Finishing Up Christmas with Some Beautiful Cards

Its been such a whirlwind month around here with 2 birthdays down and Christmas behind us – only one more birthday in our family to go!  But I was fortunate enough to receive a few Christmas cards from my friends and I loved them so much that I just had to share!

First up, I love this vintage feel that Tanya created by her color choices of Very Vanilla naturals paper, Chocolate Chip, and Old Olive.  Plus the sponging around the edges to create a cool Christmas card.

created by Tanya Cabral

I also received this cool Christmas card from Liz.  I loved the idea of using the Dazzling Details to make the glimmery dots around the Tulip Frame embossing folder.  I know the picture is a little dark, but it is so sparkly in person.

created by Liz Mitchell

Plus she did her embossing on the Shimmer White paper.  I tried to catch it in the light…. can you see the shimmer?

Well, I guess that wraps up Christmas projects for the year!  Now on to spring projects and new goodies from the Spring Catalog and Sale-a-Bration exclusive event!

Do you need a Spring Catalog or Sale-a-Bration catalog?

Just send me your name and mailing address to jennifer@nwstamper.com and I’ll get you all hooked up!

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Making a Perfect Mini Bow the Easy Way!

For years, I’ve been running classes where one of the cards may have a bow on it.  And I’ve watched folks struggle with trying to make a smaller bow without either getting your fingers caught or one side of the bow threatening to come out.  Now, it is totally possible to tie it like normal, but I’ve finally put together a video on how to do it the quick and easy way that comes out perfect everytime!  No, seriously! I have it at the bottom of this post.

So, here is a card I made with the sample bow from the video.  Isn’t it cute?  It uses the retiring satin ribbon (seriously, I think this is the product I’m most sad about losing!) for a border and bow.

Now if you are curious about the scallopy Saffron circles under the ribbon – surprise!  It is the retiring Pocketful of Posies designer paper and I just cut along the white lines in the paper.

See, just cut and flip it over and here you go!  Oh, and another close up of the bow.

Alright, so if you’ve made it this far, check out the video for how I made this bow using a fork… that is right, a fork.  Then leave me a comment and let me know what you thought of it!

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Retiring Stamps  |  Retiring Accessories  |  Retiring Décor Elements

Hello Easy Bow Card Recipe:

Stamps: Easy Events
Ink: Early Espresso Classic, Soft Suede Classic, Crumb Cake Classic, Old Olive Classic
Paper: Pocketful of Posies designer paper, Perfect Plum cardstock, Whisper White cs
Accessories: 2-3/8” Scallop Circle punch, Basic Pearls, Old Olive 5/8” Satin Ribbon, Blender pen, glue dots, Sponge Daubers

Clean and Simple Scrapbook Layout

I will admit, I spend most of my crafting time making cards.  They are practical…they are fun…they don’t take too much time if I’m in a rush.  But that said, I have a ton of pictures that I take and keep that I want to scrapbook.  So, I’ve started trying to make an effort to catch up on my scrapbooking backlog.  This is a page I completed recently and I love how it turned out.

If you can’t tell from the picture, my son is pushing the sand out of the play tube and onto the ground.  Just keeping it clean.

So, I used the “vintage-y” paper Love Letter and when I first saw this paper when it came out I thought I would never use it but turns out it works great even for non-Valentines, non-girly pages.  Yay!  I also made the red embellishment on the bottom right by just layering two punchouts using the decorative label punch (layer so that they are perpendicular to each other).  I think it turned out pretty cool and kind of different.

What do you think, do you think the paper works for a layout like this?

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Keeping It Clean Scrapbook Page:
Ink:  Chocolate Chip (for sponging of the label)
Paper:  Love Letter designer paper, Chocolate Chip cardstock, Sahara Sand textured cardstock, Riding Hood Red cardstock
Accessories:  BigShot die cutting machine, Billboard alphabet die cuts, Chocolate Chip satin ribbon (retired), Decorative Label punch, Large oval punch, Wide oval punch, silver brads

Watercoloring Techniques: Watercolor Pencils

Alright, today is the last day of my Watercolor Technique card shares.  At least for now.  But with this last card,  I wanted to show you the 5th technique we are doing in my watercolor technique class.  So without further ado:

Watercoloring with Watercolor Pencils

You may think, “yeah, yeah, I know what it is like to color in an image with colored pencils. I did that back in school.”  But have you seen the magic that is watercolored pencils? The cool thing about watercolor pencils is that you have the control to color in fine details and spaces because you have the fine tip of the pencil.  And coloring with colored pencils is very pretty.  But you are left with pencil stroke marks that maybe you would rather not have.  Simply wave your magic wand (aka Blender pen or Aqua pen) over the places where you colored with the pencil and voila!  You get this beautiful, smooth watercolored look.  Here is an example… though I’m having the hardest time taking a good picture to really show you what I mean.  But in the image below, the flowers are colored using the same colored pencils and amount of coloring.  But the one on the right has been gone over with a blender pen.  You can at least see that the color gets more saturated and maybe see that it has a smoother look.

That said, here is the sample for the card we are making in the class:

Like I said, the pencils are great for detail work.  Especially things like the stamp border and the tiny flower bud.

This technique is so pretty and so easy at the same time.  It was also probably the favorite the last time I ran this class.

Well, I hope you enjoyed checking out some of the different ways to add watercoloring looks to your cards.  This is a good introduction to just the surface of what you can do and I’d love to hear what your favorite techniques are as well!  Leave a comment and let me know how you like to do watercoloring.

Interested in trying these cards & techniques out yourself?

In Person
Do to multiple requests, I’m running my class again on March 28th in the Mountain View, CA area.  I’d love to have you join us. Check out the full details on my meetup site.

Online
Or, if you are not local, purchase the supplies for these techniques from my online store and send me an email.  I’ll send you written tutorial instructions for these cards for FREE!  Not sure what you need, email me at jennifer@nwstamper.com and I’ll send you a basic supply list and you can see what you have in your stash and what you would still need.

A Pretty Card Purse Hostess Gift

This last friday I had a fun workshop with some ladies I met recently.  I wanted to make something nice for the hostess who organized the evening and so I decided to make her a purse with a variety of cards inside.  I knew she loved purple and I remembered the awesome purples in the Lap of Luxury Designer Paper.  I swear, the first time I saw this pattern I said,”it looks like velvet!”.  It really does look luxurious in person!

So, to go with the luxury theme, I used black (more posh, don’t you think?) and made the handles out of Black Satin ribbon (I love this stuff!!).  The inside opens up and I put in four cards with envelopes, oh, and some yummy chocolates, but it could hold a ton more. 

This purse is actually remarkably easy to make and only uses 1 sheet of designer paper and 1/2 a sheet of cardstock!  I may have to make a few more for extra gifts.  

Thanks for visiting! 

Luxury Card Purse Recipe:
Paper:  Lap of Luxury DSP, Basic Black CS
Accessories:  Basic Black satin ribbon, Round Tab punch, Kraft corduroy buttons (clearance rack item), Pewter Jumbo Eyelets, Crop-a-Dile, Sticky Strip, Velcro circles, Corner Rounder punch

Want to make your own purse?  Get the supplies now in my Online Store!