Hello Everyone, I love designing and creating with scraps and pretty papers I have to make cards. I hope I give you some ideas to make pretty Valentine cards with the tips I talk about. Buying a Christmas wreath at 80% off at JoAnn Fabrics and decorating it with Valentine’s ribbon, etc. was a joy. You will see it in this video. I also show you the gifts I will give everyone this Valentine’s.
Scraps to Valentine Cards
Happy Valentine’s Day & Happy Creating,
Vicki
Hello Everyone, I’m so happy I chose to declutter my craft room this month. I have just completed project #3 and would like to share this with you. You can use any scrap paper you have for this project. You know, all those pretty papers you have that you haven’t used for awhile.
It’s so fun matching paper scraps and embellishments. I have been thinking about doing this for the last 3 years. That’s right, and today I got it done. I thought of 13 people I will give this to as a note pad for a shopping list, to do list, or whatever they need this for.
Hope you can get to those projects you’ve been wanting to do for gifts, your home decor, projects you need to do for you or your business.
All the best to you and Happy Creating,
Vicki
Hello Everyone, Week 3 and final week, until June, of making cards in my craft room – so much fun. I could get lost on cloud 9 making these cards, so many pretty papers and materials to work with!
I actually wanted to make three years worth of cards, however, that was a little too ambitious, but I made cards for most of the year. I have Father’s day and Thanksgiving I need to make cards for yet.
Thank you to all of you who stopped by to take a look. I enjoyed these past three weeks. I hope if you are a card maker I shared a few techniques or tools I use to help make your card making a little easier. Most of all I hope it gave you some ideas of how you can use your scraps and decorative papers to make inspirational cards. Sharing the love.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
Hello Everyone,
This week I made a few more Anniversary cards. I also made Sympathy and Thinking of You cards. All these cards I make for fun to send out throughout the year. Having these cards available when I need them is great. I love the idea that others will be touched by a little inspiration or comfort or that these cards will bring a little happiness to someone.
It’s always amazing to me how scraps and embellishments can look so nice when they are color coordinated and cut and made to fit on each card. This week I enjoyed creating the card designs as I shuffled papers, stamps, ribbon, washi tape, my pressed floral and watercolor scraps, sentiments and more. I was delighted to be spontaneous not knowing what the final outcome would look like. It’s so much fun to discover the possibilities as I create and use the materials I have.
My pressed floral scraps are designs that were slightly the wrong color or size and never were used. My watercolor scraps are the solid colors you will see on the video. I used my left over paint to create those scraps not wanting to toss my paint I had left on my palette after I painted several designs this past year. Nothing is wasted in my craft room! I’m thrilled that the watercolor scraps blend so well with the other papers and embellishments. If you do not do watercolor, you can simply use any color paper you have.
I was able to use my embossing powder I haven’t used for awhile, I love the colors! They are made by Stampendous and I bought them at Michaels long ago. I highly recommend them. I also recommend stickles and liquid pearls. If you purchase them make sure they are made by Ranger.
You will see that I use my self-healing cutting mat as a guide for measuring where to place the papers at times. This mat sets on my table as I am working with this project.
Don’t forget to place a lighter color paper inside the card for your sentiment when you use a dark color card base. Also, don’t forget to sign your name on the back of your card!
Next week I will be making Get Well, Easter, and Mother’s Day cards. Hope you can again join me next week to take a look at what designs I will come up with…so much fun!
Until next time… Happy Creating,
Vicki
Hello Everyone,
I love making greeting cards for fun from materials and scraps I have accumulated all year in my craft room. It’s great to recycle old cards, calendars, my watercolor and pressed floral scraps, anything I think would look nice to embellish cards. I make 5 x 7 greeting cards, so the paper is cut 7″ x 10″ and scored at 5″.
Hope you will have fun recycling your scraps. My goal is to make about 140 cards in the next few weeks. We will see how many I actually do. One year I made 80 cards and gave 20 each to my two daughters, my daughter-in-law, and my oldest granddaughter as gifts. It makes me so happy to know they enjoy receiving and sending my cards and others will me touched by their sentiments.
If I can answer any questions you have about card making, please let me know.
Happy Creating,
Vicki
Scraps to Showstoppers – Creating After Christmas Thank-you cards
Natures Best Art Give Away 1/25/19
Besides creating pressed floral designs with flowers from my garden and painting designs in watercolor, some of you know I also enjoy creating cards with all sorts of materials and scraps from my craft room. I love sending out cards and love receiving them. I recently sent out Thank-you cards to those that gave us Christmas presents who do not live in our area.
This year I have also decided to thin out my craft room materials and scraps, so I’m having my first GIVE AWAY. For a chance to win leave a comment on my newly posted Business Facebook page www.Facebook.com/NaturesBestArtist or on this blog post, (if you cannot see where to comment on this blog post, click the title of the blog post and you will see the info about leaving a comment at the bottom).
A little bit about the GIVE AWAY: The last day to comment is Thurs., February 7th. I will pick a random comment on Fri., February 8th and you will be notified by email if you are picked. I will announce the winner February 8th also. Please don’t put your email address in the comment. I can see it in my admin. I will contact you by the email address you signed up to comment. If your comment doesn’t show up right away, don’t worry, I have to approve it first. Do to shipping restrictions this GIVE AWAY is for USA citizens only.
So if you’d like to make these pretty thank-you cards you will have some of the materials needed to make them. Included in the GIVE AWAY are four snowflakes, four pieces of that pretty ribbon, one of the snowflake Thank-you cards I made, and our ten pack of Thank-you cards I painted in Watercolor and Tom printed. Sharing is always fun knowing it will make others happy!! You can click this link: Naturesbestart.com/artistic-accessories/ to see our Thank-you cards and other accessories. (Remember you can click, if you like, on any picture on our website to see it larger).
You don’t have to have exactly the same materials I used to make these cards. You can use glitter instead of stickles, you can emboss instead of using the silver stamp pad I used. Use whatever you have in your craft room. I don’t remember where I got the snowflakes, I’ve had them quite awhile, I’m so happy I finally used them and happy to share them with you for your card making.
If you do have the Ranger stickles in the white, I simply used my finger to spread it on the snowflake and let it dry. The silver Ranger stickles was used in the middle of my red snowflake I made with a gel pen. If you have a color box silver stamp pad you can use it for your sentiment. I wanted to get this because sometimes I thought I’d like to have the look of embossing without actually having to emboss. I thought it worked well. I also discovered I had to use my mouse pad underneath my paper when stamping to have the emboss look. I simply used scotch tape to adhere the ribbon on the back of the red paper. Everything else was glued with my ATG (Adhesive Transfer Gun). To see a picture of my ATG gun click on my 3/14/18 blogpost
Hope all is well with everyone. We finally got our Christmas decorations and tree down, we were so late in doing that this year – such is life. We were actually doing some fun stuff instead of getting our tree down this year after Christmas; like preparing a wonderful birthday celebration for our daughter, preparing for our Small Group we meet with from church, and taking care of our grandchildren.
I hope you can all check out my newly posted Business Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/NaturesBestArtist and don’t forget to leave a comment, clicking the Like button is always appreciated too! I so much appreciate your support!
Just curious, What kind of surface do you find is best to stamp on, is it cushioned or hard? I usually use an Alvin GBM 1824 self-healing cutting mat (which means you can use something like an X-ato knife to cut papers, etc. and it won’t cut through the mat). They are online at Alvinco.com for $34.00 or Cutting-Mat.net (currently on sale for half price – not sure how long the sale lasts). For this project I was using a different desk and found I had to use my mouse pad as I mentioned above.
Also, if you put up a Christmas tree, when do you usually take it down?
Happy Creating!
Vicki