Snow in March (???) cards

Having snow fall during March in the South is a rare thing, so I decided to pull out some arctic stamp sets that I recently purchased.  Julie Ebersole designs adorable stamp & die sets for Ellen Hutson; her recent additions are just super cute & whimsical.

First I cut an alcohol ink stained background and silver adhesive cardstock with a gorgeous background die from Lil’ Inkers.  Piecing them together like a puzzle was fun and not as time consuming as I thought and creates a stunning background.

I fussy cut all the stamped images from the Arctic Pals stamp set and used a light grey copic marker to create shadows & a little depth. Snowy hills, cut with a Lawn Fawn hillside background die, pulls all the elements (background, critters) together.

Hope that Spring will be here soon, but in the meantime, I totally enjoyed working with this stamp set- it is one of my absolute favorites that I own!

Stamps: Arctic Pals by Ellen Hutson

Dies: Faceted cover plate from Lil’ Inkers, Stitched Hillside from Lawn Fawn

Cardstock: Neenah 110 lb Solar White, Papertrey Ink silver adhesive cardstock, Tim Holtz watercolor cardstock

 

 

 

Easter Cards

Isn’t the Easter egg die from Pretty Pink Posh adorable?  The font is beautiful and the flowers and leaves paired with an egg frame, make it divine!

I love cardmaking, but I love it even more when you can use one die cut to make 2 different cards.  In the cards above, I used the negative and positive cuts from a die to make the center piece of each card.

First make sure to add a double-sided adhesive sheet to the back of the cardstock you wish to cut with the die (in this case I used a gold foil and a plain white cardstock sheet.  This makes it infinitely easier to assemble each card! For 2 of the cards shown above, I wanted to highlight the egg even more, so I first used oxide inks from Tim Holtz to create a soft background prior to adding the final die cut.

There are a number of ways you can do this, but I chose to first lightly adhere the positive die cut so that I could place all the negative die cuts in place.  I cut out an egg shape from masking paper and then proceeded blend oxide ink on the card:

Once I finished adding a light handed oxide ink layer around the egg, I peeled off the masking paper. Finally, I adhered the positive die cut, added flower sequins & some crystal and VOILA- done!

It might seem like a lot of work, I truly enjoyed fitting the pieces in like a puzzle!

Supplies:

Inks: Tim Holtz oxide ink in broken china and squeezed lemonade.

Die: Pretty Pink Posh- Easter Shaker die

Cardstock: Green Shimmer from SSS,  My Favorite Things gold foil,

Crystals:  Lucy’s jewels in pool & Studio Katia- Cupid’s Kiss crystals