Stampin up cards

Card Sketch: Blocked Christmas

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Card Sketch: Blocked Christmas

This week’s Card Sketch features designer paper again.  I wanted to get one last plug in for Stampin’ Up!’s Designer Series Paper Sale before it ends next Monday. So here’s my plug:  don’t forget about the sale!  Ha!  If you’re interested in getting 15% off of 9 of Stampin’ Up!’s fabulous designer series papers be sure to click here and check it out.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s get back to today’s card sketch!  I thought about trying this sketch with one of the papers that’s on sale but decided to try it with one of the brand new papers that you will be able to find in the Sale-a-bration Brochure next week.  This package of paper is called Peaceful Prints and is 12” X 12”.   There are lots of fun patterns in the package and it coordinates with the Peaceful Deer Bundle from the upcoming (Holiday) Mini Catalog!  Love that coordination!  😊

I did pretty well with this week’s sketch.  I only added one teeny tiny layer behind the designer paper to make it pop as well as adding the sentiment (from the Banner Year stamp set) to the small strip of paper.

When I work with papers that butt up against each other and need to be straight like on this sketch I like to start with a piece of cardstock the same size as my finished designer paper design will be.  On this card I started with a piece of Basic Black cardstock that was 3” x 4 ¼”.   I then cut two strips of designer paper that were 4 ¼” x 1 ½”.  I cut 1 ¼” off of each strip for the small section.  Then I adhered my papers to the Basic Black card stock piece. 

The layer of Basic White cardstock that I added is 4 3/8” x 3 1/8”.  Just enough of a border to make the designer paper pop.  The strip of Basic Black cardstock is 3 5/8” x 3/8”.  I heat embossed the sentiment with White Embossing Powder since it was on the black cardstock.  The sentiment strip is popped up with Mini Stampin’ Dimensionals.

This Card Sketch is a great design to highlight those gorgeous papers you have in your craft room.  You’ll just want to remember to stick with smaller patterns.  Have a great day!  Take care and Happy Stamping!

Make It Mine: Make It Simple!

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Those of you who have followed me for a while know that simple and Cindy don’t usually go together.  I’m all about layers with ribbon.  Despite the fact that I don’t do simple there was something about this card by Sue Vine that caught my attention.  I loved it and knew I wanted to share it with you.  What better way to share it than change it up, right?

Well, if you look close at the two cards you will see that I didn’t change a whole lot about Sue’s card.  I did change the color of the card base as well as the color of one of the inks.  Sue used a white card base and I used a Bermuda Bay card base.  The only other thing I changed was the color of the lighter ink.  The original card has Coastal Cabana as the light ink and I used Pool Party.  The only reason I switched this color up was that my Coastal Cabana was stamping too dark and if I stamped it off first it stamped too light.  Pool Party to the rescue!  😊

Biggest Wish

Sue and I both used the Biggest Wish stamp set.  It’s really a fun set to use.  There are only five different words in the set but they all come in both a block font and a script font.  It makes it fun to combine them as you can see on our cards.

I do have to admit that I was itching to emboss the front of card but I resisted.  Keep it simple!  Simple stamping is difficult for me but I do need to try it more.  The results can be stunning.

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping!

Fun Fold: Tri-Fold Card

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Check out this fun birthday card that my friend Tena made for me.  It’s an easy tri-fold card decorated with the Sweet Symmetry Designer Series Paper and the coordinating In Symmetry stamp set.  And it’s PINK! Yes, I still love my pink!  😊

The base of this card is quick and easy.  Start with a piece of cardstock that is 5 ½” x 11”.  Score along the long edge at 3 ¾” and 8”.  This makes it so that a little of the folded in right panel shows and is especially pretty when decorated with a coordinating piece of designer paper.

Tena layered her two piece of designer paper on to Flirty Flamingo cardstock to make it pop.  She did have to fussy-cut all of the flowers and greenery though.  Thanks Tena for putting so much time and effort into this lovely card!  Not only did Tena make a lovely card for me but she also decorated the envelope with the same designer series paper!

Do you love designer paper as much as I do?  Don’t forget that Stampin’ Up! has 9 different packages of designer paper on sale this month.  Don’t miss out!  There’s only a few weeks left of the sale!   Check out what’s on sale right here! 

Make It Mine: Beauty of the Earth

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Stampin’ Up! makes such beautiful paper that sometimes you just need to make it the focal point of your card.   The first card that I’m sharing here is the card that inspired me.  Simple, yet elegant.  I received this card in a swap and unfortunately there was no name on it so I don’t know who to credit.

The piece of designer paper used on this card is from the Beauty of the Earth package.  It is beautiful and layering it on Night of Navy cardstock makes it pop.  Those of you who have been around me for a while know that I have a hard time with “simple”.  I usually have to add layers and embellishments to my cards.  However it was the simplicity of this card that caught my eye and I knew I had to give it a try.

Beauty of the Earth Sympathy Card

If you look closely at my version of the card you will notice that this time I actually used one less layer!  What? I know, it’s pretty different for me.  I tried layering my version like the original but I felt that by just layering the designer paper and popping it up on the card base with Stampin’ Dimensionals kept the focus on the designer paper better.

On the original card the sentiment is stamped directly on to the Merry Merlot cardstock with Night of Navy ink.  I felt this was a little hard to read.  I didn’t want to stamp my sentiment on a label because I thought that that would fight with my designer paper focal point.  I thought I’d just try a strip of Basic White cardstock and tuck it under the focal point.  Guess what?  I LOVE it!  What do you think?  I am definitely going to have to try this little trick again.  It’s just enough to add a little something-something to the front of the card but not enough to detract from the focal point. 

Do you love designer paper as much as I do?  Don’t forget that Stampin’ Up! has 9 different packages of designer paper on sale this month.  Don’t miss out!  Check out what’s on sale right here! 

Fun Fold: Interlocking Gatefold Card

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Interlocking Gatefold Card
Interlocking Gatefold Card

Can you believe that I found another type of gatefold card?  There are SO many and they’re SO fun!  This fun fold isn’t too difficult, especially since I used the Stitched Rectangles Dies to make my interlocking pieces.  What’s really fun about this fun fold is that you can use any kind of shape(s) to make your interlocking pieces!

The base of my card is the usual for a gatefold card. 5 ½” x 8 ½”.  Score in from each short side at 2 1/8” and make sure the sides meet in the middle of the card base when you fold both sides in towards the center.

The frame of my card is made from Stampin’ Up!’s gorgeous Beauty of the Earth Designer Series Paper.  (Yes, this is one of the patterns that is on sale this month!).  To give my frame a little extra support I adhered a piece of the designer paper to a piece of Basic White cardstock before die cutting.  To make the frame I chose two different sized rectangles.  I first die cut the inside of the frame with the rectangle that is the 5th largest (outside measures about 2 3/8” x 3 ¾”).  Then I centered the 3rd largest frame (outside measure about 3 1/8” x 4 ½”) around the opening I had created.  When you go to adhere the frame to the card remember that you only want to adhere the left side of the frame to the left flap on the front of the card.

The solid Basic White piece that interlocks with the frame was also die cut from the 3rd largest rectangle of the Stitched Rectangle Dies.  The stitched design I added to this piece of Basic White cardstock is a border piece from the Stitched Leaves Dies.  I die cut the leaf using the same die set.  It is die-cut from another piece of designer paper from the Beauty of the Earth package.  I love gorgeous paper!

When I adhered the right side of the Basic White piece of cardstock to the right flap of the card base I had the card closed so that I could make sure that it fit perfectly inside of the die-cut frame.  Then I added the die-cut leaf and decorated with a piece of linen thread.  Done!  Oh…in the last picture did you notice that I added a little strip of designer paper to the piece of cardstock on the inside of the card?  Don’t forget to decorate the inside!

Interlocking Gatefold Card

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping!

Make It Mine: Party Puffins Birthday

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July is birthday month!  Yep, I’m having another birthday and we’re going to celebrate.  I’m going to share a birthday card with you that I made my own but first I want to share something I’m going to do for you! 

Send me a handmade birthday card this month and your name will be entered in a drawing.  The first person’s name that I draw will get to choose a current Stampin’ Up! stamp set (valued at $30 or less).  The second person’s name that I draw will get to choose a kit from Stampin’ Up!’s new Kit Collection!  How fun!  Birthday cards can be mailed to me at:

Cindy Russell 1640 Mountain Maple Ave. Highlands Ranch,  CO  80129

Let’s get to our cards today!

Here’s a birthday card that I received in a swap.  These Party Puffins are SO cute!  This stamp set makes the best birthday cards!  Thank you Kim for the inspiration with your card.  I stayed pretty true to Kim’s card design just changing up the color scheme and the arrangement of the layers.  I also left off the ribbon and moved the sentiment to the inside of the card.

Kim and I both used the Pattern Party package of designer paper that is only available for hosts with Stampin’ Rewards.  It’s one of my favorite papers in the new catalog! One of my favorite things about this package of paper is that one side is bright colors while the second side is black and white. So versatile!

Is it weird to admit that the little fish on the inside of the card is my favorite part of the card? Ha! Too cute!

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping!

Fun Fold: Diamond Gatefold Card

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Artistically Inked Diamond Gatefold Card

This card definitely looks like a WOW but is actually quite easy to make.  Four score lines and two cuts.  Once you have those done your card base is ready.  Add a focal point and some cardstock to the inside of the card to write your message and your card is done!  I used the Artistically Inked stamp set and the Expressions in Ink designer series paper. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Before I get into the basics of making this fun fold I want to share a little tip. In my opinion, when I stamped the flower with the Pale Papaya ink it was a little too bright. The flowers in the designer paper seemed a little darker in color and I wanted my die-cut flower and my paper to match better. What I did was I first inked up the flower in Crumb Cake ink and then I stamped off on my scrap paper 2-3 times leaving just a bit of the Crumb Cake ink on the stamp. After stamping the flower on my cardstock I cleaned off the stamp, inked it in the Pale Papaya ink and stamped directly on top of the Crumb Cake flower. It turned out exactly how I wanted!

Now on to the basics for creating this fun fold! You can find a complete tutorial for this fun fold here.  Below you will find some tips on making the card.

Template for Diamond Gatefold Card

Above you can see the basic template for your card.  Start with a 5 ½” x 12” piece of designer paper.  The key here is to make sure both sides of the cardstock coordinate well together.  Only one side of your designer paper can be directional.  This would be things like trees or flowers with a stem that might not look good upside down.  If you do use a directional pattern on one of the sides of your paper you want to make sure this is the side that is on the “inside” of the card.  When scoring and cutting your paper you want this side facing up.

Once you’ve decided which side of the designer paper should be on the inside of your card place this side up on your Simply Scored tool and score at 2”, 4”, 8” and 10”.  The next step is to trim off the corners according to the template.  Make sure you know which corner was cut from which side.  Take the corner you cut from the left side, flip it over and adhere it to the lower left corner of the paper.  Repeat with the right side.  Now decorate your card!

Diamond Gatefold Card Open

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping!

Pretty Perennials Card Sketch

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It’s Card Sketch Day! I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I’m having with these. I spent a whole day last weekend playing with them.

These card sketches are great because they get me searching all the stamp sets on my shelf to find the right one to use with the sketch I’m working with.

The Freshly Made Sketches website that I’m getting my sketches from runs a contest each week with that week’s sketch. Then the next week they publish the winning card along with the others that were submitted. This gives you a lot of inspiration on where to start.

Pretty Perennials

Here is the card I came up with for this sketch. The words are from the Pretty Perennials stamp set which is retiring on June 30th. The designer paper is from the Pattern Party paper set which is a host only pack.

I did change up the sketch a bit by changing the orientation of the card as well as adding layers and an extra focal point (happy) to my card.

Once again I want to encourage you to give card sketches a try. They are fun and a little addicting. Ha!

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping!

Make It Mine: Hey Chick

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Hey Chick

Before I get into the details of todays card(s) I want to remind you that June 30th is the very last day that you can order the Hey Chick stamp set, the Chick Dies or the bundle that includes both items. Don’t miss out on these fun items!

But back to our originally scheduled post….

As I was searching for a card made with the Hey Chick Bundle I came across this card. I really liked the unique layout and thought I’d give it a try.

Hey Chick

It’s kind of funny, but the thing I really liked about the original card is the first thing I changed on mine. On the original, I liked that everything in the background was the same color. Since I couldn’t decide what color I would use I just switched everything up.

I made my chicken wire die out of Smoky Slate cardstock and used a wood pattern from the In Good Taste Designer Paper on my card. Of course, I added a layer too.

Even though I left my chicken white it still pops against the background since I embossed it with the Tasteful Texture Embossing Folder.

How would you have made the original card yours? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping! Don’t forget to grab the Hey Chick Bundle before it’s gone!

Card Sketch: Hey Birthday Chick

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It’s time for this week’s card sketch. I know this is only the second one I’ve done but it’s kind of fun. It can definitely be a challenge too. The sketch looks simple enough but then I need to figure out which of my supplies to use.

The first thing I did after deciding on this sketch was to find a stamp/die that would fill most of the white space on the sketch. After browsing my shelf of stamps I chose Hey Birthday Chick with the adorable chicken being lifted in the air by a balloon.

As you can see, I added a couple of layers to the card. My sentiment is a bit lower as I didn’t want to cover up the adorable chicken. Other than that I kept pretty close to the card sketch. I used a blending brush to lightly add Bermuda Bay ink for the sky.

Have you tried working with card sketches yet? Give this one a try and then either post your photo in the comments below or email me (cindy@stampbystampcreations.com) a photo of your card. I’d love to see what you come up with!

Have a great day! Take care and Happy Stamping!