Die Cuts Can Change Seasons through the Power of Paper!

 I LOVE paper. I also have way more paper than I will ever use in my lifetime probably. I also have a fairly small stash of card making die cuts and stamps. Since I was a scrapbooker first, my card stock just massively outweighs everything else.

With this in mind paper has the power to change everything. I have this beautiful cherry blossom panel die cut, and I thought why do I have to make cherry blossoms any flower would be beautiful with this die cut and I have so many Halloween cardstock papers.

This is probably one of my favorite Halloween cards. Look how pretty those flowers are!! The cute embellishments are gems from Buttons and Galore. I added a little gold shimmer to a scalloped embossed background, it reminded me of house shingles, so I was thinking of a witches hut. I love how straight forward this was though and how just using Halloween paper turned my spring die to a anytime die.

Happy Crafting! Barbara

Witches and Cauldrons

 

So, I started making cards in the fall of 2022. Halloween was actually my first card holiday. I had some cards that I now wince at and just can't bring myself to send out. Sooooo, I decided hey I could do a fun "fixer upper" . Maybe take a before picture and then do my best to make it look better so I could send it out for Halloween 2023. So here it is!!

BEFORE

AFTER

So I think it's important to not underestimate the power of a white gel pen apparently. The cauldron looks better with the definition. The really badly embossed sentiment just had to go replaced with a much nicer stamped embellishment. Not much I could do without ruining the card to fix the layering of the cardstock, so I added dimension and texture with fabric paint to match the cauldron goop. The bigger green ribbon really helps to fill in the space at the bottom of the card as well. So much better!! Still not my favorite card, but I think there are some clear improvements!

Happy Halloween Card Making! Barbara

Teacher Time

 So making cards for teachers when I don't have a kiddo felt weird at first, but then I realized why!? I am a teacher and I want teachers to realize someone is thinking about them and wishing them a happy school year and empathizes with them.

Teachers I believe are seriously underappreciated. I loved my You Matter card, this one is a little different but has the same happy teacher vibes. 

BOOM! I had to zoom this one in so you can read the pretty message! So this is a slider card, each pencil has a dimension adhesive attaching it to the strip so that you can pull the tabs and the pencil moves over showing words underneath. The hardest part actually was lining up the paper underneath the die cut slots so that it looked like the paper was put together. I took two identical pieces of this paper and cut them to size so that the one underneath was the same as the one on top, it made lining things up easier. The other paper I used was Crayola. I mean Crayola is just the best and their scrapbook / card making paper pad is so vibrant, that I have a hard time using the paper because I love it so much I don't want to mess it up! 

Hope everyone is off to a good school year! Remember to be kind to those teachers! Barbara

Leaf Peeping

 Have you ever heard of leaf peeping? Probably depends on where you live. Leaf Peeping is like walking through the woods and enjoying or looking for the leaves as the colors change. The North and the Midwest are especially beautiful during this time of year. 

Leaves have so much color which is fun to play with for making cards, I took all of my orange and brown distress sprays and just went to town making pretty paper. I also added a mica spray because I LOVE to add a little sparkle. 

Next time to cut out lots and lots of leaves. 

Here is my leaf pile for the bottom of my card, then I picked two leaves to add some interactive elements.

First interactive element is a slider. If I'm making a falling leaf card I really wanted to have a leaf that would slide down. I added two levels of dimensional foam so that if you pick the card up the leaf would fall into the pile. To make the slider was pretty straight forward. Die cut your slider spot, then cut a circle of paper. Add dimensional adhesive to the leaf and then just add the circle to the dimensional adhesive on the other side of the slider hole on the paper. I really should make a little video, it's super easy once you've seen it done. 

I then added a wobbler leaf because this also seemed like the perfect leaf interaction for falling leaves. Throw on the Papertrey Ink sentiment and ta dah! Super cute fall card!

Harry Potter Day Four - Slytherin

 Last but never least is Slytherin. Seriously a misunderstood house. I mean think about it, if they were so terrible they wouldn't have been a founder with friends from all the other houses. Nothing wrong with being strong or having power if you use it the right way. 

The techniques were the same, paper piecing can get to be a lot so I suspect I will take a paper piecing break for a while after this. At least they were really big pieces! It is a fun technique for paper and I do feel like this reminds me of the banners in Quidditch. Well I used all four of my chipboard pieces from my Warner Brother's Scrapbook pack, so these will just got to be unique cards. Now if I can ever get myself to give them up! 

Harry Potter Day Three - Gryffindor

 

Although this isn't my favorite house, I do love the colors. I also love that this picture layout reminds me of Christmas. I always think of Harry Potter as a Christmas movie. It's so cozy with fall and cozy winter scenes. Definitely a good time of year to watch all of the movies! 

As appropriate they get a quote about adventure, they may not always make the best choices, but it is definitely always an adventure!

Harry Potter Day Two

 

Who doesn't love nifflers!? They are just so cute and since Newt Scamander is a Hufflepuff it seemed appropriate to use his two books for photos. Although not my absolute number one house, a close second. 

Similar to the Ravenclaw cards I used double sided adhesive to cut the yellow die cut so that it was super easy to put on matching yellow cardstock. All of my cards feature the Tim Holtz Metallic Words, they are a fantastic size and there are so many to choose from! 

Harry Potter Day One

So this is day one of my Harry Potter set! I love Harry Potter and I host a fantasy IG hop so when this month's theme was "Magic Books" my mind instantly went to Harry Potter. 

This is one of those cards that again looks simple but took some time! So I had to die- cut bronze (the REAL Ravenclaw color) and die-cut the blue, and then paper piece the bronze into the blue. However the netting is SO thin that I knew I didn't want to use glue or adhesive to back it on matching paper. This meant I used double sided adhesive paper. I use scrapbook.com's for most of my hard to glue die pieces. Searching for the perfect quotes is probably one of my favorite parts of the whole project, this one of course seemed perfect for the house. If you ever feel stumped for cards or scrapbook pages I strongly recommend Tim Holtz's small talk or any of his sentiment strips. The last piece is the chipboard which is from an ancient scrapbooking set I have from scrapbooking my trip to the Warner Brother's Studio in London. 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a magical day!