Art Philosophy - Cardinal Card

Well, hello! This post has been a long time in the making. Mostly because it took me a long time... to make it. :D  I'd like to thank so many people for the huge success that my little spring chickadee card became! It kind of went from a blog hop, to Pinterest, to some forums, back around again... and I've had loads of requests for "how-to's" and tutorials!

The original chickadee card can be seen here.. and I will be adding a quick link to my side bar as well. I thought that this time around, it might be fun to do a different kind of bird, and make the card for another season. Thus, the cardinal card has been created... and here are all the details.

Both of these cards have been made with parts and pieces from the Close To My Heart - Art Philosophy cartridge. Yes, this is my new favorite, and most used cartridge. More so than "George" even, because it has all and more of the same basic shapes.. plus so many other great things.

Here is my tutorial video, which explains how to put the card together, and also how you can create a system for building your own cards from this great cartridge.



Here is the "recipe" for making the card exactly as it is shown. I'll separate by color, so that you can cut your pieces more easily. One 12x12 sheet of each color is plenty to cut all of the pieces that you need to make this card.

Red Cardstock:
The base is "Square 5" on page 63. Cut two of these at 5"
Also, cut the Square 5 "Layer" for the frame, also at 5"
Cut one bird, pg. 51. Cut the bird at 2", cut two "wings" at 2 1/4 inches and one "wing" at 2"
The 2" wing is the piece that makes his little crest.
(please note, if you have the 6" Cricut machine, you can still make this card. Just cut the wings at 2 1/2" instead.)
Cut one decorative Layer from "Oval 4" on page 52. This makes the frame for your large oval. 2 1/2"
(Or if you prefer, you can cut this one from green. 2 1/2")
Cut some holly berries from page 46, at 1"
Cut one "Deco Layer" from page 56 for the sentiment frame. 1"

White Cardstock:
Cut the "Shape 5" using shift and "Font Layer" from page 64 at 5" - this should be the snow mat. When assembling the card, you'll need to trim the corner bits off of this, so that they don't hang over the edge.
Cut two of the "Square 5" on page 63 to use to line the inside of your card.. 4 3/4" (or 4 1/2"  for the smaller machine.)
Cut one "Oval 4" from pg. 52 - this is the background oval, behind the bird - 2 1/2"
Cut one "Shape 4" from pg.56, this is for your sentiment. 1"

Green Cardstock:
Cut one branch from pg. 43 - cut the "layer" one, it is the one without leaves. 1"
Cut holly leaves from pg. 46 - cut about 5 leaves at 1" and 5 leaves at 3/4"
If you decided you like the green frame better than the red, this is where you should cut one more decorative Layer from "Oval 4" on page 52.

Other CTMH products that I used in the making of this video include:
The sentiment stamp - the set I used is retired :(
Stardust Glitz - The CTMH version of "Stickles" - they are wonderful.
The Rub & Remove Eraser - this is a must-have for getting those gluebers. :)
"Bitty Sparkles" which are the self-adhesive gems. I used a black one and several plain ones.
The little red square pigment pad is a wonderful new product, they distress things so nicely and can also be used for stamping. They are sold in sets of 10, so that you would get one of each of the color families. Look up the "Exclusive Inks" mini pigment pad sets. The one I used is called "Ruby."
The CTMH Bonding Memories glue pen would be a wonderful kind to use for this project. It is very similar to the "Zig" glue that I used in my demonstration.
I'm sure that there are more, I think that you can see my small blue scissors that I use for fussy cutting and a bit of our baker's twine.

I do love all of the CTMH papers that are available, especially because it takes the guess-work out of matching your colors. However, when I am making this kind of intricate, Cricut pieced card, I prefer to use thicker, solid core cardstock with a little bit of texture. CTMH cardstock is currently white core, and it leaves so many white "unfinished" edges that it would be impossible to fix all of the tiny edges in a project of this size. I miss my CTMH solid core cardstock a lot. Just sayin'. :)

If you're interested in learning more about Close To My Heart and this really great cartridge, the best way to go about that is to go to the Close To My Heart website and do a simple little search to find a consultant in your area who can help you find the best way for you to get your hands on one! Many consultants have a website like mine, but they may also be able to help you get your cartridge for 50% off. Well worth it.

Thank you so much for stopping by to see my video and instructions. Please subscribe, share, comment or do a little dance if you liked this tutorial today. Leave me some love, or request anything else you would like to know more about, I'll be happy to try to oblige. Hugs!

Authentique and Deconstruction 110, 109 & 108

Yes, I know, it isn't Halloween Yet. :) Halloween is my favorite! I spent the better part of this morning sorting through my Halloween stuff. I've made it a goal to organize this year, and I've actually purged quite a bit of stuff!

I store all of my supplies by occasion. While this may be different than most people do, I find it to be an easy system for me. I have one or two 12x12 boxes for each major holiday or occasion. Christmas and Halloween are the only two holidays for me, that warrant more than one box! So... I sorted through my prized Halloween stash and decided to work with some of my favorite paper from last year, by Authentique.

Today I worked with Deconstructed Sketches 110, 109, and 108 again. It was a DS day! I also tried my hand at Paula's latest Boot Camp lesson, from Stars & Stamps. Let me show you how... here are the cards. :)

It was a little bit difficult to measure exactly, the color rule, but I tried to stay as close as possible to Paula's lesson. I attempted to use a variation of this theme... going 60-10-30 with oranges, blacks and whites. In the above, I think that I accomplished 60% black, 30" white and 10% orange. Or somewhat close to it anyway.

Before we go any further, let me add a reminder that the above card is probably the only one here that would be ok to send to OWH. It may be on the edge a little even... It's better to stick to the cutsey Halloween decor with regards to cards for OWH. No death imagery ... if you have any questions about that, the latest episode of OWHtv might be good for you to check out. :) Next!

I love these sketches. Did I tell you that I love these sketches? I love them.

Argh...glare on the strip of  neat black doily stuff... and can you see, that even though this little "Thriller" (CTMH) stamp is so darned cute, the skull image rules him OUT for our heroes. That's ok. They can't all go in the box. :)

A few deets! Here is that strip of black doily on some clear acrylic kind of stuff... I don't know what you would call it. But it is by Martha Stewart. My sweet "Mom" Cindy sent it to me last year!

I stamped the skull onto a piece of swiss dot Bazzill. I cut it out with a Spellbinder's frame and left the frame in place while I distressed around the inside edge with some black ink and a sponge dauber. The same sized frame was used to cut the black one, behind it.

Some thoughts about this card... first of all, I did not have any black lace on hand. I had plenty of white lace though! So I simply cut a strip of white lace and put it in a baggie with a few drops of black re-inker. After smooshing it around for a while I removed it carefully and let it dry on a paper towel. Voila..black lace!

I also wanted to note that I would normally never stamp a sentiment directly onto a patterned paper like this. But I messed around with this look and really ended up liking it, so I went with it. I daubed some white ink around the sentiment area to make it kind of misty, ghosty and cool looking! Then, I stamped and heat embossed with black to make the contrast even more different. The "web" like stamps in the corner, in comparison, were stamped with black ink. Only the sentiment is embossed. What do you think? It shows up much better in this photo, than in the one above, and in real life it looks even better... and it was fun.

This paper reminds me of Beetlejuice. Did you ever watch that movie?

For the "Trick or Treat" above, I stamped with black onto a scrap of orange paper, then used a white gel pen to accent the letters. Looks like that labeling tape stuff. Cute! I also really enjoyed adding bits of toulle, ribbon and a few other baubles today.

Here's another closeup of the corner stamp with the webs. I love this set. "Thriller" is now retired. Sad!

Hey, thanks for stopping by. I was scared and lonely and a little bit creeped out... I watched two paranormal-ish horror movies on Netflix while I was making cards today... one of them was Paranomal State 3, and the other one was about some kind of haunted looney bin... I forget what it was called, but it was scary good. Hubby doesn't like to watch horror flicks so I have to sneak them in during card time. Hee hee!

Sketch #181

I even had time to squeeze in a card following sketch #181 from Stars & Stamps. I love this one, because I had the opportunity to use up some ribbon, some CTMH button brads that I got on clearance, and a cute CTMH background stamp I have been loving lately.





Sorry about the blog and photo quality this weekend... I reverted to photos and posting from my iPad... which I had formerly decided that I didn't like. :( just ran short on time, because there were too many other fun things going on this weekend. Yay for fun things!!

Oh, and I've become addicted to watching "New Girl" on Netflix while I scrap... I just love that Zooey. :)

Lego Cards

Following Julie's awesome Lego tutorial ... I made some Lego cards! Glad I finally had the time to sit and make some this weekend. These were fun. I'm more happy with the second one than the first, because I stuck more to Julie's awesome super-hootie scrap-math formula. She was spot on :)









The Lego tutorial... Is over here.

Every Last Inch

It's been over a month, but I finally finished using every last inch of Authentique paper from my June ETM kit. I punched 1" squares out of every last scrap and rounded opposite corners. I laid them all out with some simple sentiments using this "inchie" layout and bam... Five more cards. Could have even done one or two more, but I think that I was finally all scrapped out. :)

July ETM

I hope that everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend! We didn't do much, as it has been pretty hot. It feels great to me. :) I did get some time to put into my July kit from Express the Moment. Here are my creations. You can always see them at the ETM Facebook page... sometimes I've got stuff up at the ETM Blog page and of course these great monthly kits and other fun things can be found at Express the Moment.

We're coming up on 4 years that I've been able to design for my cute little LSS (Local Scrapbooking Store!) If I have learned anything important over these years it is how important it is to support small local businesses, especially when you have the choice of spending your hard-earned dollars on things at a large chain vs. a small hobbyist store. I've continued to be amazed at how many matching things that Kim finds to put into each monthly kit, right down to the little embellishments that are already stamped, punched or put together for you. I love the strips of coordinating ribbons and the fun patterned papers who sometimes come from lines that I did not know about.

On with the show - this month features paper and embellishments from Teresa Collins called, "Stationery Noted" and it is really cute. I enjoyed making a couple of 12x12 pages from the papers and elements in the kit.

I love that these pages were quick and easy to make out of the papers in the kit.

Here is my July 8x8 page.

There is a whole page full of 3x4" cards that are fun for adding sentiments to, or they can be used as a focal point.

I stamped a "Stamper's Best" stamp on this one.

I used the latest Deconstructed Sketch to make a few cards too.

There is a sheet of coordinating stickers. I used some to make this hexagon pattern on a plain cardstock base. Quick and easy.

There are also some coordinating strips and pieces that you can cut that have sentiments already on them. I think that they make pretty cute cards.

There is a page of chipboard (thick!) stickers in the kit too, that are fun for making sentiments like this.

There is even a little pocket notebook for you to decorate and embellish with whatever you have left over.

Kim also threw in a bunch of patriotic paper that we used last July (hooray for leftovers!).. here are a few cards from last year's kit that you can do again this year or who knows... 

you could use them to make a cute project like this:

I made myself a cute box for storing 6x6 pads... which I seem to keep collecting... this will keep them together nicely on my shelf. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Tombow 4th of July Blog Hop!

Nothing better than a little blog hop on the 4th of July, right? :)

Thank you for stopping by! If you came here from The Paper Garden you are in the right spot! 

I'm very excited to be taking part in this hop that is the collaborative effort of Operation Write Home and Tombow. Tombow is the maker of some of our very favorite adhesive products when making cards for the troops and with good reason! When making cards that are going to travel halfway around the world and back again, there's no room for fall-apart cards! Nope, no mamby-pamby adhesives here, folks. You'll only get the finest from Tombow.

I had such a large variety of Tombow adhesivies to chose from to showcase today. The regular glue runner has been a favorite of mine forever, but this one was a new runner to me! I fell in love with it immediately, and made up a little video tutorial for the use I found for it. Here you go - watch now or save for later and learn how to use this POWER BOND adhesive to put together your pretty, shaped cards. It's only 4 minutes of your time, but you can always save for later, if you like!

Now then, I hope that you have had a wonderful time learning about all of the wonderful Tombow products! You should definitely check out the whole hop lineup, and hop along to Melissa's blog next.

Thank you for stopping by and don't forget to make it all the way around to all of the hops for your chance to win a little Tombow of your own. :)

Chickadee, revisited

A while back, I posted a tutorial on using the CTMH Art Philosphy cartridge for making these Chickadee Cards. The response has been amazing. I never thought that the tutorial would be so well received.

I'm going to do another video tutorial soon, to show a card like this in the works. I've been working on the parts already and I think that it will be a fun one!

Meanwhile, I wanted to share a photo of these magnets that I made for my latest customers. I followed the same recipe as above, and used one of the "Universal Backgrounds" stamps... Well... In the background... :D





I used a Spellbinders die to cut the base, which is actually from a magnetic sheet. You can find this kind of sheet in any office supply store. It's made for making your own magnets. I was very surprised and delighted that the Spellbinders die cut through them like butter. :) So these are little magnets...

If you want to stay tuned to my You Tube channel, I'll have that video tutorial up soon. Hoping to get time to work on it over the holiday weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

Zentangle Cards

Well hi... thanks for stopping by! I wanted to share a story about inspiration today.

Within the last year, I found an online friend, from an online friend, from an online friend... lol... did that ever happen to you? I started "following" someone on Facebook and before I knew what happened, I became really interested and inspired by some of her work.

Arwen is the lady I am talking about here, and her page is Tarot By Arwen... she's into a lot of tarot cards and happy hippie chick stuff like that, that I really dig. :) She's got such a positive message every day. Definitely something nice to see and a good way to start out my mornings when I am Facebookin' with my coffee at sunrise.

Arwen started posting these little doodles. At first they reminded me of something that I used to do on my book covers and notebooks in high school and college. I really liked what she was doing and sharing but I didn't know that there was a name for them until I started digging around!

Isn't that fancy? Come to find out, the "Zentangle" is really trendy right now. It's a form of doodling and I've really enjoyed the research that I've been doing to learn more about how and why.

Apparently, there are those who claim that "Zentangling" can be a form of therapy and that it can help relieve stress or even do things like helping people to overcome anxiety or substance abuse. Interesting... they say it also helps to spark your creativity (makes sense...) and can relieve stress. (Sure! Why not!) Thus... the "Zen" in "Zen- Tangle" I suppose. I did really love it but I wasn't sure where to start. Off to Google I went.

First, I found a ton of zentangle art on Pinterest. From there, I ran into quite a few sites with "how-to's" and even more than a couple of places that were offering online classes to learn how to do this. I'm more of a  do-it-yourself type, and found some sites like tanglepatterns to be more helpful to me.

I really enjoyed learning how to make dots and lines and connect them to make pretty patterns. These little "how to" sketches were pretty handy and I saved a whole ton of them on my iPad for future reference. I used quite a few tools from my scrapbooking stash along the way. I used pens, flourish stencils, and even my stitching template to mark patterns and dots that I connected with lines. I enjoyed dabbling with different markers pens and patterns. I decided to start small, and cut a few pieces of white cardstock to an A2 size.

Here are the first couple that I came up with. I worked on these while watching TV. They actually took me a couple of days each to complete. I DID find the experience to be very relaxing and enjoyable. I'm not sure how much good it did for my addiction to ink and rubber stamps, but hey, maybe I will work on that in the future.

Finally, I was super excited to see what popped up in one of my first "Google Searches" for zentangles. It's a card, by Jenny Gropp! (Love me some Jenny!) She was kind enough to allow me to link to her own tutorial and this beautiful card that she created with her own zentangle art. Who knew??

Finally, I decided to see what I could do with my own zentangle, using it as a background image on a card. I think that I really like what I see, and I think that I'll make some more!

Thank you, Lady Arwen and Ms. Jenny for allowing me to share your expertise today!