Lawn Fawn | Bunny and Turtle Birthday

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

Every now and then I get a special request. Someone needs a birthday card, but instead of choosing from what I have available, they want something a little more specific. This card was one of those.

I was told "something nice with a turtle and a bunny". Literally that is all I had to go off of. Ummm, what? There was no colour palette, no insight into what it was she wanted. Just "a turtle and a bunny".

Needless to say I fretted about this for a bit. I stopped offering custom cards quite some time ago, for any of you that have done this, you understand why. It can be incredibly frustrating when you think you've got what they are looking for, having literally put in hours of time only to hear "It's nice.... but maybe some brighter colours? or more muted? or something funner." So more hours go in, and it's not like we can actually charge for our time... I mean who is going to be paying for each iteration of a card because it's not "quite what I'm looking for".

So now for the most part, what I have available is what I have available. But this was for my mom. How could I say no? Fortunately, she provides me with quite a bit of creative freedom and there haven't been any flat-out "no" cards.

I stamped the banner, the bunny and the turtle (now wearing a hat) with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on 110lb Copic-friendly cardstock, coloured them with Copics and fussy cut them out.

I used one of my DIY stencils to create some fading grassy hills with Distress Ink and did the same with the cloud stencil for the sky. I then stamped some of the flowers directly to the panel and coloured those in as well.

I trimmed down a piece of perfectly plaid patterned paper (yay alliteration) and adhered that to the front of a standard A2 sized card base. I then trimmed down the coloured panel with the second largest of the Stitched Rectangle dies and mounted that on top. Finally I added my banner and my little birthday critters.

If I'm being completely honest, I was not really all that happy with this card, but mom LOVED it, and at the end of the day that's really all that matters.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar, over on Facebook and on YouTube. Drop me a line in the comments section below and let me know what you think.

The Greeting Farm "Be A Unicorn" | Party Like a Pony Birthday

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

Remember before you had kids, everyone was like "Oh, you should totally have a baby!", and "They're so cute!", and "Being a parent is such a rewarding experience!"? Remember that?

Let's get real for a minute. No one ever said anything about how incredibly frustrating it is to raise another human. How growing a human will take away a huge part of your identity. How your whole life will revolve around another little person. How you worry about whether or not you should go back to work, because if you go back to work, you'll worry about daycare and what to do if your job calls you out of town, but if you don't go back to work and "you're just a stay at home parent" you worry about all sorts of money issues and the giant gap in your career (whatever that may be) that could set you back years in your climb of the corporate ladder, not to mention thinking about retirement.

And when do you get time for yourself? You either spend every waking minute running after your kid(s) or you're so exhausted from work, then coming home and cleaning up after your kid(s) and dealing with whatever 3, 5, 9, 14 year old drama happened that is likely the end of the world.

My point today is carve out time for yourself. Every moment with the kids is important, but you can't take care of another human effectively if you, yourself are worn down completely. And that's in a house with TWO parents. I've done the single parent thing as well and that's an entirely different ball game. That's the difference between pee-wee and the major leagues.

So if at the end of the day, your child is fed, clothed and remembers to say "Thank you" (most of the time), you're probably doing a good job. Give yourself a break and if you need help, ask for it.

Today I have a card that has nothing to do with the ramble I just went on, but a super cute celebration card, featuring stamps from The Greeting Farm.

To begin, I cut down a piece of butter yellow cardstock with the largest of the Large Stitched Rectangle dies from Lawn Fawn, and another piece of 110lb Copic-friendly white cardstock with the next largest die from the same set.

I used a small polka-dot stencil and some Sunflower ink (Lawn Fawn) to create a fun tone-on-tone patterned paper. I then stamped the Unicorn, butterflies and the greeting with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and masked them off.

I used my cloud stencil (DIY!!) and some Tumbled Glass Distress Ink to create my sky, then blended in some Mowed Lawn and Forest Moss Distress Ink for my grassy area.

Once that was dry, I removed the masks and coloured the images in with Copic markers. I adhered my coloured panel to the yellow piece and mounted the lot to the front of a standard A2 sized card base.

To finish off the card I used clear Wink of Stella on the pony's hair and tail as well as on the butterflies' wings. Finally I used some Glossy Accents on the wings to add a bit of shine. 

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar, over on Facebook and on YouTube. Drop me a line in the comments section below and let me know what you think.

DIY - Make Your Own Stencils Using Border Dies

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

If you are like me, you have more border dies than you know what to do with. But sometimes we want the illusion of dimension without actually having the additional layers of paper. So what to do? Typically I would cut a border using my regular cardstock and then toss it at the end because it was so saturated with ink that it would either be no good, or the ink would transfer from an old project to a new projects.

Today I will show you how to use your border dies to create your own reusable stencils. 

The materials are pretty basic, and as you can see from the picture above it doesn't take much to make your own great stencils.  I chose to use borders as that is what I stencil most often, but you can do this with any of your dies - for example I plan on creating some balloon stencils so that I can create a party background for a future post (foreshadowing? Yep.)

Start with a piece of clean stencil material. I was able to get a two pack of stencil sheets from my local art store for dirt cheap. It's a thin, plastic material about the same sturdiness as my regular 110lb cardstock. They came in 8 1/2" x 11" and I trimmed it down from there. For the larger stencils in the first picture - I cut them to 6x6" squares and then used the left overs for other dies. 

 

Here I am using two of the "Stitched Hillside" Border dies from Lawn Fawn. These create a great snowy background in any winter scene (or grass if you're going for something a little more summer).

I used some low tack washi tape to hold my border dies in place and then ran them through my die cutting machine. Even though they create a stitched look, it doesn't change the way the stencil works as the stitch doesn't go all the way through the stencil, and if it does the hole isn't large enough to allow ink to pass through; at least for me. It will depend on the type of materials you use.

I did find that I had to run it through my machine twice - I would have done another pass but I didn't want them to shift and ruin my new stencil. After, just remove the tape and the dies, if the cut isn't clean, trace it with your craft blade. This material is incredibly easy to cut so while I did have to use my knife for all the stencils just to get a clean cut, it didn't really feel like I was cutting anything.

To finish it off, I used a smooth surface writer (this one is by Sharpie) to write the name of die that I used to create the stencil.

As you may have noticed from the first picture, they are all Lawn Fawn. The only reason for that is I have all their border dies. I'm not even kidding. It's like a compulsion. Or Pokemon - I just gotta get them all.

For the Ocean Waves and Puffy Clouds, I simply rotated the stencil 90 degrees and used the next size die. 

A couple things to keep in mind:

• You are cutting a plastic material - watch out for sharp corners
• If you need to finish off the cut with a craft knife - be careful and take your time, you don't want to slip and cut into your stencil
• This plastic is not a porous material - like any other stencil the ink will sit on it, it will get on your fingers, it will rub off onto your project - just wipe it clean with a baby wipe
• Store your stencils flat - these and any other that you may have - I keep mine inside a page protectors with a sheet of black cardstock so I can see it clearly, in a three ring binder
• Have fun with it! Now that all your dies can also become stencils the possibilities are endless!

I hope today's DIY has been helpful. If you haven't already, please follow me over on the right side bar so you don't miss any future projects or tips, if you are viewing this via mobile device, scroll to the bottom and click "View web version" first. You can also follow me over on Facebook. If you have any questions about this DIY or a suggestion for a future post, please comment in the section below, I would love to hear from you!

DIY - Card Protector Sleeves with We R Memory Keepers Fuse Tool

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

There are many different types of protector sleeves on the market and lots of great places online to get them. I found a couple places that sold them in lots of 100s, but the shipping was the same price as the product alone. Now, I may be cheap economical, but I don't really want to pay the same amount in shipping as I do for the item being shipped. Especially in Canada where the exchange is not super awesome at the moment.

I recently had a need to have a whole lot of protector sleeves because there is nothing worse than having super cute dimensional cards with embellishments getting ruined because of improper storage.

So today, I have a step by step tutorial (with pictures) to show you how to create your own for way less than the cost of ordering and shipping and (in my case) exchange. Let's dive in!

The first thing you are going to need is a regular sandwich ziploc bag. It doesn't actually have to be the Ziploc brand, but like anything else in the DIY world if you use cheap stuff you'll get a cheap finished product.

I'm not saying go out and buy super heavy duty bags, but something mid range that you would trust your snacks to will work just fine.

Use a straight edge and an knife to cut the zip part off the bag. This will be the opening, so you you don't want to have a hack job. Unless you want to have to tidy up the edge later, take an extra moment to do this part neatly.

In order to size the bag, use the A2 envelope as a guide, the larger size of the envelope will ensure that the card will fit with room to slide in and out as well as have room for dimension and embellishments and all the things that we love about card making.

Next, heat up your fuse tool. Place the ruler and fuse!

Because the plastic from these bags is lightweight you may have to play around a bit with speed and pressure when fusing. This plastic melts much faster than the stuff you may normally use, so use caution.

I also found that I could only do these in batches because there is no temperature control on the tool, so it needed a break to cool down then I could start again.

To remove the extra piece, I recommend using your cutting tool instead of a ruler and blade. The plastic is quite slippy so it may not stay straight. But do what works for you.

Here you can see what the protector looks like with the extra piece removed and the envelope still inside.

Here we have the finished product! Your own A2 card protector sleeves to keep your works of art safe, for only a few cents and no shipping costs.

YAY!

While the envelope will fit in the sleeve along with the card, it may be a tight fit and in the event that people are pulling the card in and out to have a look at it, it may be tear the bag. But totally your call.








I hope you found today's post to be helpful and economical because really, let's be honest, at the end of the day people are just going to toss the sleeve anyway, right?

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below, I love to hear from you all. If you like this post please follow this blog to see more!

Have a great day!