June Stamp Club Cards

Have you ever had one of those months where you didn't get anything done that you wanted to, but you were busy all the time? This has been one of those months for me. As you can tell from my (lack of) previous posts, I have not been doing much crafting or blogging. I'm starting to really miss all of my blog friends! And I've been wanting to try the Stamp Something and Sketches by Tamara challenges (not to mention Beate's WSC), but haven't had a chance. I'm hoping that June slows down a bit so I can have a bit of fun!

So this will be a "work-related" post (I can't really call stamping work, but the crafting I have been doing has been in preparation for my Stamp Clubs!). These are the cards we will be making at the last Stamp Club meeting of the year. I can't believe the year flew by so quickly. It's always so much fun getting together with my Stamp Club ladies and chatting and being creative together.

I went onto Splitcoast Stampers to find some ideas, and I found this technique called salted background that looked really cool. I basically CASEd the layout of the card given in the tutorial, but I changed the colours and stamps. I think it's a really neat background effect.

I used Bashful Blue, Mellow Moss and Perfect Plum because those are the colours of re-inkers I have! I added Basic Black accents (photo corner punch with black brads) and stamped the flower from Heartfelt Thanks with black StazOn.

The second card is an acetate card. I made it smaller (4 x 4") so that I could make two from one transparency sheet (I don't have very many left!). It's a little difficult to see in the photo, but I like how it looks IRL.

I started by stamping the acetate with my Baroque Motifs set in white StazOn. I used Blue Bayou and Soft Sky as my main colours. I broke out my Take Three set (this is the first time I've used it) for the front of the card, and I finished it off with some Whisper White taffeta ribbon.
The final card is an oldie but a goodie - the classic Waterfall Card! I think this is one of the first "specialty" cards I learned how to make. I decided to put a little twist on it by using squares of designer paper instead of plain ones on the waterfall part. I went with Bali Breeze since it's got so many fun colours in it. The base is Purely Pomegranate, and I used Tempting Turquoise and Old Olive to accent. I stamped the little words from Everyday Flexible Phrases onto the squares in Turquoise to read "my sweet special friend".

Another Swap Card

This is the second card I made for Alex's swap this month. I really wanted to use the Die Cut blooms, and the Summer Picnic designer paper matched perfectly! So I basically chose my paper colours from those (Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Rose Red, Bashful Blue). I curled the petals of the flowers a bit to give them some dimension. Then I used a mini glue dot to stick a Bashful Blue button in the center after tying some linen thread through it. I just love these colours together - I would never have thought of combining these colours, but they work so well in the Summer Picnic paper.

By the way, a huge congratulations to Alex, who has recently been accepted on two design teams (Sketches by Tamara and Stamp Something - both of which I just subscribed to and added to my blogroll!). What a talented lady! I feel so privileged to have gotten to know her here in Blogland. If you haven't already checked out her blog, make sure you head over to California Stampin'.

May Stamp Club Cards

This first card we will be doing at our May Stamp Clubs is a Trifold Pocket Card. It was actually a lot more time-consuming than I thought it would be! But that's okay - it was a lot of fun to make. I chose Porcelain Prints Designer Series paper as a starting point (I just love the Wild Wasabi/Blue Bayou combination). I used one of my kid's plastic plates to trace the curve at the top of the card and insert. As a bonus, I got to use my Crop-a-Dile (how much fun is that thing?)!

I used my Wild Rose set, since it matches the paper. I've found that the 5-Petal Punch is a great punch for making leaves behind flowers (as opposed to having to cut them out by hand), so I used that for the band. I just stamped the leaves on some Wild Wasabi cardstock before punching out the flowers so that they had a leafy texture.
Since all the On Board stuff is on sale this month, I wanted to use some chipboard in this month's clubs (we'll be using it in my Scrapbooking Club as well). I know this card looks a little strange because I've covered the chipboard pieces in two different ways, but that was just to show a couple ways to embellish them. The ladies in the clubs will be able to choose if they want to do both the same or not!

I had a whole bunch of chipboard hearts since I bought a bulk package of them, and I thought they matched the hearts in the Greetings Galore set pretty well. I basically chose my colours from the chunky glitter colours (so I used Rose Red, Bashful Blue and Elegant Eggplant)! For one of the hearts, I inked it in Eggplant, then embossed it with Iridescent Ice ep. For the other, I inked it in Bashful Blue, then used my 2-way glue pen to add some chunky glitter. We're also going to talk about all the MANY different ways to embellish chipboard at the club meeting.

I had this card up on my board at the last club meeting, and I had a few requests to make it. I used the faux cloisonne technique for this one, using an old Holiday Mini Catalogue for the flower. I stamped on it with VersaMark and embossed it with gold ep before cutting out the flower image. Then I matched the cardstock colours to the colours in the image (Purely Pomegranate, Chocolate Chip and Naturals Ivory). The squares are punched with my 1 3/8" square punch, and I used my corner rounder punch to scallop the bottom edge.

I hope everyone enjoys these projects! They're a bit more complicated than I usually do, but everyone's a pro now, so it should be lots of fun!