Hi Crafty Friends, It's a new month and another challenge at The Outlawz Christmas Only challenge.
Christmas cards are my favorite so I love creating them year round.
Here's a card using some of the newer Gina K Designs products.

I love the vintage feel of this design using only stamps to create the design.

Gina K 1st Class Frame Cover Plate, Festive Bloom stamp set and Postage Plus stamp set.

I hope you'll keep going with your holiday cardmaking and play along with us.

Cut it Up Challenge #348 ~ My Heart

Hi Crafty Friends,
Our theme for Cut it Up's Challenge #348 is MY HEART so we're looking to see a heart somewhere on your project.I decided to venture outside my creative comfort zone and create something with random stamping, ephemera, and a vintage feel for this challenge.

I began with Pinkfresh Studio's Quilted hearts cover plate run over a piece of patterned paper then cut again with PF's Dotted Nested Deckled rectangles.  Then I got busy randomly stamping images from Simon Says Stamp Vintage Love Notes set and Jaded Blossom's Heart Splatters.  I cut out two LaLa Land Crafts hearts, one from patterned velum, and, finally added ephemera from Tim Holz.  Little bits of PF bling finished the card.  Definitely not my regular style but I like the result and had fun just "letting go!"

I hope you'll play along.

Merry Christmas

 Hi Crafty Friends,

 It's my design team day on the Jaded Blossom Blog.

I'm trying to build a stash of Christmas cards.  Here's my latest design.

I only used two die sets for this card.  It's easy and a great way to use holiday paper scraps.

Sunburst Card Mat Die

Christmas Dies 2

If a stamp or die set you want is SOLD OUT, be sure to sign up for the restock notification.  Reorders are based on customer requests so be sure to let us know!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Masculine and Vintage

  Hello My Crafting Friends,   On July 1st  the summer/fall design team for Paper Crafting World was announced.  We are sharing a new format this term which will include individual postings featuring PCW digi stamps and cut files, tutorials, projects, and freebies along the way.   I have the privilege of creating the first post for this new format. I found these fabulous Moxxie papers when I was in Texas and wanted to use them to create a masculine card using the PCW digi Sailboat.  

The sentiment is a quote I found written by Whoopi Goldberg.  I think it's perfect for the essence of the card.

Because these papers have such a vintage look, I decided to use several distressing techniques to make the card come together.  Here's a close up to help you see the distressing.

  I decided to share a few pictures that explain the techniques (in case distressing is new to you.)

 First I roughed the edges of the patterned papers using a single blade of my scissors.

If you slightly dampen the paper first it shreds a little more easily, but be careful not to over tear.

 

 Then my favorite go-to technique is to ink the edges and corners with chalk ink.

 

 A crimper adds some nice dimension.  I actually crimped the bottom section of the card.

 

 I often use Spellbinders dies to cut and mat my images.  After embossing, but before removing the image from the die, I use a fingertip sponge and Distress Ink to ink from the die inward to the edge of the mat.  When the sponge was almost empty of ink, I sponged over the entire surface to get a more vintage look.

 

Finally, the choice of Copic colors is important to attain the look I was going for. None of these techniques are new or unique, I just thought I'd share the process I used to get the look that I think the papers called for.   I hope you'll plan to visit My Paper Crafting each day and see the Sizzlin Summer projects my fellow Paper Crafting World designers will share.   I would like to enter this card in the following challenges: Cards for Men, "Boys will be Boys" Crafting by Designs, "Anything Goes" A.R.T.#3 " Anything Goes" Crafts 4 Eternity " Heavy Metal" QKR Stampede "Anything Goes" Sister Act "Anything Goes"