National Frances Day

Hi Crafty Friends, 

According to the Holiday Calendar website, today (13th June) is National Frances Day! The name Frances has Latin roots and means "free one". There are several notable historical figures that bear this name including Saint Frances of Rome and author Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Seeing my name is Frances, I wanted to do something to celebrate this day this year, but of course I didn't want to send myself a card. About 18 months ago, I met another person whose name is Frances who is now a friend, so I decided to make a card to send to her to celebrate the day.

So next question was what do you put on a "Frances" card, so you know it is a Frances card ... the name of course. So I decided to do the eclipse technique using letters which are a little camouflaged into the background of the card.

For the background I used a Magnolia Washi sheet from Textures and cut. it down to a slimline size. I then used an old alphabet die set to die cut the name into the background. I have had the die set for many years, but as Frances is a long name it needed to be one which wasn't too wide. I did cut each of the letters about 3 more times from white cardstock and layered them together and then from the dark pink cardstock. I layered the dark pink letters into the opening and then adhered the other stack of letters so they were offset slightly.

Next I layered the panel onto a filagree die cut panel and finally onto a top folding slimline card base. 

For the inside of the card, I computer generated the sentiment, so the recipient knew why she was receiving a card with our name on it. I also added a couple more of the magnolia washi tape flowers to the edge of the card.

 

You Brighten My Day

Hi Crafty Friends,

It’s challenge time with the “Crazies” over on the Crazy 4 Challenges blog. As challenge hostess for the month, I finish off the month with one last challenge.

Our challenge this week is .....

I love the look of inlaid de cutting using alphabet or word dies over a design on a card which is becoming popularly known as the Eclipse Technique. 

For my card today I pulled out my Painted Peonies stamp set from The Ton which I purchased earlier in the year and hadn't gotten around to using. 

For the Inlaid Die Cutting /Eclipse Technique part of the card I die cut the word "YOU" using the Alphabet set from Karen Burniston.

The "Brighten My Day" sentiment is from a Honey Bee Stamps stamp set.

For the inside of the card I created a pop-up card using the Katherine Label Pop-up die set adding a sentiment from the Painted Peonies stamp set.

I die cut one of the edges from the MFT Stamps Stitched Scallop Basic Edges die set and stamped the peonies over the panels for both the top and bottom of the card.

Here is a side on look at my card so you can see the pop-up portion of the card a little better.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the “Crazies” cards over on the Crazy 4 Challenges blog and also their individual blogs for more details.

Amy Ottmers

Anja de Regt

Joanne Grzelak

Karen Aicken

Kathleen Adams
Maryann Einam
Raquel Mason
Rebecca Ednie

Supplies:

Painted Peonies Stamp set - The Ton

Owl Always Love You

Hi Crafty Friends,

This week the Karen Burniston Design Team is collaborating with Brutus Monroe, they have lots of fun products which work well with Karen's die sets. Karen Burniston will be releasing 12 new die sets in June, so for my card today I have combined a couple of the new die sets with a Brutus Monroe stamp set.

There were a couple of stamps I had on my wish list for a while, being an owl lover of course this Owl Love You stamp set was one of them. So when I got to chose what products I wanted to work with for this collaboration, I of course had to select this cute owl stamp set. 

As I had just received the new Karen Burniston dies which are being released in June,  I had to play with a couple of those too. Here I have used the new alphabet die set to create the eclipse technique, die cutting the word "Owl" rather than using the word that was included in the sentiment.

I also used the new Circles die set for the layering of the owl and also for the frame on the window. I love the pattern that Karen has added to the edges of some of the circles in this die set.

I used the pop-up mechanism from the Katherine Label Pop-up die set die cutting the window and the layers the owl is on using the new circle die set rather than the label that comes with the die set.

The cloud background was created using the cloud border die from the Nature Edges die set.

For the background of this card I used Hero Arts Every Which Way Stencil to create the Rotated Stencils technique.

I stamped the second line of the sentiment twice onto black cardstock and trimmed it down so I could have it on both the inside and outside of my card.

Supplies:

Other:
Stamps - Owl Love You - Brutus Monroe
Paper: White; Teal; Purple
Copics

Hugs

Hi Crafty Friends,

It's challenge time with my friends over on the CCEE Stampers challenge blog. Our challenge hostess for the month, Vicky Gould continues to issue the challenges.

St. Patrick’s Day is this Saturday…. make a card featuring green – it can be a St. Patrick’s card, but you can also choose to just use the color green (not all of us are Irish, but we do need cards of various types!)

I used the Concord & 9th Stuck on You Clear Stamp set to stamp the cactus image and after coloring the image and die cutting with the Stitched Mod Rectangle die, I die cut the "Hugs" sentiment from the lower portion of the cactus. Not sure I would want to really hug a cactus ... but I figured it was a fun sentiment to use.

I used one of the smaller cactus images from the stamp set to create the background of my card.

As you can see I have used the Camouflaging Die Cuts or Eclipse Technique on my card again this week. I had originally made this for last week's challenge ... as another one I was making was giving me trouble. But I kept seeing green when I was making this card and I finally got the other to work as I wanted it, so kept this card for this week's challenge. I have a couple of 'green' cards to make this week so it made sense to use this one for one of them.

For the inside of my card, I used another stamp from the stamp set on the background and then used the Katherine Label Pop-up Card die set to create a double pop-up card.

Here is a close up look at the left hand side of the inside of my card. I added the "Stuck on You" sentiment from the stamp set and a small cactus.

For the right hand side of my card I added the larger cactus to the label from the Katherine Label Pop-up Card die set and then a smaller one to the lower right hand corner of the card.

Don't forget to check out the CCEE Stampers blog (goes live 12 AM EST) to see the rest of the creations the CCEE Stampers created this week. You can also see more details of their creations on their individual blogs:

Anne Harmon

Joanne Grzelak

Liz Williams

Lois Bak

Lynn McAuley

Maryann Einam

Vicky Gould
Kelly McKown-Santi

Supplies:

Stamps: Stuck on You - Concord & 9th

Paper: White; Black; Green

Dies: Katherine Label Pop-up - Karen Burniston; Stitched Mod Rectangles Stax; Mod Rectangles Stax - MFT Stamps; Trio Window Cover - Mama Elephant

Other: Black Ink; Gina K Designs Jelly Bean Green Ink Cube; Foam Tape; Copics

Hooray! It's Your Day

Hi Crafty Friends,

It's challenge time with my friends over on the CCEE Stampers challenge blog. Our challenge hostess for the month, Vicky Gould continues to issue the challenges.

This week Vicky has challenged us to play around with techniques using Die Cut Words. Two suggestions to use were Camouflaging Die Cuts and 3D Word Dies.

I created a birthday card using an image from Stamps U Love ... I can never make enough boy/male cards.

I decided to use the Camouflaging Die Cuts technique for my card today, aka the Eclipse Technique. I almost threw this card out as when I first made it I layered the birthday sentiment using white die cut letters underneath the decorated die cut pieces which made it harder to see the completed sentiment.  However after creating another card (which I am now using for next week's challenge) I decided to remove the white layers and replace it with black die cut letters which defines the sentiment a little better.

I kept the inside fairly simple, but I still wanted something  special inside, so I used the mechanism from the Katherine Label Pop-up Card die set to create a pop-up for the sentiment.

Don't forget to check out the CCEE Stampers blog (goes live 12 AM EST) to see the rest of the creations the CCEE Stampers created this week. You can also see more details of their creations on their individual blogs:

Anne Harmon

Joanne Grzelak

Liz Williams

Lois Bak

Lynn McAuley

Maryann Einam

Vicky Gould
Kelly McKown-Santi

Supplies:

Stamps:  Childhood Memories Sent with Love - StampsULove; LJD Birthday Greetings - MFT Stamps`

Paper: White; Black; Blue; Just For Men Paper Pad - Marianne Design

Dies: Katherine Label Pop-up - Karen Burniston; Wonderful Words Birthday - Papertrey Ink; Words Set 1 - Celebration; Wonky Rectangles - Simon Says Stamp

Other: Black Ink; Broken China Distress Oxide; Earth & Sky Stencil; Copics