It's That Time of Year

 I bet you thought I was going to say Christmas! In reality though I always think in school years! I think having been a teacher for so many years, my year starts in September and ends in August. So, I am making some cute teacher cards for some friends for this year. Tah dah!

First things first, lots of coloring of pencils and fussy cutting...Fussy cutting is not my favorite friend, but these pencils were a a great find at the Dollar Store, Crafter's Square  has some great surprises if you're willing to fussy cut.  I found a real "silver" alcohol marker at Hobby Lobby with the Master's Touch brand. 

This paper is ADORABLE. It's American Crafts find from JoAnn Fabrics. I peruse lots of stores...

Cut a circle for my shaker window, add some plastic to the back and I actually doubled my dimensional foam for making the shaker taller so the pencils could move better.

Find cute yellow card stock for details, although this photo really doesn't look yellow, but it really is! 

How cute! The sentiment is Brutus Monroe, such a great one for this time of the year. To often teacher's don't get to hear how much they matter. Happy Teaching!

Deceivingly Simple Looking Card

 

So it would look like a card you just die cut a flower some letters make a frame and bam you're done! However, if you look closely that flower is paper piecing.

Paper piecing!? What's that? It's a method of die cutting an image twice (or more) and piecing together the pieces to make one image. In this case I die cut the Gina K. flower in holographic silver and in black. I then took each piece from silver and put it inside the black flower outline so that it would stand out. It is time consuming similar to those gem pictures, but the look is lovely!

Phoenix Rising Card

I created an IG hop based on fantasy ideas. For August I chose for the group to do a phoenix. Now I have NO feather stamps or phoenix stamps but the idea of flames and heat and August just seemed like it belonged so I went for it. 

This definitely stretched my creative brain! I have one feather looking die cut and that's the Sun Flare die by Hero Arts. So I had already tried some die cut versions and it just wasn't coming together so I thought maybe I could get that same shape with stamping foam!

So I took the stamping foam and made an impression of the die and then stamped it and heat embossed it with ruby red embossing powder. I love the sparkle although it's just not quite captured right on camera. I lined the card with dimensional adhesive and added sequins. 

Next step was to make a window to go on the top of the card. I cut out a red frame and gold frame and backed it with plastic wrapping leftover from craft packaging. I was pretty pleased but felt it was missing something...

So in the final version you can see I added a ribbon embellishment before adding it to the card backer as well as I added one of the Tim Holtz quote seals. I LOVE his metal quotes they add so much to any paper project. 

Stained Glass Card

 

This card was SUPER simple to make! You can take any fun cad overlay die and cut it out in black card stock. Step one done! Two I used the holographic paper and mounted it as a background on an A2 card. I placed dimensional tape around the outside of the A2 card base and then filled the inside with beautiful rainbow sparkle sequins. I'm pretty sure this was a set of sequins from Michaels. If you go to the kids craft section instead of cards / scrapbooking sometimes you can find some bright sequins and shaker bits that aren't in the other section.

So to finish the top of the card I hand cut a rectangle out of a second piece of holographic paper making the frame that you see in the picture. So then I took dot adhesive (it's faster than using detail glue) and used it on the back of the black diecut cardstock, attached it to the frame holographic paper, and then attached those to a piece of plastic wrapper from one of my stamp packages. I then last placed that on top of the shaker card with the dimensional adhesive and sequins. It really was a fast card to make. I think this one really packs a pop though with all the colors!