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Christmas 2022
It feels to me like I just packed away the Christmas tree last week. You know what I am talking about. Yes, the task of putting a 6-foot wide and 7 feet tall tree in a 2-foot by 3-foot box. It is worse than folding fitted sheets and it is getting to be that time of year again. It also means though, that it is time to make Christmas cards and that is always a fun time.
This card uses a combination 3D embossing folder and a matching die that cuts out the birdhouse. The birds come from another embossing folder/die set and of course, go well together. It is brilliant ideas like this that keep us cardmakers continuing to buy new products.
There will be an upcoming flurry of activity on my blog, as the Coffeelovers Blog Hop is coming up in the next couple of weeks. The blog means that I post at least 10 cards in 10 days. Is it a coincidence that this bloghop comes up in the exact time period that my subscription for my blog is up for renewal? Every year I think I am not using the blog enough to justify the cost, but every year I renew.
Spring Card Camp 2 Day 16
Today’s tutorial was presented by Ashlea Cornell. She was demonstrating easy watercolour backgrounds. when I do watercolour backgrounds, I always end up with twice as many backgrounds as I intended. I just can’t wipe away all the luscious colour that is left on my media mat, so I just make another background.
I had a bit of a minor miracle happen today too. The card I am posting today was teetering on the rim of the big round file, and then the miracle happened. I wanted to use a mainly black image on the brightly painted stripes. The stamp set I had in mind was Altenew’s Watercolour Half Tone set. The problem was that I had painted the stripes on the very textured side of the watercolour paper. I absolutely knew that the subtle gradations of grey/black on the Halftone image would not show up well on the texture but I stamped it anyway. Sure enough, it did not stamp well, and the card started it’s trip to the big round file. It was then that I thought if I could stamp the Half-tone image on smooth cardstock and put it on top of the watercoloured stripes, I could salvage the card. The next problem was that I did not have the coordinating dies for this stamp set and the image was a fussy cutting nightmare with its’ little disconnected curves and edges. That is when the miracle happened. I decided to see if my Scan n Cut would be able to cut out the image. It should not have been able to discern the edges that were not clearly connected to the main image, but low and behold, it did a fantastic job of cutting it out and the card was saved.
Spring Card Camp Day 6
Today’s tutorial was about colour blocking. As usual, I would have been done a long time ago if I hadn’t decided to do a “reverse” kind of colour blocking. I stamped three shades of cardstock with a silhouette image background stamp. This was not a problem other than it took about 4 repeats of inking and stamping to have good dark ink coverage on all the cardstock. Then blah, blah, blah and then I had to cut my own shadow for the Thinking of You on my Scan n Cut and then blah, blah, blah and then it needed matching mats and then blah, blah, blah. Finally, it needed a liberal dousing of Shimmer Spritz and a dash of Stickles to finish. My friend Dianne is right………………it takes me hours to make a card.
This card will never make my favourites list, but it turned out well. It looks better in real life than in a picture as the glitter spray never photographs too well. It is a 5 X 6.5 inch card which I rarely make, but I needed the extra room for the blocks. I have lots of the stamped cardstock left to make more cards in this style as Laurie Willison did but no time to do so. I must don a mask and risk my life to get some groceries.
![IMG_5443[10038]](https://maverickmuses.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/img_544310038.jpg)
![IMG_5444[10036]](https://maverickmuses.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/img_544410036.jpg)
Spring Card Camp Day 3
Today’s tutorial was about using stencils to create dry embossing. One of my current favourite stencils is Simon Says Stamp Tumbling Leaves. In fact, I made two cards with it in the Spring Card Camp 1. I decided to break it out again for today’s card.
This was an easy card to do, not so easy to get the subtle embossing to photograph well.
Spring Card Camp Day 17
How did I get 2 days behind in making cards for this card camp? Honestly, it is getting impossible for me to schedule more than little job in a day. I am so slow these days that I think I am going to have to dress Monday for work on Tuesday, otherwise, I am going to be late. Of course, that is assuming that I will have a job to go to eventually.
Today’s tutorial was led by Julie Ebersole. The idea was multiple uses of word dies, as per the overall theme of 2 for 1.
I have found the key to this technique is to use word dies without too many unattached little parts. Like the 10 second rule, any little parts laying on my desktop longer than 10 seconds are lost for all eternity. A new lesson that I learned is to remember to spray said little attachments outside at the same time as I spray the card front. I only noticed that they weren’t sprayed when I went to glue them on. Being lazy I tried spraying them just where they sat on my desktop. Nope, the spray is an aerosol so it blew said little attachments all over the craftroom, while adding a nice layer of glue to my desktop! Nevertheless, the cards finally came together quite nicely.
Spring Card Camp Day 13
Once again, Cathy Zielske presented the card camp instruction video today. The theme was to use word dies in both the positive and negative form to create two cards.
The instructions were simple, easy to carry out and resulted in two cards with a CAS but elegant look. If I didn’t have to wait for the glitter paste and Nuvo drops to dry, I could have had these cards posted in about fifteen minutes.
Spring Card Camp Day 12 # 3
Here is the final set of cards from today’s tutorial. I really like how they all turned out. I am having trouble picking a favourite.
Spring Card Camp Day 9 # 3
This is probably my favourite set of cards. I like the colour combination and the embellishments on these ones.
Spring Card Camp Day 9 #2
Here is the second set of cards. I used a different stencil and a different sentiment and this one turned out nice too.
Spring Card Camp Day 9 #1
It is day 9 at the Spring Card Camp. Today the class was taught by Channin Pelletier. The objective was to use a stencil both as an element for regular inking blending as well as using the stencil a second time in a watercolour smooshing technique. Not only do you get the 2 cards for 1 thing, but also your inner need not to waste all that wonderful ink left on the stencil is met.
I actually loved this technique. So much so, in fact, that I ended up with six cards. Well actually I made eight, but two of them are having trouble in trying to not to look like crap. I will let them marinate for a while and see if they look better the next time I look at them. The others though turned out very well.
I will do this in 3 posts again to capture the 3 pairs of Cards. Here is the first:
DebSelby
Maverick Muses 