Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Art with Heart Challenge - Floral Wedding Album

Hi all! Eileen Hull's Art with Heart challenge inspired me to make this pretty wedding album for my daughter and her husband. They just celebrated their first wedding anniversary and I thought it would make a perfect gift for them!

How gorgeous are these flowers?! By just inking the fronts, you get a great contrast when they're curled...and the Perfect Pearls spray gives them the prettiest shimmer. I am also very excited about the Liquid Pearls stamens! A few months ago I was trying to figure out how to make these myself and happened upon the most simple yet elegant solution. Read below to see how this sweet wedding album came together.

Begin by covering a piece of ScoreBoards mat board (front and back) with decorative paper. Since the paper I used was only 6x6, I had to piece it together. The spine will be covered, so it was ok to have a seam. Insert the Decorative Frame die into the Movers and Shapers opening of the Mini Album die and cut your album.

To create the pages for the book, fold cardstock in half and cut using the album die, aligning the fold just below the first score line. Punch holes in the pages and thread with a single piece of idea-ology Paper Twine. Punch two holes in the spine of the book, thread the strings through, and tie.

Now let's make our flowers! Cut several flowers from white cardstock using the Layered Flowers die from Eileen Hull. Sponge with various colors of Distress ink and then mist heavily with Perfect Pearls Mist. You want to have them fairly saturated for the next step.

Take your dampened flowers and form them around a dowel, or the end of a paintbrush. Remove and let dry. This will give them a great, vintage texture.

To create the stamens, cut a 3" length of Paper Twine and separate into two pieces. Fold each in half.

Next, dispense a small amount of Buttercup Liquid Pearls onto a nonstick craft sheet. Dip each end of the string into the Pearls. The Pearls will naturally form a perfect little droplet shape on the end. Hang the stamens to dry, making sure they don't touch anything.

To create the flowers, stack several sets of petals. Gather a few sets of stamens together and insert into the opening in the flower. Add a dab of glue on the back to hold in place. When dry, trim the Paper String.

To complete the album, cut a piece of burlap paper using the album die, aligning it along the cutting area for the spine. Adhere a piece of Crinkle Ribbon to it and then adhere the burlap to the cover. Cut a piece of thin cardstock using Karen Burniston's Chevron die and cover with gold glitter. When dry, adhere to the bottom on the book. Add your flowers and a length of pearl trim, and you're done!

For the cover photo, I chose an image that would fit the opening and then adhered it to the first page. I added more photos to fill the book. Mine is fairly simple, because that's my daughter's style, but you could really go crazy with more embellishments, etc.

Have you joined the Art with Heart Challenge? The theme this month is May Flowers and we would love to have you play along. One lucky winner will receive a great prize package!

The dies I used can be found at Sizzix and Inspiration Emporium via the links below. Be sure and use my coupon code (at IE only) to save 10% off your order!



This project is also a great fit for Inspiration Emporium's Celebrate! challenge. You can find all the details here. Hope you can play along with both of these fun challenges.

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Karen Burniston Designer Challenge - Fly

Hi all! This month's Designer Challenge from Karen Burniston was so much fun! The theme was 'Fly'. We were all asked to interpret the theme in whatever way we wanted. It's such a great one - there are so many different directions you can go with that one little word. Birds, butterflies, hot air balloons, just to name a few. I decided to use some of my favorite stamps from Artistic Outpost to make an aviation-themed card for my husband. Since he works with airplanes, it's always one of my favorite themes to work with.

I wanted the front to look like the skin of an airplane and I love how it turned out! You might remember me using the waste material from Karen's polka dot border die as rivets, which I did again here. I think they're so cool looking!

Here is the card in the open position. Since this was a vintage flight theme, I thought it would be fun to make the inside of the card look like the leather on a flight jacket. I used the Faux Suede technique that can be found on Ranger's web site and it turned out even better than I expected. I added a little twist that gave it an extra crackly look. Read below to see how I created my card:

Because I only wanted the foil tape on the outside edge of the card, I cut a piece of kraft cardstock to almost the exact size of the die and applied the tape to the outer edges. I used the Sizzix Magnetic Platform and cut my first panel.

After cutting the foil panel, I cut the second panel from kraft cardstock.

Next, I covered thin chipboard with foil tape and use the Polka Dot border die to cut it, saving the waste (circles) to use as brads. I added small bits of metal foil tape on top of the large area on the card to create patches. A tracing wheel can be used to add little faux rivets.

For the faux leather, I stamped pieces of kraft cardstock with the crackle stamp and inked over the surface randomly.

Next, I sprayed the cardstock with ink refresher and crumpled. After smoothing it out, I added more ink to highlight the wrinkles.

While the faux leather cardstock was drying, I finished the front. I applied a light coating of black Distress paint to the foil and wiped it off. Since I accidentally got it on the card, I decided to paint the whole thing black. :) After that dried, I stamped the collage of Charles twice on kraft cardstock. One was cut with the matching frame die and adhered to the card. I cut the image of him out of the other and adhered it with pop dots.

After the faux leather dried, I cut it with the solid frame die and ran the pieces through the Xyron, then adhered them to both of the panels. Love the beveled edges!

Finally, I stamped the sentiment on kraft cardstock, cut the words out and adhered them to a piece of black cardstock. I cut them out again, leaving a small border of black around each word. The propeller was stamped onto chipboard, cut out, and given a coating of Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel. After I adhered the words and propeller, I attached the two panels and my card was done!


Such a fun card! It would make a perfect Father's Day card, or a great masculine birthday card. All the supplies I used can be purchased from Inspiration Emporium via the links below. Remember to use my coupon code - stamptramp - to score 10% off your order!



Make sure you check out the Elizabeth Craft Designs blog on Wednesday to see what the team has come up with, along with a very cool new card idea from Karen - you will be amazed!

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I promise, I'll try to get back to posting more regularly. Then again, I have some baby chicks coming in the mail in a couple days, so I might be preoccupied for a bit! ;)