Clean & Simple Card Making: Lessons 1 & 2

Dear Reader,

I am currently enrolled in the Clean & Simple Card Making class at Online Card Classes.  Last night when I should have been going to sleep (in fact I put the dogs to bed and they happily slept without me), I went into the studio to catch up on the videos for the class and try my hand at the lessons.  I was really inspired by Julie Ebersole's (I really loved her video and I hope she does more videos in which she talks as she has such great energy and an infectious laugh) one layer cards so I tried my hand at that first.

This card should have been a breeze and once I figured out exactly what I wanted to do, it was.  With full disclosure, I ended up making it 3 times.  The first time I used too heavy of a hand with the background and hearts.  The second time it turned out well with a simpler background and only one heart, but I didn't like the size of the card.  The last time was the charm.

I wanted to create a Valentine's card with the cute plane from Bon Voyage by Lawn Fawn and have a banner sign being pulled by it with a customized sentiment.  I love all of the abcs by Lawn Fawn as they are designed to make it easy to stamp any word or sentiment you desire.  I wanted to stamp "sending" so I used my Smitty's ABCs and paired that with the sweet "love" from Sophie's Sentiments (suggestion: if you are new to Lawn Fawn start with Sophie's Sentiments along with whatever other stamp sets catch your fancy) and then added a little heart from Cruising Through Life in red for a little interest and drama (in the future I may fill in the heart with stickles or just a marker or emboss it, but I wanted this card to be a simple stamp and ink card).  The banner is a two sided ribbon banner from Bannerific, but I wanted one side to be plain so I simply removed the ink from one edge of the inked up stamp and once stamped filled in the area with a marker as I wanted it and added the attachment to the plane.  I stamped the banner and plane first, then masked them off before stamping the cloud background.  Lastly, I rounded the bottom right corner.

The second card I made uses one of the simple sketches by Kristina Werner.  I needed a masculine birthday card so I grabbed my Oxford 6x6 patterned paper pad by Basic Grey.  Stuck in there was a strip of the claret colored paper I had left over from a previous card so that was my jumping off point.  I began with a white card and stamped the Dash Pattern background stamp by Basic Grey/Hero Arts, but after adding the plaid strip of paper over the claret the white wasn't right so I colored all the white cardstock using my Antique Linen Distress Ink.  As my card is for a relative that has an interest in cars I used the vintage car from the Going stamp set by Hero Arts on a circle cut using a Spellbinders' die and also decided to also use the "to arrow" image in the set for further interest and to begin a sentiment.  I embossed the "to arrow" stamp and filled in the unembossed section with Shabby Shutters Distress Ink with white embossing powder, but since I changed the color scheme away from bright white I colored over the white embossed image with some Copic markers.  Usually I would have used some dimensional adhesive on a card, but I wanted to go away from my usual modus operandi (can you tell I have been reading some mystery novels?) on this card.  I added a "u" sticker from Studio Calico and rounded the bottom corners of the card.

Thanks for stopping by! 

Happy creating,
Shay.

{sending love card}

stamps: (sending)smitty's abcs, (plane&cloud)bon voyage, (heart)cruising through life, (love)sophie's sentiments; banner(bannerific), Lawn Fawn

ink: tuxedo black, Memento; soap powder & cough syrup, Jenni Bowlin for Ranger

cardstock: white, Georgia Pacific

marker: soft black memory marker, American Crafts

other: crop-a-dile corner chomper, We R Memory Keepers

{to u card}

stamps: (to arrow&car)going, Hero Arts; dash pattern, Basic Grey/Hero Arts

ink: tuxedo black, Memento; shabby shutter, antique linen & black soot, Tim Holtz Distress Ink by Ranger; weather vane, Jenni Bowlin for Ranger; versamark, Tsukineko

embossing powder: opaque white, Judi Kins

cardstock: white, Georgia Pacific

patterned paper: oxford 6x6 paper pad, Basic Grey

markers: Copic
die: from nesties classic & standard circles nestabilities set, Spellbinders

stickers: u from documentary collection alphabet stickers, Studio Calico

other: crop-a-dile corner chomper, We R Memory Keepers; cuttlebug, Provo Craft