long, so I am going to make a conscious effort to get back into it. I recently subscribed to the Summer Card Camp 2011 of Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner (my heroes). I missed the actual camp but purchase PDFs last week. What great ideas they shared!Here is my attempt at one of the techniques- Letterpress.

Notice the little accident I had with the green ink. What to do, what to do? Cover it up of course!!!

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos but my camera has been acting up.

I also had to make an envelope because the card was so thick that it wouldn't fit in a regular one.

Here is what I came up with. I rather like it if I do say so myself.

I gave the card to my friend and colleague Angie who shares the same birthday as me and she loved it!! That's what I love most about cardmaking, the joy it brings to others. =)

Heartfelt Sympathy

2011-04-25T18:30:00.001-04:00

It's never nice when you need to send a sympathy card but here is one I made for a friend , it's simple and sincere.

Easter Treat Bucket

2011-04-22T17:02:00.000-04:00

Here us a little something I made today for my nieces for Easter. My inspiration came from Charlene (mycraftpaperscissors.blogspot.com) on Splitcoaststampers. These were easy to make especially using my trusty Cricut, cartidges- George & Basic Shapes and From My Kitchen. I think this project is a keeper.
I hope Chloe, Evelyn and Elizabeth like them and the little egg treats inside. After Easter I thought they could use them to hold crayons or their hair ornaments.

How to make Elmo pop!!

2009-12-30T10:01:00.001-05:00

I had a question on the Cricut MB asking how to make Elmo pop. I am visual learner so here are the steps with photos. The card is made with two bases, an outer and an inner. These are directions for the inner card base. Click on the photo for enlarged directions.

from the back

from the front.

To make the card, decorate the inner base and then secure to the outer base which will cover the flap you made for the pop up.

Good luck have fun!

For more advanced pop up cards visit http://extremecards.blogspot.com/

Hip, hip, hooray Elmo birthday card

2009-12-06T08:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my niece Chloe turned 2. This little ball of energy is totally in love with Elmo. So what other choice did I have but to make her an Elmo birthday card. I liked the image of Elmo, from the Sesame Street Friends Cricut cartridge jumping and clicking his heels. It gave me the feeling of Elmo celebrating. My dilemma though was how to make it feel like he was jumping up in the air in celebration. The solution was to use his image as a pop up card. I'm happy with how he turned out for a first time effort. I used a double thickness of popdots on the "2" for more dimension. I also used different thicknesses of popdots on the front of card to make the hip and hooray stand out too. After taking these photos and looking closely at them I realized that even though the front had dimension because of the popdots, it still looked flat to me. I then took a white gel pen and drew doodle dots on the letters. It was a big improvement but unfortunately I was running late and didn't take another photo. Maybe I'll ask my SIL to send one to me.

Look at the BD cake my brother decorated for his little girl. Now THAT is sweet!!

Christmas Ornament Boxes

2009-12-05T07:49:00.000-05:00

Every year for the past two years I give an ornament to to each of my nieces for Christmas. It was something one of my aunts did when I was young. I was very appreciative of that when I got my own house and put up my own tree. I have two nieces who are 2 years old and one niece who is 10 months. I also decided this year to make a box to put the ornaments in to make them extra special. I didn't have a plan on how to decorate them when I first started so just kept staring and staring at the ornaments when it hit me, decorate the box according to the theme of the ornament. So here they are. Sorry the photo quality is not the best. I am still learning how to photograph my creations.To make the boxes I followed the directions for a Gable Box from the Splitcoaststamper website and added a little creative license. Since making these I have made others and changed the dimensions to get a larger box.

Giving it the old college try!

2009-10-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

Well I'm finally going to give this blogging thing a try. I am not really sure of what to do, so don't laugh as your viewing this. Remember I am a neophyte.
I have been interested in papercrafting for the past 5 years. It started out as scrapbooking ( I have only completed 1 book, but books are ongoing right?) my real love is cardmaking and gift boxes and bags. I am always looking for unusual boxes and bags. I like to change it up to and not always for their intended use. I have recently become the card lady and poster lady at work for people retiring or moving on to other jobs. Because we have a huge amount of staff, I have used squash albums and explosion boxes for cards since they provide lots of space for sentiments and signatures. The posters could not be done without my trusty Cricut Expressions. Man I love that machine!! and my DH for giving it to me for Christmas. I was the envy of all my scrapping friends. Unfortunately my hubby took a lot of heat from the other guys for being such a super husband.