MFT Stamps Christmas Card Sets

Holy. Moly. Has it really been over a year since I last posted in here?! I can't believe I haven't found the time to come back and let you all know what I've been working on!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I no longer have a craft room. A few months ago I decided that just because I didn't have my own craft room anymore, that didn't mean I had to give up completely! I still posted projects every once in a while, but nothing big, and I mostly did it through Instagram since it is so much easier to post a project then write up an entire blog post! I realize that not everyone has instagram though, so I am hoping to share more on here now that I've got everything set back up! Now that the days are a lot cooler, it is easier to just craft here in the garage, so I've got everything out again and am happy to say that I've spent the last month or so happily crafting again!

Which brings me to what I would like to share today. I ordered the MFT Jingle All the Way and Santas Elves last year but didn't get to use them too often. I brought them out again this year because they are just too darn cute! I made 2 card sets. Each set is exactly the same, and I loved the layout of this card here and decided to give it a try.

I used different sentiments from Hero Arts and Recollections stamp sets. I stamped all the images with Versafine Onyx Black ink and clear embossed them, then cut them out with my Brother Scan and Cut. By the way, if you haven't invested in a Brother Scan and Cut yet, IT IS WORTH IT. I cannot tell you how awesome it is to not have to buy the matching, super expensive (and sometimes more expensive than the stamp set itself!) die sets. The machine scans and then cuts out all the images, even the little tiny ones! Super cool and takes no time at all!

I've made lots of others things recently, mostly to put up in my Etsy Shop, so if you're interested to see what else I've been working on, just head over to my Etsy Shop and take a peek!

If you are reading this post right now, I cannot tell you how much it means to me that you've kept me as a follower or are still following me, even though I've been a lousy blog-poster this year! I really hope to post more, thank you so much for visiting!

Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #261

Good morning fellow crafters! I've missed you! It's been a long time since I have visited my blog here to post anything creative. Truth is, I haven't been able to make anything in a really long time.

I've got 2 daughters and we all decided it was a good idea for them to get their own bedrooms. They've always shared a room together but as they are getting older they need their space. So, I had to give up my craft room. It was the hardest decision I ever made. I was having anxiety attacks just packing things away, not knowing when I would be able to use them again. This past couple of weeks I was able to go through some boxes and organize some of things that I know I use often so that I could start making things again. So for now I've been taking things out to use here and there and just using them in the dining room. They are easily accessible and easy to put away. I do miss having a craft room, it was so much easier to craft and not worry about putting things away until a project was done, but at least I can say now that I am making things again!

So for this week's Papertrey Ink Make it Monday challenge over on Nicole Heady's blog, the challenge is to make a masculine floral card. I went through all my floral stamps (which isn't many) and couldn't find anything that I thought would look okay with masculine colors. I decided to make an Asian-inspired Thank You card using Inkadinkado's Asian Influences stamp set and Fiskars Asian Inspired stamp set. I know I had to include something from Papertrey Ink in order to make the challenge count, so I added a small Thank you sentiment from Papertrey Ink's Fillable Frames Additions stamp set.

I wanted to include the Cherry Blossoms on the card without making them stand out to much and without having to color them pink, so I decided to stamp out a background on Old Olive cardstock, adhered that to a black cardstock base, and added that to a Kraft cardstock card base. I actually like the way the card turned out, even for my first card made in months and months! You don't see many Asian-inspired cards made.

I hope I can continue to create more cards and projects soon, I might not post so much here on the blog unless it is for a challenge, otherwise I will most likely post up on Instagram. Thanks so much for stopping by, have a great day!

2 Challenge Birthday Coffee Card

Good afternoon fellow crafters! Hope you are all having a great week so far! I am going to make this post short because we are headed out, but I quickly wanted to share with you a card I made for the Papertrey Ink Make it Monday Challenge and the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.

The challenge for Papertrey Ink is to Create Your Own Border and the challenge for Simon Says Stamp is Coffee or Tea? For my card, I used a Kraft cardstock base and the Papertrey Ink Latte Love stamp set. I stamped my "border" in 5 different American Crafts Stamp markers (Cranberry, Leaf, Mustard, Wave, and Brown Sugar). I die-cut the coffee mugs, clear-embossed the image, and colored it in using similar colors of my Prismacolor Ink markers.

One of my older sisters birthday is on Saturday, so I plan on using this card and adding a Starbucks gift card to it. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the rest of your week!

Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #216

Good afternoon fellow crafters! Happy Monday AGAIN. It seem likes last week just zoomed on by! Since the kids are on summer vacation the days seem to be going by even quicker, especially the days that seem more fun than others! Since I work in a pharmacy, not having kids in school equals less people getting sick and hurt, which means it has been SUPER SLOW. We are getting ready for Flu Season though, which usually starts at the beginning of August, and is definitely my LEAST favorite time of year to go into work!

Anywho, wanted to show you the card I put together for today's Make it Monday Challenge over on Nichole's blog. This week Laura shows us how to dress up some cover plate die-cuts by adding color to them. The cover plates in her videos are so pretty! I didn't even know Papertrey Ink had them! I definitely need to look into them the next time I place an order!

I went to Michaels after work yesterday because I wanted to pick up a few cheap watercolor paint sets. You know, the Artist Loft ones? I swear I already had one and for the life of me couldn't find it, so I took advantage of their 3 hour 40% off coupon yesterday (took 40% off the whole purchase!). Our Michael's Stores (we have 2) don't carry very many brands of Stamps. Very rarely I will get lucky and find a Hero Arts stamp set, and yesterday I was able to pick up the Lil Hoot stamp set and it is so cute! I used the Owl image on my card today, along with a sentiment from Stampin' Up and the Papertrey Ink Happy Hexagons Cover plate. I used the Pearlescent watercolors to paint on a couple different colors onto the cover plate. I added my 'shaker' which I made out of the Papertrey Ink Heart dies, and added some hearts, glitter, and sequins. I didn't want it to be a shaker card that really 'shakes' around too much, so I just glued all the hearts on top of each other without any foam tape. Since I used acetate, the glitter still moves around and that was exactly what I was looking for!

I wasn't sure if I wanted to blend or stamp anything onto the white part of the card underneath my cover plate die cut, like Laura does in her video, but since I blended a few different water colors together I thought that was enough color and chose to leave it blank underneath.

That's all for today, remember you can always follow me on instagram as well, I tend to post more projects there since it's easier than doing a whole blog post! Thanks for stopping by, have a fantastic week!

Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #215

Good afternoon fellow crafters! How are you all doing? I hope you have all had a great start to the first week of summer! I hope it isn't as hot where you are as it is here! I really wish we would get some rain already! Today I wanted to share a card I made for this weeks Make it Monday Challenge over on Nicole Heady's blog.

I colored this little guy in last week for the Daily Marker 30 Day Coloring Challenge Round 2. I knew I wanted to use him for a shaker card, so that is what I made today. Danielle's challenge is to make a card bringing the inside of the card onto the outside as well.

I used Papertrey Ink's Nuts for You stamp set as well as the Ruby Rose Stamp set for the sentiment. I added some sequins and Delica seed beads for the shaker part of my card. I die-cut the window so that you can view the sentiment from the inside of the card on the outside as well.

I'm making this post nice and short as I need to make the kiddos lunch, make something for dinner, and get ready for work in 2 hours! I don't post as much on the blog anymore (although I will try my best to) because I have been using Instagram. If you have an Instagram you can follow me here and I would love to follow you back! Thanks for stopping by, have a great week!

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge

Good evening fellow crafters! Having a fabulous week, I hope!? I was lucky enough to have today off, and I accomplished absolutely nothing, and it was awesome. You know when you look forward to a day off, and you tell yourself that you will do this, and do that, and then the day comes, and it is nothing like you planned it to be? That was my day. I took a 4 hour nap, and it was just...well, awesome. As adults, we don't get "me" time very often, because it is usually spent running errands and cleaning, and I just really didn't want to do that today.

Tonight I wanted to show you some cards I put together using Hero Art new Ombre ink pads. Have you purchased them yet? The colors are so pretty, I really hope Hero Arts plans on adding a few more colors, I would like to see a Purple Ombre mix! I went to Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago and saw all 5 of the ink pads, I couldn't believe they were selling them and I was relieved and excited that I didn't have to order them online and wait for shipping and all that mess! They are so fun to play with, Jennifer McGuire has an amazing tutorial on how to make the best of the ink pads, so her technique helped me a lot!

For my first card, I made a rainbow shaker card using Hero Arts Circle Pattern Rubber cling stamp for the background, and one of the adorable images from Hero Arts Sweet Wonderful You stamp set. I colored in the image using Prismacolor markers, and used beads, heart confetti, and glitter for the "shaker" part.

This next card set I am using for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday CAS challenge. I made a butterfly card set using the Hero Arts Ombre ink pads, and Papertrey Ink's Beautiful Butterflies Stamp set. I used all the ink pads on these cards, and finished them off with some clear rhinestones.

If you don't have these ink pads yet, I think you should definitely get them! They are so fun to stamp with! Thanks for stopping by, have a great night!

Mothers Day Card Set

Hello and Good evening fellow crafters! Hope you all have had a great Tuesday! Are you ready for the middle of the week already? I can't believe that April is almost over. I still can't get over how quickly the months are just flying by, it's really sad because most of the time we don't get to just enjoy "time" anymore....

I am posting today to share with you a Mothers Day card set that I made and shared on my Instagram account. Do you all use Instagram? I think it is almost, if not just as equally, addicting as Pinterest! I think posting and sharing to Instagram is so much easier than posting a blog post, don't you?! There are so many wonderful, brilliant crafty people on Instagram, and its so much easier to browse fellow crafters creations!

Anywho, I used Papertrey Inks The Sweet Life stamp set to make these four cards. I die-cut a circle and used that to mask off my circle stamping. The script cling stamp is from Recollections.

I started out with my favorite Kraft cardstock for the base (as I almost always usually do!). I chose lots of pretty Stampin' Up colors to match up with my stamping on the roses.

I wanted to make a few more cards in different colors to complete the stamp set, but I couldn't really find any more combinations that looked well together on the roses. So I just kept the set simple with 4 cards.

I am glad that I took the time to make something that didn't have anything to do with a challenge! I hope I can find the motivation to continue doing this! Thanks so much for stopping by, have a great night!

Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #209

Good evening fellow crafters! How are you all doing? I hope you all had a great start to this week! It is after 11pm right now and I am so tired, but I wanted to make sure I get this posted in case I do not have the time later in the week! So I am going to make this quick and get right to it!

This week the Papertrey Ink Make it Monday challenge is white on white die-cutting with a "pop" of color. What a fun challenge! When I saw the challenge this morning on Nichole's blog, I immediately knew I wanted to do white-on-white die-cutting with some clouds. I am also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge for creating your own background!

I used Papertrey Ink's Heart-2-Heart #6 Stamp set for the die-cut clouds and the stamped Sun image. The sentiment is from the Framed Out #3 stamp set. I stamped the sun and sentiment in Hero Arts Butter to Orange Ombre ink pad. I used a digital stamp from Pink Cat Studio and colored it in with Prismacolor markers, and then did some fussy cutting. I popped up a few of the clouds, as well as added some White flocking to the clouds on my digital image.

This week the kiddos are doing school testing, so I am going to make one more of these so I can give them to my kids for encouragement on their tests. I know they will do great, they are smart, but I still worry if they get stressed out as much as I do thinking about it! Thanks for stopping by, have a great week!

Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #208

Happy Monday fellow crafters! Did you all have a Happy Easter? We had a good day. Unfortunately most of our family live in others cities, so we decided not to do anything big this year. We didn't color any Easter eggs for an egg hunt like we usually do. This was the first year we didn't do that. I still made the girls their Easter baskets and they were content with that. It was also my DH birthday, we had made plans for him to go to the movies and then dinner, but he had work stuff to do so the girls and I did it together anyway. We went to watch Home. It was a cute movie. For Dreamworks, I think the characters lacked a little imagination, but overall it was a great movie.

Anyway, on to the reason for today's post. This week the Papertrey Ink Make it Monday challenge is Ombre stamping. This is probably a pretty easy technique for anyone that has small ink pads, or sponge dabbers for their different ink colors. I do not. Most of my ink pads are Stampin' Up, and they are not exactly small. Going through my Simon Says Stamp inkpads I could not find any Ombre colors that went well together. Then I remember I had these Inkadinkado Pigment Ink Stacks that I had never used. These worked perfect because the ink pads are small and they stamped really well.

I decided to make a Thank You card set with the Papertrey Ink Delightful Dahlias and Delightful Dahlias Additions stamp set. The sentiment is from the Ruby Rose Stamp set. I used Kraft cardstock (my favorite) and embossed the white cardstock with a Paper Studio embossing folder.

I am happy with the way the cards came out, especially since this is my first time trying Ombre Stamping. It was really neat to try since you don't really know how it is going to look until you stamp it. Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope you all enjoy your week!

Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #207

Good Afternoon fellow crafters! How are you all doing? I hope you all are having a great week so far! I am amazed that tomorrow is April already, I cannot believe that I have not visited or posted to my blog since October 2014! To be honest I had a lot going on in my life this past year where I just did not have the motivation to do anything crafty. I did make a few things for the Holidays, but that was it. To be able to come into my craft room and put together a card "just because" again felt really good! I forgot how great a feeling it was to be able to just lock myself away in my room and keep to myself for a few hours. I did a bit of spring cleaning in my craft room a few weeks ago and this helped to get a little bit motivated.

Don't you just love your craft space when its all cleaned up and everything is in its place? Even though it doesn't last like this very long, I like seeing everything in its place!

This week, the Papertrey Ink Make it Monday video is from Laura Bassen. She made this tutorial look so easy, but my final card is actually my 5th attempt! I had never tried making a partial die-cut card before, let alone a DOUBLE partial die-cut! I also wanted to try making a shaker card, but I don't have any sequins, so I used a seed bead/bugle bead mix instead. I decided to use Papertrey Ink's Ballerina Beauty Stamp set along with the Mat Stack #5 Die. I die-cut my card differently than the way Laura shows in the video. I did the mat stack first, then the ballerina.

Unfortunately, I had to use foam adhesive squares to set the shaker card because I am out of foam tape. This took forever and made the side of the card look really sloppy, but I am happy with the overall look of the card.

I am hoping that I find some time within the next day or two to try this technique again, maybe this time with a word die (I tried this to begin with and it just wasn't working out!) Thanks for stopping by, have a great night!