Evolutionary card making

Hello out there, 

how are you? Me, I am glad the week is almost over, it's been a rather trying one, including a broken water-tap, a power outage and the requirement of a new house lead-in. So hopefully, next week will be better.

Today, I have another school themed card for you. Or rather, I have two. 

My friend asked me to help her create some school themed invitations, for her foster son's birthday party. So we mass produced these cards.

We stamped the white card front with an alphabet background stamp in green. For the blackboard frame we used craft card stock and a large wood structure stamp with brown ink. The blackboard itself is black card stock, with quite a bit white pigment ink and white heat embossing. And we cut up a sponge for all the little sponges. The sentiment says "Invitation" in German.

My friend initially wanted to create the card fronts with a rainbow colour scheme, but that was just a bit much for a mass production. But I used the idea, to create a card for the boy himself, as he started school shortly after his Birthday.

I used the same design, except for the colour scheme and the sentiment.

As my friend needed these cards rather at short notice, I fell back on a design idea I had used several times in the past, but none of the cards look the same. The original idea by Tami was actually a Valentine's card.

See here 's the evolution of a card.

2013

2014

2015

2017

I think it's rather fun to see how one idea can lead to so many different cards over the years...
Which one do you like best?



Love
Ela


Challenges:
Night Shift Stamping: No patterned paper
Simon says Stamp: Back to School

Back to school

Hi Crafters, 

where we live, school is starting today. I honestly wish it wouldn't. I really enjoy not having to drive the girls to school every day and not having to send them to bed at any specific time. The summer holidays are always a time of easy going.

Well, it can't be changed, we enjoyed our holidays, and now it's back to business for all of us.

Also my friend's daughter is starting school this summer, and I created a card for her. I don't own a single stamp set for school, so I had to make do with what I had. 

I decided to go with a chalkboard again. I did that before and it's relatively easy, always effective and so fitting, for a school card. So I created a black panel and a craft coloured matte for it. I stamped the matte with my wood grain stamp in brown ink, so it looks like a wooden frame. Then I stamped the sentiment and little images on the black panel and heat embossed them in white. After that I sponged white pigment ink around the edges and over the panel, to make it look like a half cleaned chalk board. The tag was made in the same way.

For the card I wanted an animal to look at the board, so I checked all my critter stamp sets. The little fox from Avery Elle's "more stories" was perfect, but I wanted him to have a school bag. As I don't have such a stamp I checked the Internet for a nice clip art as an example and drew the bag and apple myself on water colour paper. Then I masked off the right side and stamped the fox. 

I watercolour the image with my inktense pencils and fuzzy cut it.

For the card base I had planned to adhere lots of die cut letters white on white to create a faux dry embossed look, but that was too plain and boring. After all, that's for a 6 year old, it should be fun. So I decided the card needed more bright apple green, to tie in the leaf of the apple. I die cut the letters in green instead and adhered them at random on the white card base. 


At last I assembled the card, mounting the fox on foam dots and added glossy accents to the apple and hearts and some silver pearl pen on the buckles of the bag.

For the envelope, I picked a matching bright green ready made envelope and just adhered the letters in white.

I must say, I love how that card turned out. The bright green really makes me happy and it even fits with gift we picked, a book about an inventive frog.

I think I'll create the same card again, because there are still some more kids among our friends who will start school next year, or the year after.And those friends don't know each other, so they will never know. ;)


I hope you all have a great day!

Hugs
Ela

Challange up your life: Challenge #2 Banner, Girlande oder Kranz / Banners, garlands or wreaths

Hi Crafters,

today we are challenging you again, over at 

The Challenge this time is:

Challenge #2 Banners, Garlands or Wreaths

This challenge really inspired me, I created not only one card, but four, though two of them probably count as one.

These are very simple cards. I used the paper smooches botanical 2 set and shadow inks to create the wreaths and also the mistletoe on the envelope. Then I stamped the sentiment and added the red bow with a glue dot. Last step was to add the red ornaments/berries with a red paper pen. These take a while to dry, so that should always be the last step.

Already while I was creating the first two cards, I thought about using snowflakes to create another wreath. Unfortunately I lost my snowflake set last year – to my long lasting distress. But there are a few tiny snowflake that are just the right size in the lawn fawn frosty friends set. 

I stamped them in white pigment ink on black cardstock and heat embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder. Then I lightly applied some more of the white ink with a dry baby wipe around the edges, to create the blackboard look and adhered the panel to a white card base. I actually wanted teal dots for this card, but I had neither teal ribbon or a teal paper pen, so I went with red again.

For the last card I wanted a less classic wreath, but still Christmas themed. So I stamped, colored and die cut a bunch of the tiny images that come with lawn fawn’s trim the tree set. I arranged them in a circle and glued them down on a craft card base. And then I messed up the sentiment by stamping it crooked.
That really annoyed me, it was just a tiny bit, but it was noticeable… I wondered with what I could cover it, but it was a two line sentiment, so an ordinary banner wouldn’t have worked. That’s why I chose the larger banner, stamped it an cut it out, just to see if it would be large enough. But I didn’t like it in white, so I thought I’d try to color it with alcohol markers. And I think it turned out quite nice in red.

For the envelope I adhered three more of the tiny items to the flap.

I really hope you’ll take the challenge and have some fun with us!

Ela



Challenge:
Festive Friday:  #44 Picture inspiration

Chalkboard Birthday

Hey crafters,


I've been making a lot of non-birthday cards lately, but this week-end I wanted to do some more Birthday cards. You can never have to many....

I think this Happy Birthday stamp is perfect for a chalkboard look, so I wanted to try that.

 

I paired it the make a wish stamp from the same set, just to make  the sentiment even larger. I heat embossed it in white on my black panel and stamped it a second time with white pigment ink, slightly offset to create a shadow effect. I also stamped the swirls and stars from the set, though only once and added an uneven frame with a white gel pen. 

When all had dried I used a dry baby wipe to add some more white ink mostly around the edges to create the chalkboard look. Then I adhered it to a simple red card base and stamped and doodled the envelope to make it  match.

Looking at it now from a distance of two days I am impressed that I managed to use three different sentiments from one set all on one card. And all the tiny lines and stars too. 

Now I am off to bed, I am not feeling all too well tonight. Better get some sleep.

Have a great time

Ela

Challenges:

Seize the Birthday: Anything goes Birthday

Virginia's View: clean & simple

Creative Friday: #113 Gestalte einen Umschlag / Create an envelope

School is about to start

Hello Crafters,

as school will start again soon, I created to more blackboard cards, similar to those I did for my daughters' teachers.

 The idea has come a very long way, the original inspiration was from Tami White, this card:

This is not my design!!!

It originally inspired me to this card, which was still pretty close to the original:

The sentiment is "School is cool". I created that one last year, now this summer, I needed two cards for teachers and two more for school starters. So I took the old inspiration and made something new of it. The  sentiment for the teachers says "Thanks a lot".

For the two school starters, I had to change the sentiment of course, and to my big frustration I only had a tiny one from Stampin' Up. So I used more pictures and made it more playful, which is probably quite fitting anyway. Here is the next version:

I luckily had red envelops at hand that are almost the same red, so I stamped them with the same background stamp as the card base. The letters on the envelop are once again cut with the Tim Holtz Alphabetical die, definitely a die I don't regret having bought.


Love
Ela

Summer holidays

Hey Crafters,

finally the summer holidays have started. And only two days into the holidays, I already feel like time is running out. We have so many things planned for the summer. I really hope we get some nice weather this year, sunny and warm, but not too hot.

But now I'd like to show you the results of my busy last week of term. My daughters will have a new teacher next year, so we wanted to say thanks to the teachers they had during their first 2 years.

I don't have a teacher stampset, so I had make do with the supplies I have. I used an alphabeth background stamp to stamp with versamark on a red cardbase, for the background. Then I created a black panel, on which I white embossed my stamping and then shadow stamped it again in white pigment ink. That was hardly visible, therefore I traced the lines with a white inktense pencil. Then I embossed the second heart on red cardstock, cut it out and added it to the panel. I created the chalk effect with white ink sponging and stamped a woodgrain background stamp in brown ink on a craft panel. Then I cut out the inside to create a frame and adhered it to my blackboard. Finally I used foam pads to adhere the blackboard onto the card base.

And my girls pained clay flower pots  with bright acrylic paints to create a personal gift. I glued two pot bottom to bottom, creating a kind of tower, to make them more fun, and my mother-in-law got us some pretty flowers for it (she's a florist).

 

And then, there was another card we needed, for a school friend who had her birthday on the very last day of term. She likes to draw StyleModels, so I created a very simple one layer StyleModel card, coloring the girl with my colored pencils (Faber Castell watercolor and Derwent Inktense). Then I just stamped a birthday sentiment and rounded two corners.

As I don't usually use my colored pencils dry, I am pretty content with the result.


Now I better run, tomorrow is my long office day, which means I have some work do be done today. What a pity, the weather is nice, and I really don't feel like work at all.

Love
Ela

C&S3 Day 1: Another chalkboard card - this time really layered

Hello crafters,

I liked the chalkboard look of the card I made earlier tonight, so I had another shot at layered chalkboard.


This time I (really) layered a snowflake and stamped and embossed the sentiment. I also adhered a red glittery heart and created a matching envelop with the positive from the chalkboard panel.

Have a nice Sunday
Ela

What a day

Hi Crafters,

what a day it was today. It seems everything went wrong.

We were invited to a 5th birthday today and were asked to bring a salad. My timing was perfect, salad done, kids home from grandma in time, reluctant to get dressed and washed and combed, but there was still time...

Then I went to the bathroom and found that one of my daughters had emptied her pockets on the floor, sand and stones and all. So I told her to clean up the mess before we go. She removed the wooden bath mat to clean up and said: "Mum, it's wet under there"... Guess what... the cat. And no water bowl...

So I cleaned up the worst mess, mopped the floor and before I was done my other daughter came in:
"Mum, the cat is bleeding". (She had surgery a few weeks ago and the crusts are falling off now).

So I finished cleaning, went to check the cat and because for once she was relaxed and staying put, I removed a few more of the stitches. Usually the vet would do that, but she allowed me to do it myself, because my cat is hysterical, when she has to go see the vet. That is a job for 2 grown-ups, but I had no one to help me this week, so I did my best alone, while the kids were holding the lamp and feeding the cat to distract her.
Luckily the bleeding was only very shallow, because she ripped of a piece of crust.

Well, that done we were running pretty late already, so I quickly finished what else there was to do, while my daughters were veeery sloooowly putting on their shoes. And when I went to fetch the salad, the bowl just slipped out of my hands and I spilled half the salad all over myself, my kitchen and into the half open drawer below.

So I cleaned up some more (much more), cut another handful of tomatoes to refill the bowl a little, got changed and off we went, before anything else could happen! We arrived 45 minutes late, flushed and bad tempered. By now I can laugh about it again. I wish someone had filmed it. No, actually I don't, if think about it.

But, at least Kevin liked our gifts, the coffee got me back on my feet some and everyone had a good laugh at me.

We returned home late and the first thing I had to do was to repair the dish washer, because it had an error code on the display.

But after that I granted myself a little playtime, instead of going straight to bed, like I had intended.

I had the idea right at the beginning of C&S 3, to create some layering with chalkboard, so I had a try at it.

 

As you (hopefully) can see, I totally failed again in creating a one layer card. I die cut the Hello from fun foam and stamped it with white ink on black card stock. Then I wanted to inlay the white hello die cut, but I had not mounted the foam stamp perfectly, so the h was pulled to the left a bit. Therefore I had to pull the white die cut too, which made it impossible to use inlay. Therefore I just adhered it to the black panel. I inked the edges in white, to give it a chalkboard look and added faux stitching and a few brads for a bit of colour. 

For the envelop I stamped the sentiment again, in grey and black, slightly offset to create the same kind of shadow.

Hope you all had a better day
Ela

Back to school and Lightning McQueen

Hello out there,

one of the reasons, I finally started my own blog, is that I've always wanted to participate in card making challenges.

So let's start with this back to school card, I created for Simon Says Stamp Challange Blog. It says "School is cool". The words "Schule" is stamped with Heyda alphabet stamps, the rest is either handdrawn or from the stampset Tween Scene by Scrappy cat.

School is cool

And I have another one, which happened to fit perfectly. Paperminutes called for cars this week, and I happend to need a birthday card for a little cars fan, so here is my result. I coloured in Lightning McQueen and the flash with my daughters' watercolour pencils. The greeting I had in mind, just wouldn't fit in, so I decided against it.

Lightning McQueen

Sorry the pictures are so bad, they were taken with my mobile...

See you soon
Ela