Sunshine Wishes thinlet dies Archives

Love! One Word InKing Royalty January Blog Hop

Jan 30, 2019 | InKing Royalty Blog Hop | 16 comments

Welcome to InKing Royalty’s January Blog Hop! This year’s Blog Hop themes are inspired by a single word – and this month our projects are centered around LOVE. You’re certain to see some amazing ideas for Valentine’s Day in the hop, but there are other ways to honor love in the lineup, too. What fun! We are excited to share our creations with you today! After you read my post, I hope you’ll hop over to the next person on the list at the base of this post.

Here’s my card front and inside, along withboth sides of the decorated envelope:

Lesson Learned

Just one of the many things I learned at OnStage/Orlando was to stop saying I am “just” a hobbyist demo. I’m a demo with a fabulous hobby sounds so much better. However, a hobbyist demo also means that I have to be very careful with how I choose my Stampin’ Up! products for purchasing. My first priority is versatility and longevity. Valentine’s Day stamps/bundles usually do not make it into my wish list, and the same goes fpr this year. (If I still taught elementary school, I would have definitely purchased the Hey Love Cling Stamp Set!!)

For this blog, I relied heavily on the DSP from Brian King’s DSP share. The bold hearts in the various shades of Lovely Lipstick jumped out at me, especially for a card for my husband’s Valentine’s Day card. While very happy and full of love, I used vellum to tone down the brightness of the Lovely Lipstick. Score! I needed to make sure the vibrant colors would pop, which caused me to use Basic Black cardstock to mat both the outside and inside panels.

My next challenge required me to figure out how to adhere the vellum to the card stock. I pulled out the epoxy hearts, again from an embellishment share from Brian King. I used some of all three sizes of epoxy hearts and randomly spaced them out to sit on the DSP hearts, then placed tiny dots of Tombow Liquid Adhesive behind the hearts. This trick allowed me to get the vellum attached without the adhesive showing through.

Here’s a close-up of the epoxy hearts because they don’t really show up on the picture of the outside:

Two Stamp Sets, Two Die Sets

I’ve been pretty blocked creatively since Christmas. However, once I picked out my DSP for this card, everything else seemed to fall into place.

I pulled the Strong and Beautiful stamp set from the Occassions catalog, specifically for the “You are so Loved” sentiment for the inside. The heart die and the cropped “love” is from the Celebrate You thinlit set. Happiness abounded when my plan for the heart and sentiment on the inside actually worked out perfectly! I cropped the “YOU” in Lovely Lipstick using the Celebrate you thinlit set.

Wood Words has the very textured heart stamp, which I used to stamp off Lovely Lipstick for the front of the envelope. Then, I glued the same DSP onto the envelope flap, and then fussy cut it down.

TA-DA! Done! Feels good to have created something of which I am proud! Now, I feel I’m ready to take on some challenges.

Many Thanks!

Thank you for stopping by today. If you feel inspired, please leave a comment.

I hope you’ll hop along to the next stop on the blog hop, Katie Ferguson at Cottage Paper. You don’t want to miss all the inspiration found within this group of demos!

A two-fer for CTS # 267 and #tttc043

Apr 16, 2018 | CAS(E) This Sketch | 6 comments

Congrats on your retirement…….but you will be missed!

I chose the bottom row for the Tic Tac Toe Challenge #043 of square, die cut, and dots. The very first dots I thought of were the Crushed Curry, Basic Black, and Whisper White dots from Pick-a-Pattern. I have loved this DSP set for a year and am sad to see it go. But change happens, and new colors and DSP are on the horizon. Demo pre-order period starts May 1st, and I am waiting with bated breathe. In the meantime, I am waiting for my Gotta Have It All pre-order. What a huge deal! Details at the bottom of this post.

Back to the card…..

Here’s my card:

Once I knew the DSP I would use, I had to figure out the layout, so I decided to check out other challenges. The CAS(E) This Sketch #267 for this week was perfect! The combination of these two challenges really works well! I knew the black mat couldn’t be plain, so I ran it through the dots embossing folder for added texture without adding another pattern. I needed something for the stripe across the top, so I put in a strip of Crushed Cury and used the Basic Black bakers twine wrapped it around three times and tied a simple knot.

Here are the challenge boards:

Die Cut Decisions

I really like the Sunshine Wishes die set, so I cropped out 3 “congrats” greetings, white, Crushed Curry, and Basic Black. Thankfully, I have the Xyron sticker made and ran all three pieces through the sticker maker. Since I use the dryer sheet technique to get my detailed die cuts to release, the brush has been just sitting with the other tools. I knew that the more rubbing I did before I pulled of the top sheet, the cleaner the stickers would be. Therefore, I found that using the brush to really go over the stickers until the top layer starts to release, the cleaner the adhesive will release as well. Before running the sentiment through the Xyron, I tried different layers of color combinations, and settled on white on the bottom, Crushed Curry in the middle, with black on top.

Once the layers and placement of the sentiment was decided, I thought I really needed something else. I went back to the Sunshine Wishes dies and decided on the butterfly. Once again, I cropped it in the three colors and started playing around with the layers. I decided to use the black as the base and the white for the top. Since a plain butterfly is boring, I daubed Crushed Curry on the white so the top would have dimension. The butterfly was still too plain, so I used the Gold Wink of Stella on both sides. That worked, as did the three black enamel dots for the body of the butterfly. After adding the gold and enamel dots, the black base looked sad. Clear Wink of Stella took care of that concern, and I was done.

It’s difficult to take a picture of Wink of Stella, but this close-up shows the gold and the little twinkles are the bling left behind.

As promised, here’s the banner for the exclusive pre-order with three different levels of goodness! Contact me if you are interested. Levels start with a beginner set, there’s a middle level set, and the Gotta Have It All deal. That’s what I ordered. Three free items, including an exclusive to this kit’s stamp. Can’t wait to have it delivered.

Have a Peachy Day!

InKing Royalty’s March Blog Hop

Mar 21, 2018 | InKing Royalty Blog Hop | 18 comments

Welcome to InKing Royalty’s March Blog Hop! Today’s hop is filled to the brim with projects that celebrate Spring and Summer. With inspiration from Katrina & the Waves’ song “Walking on Sunshine,” we’ve created projects that share the joy and excitement that accompany warmer weather. We are excited to share our projects with you. After you read my post, I hope you’ll hop over to the next person on the list at the base of this post.

Walking on Sunshine

I live in Central Florida and if there’s something we know, it’s sunshine. However, my relatives on Long Island, where I grew up, aren’t as fortunate and have been getting slammed with snow. While I am not a fan of the outrageous heat and humidity during our extended summer, I know we are lucky to not have to deal with snow, lots and lots of snow. This card comes from being thankful for the spring weather we have been having.

Without further ado, here’s my card:

I started with some of my favorite DSP from the Pick-a-Pattern DSP. What could be better for sunshine than Crushed Curry? I created my own DSP using the sunburst stamp from the Amazing You clear mount Sale-a-Bration set (free with a $50 purchase, ask me how). Each sunburst is Crushed Curry, which is stamped off once, and then lined up around the perimeter of the white cardstock. I used two other stamps in this set for the “Let’s celebrate” stamped in Basic Black. The “sunshine” was cropped from both black and Crushed Curry using the Sunshine Wishes thinlits from the annual catalog. I used the Basic Black to shadow the sunshine greeting, and as mats around the rest of the card elements.

Coloring Dimensionals

After adhering the black and Crushed Curry sunshine pieces together, I popped it up on dimensionals.. Mini-dimensionals, cut in half, and mounted on the back of the black layer. Lots of mini-dimensional halves. If I had been a thinking person, I would have used the Basic Black Stamping Write Marker to color the sides of all the dimesnionals before I placed it on the sunburst and white paper. However, I wasn’t a thinking person which means I had to very, very carefully try to color the sides without getting black marker on the white sunburst paper. Patience was required, but mission accomplished, as shown here:

Sunshine Wishes

For those of you still dealing with snow and winter, I am sorry. I need to wait patiently before I send this card up north. Hang in there, stay warm and dry.

Thank you for stopping by today. I hope you’ll hop along to the next stop from Jackie Beers at http://BlueLineStamping.com

Thank you for hopping along with us. If you get stuck during the Blog Hop, please use this line-up as a guide, you are currently on # 6:

Have a Peachy Day!

InKing Royalty Blog Hop

Jan 24, 2018 | Uncategorized | 17 comments

Welcome to InKing Royalty’s January Blog Hop! This year’s Blog Hop themes will be inspired by popular songs – the first is “I Think I Love You.” Our Blog Hop today is jam-packed with projects that are perfect for Valentine’s Day or that showcase love. How sweet is that?! We are excited to share our love-themed creations with you today. After you read my post, I hope you’ll hop over to Candy Ford at http://stampcandy.net/.

Here’s my card:

I Think I Love …… eclipse cards.

This isn’t the first eclipse card I’ve made and it definitely won’t be the last. There are a few tricks that will help make this rather simple technique even easier. First, add a layer of thick cardstock to the back of the cropped letters to give them more stabilty. In this case, I added some thick Whisper White cardstock to each letter and the heart.

Second, it is much easier to use the foam adhesive strips than dimensionals. Trust me, I learned the hard way and you just have to take my word for it. Dimension is key to this technique, and two layers of the foam adhesive tape really lets the letters shine. This also helps to have more of the Fresh Fig base show through for each letter, which is another way to add dimension. Mini-dimensionals were cut down into quarters and I used two layers of those tiny pieces on the thicker parts of the heart (are there really any thick parts to this heart?).

I Think I Love……… the Painted with Love Specialty DSP.

I am usually not a gold person, or a foil paper person, but this paper is gorgeous! The colors work so well together and I used the Fresh Fig as the base and this DSP showcases all the fabulous colors from the stack. I thought the lighter colors would blend in too easily. The heart is just the reverse side of these adorable hearts on the front. I did have a difficult time deciding how to do the heart because I’d already had a huge eclipse fail using a detailed thinlet. While working with those little, tiny pieces of mini-dimensionals took some time, the result is just what I saw in my head when I started creating the card.

I Think I Love…….ribbon and thread.

The Gold Metallic Thread is so fine I knew it would get lost on the card without a background to ground it. Enter the Fresh Fig Finely Woven ribbon. The ribbon is flat on the card and I wound the Gold Thread around the cardstock a few times. Another tip: this thread will fray. I’ve found that it’s helpful to use the Fine Tip Glue Pen to add a couple of drops of glue to the thread before I cut it, which will keep it from fraying.

Thank you for stopping by today. I hope you’ll hop along to the next stop on the blog hop, Candy Ford at stampcandy.net

Have a Peachy day!

If you get stuck while hopping, please use this line-up as a guide: