I made Steve a pop-up birthday card! It's better in video because you really get to see how it works:
And here are some photos:
I used hand carved stamps to decorate the inside of my card.
This is a "Twist and Pop Up" card. I found a tutorial on YouTube that was comprehensive and super easy to follow:
If you enjoy papercrafting, this is a fun one! I hope you'll give it a try!
Thanks for stopping by!
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I haven't bought a card to give someone in years. I like to make the cards. It's a mini gift to the recipient!
A few months ago I was invited to a family member's baby shower. I immediately knew that I wanted to make the card and so I went looking for inspiration! I was poking through some of the premium ScanNCut cut files and I found one called "SVG Cutting Files Baby, Steampunk and Skulls Pattern Collection."
I immediately loved the elephant card (I have long had a thing for elephants):
I decided to make it with a few extra embellishments! Here's my version:
I added some bling:
I frosted the stars with glitter glue and I added some black rhinestones.
I also personalized the card with some text:
The "Baby" is a built-in design in my ScanNCut and the "Balzer" was created with one of the built-in fonts. You may also notice that I used colored ink pads to ink the edges of most of the pieces of paper. I think inking adds a lot of dimension to paper crafts.
I also added actual dimension:
I looooove foam adhesive. If you wander down the card aisle at any drug store, you'll notice that an enormous number of the cards now feature raised elements. It's more visually exciting!
So there you have it! An adorable baby card suitable for giving away or simply popping into a frame and displaying in the baby's nursery!
This next card was something I hid in Steve's car as a surprise! You may or may not know that he is back in college at the moment (very exciting). He had a big exam and I wanted to go a little bit beyond a post-it note of encouragement. Once again, I turned to the premium ScanNCut cut files -- this time to the "School Grad & Beach Pattern Collection." I found two different designs that I liked:
Both are box files, but I figured that I could transform them into card embellishments! I frankensteined the two designs together and came up with this card:
To give the card visual dimension, I used a lot of my favorite card techniques, like inking and foam adhesive.
You can see in the photo above that I inked the edges of the polka dot paper. And, it's subtle, but did you notice that there's foam adhesive under the top of the notebook paper but not the bottom? It makes the paper really appear to be tucked behind the apple.
To add hyper dimension to the heart, I stacked two pieces of foam adhesive together. Even the leaf on the apple got some dimension, with a bit of folding!
Once again, one of the things I love about my ScanNCut is the ability to constantly customize. I love that I was able to grab two "recipes" and mash them together into something uniquely my own!
Thanks for stopping by!
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P.S. I am a paid spokesperson for the Brother ScanNCut. It is a machine that I love and use. All projects and opinions are my own.
Product Registration: https://www.brother-usa.com/registermybrother/
Brother Customer Support: https://www.brother-usa.com/support/
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You may recall that I asked for advice on making thank you cards for my baby shower. I got lots of good advice -- keep it simple, create a postcard instead of a folding card, etc. Well, I took the advice and these are the cards that I made:
These were pretty simple to make. I took two large pieces of paper and did some indoor sun printing on them -- in two different color ways -- one dark and one bright.
I cut up the sun printed paper and glued it to a white piece of cardstock. In some cases, I needed to frankenstein together two or more pieces of sun printed paper:
I love the semi-dimensional look you get from sun printing! It really looks like you could pluck that yellow leaf off of the yellow background!
For the sentiment, I scanned a handwritten "thanks" into the ScanNCut and cut them out of white paper.
I love how they turned out! I put together a 30-second video showing the end of the sun printing process and the finished cards:
Now, I just have to sit down and write all of those thank you notes!
Thanks for stopping by!
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My baby shower is this weekend. (Yay!) Knowing that I'll have lots of thank you cards to write, I've been looking for inspiration. I think handmade thank you cards are always a really nice gesture, but I'm also short on time (we move in less than a week) and need to make a whole bunch ASAP. I thought I'd share some of my favorite cards I found online. There are a couple of styles I clearly like.
STYLE ONE: Watercolor
STYLE TWO: Cut Outs
STYLE THREE: Text Based Design
STYLE FOUR: Clusters of Little Things
For the sake of time, I'm inclined to think that either some simple watercolor cards or some simple text-based cards would be the best choice. Mostly, I think I need a "thank you" stamp to make things go quickly and smoothly. What do you think?
Thanks for stopping by!
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If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here. All of the previous posts can be found archived here. Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day! No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek. Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here.
I'm delighted to be sharing some pages from August & September of last year. It has been long enough since I created them, that I don't really remember creating them. The main question in my mind is: Have I grown and changed in the (almost) year since I created them or am I in the same creative space?
This page was created using a technique I use all the time: reductive painting. It's a technique I demonstrate extensively in my Gelli Journals class.
I love to use pattern stamps to fill empty space in my journal. It's like a super easy version of doodling!
One of the things that I've realized in a decade or so of art journaling, is that I really like knowing the date. I used to be subtle about what month it was, but looking back through my journals, I much prefer seeing the bold month titles!
This face was also created using that reductive painting method.
However, instead of stamping...
...I filled the empty space on the page with pieces of washi tape!
Another face created by reductive painting!
I recycle all of my old prints, messed up art projects, samples, mistakes, and experiments into my Junque Journals -- all of that "garbage" gets bound into an art journal. Sometimes I cover the old artwork completely. Or sometimes, as in the case of this page, I let just a little bit shine through. That purple daisy is from an early Balzer Designs release with The Crafter's Workshop (probably 5 years ago at least). And now I've incorporated it into this face in my art journal! For me, my Junque Journals are a perfect solution for (a) never facing a blank page, (b) creating layered art work with less work, and (c) neither throwing away nor hoarding old art projects, but rather putting them to good use!
I used a marker to color portions of this stamped design and I think it really makes it pop off the page!
So, let's get back to my question from the beginning of this post. Looking at these pages, I am slightly sad to say that I feel like I'm in the same creative space. And that's disappointing. I like these pages. I like these techniques. But I hope that I am always growing and evolving and improving. Staying stagnant feels like a little bit of a failure. On the other hand, moments of reflection -- like this one -- are motivation to push towards change. I think I'll take out my journal today and see what I can do to push myself!
I hope you will too!
Thanks for stopping by!
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P.S. Don't forget! The YouTube Livestream for Channel Members is tonight at 7:30pm EST! If you're not a member, you can learn more here.
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