Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the My Monthly Hero July 2019 Kit. This kit is all about summertime fun at the lake and celebrating the great outdoors!

The 6″ x 9″ clear stamp set includes three layering stamps – the dock, mountains and trees along with assorted ‘summertime on the lake’ silhouettes. We have 14 coordinating frame cuts and two fancy dies in our die package, and we are treated to FIVE ink cubes with this kit –  Lime Green, Forest, Sand Stone, Cocoa, and Dusty Blue. We get four 8.5″ x 5.5″ sheets of the Hero Hues card stock – two Meadow and two Lapis, and a half-ounce pot of Blue Pearl embossing powder. Grab your swimsuit and let’s head to the lake!

For my first card, I ink blended a sunset (or sunrise! – aren’t those prime fishing hours?) on the top third of a card front using Simon Says Stamp Hybrid ink cubes in Watermelon, Orange Slush and Lemon Zest,  and the lake with a simple layer of the HA Dusty Blue ink. I embossed the large water ripple stamp on the lake twice using VersaMark ink and the included Pearl Blue embossing powder. I die cut both of our tree dies from some dark green card stock from my stash, and used the negative cut to ink their reflection in the water using the green inks from our kit. Easy reverse inking using the negative die-cuts!

I toned down the Dusty Blue lake with Salty Ocean Distress Oxide ink and added some sky reflections with the SSS Hybrid inks. I stamped the fisherman boat, the fish, birds and sentiment using VersaFine Onyx Black ink – I did mask off the bottom of the boat stamp to look like it was in the water. I glued the die-cut trees to the horizon, added some invisible thread between the fishing pole and the fish, and added more Blue Pearl embossed water ripples (and a splash for the fish) using a VersaMarker pen. I used the oval die from the MMH May ’18 kit to die-cut an oval frame from some dark grey card stock and glued that to the top of the card front. A perfect birthday card for the fisherman in your life! I did add a pun on the inside of this card – I thought it went quite well with the Birthday sentiment and fishing theme! I printed that sentiment using my Silhouette software and the Arial and Black Jack fonts, and trimmed that to a banner shape with my Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment dies. I really love the colors on this card – the silhouette stamps in our kit seem to dictate back-lighting – and I think that fishing line is the perfect accent – you can almost feel the tension on that pole!

When Hero Arts released this kit, Josmary Gonzales posted a lovely picture on the Hero Arts Kit Fanatics FaceBook page of a canoe being paddled on a lake in Canada with the aurora borealis in the sky above. I decide to give that northern lights effect a try!

On black card stock, I used Hero Arts Unicorn White ink, Cracked Pistachio and Abandoned Coral Distress Oxide inks and my small Cheap-o Blending Brushes to create the ‘northern lights’ effect in the sky and their reflections in the ‘water’. I die-cut the mountains from more black card stock, and highlighted the edge with Unicorn White ink before gluing it to the horizon line. I stamped the boat on white card stock with VersaFine Onyx Black ink and fussy cut it to avoid the border left by the die. I did add the stars in the sky and water using a water based, extra fine point white Sharpie.

I highlighted the top (white) edges of the boat with the Cracked Pistachio ink, and attached it to the card front with foam tape. I did cut away the fishing pole, and I think it looks like he’s holding an oar instead. I embossed the sentiment on black card stock with white embossing powder, trimmed it out and added it to the card front with more foam tape. I trimmed the panel down to 4″ x 5.25″ and glued it down to a dark blue card base. I thought the extra “wish you were here” sentiment would be a perfect addition to this card, so I stamped that on the inside writing surface with Onyx Black ink. I think this is a pretty good representation of the Aurora Borealis, but I will definitely try some different techniques to try and get some true brightness emanating from these northern lights… isn’t there a “northern lights” stamp out there??

All of the scenic stamps and dies in this kit are sized to create portrait cards – I wanted to try a landscape card – after all, one would call these scenes “landscapes”!!

I actually used the Hero Hues card stock from our Venice kit for this card – Mustard for the sky and Arctic for the lake. A little ink blending with the SSS Hybrid inks for the sky, and I stamped the sentiment with Onyx Black ink and embossed the entire lake piece with the Blue Pearl embossing powder. VERY water-like! I stamped the mountains, trees, and plants on white card stock using the inks from our kit, and stamped the float line (and the birds) with Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide ink. I added white stripes to those buoys with a white gel pen and a touch of shading with an alcohol marker. I die cut everything with their coordinating dies and glued them all flat to the card front.

That Blue Pearl embossing powder is very interesting – very fluffy in the pot, yet very water-like once melted.  I didn’t add any figures to this card because the dock feels like an invitation to me – an “open door” so to say – coaxing you in and inviting you to the cool waters of the lake!

When we get one of these ‘create-a-scene’ kits from Hero Arts, I find myself thinking in terms of smaller vignettes that highlight a specific idea or stamp in the kit. Love this one!

I used my homemade water ripple stencil and Cheap-o blender brushes to ink the ‘water’ in the center of a white card base. I did use the Dusty Blue ink from the kit and added a touch of Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide ink for a little variety, as well as positioning the stencil in a couple of directions to add texture. The silhouette and the sentiment are then stamped with Onyx Black ink. I had an interesting idea on how to complete this stamped sentiment, so before I did anything to the front of this card, I printed “you can’t make a splash without getting wet” on the inside of the card using the Arial and Brushgyo fonts. I thought this was the perfect compliment to the kit sentiment and certainly creates a real purpose for this card. I love the simplicity and all the white space on this card and how that pulls your focus right in to the vignette. All in all, a simple single-layer card that conveys a terrific sentiment of encouragement!

I’ve used five of the six sentiments include in the stamp set… how about a pun or two?

I used the SSS Hybrid ink in Orange Slush and Lemon Zest to ink blend the sky, and the Dusty Blue for the ‘lake’ I did a second layer of the Dusty Blue with my water ripple stencil for some nice watery texture. I stamped and die-cut the mountains (on grey card stock) and the trees (on the Meadow card stock) using the included inks. Again, the negative die cut comes in handy for inking in the islands’ reflection in the lake. I stamped the dock and the grasses with the included inks directly on the card front, and stamped the silhouettes and the birds with Onyx Black ink.

I also stamped the inner tube using some SSS Barely Beige ink and colored that with my alcohol markers and fussy cut it out. I thought it wasn’t in quite the right perspective to be floating on the lake, so I simply leaned it against one of the piers on our dock. I also embossed a few water ripple stamps on the lake using the Blue Pearl embossing powder. Before I assembled everything together, I printed “avoid pier pressure” using the Arial and BlackJack font. Kind of a perfect pun for the theme and stamps this month! Finally, for a little extra “peer pressure”, I added the “wish you were here” sentiment on the inside, stamped again with Onyx Black ink.   I really enjoyed stamping these images directly on the card front which avoids the ‘border’ when you die-cut the images with the dies. And a really fun pun too!

I thought the little ‘Loch Ness Monster’ stamp added a cute whimsical touch to this stamp set, but it seemed a little smaller in reference to the other images. Vignette to the rescue!

This is on a Lapis card base from the kit, and I die-cut the circle from the HA Arctic card stock, and ink blended the lake with the Dusty Blue ink from the kit. I die-cut the hills from the Meadow card stock and again used the negative die-cut to ink blend the reflection in the lake. I added a touch of Unicorn White to the base of the hills for a little bit of a ‘misty’ feel, and stamped ‘Nessie’ using the Forest ink and embossed her with some clear embossing powder.

I printed “i believe in you” on the card front using the same Arial and Brushgyo fonts, and punched a small sun with a simple hole punch. I did die-cut the circular frame using some real wood sheets in my stash, and then glued everything directly to the card front. I really like highlighting that ‘Nessie’ stamp all by itself, and it’s a perfect image for this fun and useful sentiment. Who doesn’t need to be reminded that you believe in them!!

I really like the “it’s your birthday” sentiment – I don’t have one of those in my stash. So I trimmed off the “…relax and enjoy” so I could stamp just the birthday sentiment alone.

 

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I rarely use pattern paper with the MMH kits but this seemed especially appropriate! This pattern paper is Doodlebug Designs Fairy Tales Collection (came with the Simon Says Stamp September ’17 Card Kit) matted on a thin black mat and mounted to a white card base. The sentiment is stamped on a scrap of white card using Onyx Black ink and die-cut with another LF Everyday Messages die. The silhouette is stamped on some heat resistant acetate with StazOn jet Black ink and partially die cut to leave an acetate tab underneath the stamp. This is a simple ‘double slider’ card mechanism with a slit hidden towards the bottom of the sentiment that allows the silhouette to magically appear from behind. Very simple yet I think it’s very effective! It’s your Birthday – – HOORAY! There is a little more of a how-two for this card on my 10C1K video for this kit:

 

This apparently simple birthday card is perfect for any whimsically inclined grownup!

I do have one more pun that I’m itching to use… pretty silly, but very funny! (I think!)

Makes me laugh every time!! This is another completely flat, one layer card. Since I knew I would be printing this sentiment (Brushgyo and Arial fonts again), I used my Silhouette Software (remember the basic software is FREE!) to draw my pond ellipse with a faint blue line to guide my alcohol marker coloring of the pond. I stamped the cattails and grasses with the included inks and colored the cattails and added the grass details with a brown pigma micron pen. The ducks are stamped with Onyx Black ink, and I added a few highlights with a white gel pen. This could be another “wish you were here” card or a “happy place” card depending on the recipient… this pun makes me giggle!

While I was researching some lake images, I came upon a picture of a perfectly still lake reflecting every single star in the sky. I wanted to try and recreate that on a card.

On a black card panel, I spattered the stars using my Permanent White Gouache watercolor paint and a thin brush. I die-cut the hills from some dark gray card stock and used Unicorn White ink and the die cut negative to blend a little reflection of the hills in the lake. I stamped the fishing boat on the same gray card stock with Onyx Black ink, die-cut it out with the coordinating die, trimmed the bottom of the boat flat and added highlights to the boat and occupants with a white gel pen.

Again, I used the negative of the die cut boat and Unicorn White ink, to add the reflection in the lake. I did use another piece of my invisible thread to create a swooping cast of line from the end of the fishing pole. If you look closely, you can see it. That seemed much more appropriate to go along with this sentiment than a line straight down into the water. I printed the “cast away your troubles” (same fonts again) in white on black and die cut that out with the LF Everyday Messages die. The images are glued directly to the card panel, the sentiment is mounted with foam tape, and the whole panel is glued to a white card base.

Once again this begs for more on the inside, so I stamped the “life is better at the lake” to finish out this card. Talk about a seriously monochromatic card! The night sky certainly feels vast and infinite in this scene. This was really a pleasant surprise for me when this card came together. I think it’s kind of stunning!

I have one more sentiment from the stamp set waiting to be used, And 1 more good idea! Another interactive card to wrap up this kit! A “double slider” card with double actions!

 

This turned out to be simpler than I originally thought it would.

I did make a mock-up to figure out this mechanism and then created these pieces for the actual card. The piece on the left is 4.25″ x 5.5″ with a 1/2″ square notch at the center of the bottom, and a 1/2″ slot right in the middle of the card. The girl jumper die-cut is just under 1″ wide so I added two long slots 1/2″ from the vertical center line and 1.75″ from the horizontal center line down. Those will be the ‘tracks’ that the long tab on the bottom of the splash piece will travel in.

I stamped our jumper with SSS Barely Beige ink and colored her with my Micron pens and alcohol markers – I wanted more color that the simple silhouette stamp would provide. I did a partial die-cut on her and extended the card stock underneath her to make a long tab.

The “splash” is freehanded and cut from HA Arctic card stock with a long 1/2″ tab along the bottom. I colored the splash with Pigma pens, alcohol markers and a tiny heart stamp. The front of the card piece is 4.25″ x 2.75″ (half the size of the card) I inked the top inch of that piece with HA Summer Sky ink, die-cut the water die (from the HA April 2019 Venice kit) from more of the Arctic card stock, glued that to the inked section and stamped the sentiment on the bottom with Onyx Black ink.

The assembly is the same as any other “double slider card” – wrap your 1/2″ wide plastic ‘conveyor belt’ around the bottom notch and through the center slot and glue the ends together with some very strong double-sided adhesive. Remember to keep it just loose enough to slide easily. The tab on the splash piece is folded (1/2″ either side of the center of the splash) to go through the side slots, wrapped around the back and glued to the back of the plastic ‘conveyor belt’.  The tab on the girl is glued on top of a 1/2″ pull-tab and both are attached to the front of the conveyor belt so she is above the center of the card when the wave is at the bottom, and she is below the center line when the wave is at the top.

Once the action is complete and working properly, you can add the top piece with foam tape and then add the whole panel to a card base with more foam tape. My 10C1K video has a little more detail on the assembly if you’d like to see more. I’m thrilled with this double-action card and I think it illustrates this sentiment perfectly!

That’s my 10 cards from the My Monthly Hero July Kit. I’m sorry this took a little bit of time to get to you – I didn’t receive my kit until July 12th and we had relatives staying with us over the last weekend. The craft room becomes the guest room when we have visitors!  I am very pleased with all of these cards and I did manage to use every single stamp in this stamp set! WOO-HOO!! This is one of those MMH kits that sold out incredibly fast. I think everyone loves getting layering stamps in these kits – and I love the five ink cubes!  If you DO go shopping at Hero Arts, please use my link: http://bit.ly/2sBmuMCHeroArts   It helps support this website and my channel on YouTube, and is, of course, sincerely appreciated!

Hello Folks! Scott here un-boxing my Love From Lizi August 2019 Card Kit. Lizi is calling this the “Flawless” Card Kit and it features an assortment of gem images and icons and  some unique layered sentiment stamps. Oh, yes… and it’s VERY pink!

As usual, we get bunches of card stock, pattern papers, dies and embellishments!

Our five sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stocks come in Ivory, White (alcohol marker-friendly) Pink, Vanilla, and Dark Grey. We also get four half-sheets of specialty card stock in White, Dark Grey, Bronze and Pink pearlescent. That’s 14 card bases right there if you wish!

We get 12 sheets of 6″ x 6″ pattern paper this month. The top two on the left have gold and rose-gold foil accents and the middle two in the top row feature glitter accents. A few pieces feature text in the patterns, and most (but not ALL!) have some pink in them!

Our peel off stickers this month are white with gold lining. I love these dual-colored peel offs – it’a almost like every peel off is three peel offs in one! Big bang for your buck there! We are also treated to an over-sized stamp set this month with six gem images (those should be fun to color!) and five two-layer sentiments: PERFECT, A GEM, YOU”RE PRICELESS, ONE IN A MILLION, and SHINE BRIGHT. It will be interesting to see what effect the layering stamps add to these sentiments…!

And that brings us to our embellishment bag! WHEEEEEEEE!! We get two white tags with twine ties, and a “polaroid” picture frame featuring rose-gold foiling on pink – a very thick chip board frame! We do get a new bottle of Nuvo Crystal Drops this month in a “Silver Lining” metallic finish. We also get four dies this month with a “Smile” sentiment, a faceted heart gem, three hearts in a rectangle, and a large hexagon die with the words “be happy be bright be you”. That ‘sentiment’ is actually repeated on one of our pattern papers! Back to sequins this month – we get our sample pack of the Flawless sequin mix featuring rose-gold, brushed gold, white and brushed silver sequins in a variety of sizes.

We are treated to a new LFL embossing powder this month – Platinum Tiara – platinum is the perfect name for this unique, shiny silver embossing powder. We also get six rose-gold metallic buttons and four pink glitter pre-tied bows, as well as two rolls of washi tape featuring a rose-gold foil on one and a geometric pattern on the other. There’s also a sample of the Tonic Copper gilding flakes (always fun!) and a Nuvo Smooth Precision glue pen (should work well with the gilding flakes). I’ve never used any of the Nuvo glues so I’m looking forward to giving this one a try! To go along with the embossing powder, Lizi has also included a Nuvo Clear Mark pen – similar to a VersaMark pen and perfect for embossing! Finally we get three die cut hearts with gold foil accents and a faceted heart paper clip – gold foil faceting on the heart and a copper colored clip! That an item-by-item run down of all the supplies included in the Love From Lizi August ’19 card kit.

I did get a couple of the add on items for this kit including the August peel off bundle with Apricot Pin Stripes (new color), Gold Glitter Sway, Apple Green Bubble, and Brown Mirror Pin Stripes. I also got the Flawless Sentiments stamp set that features more of those layered sentiments with a BIRTHDAY, HAPPY, WITH, LOVE, ANNIVERSARY, and CONGRATULATIONS. Good, everyday sentiments in that interesting double-layer design.

This kit has already sold out, along with many of the add-on items and special August releases as well. If you’d like to become a subscriber (so you never miss a kit!), or want to see if any new items are still available, Please use my link when you go shopping at Love From Lizi: http://bit.ly/LFLlink.

I think  this kit offers me a lot of challenges this month… Please send me any extra card-making mojo you may have to help me come up with 10 different cards! Stay Tuned!

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. I’m so sorry this kit sold out so quickly… I guess Lizi is just going to have to start increasing the number of kits she puts together! Happy Crafting!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi July 2019 Card Kit. Lizi is calling this the Summer Fruits kit and it features the ‘eyelash girls’ introduced in the LFL September ’18 “Happy Haunting” kit – this month the costumes are minimal!

This is our second Love From Lizi manufactured kit in the last year – everything is designed, created and manufactured specifically for Love From Lizi. As usual, we get tons of supplies in this kit and a few surprises! I did get some of the add on products this month including the two add on stamp sets – “Summer Loving” (on the left) and “Summer Girl” (on the right) which gives me another two of the ‘eyelash girls’ and that terrific camper stamp! Since Lizi provided us with some extra copic-friendly card stock this month, I decided to go ahead and stamp all of the image stamps on a half-sheet of that card stock using VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I grabbed my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers to color everything. I also did a little paper piecing here and there on the girls – can you tell? – the bows, some clothes, and the surfboard!

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We did get matching dies for the stamps in this kit, so I did another, “color, cut, and display on the stamp set” picture. 

I did try to match my coloring with the palette of this kit – paper piecing helps – but other than hair, there’s really not a lot to color on these girls – Just lots of skin and lots of hair!

I did cut the 5 colored card stock sheets in half, and used some for card bases and some for card panels… wherever inspiration took me.

Now, I have probably never sent a ‘Summer’ themed card to anyone ever, but you know I like to try to use all the images and sentiments in our stamp sets on my ten cards. I should at least be able to use these four sentiments! We’ll see how successful I am with this kit – some of the props in these stamp sets are pretty tiny – not to mention the extremities on the girls themselves!

There is that “watermelon in hand” sentiment that obviously goes with the watermelon girl, so lets start there! I think we can combine a sentiment or two with her as well!

I die-cut a piece of white card stock with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die and ink blended some Lucky Clover Distress Oxide ink around the edges. I thought it would be fun to highlight the five new colors of embossing powders Lizi introduced in the July release – Neon Grapefruit, Neon Lemon, Cherry Red, Neon Lime, and Peony Purple – so I die cut five chevron borders using a Darice Borders die and embossed each with a different color powder. All of those are terrifically bright and fairly fine embossing powders, so I thought I would try them on the sentiments as well, The Neon Lime matches the Lucky Clover ink nicely, and I LOVE that Cherry Red!

I glued the embossed chevron stripes right next to each other along the bottom of the card panel, and matted that to a thin mat of the Raspberry Pink card stock, and glued those to a Pink card base. I attached the girl and the leaf to the card front using the foam squares included in the kit, and embellished with three blue enamel dots. They match the bow and skirt on the girl perfectly! (both paper pieced) I did continue the sentiments on the inside of the card stamping the “Have a wonderful Summer” on the inside writing surface. I think all three of these sentiments work very nicely together! I like how the Pink and Raspberry Pink card stocks and the green ink blending on the white card panel echo a watermelon! And if that slice of watermelon is any indicator, then that watermelon must be bigger than her head! LOL!

That knocked out three sentiments from our stamp set right there! All that’s left on this stamp set is the “Sweet thanks” sentiment. Since all of our ‘sweet’ images in the stamp sets were very small I decided to turn to some of the images in our pattern papers.

I don’t think we can get any more pink than this card!! The pink grapefruit and lime image, along with the pineapple and the watermelon slices are fussy cut from the pattern papers and arranged together for the focal image on this card. I glued all three cut-outs together and traced their outline on the pink pineapple and lime pattern paper and fussy cut a reverse mat about a quarter of an inch wider. I glued the cut pattern paper to a Raspberry Pink mat and then down to another pink card base.

I stamped the “Sweet thanks” with Onyx Black ink and mounted the fruit arrangement with some foam squares. I did add a couple of fussy-cut pattern paper flowers for a little extra interest and embellished the card with a row of the miniature fruit pieces from the sequin mix along with a few clear sequins. I’m pleased that the pattern papers provide us with some fruit images that are large enough to hold their own on a card front! A very sweet, very PINK thank you card!

My attention was drawn to the ephemera girl holding an ice cream cone that is almost as tall as herself! Seems like the perfect image for this oft repeated sentiment!

I printed this sentiment on a white card base using the Brady Bunch Remastered font and my Silhouette software. I used a stitched hillside die to cut the edge of the ice pops pattern paper and glued that to the left side of my card front. I attached our ephemera girl with some foam squares, added three purple enamel dots below the sentiment and a thin Mauve Moonstone peel off along the edge of the pattern paper. The thinnest pin stripe peel offs will actually follow a curve fairly easily. I like using these ephemera pieces and die-cut images on a white background because it camouflages the white borders. Did you notice the asterisk at the end of the sentiment? Oh yes… there is more to come! Seems like there’s always a condition when someone says they love you more than something (or someone) else! “Unless it’s mint chocolate chip” is printed on the inside of this card just the same as the sentiment on the front. Now THAT makes me laugh! A nice valentine or ‘love you’ card that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with summer!

The ‘Summer Loving’ add on stamp set has that “life is better in a bikini” sentiment and one of the girl images that’s actually wearing a bikini is the one with her back to us. That pretty much pulls your focus right to her bikini!! I swear that has got to be one of the tiniest little bikinis EVER!!

I cut a 2″ strip of that lovely blue-green shimmer pattern paper and glued that to the middle of a Mint card base. I stamped and clear embossed the sentiment towards the bottom of that strip. The “is” in that sentiment is so tiny I had to reinforce it with a white gel pen. It would probably read okay stamped on white but it was very hard to read when it was stamped on this pattern paper.

I reached for the new LFL Bubble peel offs in Green Mirror and edged the pattern paper with the medium bubble strips. I like those new Bubble peel offs!! I added a strip of our mauve mirror washi tape on either side and then thin strips of the Raspberry Pink card stock to the outside of the washi tape. The smallest Bubble peel offs fit on those strips perfectly, and I added a super thin strip of both to anchor my girl mounted with foam squares. A few sequins for more sparkle on this shimmer pattern paper and I also stamped the “sea you soon” sentiment on the inside – gives us a little purpose for this card! And it’s a nice pun!

I was eager to use the bonus “aloha!” die included in our kit this month, so I took a scrap of white card stock and did some quick ink blending with Simon Says Stamp Watermelon and Lemon Zest hybrid inks and die-cut the “aloha!” from that.

I also die-cut two more layers from some plain white card stock and glued all three layers together for a nice chunky  sentiment. Keeping track of that tiny little dot for the exclamation point was a little tedious, but I like the end result!. I cut more of that shimmer pattern paper with a LFSRD and matted that on a black mat before die-cutting the “aloha!” shadow die from the center. The pattern paper and mat are glued down to a Sunshine Yellow card base, and the die cut “aloha!” glued into that opening. I like doing those reverse mats – it’s a nice way to stretch your card stock! I added the ephemera pieces to the two corners with some glue and foam squares and finished this card with some enamel dots, a little Glossy Accents on the sunglasses, and the “Have a good summer” epoxy sticker in the lower right corner. I like that fact that Aloha means both Hello AND Goodbye! If I only knew someone living in or headed to Hawaii!

I like the “Eat beach sleep repeat” sentiment on the “Summer Loving” stamp set. Particularly appropriate because we have that great camper/caravan stamp as well!

On a Cream card base, I masked off the top third with some post-it notes and ink blended some Spiced Marmalade Distress oxide ink above the line, and some Frayed Burlap Distress Oxide ink below the line. I added some texture to the ‘sand’ with a disposable micro applicator brush and some Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink. I like the variation that these applicator brushes provide. I added some white dots to the ‘sand’ using a white gel pen and added a thin strip of the leftover blue-green pattern paper for a thin horizon of ocean in the distance.

I stamped the sentiment using Stampin’ Up Early Espresso ink and the birds (from the SSS “Sea you soon” stamp set) in Walnut Stain Distress oxide ink. I fussy-cut the camper and the surf board girl and added them to the card front with foam squares. It seemed only appropriate to add the “Have a wonderful summer” sentiment on the inside of this card. A relatively simple but very nice beach scene – I really like that camper stamp!

Watermelon seemed particularly prevalent in this kit – let’s play with some puns!

I die-cut the striped pattern paper on an angle with a LFSRD and printed the “You’re one in a MELON” sentiment using my Silhouette software and the BlackJack and Brady Bunch fonts. I cut a mat to size from a scrap of white card stock and covered the edges with our gold glitter washi tape before gluing it behind the pattern paper. Both of those are glued to a Raspberry Pink card base. This is our third girl from the stamp set included with our kit – I fussy cut a slice of watermelon from the pattern papers and placed that in her hands and attached both to the card front with foam squares. Again, we have another watermelon that’s got to be bigger than this girl’s head! Fun pun!!

I couldn’t resist this pun – maybe considered a simple joke – but this cracks me up!

I cut a 3.75″ panel of that terrific watermelon shimmer pattern paper and glued that to a Sunshine Yellow card base. I ran a couple strips of the Green Mirror Sway peel offs down either side and turned to my Silhouette software for this sentiment. I stuck two pieces of vellum together using my Xyron sticker maker and printed “when life gives you MELONS…” using the Brady Bunch font on the doubled-up vellum. I let that dry for a while and die-cut it with a Spellbinders Deckled rectangle die, ran it through the sticker maker again and glued it to the card front. The big kick comes on the inside with the completion of this sentiment – “you just might be dyslexic!” That makes me giggle every time I say it! I added the small watermelon wedge and the lemon from the stamp set(s) around the inside sentiment to kind of drive home the whole melon = lemon gag. A simple card with a terrifically funny sentiment. Sometimes I just can’t help myself!

The “Summer Girl” add on stamp set had a “Girls just want to have fun” sentiment, and I was a little surprised that Lizi didn’t go for the obvious pun here… it is Summer!!

On the Cream card base, I took my homemade sunburst stencil, and using the SSS hybrid inks and my Cheap-o blender brushes, ink blended this sunburst on the top half of the card front. I did the same technique for the sand as the camper card using Antique Linen Distress Oxide ink (a little lighter). I printed the “Girls just wanna have SUN” sentiment on the bottom of the card front using the Brady Bunch font again, and added my blue ocean horizon line using the new Denim Blue Mirror peel off from the Summer Fruits peel off bundle. I chose three of the girls from the ephemera pack and mounted them to the front with foam squares. I like our center girl facing the sun! Then I cut apart the yellow tassel from our embellishment bag and added the strips to the sunburst on the outside of the girls. That adds a LOT of dimension to the sunburst almost making it pop off the page.  Who can resist this practically perfect sentiment? My apologies to Cyndi Lauper!

One more card to go, and I still haven’t used the ephemera camper/caravan or the tiny eyelash girl from the Summer Girl add on stamp set – she seemed a little bit smaller compared to the other girls so I thought maybe…!

I reverse stamped the girl from the “Summer Girl” stamp set and colored her before fussy cutting both girls. I trimmed the white border around the camper and figured out it’s placement on a Mint card panel. I traced around the camper and colored the card panel to look like the inside of the camper, as well as the outside landscape. I cut a slot for the hinge in the card panel above the camper roof and added a pull tab so it would flip the front of the camper open. I also cut out the window on the front of the camper to give a hint of what’s inside. I printed the sentiment on my last Mint card panel using the Noteworthy and BlackJack fonts, and cut that to match the camper and glued it on the back of the ephemera camper. Everything is mounted to a sturdy black card base with some foam tape and double-sided adhesive, and I finished off the night sky with the smallest sequins and stars from our sequin mix.

This is the first ‘pull-tab flip-up reveal card’  I’ve done and I think I need to finesse the mechanics a bit… but it’s basically just a folded hinge that is a touch ABOVE the slit on the card front so when you pull the tab it flips the image over. If I find a reason to do another one of these type of cards, I promise I’ll do a detailed how-to! I think I was much more interested in creating a plausible scene inside this camper than I was in perfecting this mechanism!  I do think this is completely adorable and a pretty cool surprise!

That’s my 10 cards featuring the Love From Lizi July 2019 Card Kit. I think we have a pretty good assortment of cards from this kit – some good puns and jokes and only five cards are specifically summer-themed! And not too heavy on the pink!

I did manage to use all 5 of the girls (6 if you count the reverse stamped girl!) and 7 of the sentiments from the stamp set(s). I didn’t use every single prop in our stamp sets, but I used all of the card stock except one piece of white. I used bits and pieces from 10 sheets of our pattern paper pack (10 more untouched!) and quite a few ephemera pieces. I didn’t get to use the vellum or the acetate specialty papers in our kit – I just didn’t find a need for them, but I did use a little bit of most everything else in our kit! Lizi packs her kits with so many supplies you can make so many more cards from this kit – as is the same with ALL of the Love From Lizi Card Kits!

At posting, this kit and many of the add-on and July release products are still available at lovefromlizi.com. If you go shopping with Lizi, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. Thank You!! Even though this is rather a feminine kit, I did enjoy creating these cards – and I know any member of the fairer sex in my orbit would be thrilled to receive one! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here! Your support and encouragement means so very much to me! If you have any questions or comments please let me know! (you can always click on the CONTACT page at the top of this post to email me directly) Please follow me on Instagram at #cardcutups, and please give my FaceBook page a thumbs up: https://www.facebook.com/cardcutups/ Remember to Pin me, Post me, Like me, List me, share me with all your friends, don’t run with pineapples, and as always… HAPPY CRAFTING!!

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Hello Folks! Scott here with the un-boxing of the Love From Lizi July 2019 Card Kit. Sorry this is a bit late, but for some reason, DHL had a hard time finding me this month!

This July we are treated to another LFL manufactured card kit featuring the eyelash girls introduced to us in the ‘Happy Haunting’ kit last September! All the stamps, dies, papers, and embellishments are exclusive and have been created and manufactured by Love From Lizi just for this card kit! Again… a veritable cornucopia of quality products!

We even get a little extra card stock this month! We get seven sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stock in Pink, Raspberry Pink, Mint, Cream, Sunshine Yellow, and two copic-friendly white cards. Our Specialty card stock consists of an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of striped acetate that actually sports thin silver stripes on one side and thin gold stripes on the other. Very unusual! And we get an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of vellum printed with some bright green lime slices. Our Love From Lizi “Summer Fruits” Pattern Paper pack has 20 sheets of 6″ x 6″ pattern papers in a wild riot of fruity patterns and colors. Lots of pineapples, citrus, watermelon, tropical flowers, frozen treats, polka-dots, chevrons and stripes. Five of these pages are embellished with a shimmer as well! Fun pattern papers!

And here’s our stamp set with three of those eyelash girls in various poses with four summery sentiments and a few props to play with as well. The girl with her back to us is wearing what must be the world’s smallest bikini!! And I love that cocktail!

We do get matching dies to go along with our stamp set and a bonus word die “aloha!” that also has a shadow die in addition to the word die! Lizi is introducing a new color to her peel off sticker line this month – we get a sheet of Mauve Moondust pin stripe peel-offs. That’s a pink that I can almost love!! We also get a sheet of clear epoxy stickers that feature more summer sentiments and come in an assortment of different sizes! They have a nice rounded dimension to them and are perfectly clear! Very cool!

The dies and epoxy stickers are actually in the embellishment bag which also includes a sheet of foam squares (generally means there are ephemera pieces to come!), and a collection of coordinating enamel dots. Lizi mentioned that she’s running out of new Nuvo Drops colors so she created these colorful dots for this kit! And here’s the “I’ve never seen that in a card kit before” embellishment – faux leather tassels! Two shades of green, yellow and red. Lizi thought they might make good hula skirts for the girls…! Another treat this month is a bundle of three washi tapes! A gold glitter, pink (mauve?) mirror, and a patterned washi tape that matches everything in the kit perfectly! Of course we get a sample of the Summer Fruit Sequin Mix – this is actually the Rainbow Wishes Sequin Mix with a sprinkling of mini fruit pieces throughout. Very tiny!

Did someone say Ephemera!?? 60 pieces on our Summer Fruits ephemera pack with that large camper and 9 different girls! Lots of fruit, flowers, bows and baubles round out this ephemera pack – so much goodness here… maybe I’ll make all my cards from these!

I did get the two add on stamp sets this month. “Summer Loving” on the left with that great camper and a surfboard girl, and “Summer Girl” on the right with the curly hair girl and bunches of props for her to hold. Seven more sentiments between these two sets provide almost unlimited option for summer cards! As part of the July Release, Lizi has come out with new embossing powders in Peony Purple, Cherry Red, Neon Lime, Neon Lemon and Neon Grapefruit (PINK grapefruit!). Really bright colors! Looks like they might even glow under black-light!

I also got the Summer Fruits peel off selection pack (already sold out!) with Denim Blue pin stripes, Pink bubble, Holographic Silver pin stripes, and Mint sway peel offs. Bubble peel offs? YES! As part of the July Release Lizi has come out with another peel off shape for us – Bubbles! Chains of outlined circles all connected together. We have Black, Sky Blue, Pink, White, Gold, Silver, Gold Mirror, Mint, Silver Mirror, Green Mirror, Red Mirror, Lilac Mirror and Teal Mirror!  WOW!  You can bet I’ll be using some of these with my cards this month! Very groovy!

This kit (and some of the add on products) is still available at lovefromlizi.com. If you go shopping with Lizi, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink  Thank You! I will start working on this kit as soon as possible… Should prove to be fun! Please share this post with anyone who might be interested, and stay tuned for my 10C1K video! Thanks for sharing your time with me, don’t run with scissors, and HAPPY CRAFTING!

DISCLOSURE: This site contains some affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you!!

 

 

DISCLOSURE:  This site contains some affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards inspired by the My Monthly Hero June Kit. “It’s a Jungle Out There” is the theme this month, and one of the most amazing things is that Hero Arts is donating 10% of the profits from this kit to jungle habitat preservation through the World Wildlife Fund. I LOVE THAT! Kudos to Hero Arts for giving back to such a worthy and necessary cause! If you’d like to follow along with the video, click here: https://youtu.be/IXaDvnDMjPQ

Flowers and leafy images along with realistic animal images make up our 6″ x 8″ clear stamp set paired with seven different sentiments. Ous dies include twenty coordinating frame cuts along with two Jungle Vine Fancy Dies! We are treated this month to a Daniel Smith Watercolor Dot card “Jungle Palette” created especially for this kit. I guess we’re going to be watercoloring this month! This kit is rounded out with a 6″ x 6″ leaf pattern stencil and a brand new black dye ink cube that is darker than Hero Arts Intense Black ink – they are calling this INTENSE-ified Black Ink. I always love getting ink cubes in our MMH kits – this looks like a great kit to color and play with!

Of course, I stamped all the images (using the INTENSE-ified ink cube) on some of my Strathmore 400 Series Cold Press 140# watercolor paper and started watercoloring.

I did mask off the headdress on the elephant. A post-it flag was the perfect size to mask this, and I just used a Pigma Micron 08 pen to draw back in the top of his head. I think that makes the elephant less domesticated! I am only using the DS paints on the dot card. I do tend to watercolor with fairly thin paint, and add more layers of color for shading.

I use a pretty small brush (top of this pic) to do my painting, and it helps get into the tiny spaces some of these botanical stamps require. I love the Lobster Claw plant (top center) and, of course, the Bird of Paradise flower. I don’t really see the opportunity to combine all these plants into a coherent background, so I’ll just go ahead and die-cut everything!

I’ve always admired those pics of a stamp set with all the images colored and die-cut and then displayed on top of the stamp set. I couldn’t resist taking this shot. Let’s Make Cards!

I presented myself with a challenge – Can I possibly use all these images along with the 7 sentiments to create cards without having to stamp any more images?? Let’s try!

As I said, I didn’t see a coherent background using these botanical images, so I fiddled around for a while and came up with this ‘arrangement’ that really highlights all of these images. The flowers and pineapple add a nice pop of color to the leafy greens. I cut a piece of watercolor paper to 5″ x 3.75″ and added a light brownish shadow to that to go underneath the die-cut pieces. I stamped the sentiment with VersaFine Onyx Black ink, and added a thing green mat behind the watercolor paper. I glued the panels to a white card base and added all the plants with some Multi Medium Matte glue and little pieces of foam tape. I did find some of the sentiments in the stamp set presented a bit of a challenge in conjunction with the images in this kit, but I think this floral arrangement deserves an ‘amazing’ sentiment! Not to mention that this card uses 8 of our 20 images!

The “stay wild” sentiment seems a little more in tune with the theme of this kit! And I was definitely looking forward to experimenting with the leaf pattern stencil.

I used Lucky Clover Distress Oxide ink to stencil the leaf pattern on a panel of my plain green card stock and die cut that with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die. I really loved that the green card stock brought out the blue tones in that ink. Perfect for this flamingo card! I stamped and embossed the sentiment with Versa Mark ink and Ranger White embossing powder, and matted that panel on a blue card stock mat before gluing down to a white card base. I die-cut a plain white oval and a blue oval mat with my Gina K./therm-o-web oval dies, and  glued those together to the center of the card front.

I added the flamingo to the oval with some foam tape, and die-cut a scrap of vellum and colored the back of that with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers to provide the ‘shallows’ where our flamingo is hanging out. A touch of glue around the bottom edge of the vellum holds it down nicely without showing any glue spots. The two monstera deliciosa leaf images adds some extra dimension and foliage around our oval, and I used some of our blue and green droplet embellishments from the MMH March ’19 kit for a final touch of bling. I really like the vellum “water” that you can see through and this flamingo stamp is  just a little bit of perfect. The first real flamingo stamp in my stash!

I’m really eager to use that elephant – I think that’s my favorite stamp in this whole set!

I found it terrifically funny that after I took the time to mask off the headdress on this stamp that I ended up adding a “party hat” on this elephant after all! BUT… I think that water lily “hat” is kind of hilarious! And, hey… it is a party!! LOL!! I just trimmed the bottom leaf portions away from the lily, and glued it to the top of his head – perfect fit!

One of our Jungle Vine Fancy Dies was a large curve that reminded me of half of a heart. I grabbed a piece of Tim Holtz pattern paper in a distressed olive green and die-cut two of the curved vines – they needed to go in two directions so I die-cut one vine from the front of the pattern paper and one from the back. I glued the bottom points together and then added more of a curve on the top to make the ends meet in the center to form a heart. These vine dies are thin enough to withstand a little extra bending and make a really nice heart shape!

I stamped the sentiment on a plain piece of white card stock cut to 5″ x 3.75″ and matted that on more of the Tim Holtz pattern paper and glued those to a white card base. I glued the vine heart directly to the card front and added our elephant with foam tape. Of course I justified this sentiment by adding a second sentiment on the inside. Using my Silhouette software and the Arial font, I printed “I remembered!” on the inside. Now that provides a good reason to use an elephant to deliver a Happy Birthday! After all… an elephant never forgets! This elephant in a “party hat” continues to make me giggle!

You know I do like to try and ‘tell a story’ with all of my card designs. The ‘story’ is so often my inspiration when working with a new stamp set, and I couldn’t resist this one!

How about a little cat and bird drama this month!? Let the adventure begin, indeed! This feels like a snapshot of a nature program just before things go bad! LOL!  I used my cheap-o life changing brushes to blend some Lucky Clover Distress Oxide ink around the edges of a card base, then added the left-over green frame from the flamingo stenciling. I stamped the sentiment using Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink and mounted the images with glue and foam tape. Instead of creating a rock or a log or something for the leopard to stand on, I simply hid his front legs behind the stand of tall grasses. I let the tree branch, the grasses and the leopard’s tail break the frame around this scene for a touch of whimsy, and I think we have a great little scene that brings this sentiment to life! (or death as the case may be..!) I’m fairly certain that toucan escapes..!  LOL!

I had seen lots of cards from this kit that had the tiger coming out of a swath of the tall grasses. Inspired by one of the sentiments, I decided to take that idea one step further.

I fussy cut around the tiger’s head and slipped the little monkey behind so it looks like he’s catching a ride! Tiger Taxi, anyone!!  I cut off the monkeys tail and changed its position so we could still see it. I masked and stamped the tall grasses in a row across some more of that Tim Holtz pattern paper, added a few shadows with an alcohol marker, and fussy cut the top edge. I stamped the sentiment on a white card base, glued the bottom edge of the grasses to the card and added some foam tape towards the top of the grasses on the right side of the card. Our ‘tiger taxi’ is tucked in among the grasses and mounted with some foam tape. I did consider adding some ink blending to this card, but I really liked the white space, and how it pulls your focus right to the animals! These guys must be friends, or else I think someone might be eating the other..!!

I didn’t’t quite understand the “sending a jungle of joy” sentiment included with this kit. It seems to reference “a bundle of joy” but that’s a sentiment for a new baby and we don’t have any “baby” animals in this kit. You know how literal I can be! Then I had an idea…

A perfect opportunity to use the sssssssnake image! LOL! I used my Sea Foam shimmer spray (from the MMH June ’18 kit) to cover a white card panel, let that dry, and then stenciled the leafs on top with Peeled Paint Distress Oxide ink. The shimmer from the spray reads right through the ink and I think this is my favorite background using this stencil! I die-cut a bunch of the straight vines and one curved vine from the Tim Holtz pattern paper, then die-cut a couple extra curved vines from white card stock and glued those curved vines together. That not only adds a little rigidity to the vine, but it helps coordinate the vine with the white border on the die-cut snake.

I die-cut the stenciled panel with a LFSRD, added a thin black mat and glued those down to a white card base. I cut the tail end of the snake off and wrapped that around the back of the curved vine, and added the front of the snake on top of the vine with foam tape. I glued (and trimmed) the edges of that vine to the card front and added some tiny bits of foam tape to the vine around the snake. I glued the rest of the vine die cuts to the top of the card front and stamped the sentiment on a scrap of white card stock using the Peeled Paint Distress Oxide ink. I did cut the ‘s’ off of the stamp and added 8 more to the beginning of this sentiment. I wasn’t too concerned with getting them perfectly straight as a little wobble just highlights the ssssnake-y sentiment! I used one of my Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment Banners die to do some partial die-cutting on this sentiment and fussy cut around the “jungle” word to complete this sentiment. I think that’s a fun way to use this sentiment, and I love the monochromatic palette on this card!

I’ve used all seven animals from our stamp set but still have one sentiment to go…

I had been seeing a lot of videos about the new Waffle Flower Water Media Mat and was pleased to discovered that silicon mats are good to use for reverse stamping! The Waffle Flower Mat was a little out of my budget, so I started looking for a cheaper alternative. I found this Fiskars 15″ x 18″ Silicone Craft Mat on Amazon for a third of the price! It works beautifully! I am thrilled to be able to have a GOOD reverse stamping option!

Looks like I may be reverse stamping all over the place now! I LOVE THIS!

I swear you cannot tell which flamingo is reverse-stamped on this card! WOO-HOO!! Now, I didn’t quite have the courage to attempt a full card-sized watercolor background, so I alleviated my terror by creating a smaller heart shaped background for this card. I stamped the flamingos on my watercolor paper and die-cut the heart with a Darice Nesting Hearts die. I watercolored the flamingos and the background using the watercolors from the Daniel Smith dot card. I matted the heart on another piece of the Tim Holtz pattern paper and glued both to a white card base.

I made another Vine Heart exactly the same as the one for the elephant birthday card, and mounted that to the heart with tiny dots of foam tape for a little extra dimension. I stamped the sentiment with Onyx Black ink and embossed it with some clear embossing powder for a touch of shine. One more of the straight Jungle Vine die cuts on the bottom of the card front and here’s a terrific valentine card for anyone – especially those predisposed to the tropics! I’m very proud of my watercolor background on this card!

Now I have used every single stamp and die in this kit! Three more cards to go! I did mention in one of my sneak peeks that a wreath card just might appear this month!

The pineapple is recognized as a traditional expression of “welcome” throughout the South and in areas along the Eastern Seaboard. Appearing on all sorts of décor – from door knockers to quilts – the fruit symbolizes those intangible assets we appreciate in a home: warmth, welcome, friendship and hospitality. I fiddled around with this pineapple stamp for quite a while trying to figure out a nice wreath pattern, but I was stuck on the notion that the pineapple had to be straight up and down. Nothing looked good to me until I actually tilted that pineapple a little and came up with this pattern! I LOVE IT!! I did use my homemade wreath builder template and stamped these pineapples on some more watercolor paper, and painted them with the DS dot card.

I die-cut the watercolor panel with a LFSRD, and grabbed the left over stencil frame from the snake card. I used my Silhouette software to create this sentiment using the Arial font and the Arabella font. I tried to match this sentiment to the other sentiments in this kit, and I think this is a pretty good approximation! I glued the frame to a white card base and mounted the watercolor panel with foam tape. That stenciled frame is a perfect compliment to the pineapples! Some tiny copper gems from the Love From Lizi March ’18 Card Kit add a little bling, and I used my Spectrum Noir sparkle pen to add some shine to the pineapple fruits. I must remember that a little tilt can add a lot to a wreath!

I did feel like I perhaps shortchanged the elephant stamp in this kit by masking off his headdress, so I remedied that with another elephant birthday card! With a Pun!!

I die-cut a piece of the Hero Hues Pumpkin card stock (from the MMH April ’19 kit) with a LFSRD and glued that to a white card base. I used the Sea Foam shimmer spray on another card panel and die-cut that with a Darice Morrocan Geometric background die and glued that to the card front. Since this elephant is a little more domesticated, I figured this ‘architectural’ die would work very well on this card. I like that die! Don’t believe I’ve ever used it before now!

I stamped and watercolored the elephant on more watercolor paper, die-cut him out, and mounted him to the card front with foam tape. I turned to my Silhouette software and Silhouette Portrait to create this great birthday pun! This is the Silhouette Paprika font which is “sketched” on a scrap of watercolor paper using a Pigma Micron pen. I fashioned that sentiment to fit my Darice Banners die, and matted that on a scrap of the pumpkin card stock before I mounted that to the card front with foam tape. Naturally I had to add the “Happy Birthday!” sentiment on the inside, again using my Silhouette Portrait and a Pigma Micron pen to “sketch” that sentiment. Some orange sequins from my stash adds a nice birthday sparkle for our finishing touch on this card. I think that elephant headdress works well with this Moroccan die because it takes him out of the ‘wild’ and puts him in a more civilized environment. Another great birthday card!!

I wanted to do another round of reverse stamping, and I have one more pun I’d like to use, and I had an interesting idea for using the stencil in a little bit of a different way.

A shaped gate-fold card! There is one side of that Leaf Pattern Stencil that offered a fairly continuous line from the top to the bottom that seemed about 2.5″ wide – perfect to do a gate-fold! I stenciled that one side twice using Cracked Pistachio and Twisted Citron Distress Oxide inks and leaving and extra inch on the sides to use as a flap. I fussy cut the edges of both, flipped one upside-down and scored the sides so the gate-fold would overlap a little in the center. This took a little trial and error, but I think the results are worth it!

I stamped (and reverse-stamped) the monkeys on my watercolor card – again, using a silicon mat to do the reverse stamping. That works so well, you really can’t tell which monkey is stamped backwards! I was even able to do a reverse die-cut on that monkey by putting the colored stamp on a light table and lining up the die from the back. The red monkey is reverse stamped – I actually got a better die cut on the reverse stamp than I did on the normal monkey on the left. I find that reverse stamping option so exciting! Let’s get to the pun already! The two sides of the gate-fold open to reveal…

This pun is so perfect! LOL! I printed “you’re my prime mate!” using the Arial font on a 4.25″ x 5.5″ card panel. I also printed “you’re more than a friend…” on a scrap of white card and trimmed it down to size for the card front. I glued the side flaps of the stenciled pieces to the back of this printed panel and then covered the back of the flaps with another card panel glued to the back.

One more vine die cut, glued to a die-cut blank for a little stiffness, is glued to the gate fold across the center and cut at the seam. I added another layer behind the sentiment strip for rigidity and glued it to the left gate fold. The monkeys are mounted with foam tape leaving a little room on the right side of the left monkey so the right side of the gate-fold can tuck behind his knee. A couple green mirror peel off stickers for edging the sides of the card front add some shine, and I found an old leaf punch from my stash that was very close to the leaf shapes in the stencil, so I punched the mirror leaves from the edges of the peel off sheet for a final shiny surprise. This card tickles me to no end!

Than’s my 10 cards from the My Monthly Hero June 2019 Kit! I did manage to use every sentiment, every stamp and every die on these cards. WOO-HOO! And a couple of good puns! YEA!! I had a fun time with this kit! I like the images in this stamp set – especially the animals – definitely something new in my stash. I think these make a handsome batch of well-themed cards!  I find watercoloring small images is much less intimidating than trying to paint larger images or scenes. I am NOT a watercolor artist by any means, but I always appreciate being prodded into practicing! And I always enjoy playing with Daniel Smith watercolors. Even if all I get is a few dots!

This kit is still available at Hero Arts! If I have sparked your imagination or given you some unique inspiration, I’d hop over to HA and grab a kit for yourself. When you do go shopping at Hero Arts, please use my link! http://bit.ly/2sBmuMCHeroArts  Thank You!

I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks to all of you for sharing your time with me here! Let me know if you have any questions, or comments and which card is your favorite! Please share this post with all who might (even remotely!) be interested, and remember to Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, Share me with all of your friends, don’t run with leopards (you’ll never keep up!) and HAPPY CRAFTING!!

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 (plus!) cards featuring the Love From Lizi June 2019 Card Kit. This kit sports a soft teal, mint and peach color scheme and is chock full of a huge variety of papers, stamps, dies and embellishments. Just what we expect from Lizi!

This kit sold out VERY quickly this month. I’m not sure if it was the colors, the stamps, the embellishments or possibly the rare opportunity this kit provides to make some lovely sympathy cards that connected with folks, but, this kit went like hot cakes! If you’d like to follow along with my 10C1K video, click here: https://youtu.be/zzJ06VjNB7s

Usually, I’ll take the 5 sheets of card stock included in Lizi’s kits and make 10 card bases out of them. This month, I decided to cut the card stock in half and use half of each sheet for card bases and trim the other half down to Acard-sized panels. I augmented the card bases from the kit with five white card bases from my stash, and I kind of like the option of having extra colored card panels to play with!

To begin with, my eye was drawn to the two pattern paper sheets that had 3″ x 4″ cut-apart panels on one side. Along with the two 12″ x 12″ cut-apart sheets also included in this kit, we have an embarrassment of cut-apart riches this month! I think it must have been that teal ombre, the wreath, and the dandelion panel that made me want to play with these. I went right ahead, and, disregarding the patterns on the back of these, cut both sheets down to eight panels. I wasn’t quite in the mood for a sympathy card right off the bat, so I decided to turn one of these panels into a masculine valentine.

This is the ombre panel that said “sending love and sympathy”, but I just trimmed the sympathy part away from the love part leaving a little bit of the teal as a border along the bottom of the scripty ‘love’. On the black card base, I added a teal card panel die-cut with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die, and a black panel die- cut with another LFSRD, and added the trimmed panel with some foam tape. I did use my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen to add a layer of glitter on the ombre background before I added the ‘forever in my heart’ banner and the black heart from the sticker sheet. The banner is glued directly to the ‘love’ panel and the heart is mounted with some foam tape. Three little black sequins from our sequin mix add the finishing touch to our uber-masculine valentine!

I mentioned in my un-boxing that I thought this kit would give me the opportunity to create some unique sympathy cards to add to my stash since I’m never in the mood to make one when I need one. I grabbed some old David Tutera shimmer white card bases for these next four cards.

I think the shimmer provides a very ‘dressy’ feeling with just the right gravitas for a sympathy card. I die-cut the printed panel with a LFSRD, and matted that on a teal panel with a thinner black mat. I cut the flowered pattern paper with another LFSRD and matted that on a thin black mat and glued that directly to the card base. The flowers were a little too prevalent, so I toned them down with a piece of vellum die-cut to the same size and glued on top. The printed assembly is foam taped to the card front and three of our gold crystals highlight the flower centers for a simple touch of sparkle. I really like this sentiment and the matching flowers. Lovely sympathy card!

This 3″ x 4″ panel is matted on a thin black mat and paired up with a 1″ wide strip of the ‘confetti’ pattern paper that is attached to a thin black mat and glued to the left side of the card base. I used the Gold Moondust peel-offs (from the add-on peel off bundle) to both sides of the confetti strip and on the top and bottom of the three ‘sentiment strips’ on the panel. That helped this sentiment pop quite nicely! I foam taped the panel to the card base and added three gold sequins from our mix  for a final touch. I though this was a perfect sentiment for a sympathy card, and once again, quite respectful yet very pretty!

Again, I die-cut this printed panel with a LFSRD, and glued that to a thin black mat. I did the same with the striped pattern paper for the background and glued that to the card base. The ‘notebook paper’ panel wasn’t quite cutting it on its own, so I grabbed some flower stickers from our sticker sheet and arranged them on the top and bottom edges. The sentiment panel is foam taped to the background, and the flower stickers are foam taped on top of that. The gold heart (from the add-on ephemera pack) is foam taped over the printed heart and provides a tiny bit of shine on this card. I did go ahead and add a sentiment on the inside of this card. One of the small sentiment strips from the sticker sheet went perfectly with this sentiment and is a great prelude to a personal note. More pretty!

While we’re at it, there’s the wreath with the “So Very Sorry” banner just waiting for me!

Pet sympathy card to the rescue! I wanted to die-cut this wreath but didn’t have an appropriately sized die so I reached for my EK Success Circle Cutter to cut out the wreath. I did have a Darice circle die that worked for the black flowered mat, and glued that directly to the shimmer card base. The sentiment strip on the bottom is from the sticker sheet and the 3 flower bunches are from the add-on sticker pack. I mounted all of those with foam tape and outlined the sentiment with more Gold Moondust peel offs. I mounted the wreath with foam tape and cut the gold heart away from a sentiment piece from the add-on ephemera and foam taped that above the banner. The dog stamp and die is from the My Monthly Hero May ’18 Kit – that is the only dog stamp I own..! I stamped that with VersaFine Onyx Black ink and embossed him with some clear embossing powder  and mounted him under the banner with foam tape. A few gold sequins circle the bottom of our wreath for a little balance and shine, and I think the casual nature of “So Very Sorry” works great for a bereaved pet.

I think that’s enough somber thoughts for the time being… let’s play with that dandelion!

It’s Shaker Card Time!! Using two LFSRDies, I die-cut this frame from the Blush specialty card stock, and glued a piece of the tulle netting to the back of the frame. I centered the dandelion panel on the netting, and added a double layer of foam tape around the frame and behind the panel. I added a bunch of sequins from the sequin mix around the channel, and added all the little dandelion seed pieces from the ephemera pack. I peeled off the liner paper from the foam tape and added the Ivory card panel to the back. I then used the peach/gold sway peel offs from our kit around the frame (large) and the center panel (medium) – those peel offs match the blush specialty card perfectly, and add some  nice texture and shine! The whole shaker assembly is then glued to a white card base. I think a shaker card is perfect for this dandelion image – everything floating away and moving around, and I like using the tulle netting instead of acetate – no excess static to deal with! And, if you want to clear out all those (infuriating) extra tiny dots punched out of the sequins, just use the netting as a strainer! LOL!

I was eager to use the swan dies from this kit and thought a black swan would be a unique and interesting way to use this crowned swan die.

I die-cut the swan from the black and white shimmer specialty card stocks and layered the white outline on top of the black die cut swan taking care to hold all the black pieces together with a little tape. Very striking! I die-cut the cattail die from the same card stocks and glued them together with a little offset. I used my Darice Nesting Circles dies to cut three different sized circles from the pattern paper, and turned to my Circle Cutter to cut the black mats for them. I stamped the sentiment on one circle with Onyx Black ink and glued the cattails to another. I die cut the Teal panel with a LFSRD and matted that with a piece of the black flowered pattern paper from the 2″ x 2″ cut apart sheet and glued those directly to a white card base. The sentiment and cattail circles are foam taped to the background, while the large circle is glued to the card base and the swan is foam taped on top of that. I foam taped a black heart from the ephemera pack onto the circle with the swan, and added three gold sequins to the top right corner. I really like this black swan – did you know that black swans are native to Australia?

I kept coming back to the Dr. Seuss sentiment featured on one of our pattern papers. I really love that quote but thought it was too similar to the cut apart I used on card #3.

So I fussy cut the four sentiment strips away from the pattern paper and matted them on strips of brushed gold mirror card stock from my stash. I trimmed two rows of the grey hearts from the pattern paper, and I trimmed the black heart pattern paper to 2.25″ so it would leave me room for the black card panel to show between the pattern papers. All three pieces of the pattern papers are glued directly to a black card front. The large partial heart is fussy cut from one of the cut apart panels, and foam taped to the left side of the card front. The sentiment strips are mounted with foam tape as well. I debated whether this should be a sympathy card or a “miss you” card and finally settled on a sympathy card. I actually did a little stamp surgery on the “Forever in our Hearts” stamp from the “Heaven Held” add-on stamp set, and trimmed the ‘in loving memory’ away completely. Lizi mentioned possibly being able to mask off this portion of the stamp but I took that a step further and cut it off completely. Another sympathy card (I can’t help myself!) but I adore this quote and just had to use it!

I was also fascinated with the itty-bitty tiny circular sentiment on the “Heaven Held” add on stamp set referencing butterflies and angels, and wanted to see if that small of a stamp would even read, much less carry a whole card. I think it holds its own admirably!

I stamped that on the Blush specialty card stock using StazOn Jet Black ink (I didn’t want to risk smearing ink on that shimmer card stock) and die cut that with a circle die. I embossed the laurel wreath wood veneer die cut with VersaMark ink and LFL Golden Crown embossing powder, and glued the die cut sentiment on top of the wreath. I glued those to a die cut circle of the white pearlescent specialty card stock and went to work on the rest of the card. I die cut a mint card front with a LFSRD and outlined that with the small sway peel offs. I die cut the black flower piece from one of the pattern papers and glued that to the mint piece and glued both to a white card base.

I glued two of the doilies together (since they were so thin you could almost see through them) and glued them directly to the card base, and glued the sentiment stack on top of the doilies. I stacked up two of the large glitter flowers and three of the small glitter flowers, and replaced the beads in the center of each with some gold gems and glued them to the card front. I do not have a butterfly die in my stash (surprise!) so I grabbed one of the heart dies from the LFL May kit and fashioned one of my own with a body made from the mini copper gems from the LFL March ’18 kit. I glued the gems to a strip of the peach ribbon, cut the hearts in half and glued them to the sides of the sequins – this might look more like a moth than a butterfly, but not a bad substitute for the real thing! LOL! I glued the butterfly to the card base and added some Nuvo Drops to the bottom right corner for the final touch. LOTS of embellishments on this card!!

I like the ‘harlequin’ diamonds on the sticker sheet and pattern paper and wanted to see if I could get them to work together to create a unique pattern. The sticker diamonds are about 4 times larger than the pattern paper diamonds so that gave me this idea.

I fussy cut a bunch of the small pattern paper diamonds and glued them together in sets of four to match the size of the sticker diamonds. I cut a piece of scrap white card stock four times larger than the sticker diamonds and stamped the sentiment on that using Broken China Distress Oxide Ink. Then it was a simple matter of foam taping all these diamonds to a black card panel, and adding some “X”s and “O”s die cut from the black and white specialty card stock with an old Die-namics “Little Lizzie” alphabet die. I added some of the small peel offs to the edges of the cut diamonds top and bottom and some more gold gems on the four corners of the center diamond. I like this pattern and the juxtaposition of the small, medium and large diamonds. FUN!

I’m really itching to color something now… I thought the swan wreath might satisfy me.

Ahhhhhhhhh…! That feels so much better!  LOL! I dry embossed the swan wreath die on a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock die-cut with a LFSRD, and used my craft knife to cut away the inside of the wreath. I reached for my Stabilo markers and a paint brush to color the swan and wreath. It felt so good just to color something! I added a little detail with a black Pigma Micron pen and stamped the sentiment with Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide ink and clear embossed that for some nice shine and dimension. Then it was a simple matter to mount the colored panel to the Mint card base with some foam tape, add a few sequins from our mix and we get a nice bright colorful Hello card! It was terrific card therapy for me to be able to color this… this card made me a happy crafter!

I was determined to come up with a great way to use that gold chain embellishment from this kit, and after fiddling around for a bit, I arrived at this.

On the Ivory card base, I glued a 3″ strip of the ‘stars’ pattern paper down the middle, edged that with two 1/8″ strips cut from the striped scallop border on our sticker sheet, and finished that off with 2 strips of the new Lemon Glitter peel offs from the add-on peel off bundle. I think this is my favorite sentiment from the “Heaven Held” add-on stamp set –  maybe my favorite in this whole kit! I stamped and embossed this on one of the ivory card fronts and die cut it with the middle-sized die from the Gina K/therm-o-web Small Oval die set. I really like that double stitched edge! Then, using the die as a guide, I determined the appropriate length of the chain needed, and connected the ends together with some plain needle-nose pliers. This chain is inexpensive, and very easy to open and close the links. I centered the die on the card front and used my Multi Medium Matte to glue the chain around the edge of the die. That glue holds brilliantly! Once that had properly dried, I mounted the sentiment oval with some foam tape and added three gold crystals for highlights. I LOVE THIS! Yes… one more sympathy card (that makes 7!) but I love combining “treasure” and the gold chain! And I like this sentiment stamp so much I just might have to use it to make ALL of my future sympathy cards! LOVELY!

The “Sending Love” stamp set had one sentiment stamp that I absolutely HAD to use.

I recently bought the “To The Moon” layering stamp set from Altenew, (on sale!) and I was eager to try it out, and this sentiment gave me the perfect opportunity! It took me a number of tries to figure out the perfect alignment of these stamps, (stamped with Hero Arts Soft Granite ink) but once I figured it out it gave me a really nice moon!! A 2″ circle die cuts the moon out perfectly, and I added a little sparkle to the moon with Sheer Shimmer Spritz. I covered a white card panel with the Altenew Watercolor Nebula washi tape and die-cut that with a LFSRD. I added a thin black mat, and glued those to a white card base. I stamped the sentiment with VersaMark ink on a scrap of vellum, and embossed it with the LFL Very Vanilla embossing powder. I tried a few dies to see if they would fit this sentiment, but ultimately just fussy cut the vellum before running it through my Xyron Sticker Maker and attaching it to the card front. A few SSS Moonshine Confetti sequins adds additional sparkle to the nebula and we have another bright colorful playful card! I just love that wide washi tape… and I shouldn’t have to print a moon image ever again! I LOVE IT!

Thats a baker’s dozen for you right there. 13 cards with seven sympathy cards. But, I haven’t used the Swan with heart die yet! OK! I have one more treat for you this month!

Did you know that swans mate for life? They do! That simple fact actually makes this sentiment stamp perfect for a pair of swans! On a Teal card base I grabbed my home-made ‘water ripples’ stencil and stenciled the bottom half of the card base using Salty Ocean Distress Oxide ink. I stamped the sentiment with the same ink and clear embossed that as well. I die-cut the two swans and three water  lilies from our White  specialty card stock and cut the hearts from a scrap of white glitter card stock. I took some green alcohol markers to the leaves of the lilies and glued everything flat to the card front except for the second swan who is mounted with some foam tape. I added two Teal mirror Sway peel offs (add-on peel off bundle) to the top and bottom edges of this card for a final pop of shape and shine. Of course, I cannot leave you without any puns this month, so on the inside of this card we get “You’re the swan that I want” (you are the swan I want – ooh, ooh, ohh, honey!) This is printed on a die-cut white writing surface using the Raustila font. A perfect little pun to wrap up my 14 cards this month! That’s 6 sympathy cards, 1 pet sympathy card, and 7 love cards! I just couldn’t stop myself this month! So much inspiration here! I could go on and on! I did manage to use a little bit of most everything in this kit (and my add-ons) except I didn’t get to those gold bows or any of the ribbon, and I didn’t get to use the three small flower dies, and, alas, I didn’t use every stamp in the stamp set(s). I’m Only Human!!

So there’s a little extra for everyone this month! Hopefully that makes up for the fact that his kit sold out so quickly! Most of the add-ons are gone too! I do know that the “Heaven Held” add-on stamp set is still available, and if you need some sympathy sentiments, this is a really nice set to have in your arsenal. If you missed the chance to get this card kit, I heartily encourage you to become subscriber so you won’t miss out on Lizi’s next “knock it out of the park” card kit! If you do go shopping at Love From Lizi, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink  Thank You!

I’m truly pleased to be able to share some ideas with you, along with a smile or two, and I truly appreciate the time you spend with me here. I am always eager to hear from you – let me know what your favorite cards are, if you have any questions, need more information, or just want to chat, you can always email me at cardcutups@gmail.com.

Please share this post with interested parties, remember to Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, don’t provoke the swans, and, as always, I wish you Happy Crafting!

 

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Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards created from the My Monthly Hero May 2019 Kit. Hero Arts is calling this “A Crafty Life is a Happy Life” kit in celebration of their 45th anniversary! This month we get a 6″ x 8″ clear stamp set featuring all sorts of craft supplies from stamping and painting to knitting and stitching along with 11 ‘crafty’ sentiments. We also get 20 matching frame cut dies and 2 Fancy Dies. I like the wide variety of crafty tools included with this stamp and die set! We also get a .5 oz. pot of Purple Sparkle Embossing Powder, a Clear Embossing and Watermark Ink Cube, a roll of Lavender Washi Tape, and five mini clothespins. I swear I have never actually purchased any mini clothespins, but over the past few years, I have acquired quite a large stash of these clothespins… obviously these mini clothespins are a popular addition to card kits and subscription boxes… Maybe I can find an interesting use for these…! If you’d like to follow along with my video, click here: https://youtu.be/-yCd6duh2FA

I was also completely thrilled to receive an enamel pin marking the 45th anniversary of Hero Arts! Very nice pin in black and gold. Quite a lovely surprise!

I rarely go for the extras offered in the monthly release, preferring to see if I can come up with ten cards just using the supplies in the kit – (I am on a budget!) and you know I like to try and use every stamp in our stamp sets, so I started playing with this kit by creating my own little background stamp using all the smaller stamps from this stamp set. This isn’t as all-encompassing as the Crafting Tools Bold Prints 6″ x 6″ background rubber stamp, but I think it’s a pretty good approximation! A great, large background without any repetition!

Stamped with VersaFine Onyx Black ink, this panel looks like it just needs a little bit of color to bring it to life!

For my first card, I colored that background with my Prismacolor pencils. Nothing terrifically fancy, but I did take time to get some nice shading on our tools and supplies. I considered coloring the background, but was so pleased with the straightforward simplicity of this panel, that I decided to use it as is. I did stamp the sentiment on a piece of our Lavender Washi Tape using StazOn Jet Black ink. It took a couple of tries, but I finally got a really nice impression on that tape. And it’s permanent! I was going to add this washi tape sentiment to the front of the card, but I couldn’t bring myself to cover up any of the images! That “Make Stuff. Be Happy.” sentiment is one of my favorites from this stamp set. I like that it encourages one to make “stuff” which could be anything at all and not necessarily something specifically “crafty”. You can make a bed, you can make dinner, you can make peace, all of which make me very happy! LOL!

I did decide that I would use the “Handmade with LOVE” stamp on the back of all my cards this month. I do have a personalized stamp and a CardCutups label that I use on the backs of my cards, but I figured this was a good use for this stamp this month!

I liked this background so much, I wanted to try to foil this on some black card stock.

So I embossed these stamps with clear embossing powder, added some rainbow deco foil on top, and sent that through my laminating machine… I didn’t get absolutely perfect results… but I was pleasantly surprised with the colorful shine. I wanted to try that Purple Sparkle embossing powder that came in our kit, so I die-cut a frame using two Lawn Fawn Stitched rectangle dies, covered it with VersaMark ink and embossed that purple sparkle – that worked very nicely, so lets try that embossing powder on the sentiment too! I think glitter embossing powder is sometimes tough to use on a sentiment but it works very nicely here! I cut that sentiment with a Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment die, used foam strips to glue the frame to the card front and added the sentiment strip across the front. I grabbed the double-heart die from the kit and die cut a bunch of hearts from some colorful mirror card stock scraps I had in my stash and filled in the background with the hearts and some assorted sequins. Just what this card needed – more sparkle and shine! Now these stamps may have been a touch too small and fine to emboss and foil, but I will experiment with this technique some more! Love that shine!

Now, one more technique with that background arrangement that I haven’t done before!

Emboss resist! I am very pleased with how this card came out! I clear embossed the stamps on a piece of pattern paper from my stash (Sizzix Geometrics Paper Pad), and went to town with my Black Soot Distress ink and my ink blender to color this whole panel black. A quick buff with a cloth to remove any ink on the embossing and VOILA! My first emboss resist card! I did the same with the sentiment, and die-cut that with another LF Everyday Sentiments die. I die-cut the card front with a LFSRD, mounted that to my card base with foam tape, and foam taped the sentiment on top. Some black sequins (and hearts) add more sparkle to the front, and I think this card is AWESOME!

It was great fun playing with a couple of new techniques, and I did stamp 4 more panels of that arrangement before I took the stamps off my MISTI, but let’s move on…!

We got that terrific fancy Heart Ball-of-Yarn die (along with knitting needles) and I couldn’t resist covering that die-cut with real yarn! (The yarn is actually from an old Paper Pumpkin Kit!) Patience and persistence paid off as I added strips of green yarn to the die cut. The last piece of yarn I added was the bottom horizontal strip that continues around the edge of the ‘ball’ and then gets “cast on” to one of the knitting needles! I die-cut the knitting needles from some satin finish silver card stock from my stash, and added a second layer of thick black card stock behind the silver for a little more rigidity.

The closest matching ink I had in my stash was a Stampin’Up Emerald Envy cube – must have been from the same kit! I used my Cheap-o Life changing Brushes to blend some ink on the top and bottom edges of my card front, and stamped the sentiment using VersaFine Onyx Black ink. The ball of yard is glued directly to the card front and the needles are attached with some strategically placed bits of foam tape. LOVE IT! So much texture and warmth from this card. That was a fun way to use this die!

I thought making little ‘projects’ would be a good way to highlight some of the stamps in this kit and create some specifically themed cards this month. There were a few “hand-written” sentiments in this stamp set, and I really liked this “You inspire me” stamp.

It made sense to me to pair that with the pen and ink stamps. I had this rose themed writing paper in my image stash, and I sized it to be 2.5″ x 3.25″ and stamped the sentiment on that with Onyx Black ink. I matted that on a thin black shimmer card stock and then on to a final white mat, and glued all directly to this kraft card base. I stamped the pen and ink bottle on Bristol smooth card stock and colored them with my Zig Real Brush markers before die-cutting them both. I needed something to anchor the pen and ink down to – they looked a little weird just floating around – so I added a 1/8″ strip of that black glimmer card stock across the bottom and mounted the pen and ink to the card with some foam tape.

The black confetti pieces I added were from the MMH February ’19 kit… but something was missing here… that little ‘spark of the unexpected’ turned out to be adding more roses to the “stationery” – breaking through the “4 straight sides” for a little bit of whimsy! Those roses are fussy cut from this same image and foam taped into a pleasant arrangement down on the corner. I did add what could be the beginning of a long, soul-searching missive on the inside of this card by adding the “hi there” stamp! I’ve always liked cards with “cards” or “letters” or “envelopes” on them, and I really enjoy this “stationery” card. And, if calligraphy wasn’t enough to champion, then the simple act of writing a letter (or sending a card!) certainly is! LOL!

Well, what do you know… There’s also a “card” stamp and and “envelope” stamp here!!!

Here we go with another “card on card” meta creation!! Once again, I stamped the images on Bristol smooth card stock and colored them with my Zig markers. I foam taped them to a white double-stitched oval and black mat cut from the GinaK large and small Oval dies and glued that all down to a white card base. I die cut the “O”s and “X”s from some scrap white glitter card stock I had on hand. This alpha die set is from an old Love From Lizi “Oh, Baby” card kit – all the letters are just over a half an inch tall. Now, all “O”s wouldn’t work because then it’s just “OOOOO!” so I thought adding a few “X”s around would make the “O = hug” idea work!! But, not one to let the kisses go unnoticed, I did add “(and kisses)” on the inside as well! This is the Black Jack font just printed on card stock and die-cut with a small LFSRD. A little bit of Hero Arts clear lacquer pen on the heart and a heart-shaped piece of glitter on the envelope, finish off our crafty greeting with a little bit of shine and dimension.

There is that large painter’s palette stamp I haven’t used yet…  Let’s paint something!

Here I am being literal again! If I am searching for a card design, sometimes I just take a sentiment and run with it! This globe is another image I had in my image stash (I love the sketchy quality) and I printed that on a piece of watercolor paper and colored it with my Zig markers. I did give it a little spritz of Sheer Shimmer Mist for a light sparkle before I fussy cut it out. I cut a piece of black card stock to 3″ x 4″ and used my White Gouache paint to spatter the stars. Again, the images are stamped on Bristol Smooth Card Stock and colored with Zig markers. The ‘brush pot’ is actually the bottom of the glue bottle stamp, masked and stamped with the rim drawn on. The heart die cut is actually covering up the word ‘glue’. The sentiment is stamped on a white card base, the black ‘canvas’ is glued to the card front, and the globe, palette and brush pot are mounted with foam tape. A little Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen on the pallet paint colors and the heart on the pot bring everything together.  I love this card! Almost feels like a pun!

So we’ve done some knitting, calligraphy, we’ve made a card and painted a globe, let’s sew something now! I’ve done a few cards over the years with some hand stitching, but I’ve never taken a card to the sewing machine until now!

I used the sewing themed stamps to make a little vignette on Bristol smooth card stock and colored them with Zig markers, and then die-cut that piece with another LFSRD. I traced the inside of that die on a blank card front and used that line to guide the pressure foot on my sewing machine to stitch this zig-zag frame. It did take me a few tries to get this right – thicker card stock is easier to sew on than thin card stock! – but I’m totally thrilled with the result! Another LFSRD trims out the sewn panel, and then I went digging through my old pattern paper stash to find this red measuring tape from the Echo Park “I’d Rather be Crafting” paper pad (from the February 2018 Simon Says Stamp “A Colorful Crafty Life” Card Kit). I glued the ‘tapes’ around the edge of a white card base, mounted the stitched panel and the colored panel with foam tape. I used my Sakura Star Dust pen on the needle, safety pin and straight pins for a small touch of glitter, and now I can say that I have actually sewn on a card front with my sewing machine! Loving this card too!

Now, what crafty project would someone do with a bunch of mini clothespins? Hmmm…

How about a mini clock?? LOL!! I took 18 clothespins apart and colored one side of them with my Zig markers and glued them all together in this rainbow sunburst arrangement. A black and a silver circle covers the center opening, and the hands are die cut with the end of the knitting needle die. Four more silver punches mark the 12, 3, 6 and 9 locations and we have an adorable little crafty clock! I stamped the glue bottle once, and the marker stamp six times on Bristol smooth card stock, colored all with my Zig markers and fussy cut them all out. I stamped the sentiment on a white card base, added two coffee stirrers for a ‘tabletop’, and glued the bottle to the card front and mounted the markers with foam tape. the clock is attached with more foam tape and I added an unadulterated clothespin to remind us what the ‘clock’ is made from. A few of my left over die-cut mirror hearts finishes off this card with more shine, and I think this is my favorite “project” from this kit!! And I managed to use a lot my my mini clothespin stash!

I have finally worked my way through ALL of the sentiments in the stamp set. With the “Handmade with LOVE” stamp on the back of all these cards, and the “hi there” stamp on the inside of the stationery card, I have free rein with my last card. I also haven’t used the ball of yarn w/needles stamp yet, and there’s one more pun that’s begging to be used.

This pun is actually a sentiment included in the “Knitting” stamp set released as a kit extra this month. Who could resist!?? I printed this on a white card front using my Silhouette software and the Typewriter Hand font. Again I stamped the balls of yarn using VersaFine Onyx Black ink on Bristol Smooth card stock, and colored them with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers before die-cutting them out. I grabbed a piece of dark shimmer blue card stock from my stash (LOVE that stuff!) and embossed that with a “knitted pattern” embossing folder from the October, 2018 Love From Lizi Card Kit. I trimmed the embossed panel down to 5 and 1/8″ tall and 2″ wide for the left panel and 1/4″ wide for the right strip. I glued those pieces to the card base and added the die cuts to the front with foam tape. I cut the prongs off of 7 mini pewter brads, and glued them to the ends of the knitting needles and scattered a few on the card front. Perfect Pun!!

That’s my 10 cards from the My Monthly Hero May 2019 Kit! I managed to work my way through every stamp in this stamp set, and used a little bit of all the extras as well! This is the third “crafty” kit I have received from my kit subscriptions (in three years) and I did appreciate the large variety of stamps this month along with the the terrific fancy dies!

Thank you so very much for sharing your time with me! I appreciate each and every one of you so very much. At posting, this kit is still available from Hero Arts. If I’ve managed to inspire you a little and you’d like to join in on the fun, please use my link whenever you shop at Hero Arts: http://bit.ly/2sBmuMCHeroArts  Thank YOU!

I’d love to know which card(s) is your favorite, and if you have any questions or requests you can email me directly from the Contact page. Please share this post with anyone who might be interested, click the FOLLOW button on the top to get notifications when I post, and remember to Like Me, List Me, Pin Me, Post Me, don’t run with knitting needles, and by all means, HAPPY CRAFTING!!

 

Hello Folks! Scott here unboxing the new Love From Lizi June 2019 Card Kit. This kit has sold out already, but I do believe there are a few add-ons still available…! That was Fast!

This kit is kind of a tribute to teal, mint, peach and gold – everything coordinates beautifully, and all of the sentiments are very uplifting and positive and would work well for sympathy cards too. I know I am not particularly interested in making a sympathy card when I need one, so maybe it makes sense to make a few sympathy cards so I have some in my stash..!

Let’s start with our card stock. As usual, we get five sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stock in Teal, Ivory, White (super-smooth, copic-friendly), Black and Mint. Those are complimented with three half-sheets (8.5″ x 5.5″) of specialty card stock in White, Black and Blush pearlescent colors, and a large piece of peach tulle netting to play with as well. We have gotten tulle in our kits before and there are all sorts of ways you can use this fabric.

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We get two more 12″ x 12″ cut apart sheets this month. Both double-sided, and one featuring 2″ x 2″ blocks on one side, and the other with 3″ x 4″ panels on one side. Of course there’s lovely pattern papers on the reverse of both these sheets, and some of the cut-apart panels sport some gold foiling as well!

There is also a 12″ x 12″ sheet of nice thick card stock stickers coordinating perfectly with the colors and themes of this kit. Some large words and sentiments paired with smaller shapes and icons, and a bunch of little word and sentiment strips that come in so handy when you have just a little bit more to say!

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That brings us to our pattern papers. This month we are treated to twelve 6″ x 8″ double-sided pattern papers. These feature some really large designs perfect for scrap booking or home decor, along with lots of patterns using florals, stripes, and polka-dots. Two of the pattern papers have more 3″ x 4″ cut apart panels perfectly geared to making sympathy cards. I always appreciate the larger sized pattern papers that we get from Lizi on occasion – I never feel like I have to ration every little scrap..!

And here is our “Hello Love” stamp set for this month featuring eight loving sentiments in a variety of fonts and sizes. And our peel offs this month are totally unique! Not only are they the new SWAY peel offs in a soft peach, but each peel off is outlined in metallic gold – all three sizes! The shape of these peel offs really highlight that gold outline!

And now we get to our embellishment bag! A full-sized bottle of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Caramel Creme, five one-meter lengths of 1/8″ satin ribbons in Dark Teal, Peach, Charcoal, Navy Blue, and White. Remember, you can change the color of the white ribbon with any alcohol marker in your stash. We get five paper doilies in a nice peach color, and our sample pack of the “Hello Love” sequin mix that matches the color palette of this kit with teal, green, navy, ivory and peach sequins in a variety of sizes and styles.  We also get four wood veneer die cut wreaths in different designs – very pretty and delicate, and (here’s something truly unique) a length of gold chain! It will be very interesting trying to incorporate this chain on a card! Very compelling!

Then we get a little bag of golden embellishments that include a strip of small gold crystals, five gold bows, and ten gold glitter flowers in assorted sizes! Love those glitter flowers!

Lastly, we get eight (count ’em, 8!) dies this month! Three large Swan dies – One complete swan with a heart in the middle, a swan with the rear end adorned with flowers, and a flowery wreath with a swan head in the center. The swans are accompanied by a cattail die, a water lily die and three small flower dies of different types. Used individually, or all together, this is a great big batch of dies this month!

I did get some add on products this month as well! I got the Love From Lizi “Heaven Held” add on stamp set. This set features six sympathy sentiments – looks like I should do a batch of sympathy cards this month!  I also got the special peel off bundle add on which includes a NEW color… Lemon Glitter pin stripe! This bundle also includes the Mint Glitter pin stripe and the Gold Moondust pin stripe and a Teal mirror SWAY peel off sheet. Love that Lemon Glitter!

I also got the add-on sticker pack – eight sheets of matching stickers and a whole sheet of little sentiment strips perfect for completing most any sentiment. There are a number of sympathy sentiments in this sticker pack as well.

Finally I got the add-on ephemera pack – SO MANY pieces in this pack! Everything matches this kit, and there are more foiled accents, lots of labels and tags, hearts and stars, and a little bit of just about everything you can think of!

This kit has already sold out…! Sometimes you have to move really fast around Lizi! I know there are some add-on products still available – remember subscribers can add extras to their kit orders for no additional shipping, and, if you suffer from Card Kit Envy,  I encourage you to subscribe to the LFL Card Kits so you don’t miss any more!!

If you do go shopping at Love From Lizi, please use my link:  http://bit.ly/LFLlink 

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today! Stay tuned for my 10 Card 1 Kit video coming asap, and, as always, Happy Crafting!

 

 

DISCLOSURE:  This site contains some affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 Cards 1 Kit post featuring the Love From Lizi May 2019 “Snap Happy” Card Kit. This kit is stuffed with such a huge assortment of stamps, papers, stickers, dies, ribbons, embellishments and ephemera that it kind of feels like a free-for-all! Almost any card imaginable can be assembled using the supplies in this kit! As usual, I did make my ten A2 card bases using the five sheets of colorful card stock included in this kit. Let’s play!  If you’d like to follow along with the video, please click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWppFqOG3E

For some reason, I was hugely enamored with this “SERIOUSLY” kraft ephemera banner from our embellishment bag, so I decided to play with that piece on a black card base. I kept thinking of this sentiment as a question, so I turned to my Silhouette Portrait cutting machine to create this large question mark. This question mark is in the American Typewriter font, and I cut that from a piece of our pattern paper and cut a mat for that with some of my own kraft card stock. Both the question mark and the banner are mounted to the card base with foam tape and I added some of the white leafy stickers around the edges to echo the leaves on the banner. A sprinkling of the iridescent sequins from the sequin mix and I think that’s all we need! Naturally, I have a little more to say here and added this (kind of snarky) sentiment on the inside. I printed that using the American Typewriter and GrutchShaded fonts and cut the white card stock panel with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die and matted that on a piece of my kraft card stock before adding to the inside of my card. I’m getting to that age were so many people make well intentioned comments like this (me being one of them!) that I though this was a very useful Birthday card to have on hand!

I really liked the kraft ephemera pieces in this kit and thought they were rather unique!

I knew that you could color on kraft with colored pencils, but I thought I would try coloring this arrangement with my Stabilo markers. They worked really very nicely! I was even able to get a little color blending on this card stock!  After coloring, I temporarily taped that piece to the grid pattern paper and cut a mask for this bouquet with a card-sized rectangular anchor on the left. Since the Kraft piece had gold foiling, I decided to add some gold stripes to the pattern paper with an extra-fine tip Metallic Gold Sharpie marker – every other line seemed sufficient, and created a bit of a plaid feel too! 

I took a white card base, placed the bouquet and mat in the proper place BEHIND the card front, and put them on my light board to show me their positions so I could blend a little halo of Lucky Clover Distress Oxide ink in the proper shape on the card front. Of course I used one of my small Life Changing Cheap-o Brushes for the blending, and I was totally thrilled with the result! I glued the pattern paper mat to the card front, added the bouquet with foam tape, and used VersaMark ink to emboss the “Hello” stamp with LFL Emerald City embossing Powder. Three gold sequins under the sentiment and a peel off strip of Clear Iridescent Mint down the left side, compliment the gold foiling. Lots of shine on this pretty rose “Hello” card!

I was looking for a die in my stash that might work with the “You make me smile” stamp, and when I discovered this speech bubble die fit perfectly, that’s what inspired this card.

This is a Darice ‘Quotes’ Word Bubble die and since it is a solid die (not open in the center) I die cut a piece of white card stock, and then stamped the sentiment on the already cut piece. That is stamped in Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide ink and embossed with Clear embossing powder. I thought that ink was a good match for this pattern paper – close to the same value, but a touch darker to pull your focus. I cut the pattern paper with a LFSRD and was looking for matching card stock to create a mat behind the sentiment, when I realized I could make a ‘negative mat’ with the Teal card base. I traced the outline of the die on the pattern paper and cut that out with my craft knife. I sponged a touch of the Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide ink around the cut edges of the pattern paper speech bubble, and glued that flat to my card base. I outlined the pattern paper with some thin Teal Mirror peel offs and added the sentiment bubble to the card front with foam tape. I did want to expand on this sentiment a little bit, so, on the inside writing surface (cut with a LFSRD) I added “even when I feel like crying” (Noteworthy font).  I think that makes this feel much more personal than the smile sentiment alone… after all… puppies make me smile…!!! And I really like that “negative mat” idea – it certainly guarantees that your mat is a perfect match for your card base! Clean and Simple and Touching!

I think my favorite stamp in this set is the cute instamatic camera with the long strap. You can almost picture one of those 4-way ‘flash cubes’ sitting on top of it!

I thought a trio of those cameras in secondary colors would compliment the Violet card base quite nicely! I stamped the cameras with VersaFine Onyx Black ink on Bristol smooth card stock using my MISTI to get perfect alignment and even spacing. Since my Stabilo markers were still out, I grabbed my paintbrush and an orange, violet and green marker and colored all 3 of the cameras. I used a tan marker on the straps and a touch of light blue in the viewfinder. The “Oh SNAP!” sentiment is stamped on the bottom of the die-cut card front (LFSRD) with more of the light blue marker highlighting the ‘snap’. I attached the card front to the Violet card base with foam tape, and used my Stardust Glitter gel pen on the little dots around the lenses. That made me think of some gems I had in my stash that I thought might fit these lenses, so I excavated a green and violet round gem out of my stash (really old, cheap, Oriental Trading Company gems!) but I didn’t have an orange one… No problem! I simply colored a clear gem with an orange alcohol marker – simple solution! Those gems fit the lenses almost perfectly and add a BIG touch of bling to yet another Clean and Simple card! This card has many possible uses!

Violet and yellow are complimentary colors so I wanted to use our new Sunshine Yellow Sway peel offs on the other violet card base. And I do have that new Lemon Zest Party embossing powder from Lizi… I did an experiment embossing the “Smile” stamp with that Lemon Zest on a piece of my own violet card stock and this is what became of that.

On the violet card base, I created a sunburst of the SWAY peel offs using a Gentleman Crafters oval grid with twelve sections template to get the alignment just right. I used all three widths of the peel offs and butted their flat edges together to make the ‘rays’.  I fussy cut my embossed “Smile” and added that to the center of the burst with foam tape, scattered a number of the violet sequins around and added one of the faux leather (fleather??) pom-poms beneath the sentiment. The pom-pom echoes the sunburst and, while this picture of the embossing powder is a little spotty looking, all those dots are the holographic sparkles in the powder! I got one or two too shine for you here! I also seemed to remember a Love From Lizi sentiment stamp that would go along with this card beautifully! The “Happiness looks gorgeous on you!” stamp is from the LFL June ’18 Makers Gonna Make stamp set. Stamped with Onyx Black ink on some yellow card stock from my stash (cut with a LFSRD) and attached to the inside completes this sentiment perfectly and reinforces the violet / yellow color theme with this card. Surprisingly, that yellow card stock is a great match for the Sunshine Yellow peel offs!

Well, that covers the four sentiments in the stamp set… Are you ready for some puns?

This pun tickles me completely! I fashioned my little ‘tabletop’ from a 1″ strip of the Satin Gold Mirror specialty card stock, and a 1/4″ strip of the striped pattern paper. At first, I just glued that strip right on top of the Sunshine Yellow card base, but soon realized that the plant stickers would have a big crease on them at the seam if the card stocks were different layers. So I cut away the yellow card front behind the strips, and ‘inlaid’ the tabletop strip between the remaining pieces of the card base. That helps make the transition for the plant stickers much smoother between the ‘tabletop’ and the card base. The sentiment is printed on the card front using the Noteworthy font, and I added some Clear Gold Mirror peel offs across the top and at the bottom of the ‘table’. I though this was a great idea for a Spring card, and knew I had this “Happy Spring” stamp from my days as a Paper Pumpkin subscriber – this stamp is from the April 2016 Paper Pumpkin kit. I embossed that stamp on some of my yellow card stock using the LFL Golden Crown embossing powder, die cut the stamp and a black mat with the Gina K. Stitched Oval dies and added that to the inside of the card. I think this is a terrific pun and goes so well with all of those plant stickers – which also happen to have gold foil accents! Lots of gold bling on this card!

I did a little experimenting with the “THANK YOU” die from our kit, and, because the “THANK YOU” lettering is in ‘stencil’ form, I decided that’s how I should use it!

I cut the die from our Satin Gold Mirror specialty card stock, traced the outline of the die on a piece of my black glitter card stock, cut that out, and glued the two together for the big “THANK YOU” on this Black card base. I did send some time working out this sticker arrangement of the gold foil flowers by using my non-stick craft mat and the die itself. I could move the stickers around and not worry that they would permanently fix themselves to the craft mat. I made a couple of slight adjustments transferring this design to my card front, but this exercise gave me a really good template to follow! I attached the die-cut to the card base with foam tape and arranged the foil stickers around it.

I was itching to use this “unforgettable” sticker and figured that it went well with a thank you card, so I attached the white sticker to more black glitter card stock from my stash, and fussy cut that out following the cut lines of the sticker. I added a  5/8″ strip of my black glitter card stock across the card front and foam taped the fussy-cut sticker on top of that strip. I HAD to complete that (lyric) sentiment so I printed the “that’s what you are” using the Courier font on some white card stock, die-cut that with my new Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment die, foam taped that to a 1/4″ strip of the Satin Gold specialty card stock and glued that to the card front under the “unforgettable” sticker. I needed to add a little more white to this card front to balance out the unforgettable sentiment, so I added some white leaf stickers to my floral arrangement. I added some of the Honeysuckle Jewel drops among the flowers (if you use these translucent Nuvo Drops on black, they don’t look pink at all!!) for a little more shine, and finished out this card with the faux leather (fleather?) bow in gold. It fits perfectly between those two leaf bunches! Another super shiny, sparkly card… this time in black!

When I saw the ‘calendar’ stickers in our sticker pack, I knew this card was in my future!

Another lyrical sentiment for us! I fiddled around with my Silhouette software for a while to get this sentiment sized and spaced correctly so I could print it on this round ephemera piece using the Noteworthy font again. I also printed the little “or” on some scrap white card stock and punched it out with a standard hole punch. On the Sunshine Yellow card base, I glued the printed ephemera circle to the bottom and used foam tape to attach the season stickers and the ‘or’ circle to complete this sentiment. I attached the large flower ephemera piece to the card front with foam tape and used Black Soot Distress Oxide Ink to stamp all the small foliage stamps around the edges, and the two hears in the bottom corners. Knowing that the Nuvo Drops in our kit don’t show their color on black, I reached for my Studio Katia Cupid’s Kiss crystals for the glittery accents on the flowers. Since the dots on the pink flower were so close, I didn’t want to risk the Nuvo drops running together, so I used the jewels on the pink flower as well. A couple of the medium peel offs down the sides of this card front and a final finishing sentiment on the inside and we have a lovely friendship card good for any season of the year!

When I saw that camera stamp with the “flash” I knew I was going to have to do another light-up interactive card this month!  Here’s all my pieces:

The top three pieces are all cut with the 5″ x 3-3/4″ Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die. I die cut the heart in the pattern paper using a Darice nesting hearts die. I stacked the pattern paper and the second sheet (bristol smooth card stock) on top of each other to get the placement for the camera stamp and stamped that with Onyx Black ink. I cut a tiny hole through the center of the ‘flash’, stacked the two white card pieces together, marked the hole on the third piece then die-cut a circle centered on that hole on that third piece of card stock. The black piece is cut to 5-1/4″ x 4″ (for a thin mat) and I lined up the circle die on that piece as well, and cut it out. The last piece here is the Teal card base.

Stacked together, all these pieces make up the card front. I did the circle die-cuts so any light bleed would create a halo of light around the flash. Of course the 140# Bristol smooth card stock doesn’t let much light through anyway… If I did this again, I would use a lighter-weight card stock for the camera image. Here’s a short wiring video if you are interested in seeing how I wired the Chibi light for this card:

Of course I marked the little flash hole on the card base and placed the Chibi light right on top of that spot. I determined placement for the switch by arranging the puffy hears on the front of the card knowing that I wanted to press the right heart to make the light operate. I was actually able to stamp the “press” (from the MFT Interactive labels stamp set) on the pink heart using Archival Black ink… fairly successful stamp there, but I did have to go in and re-ink that word with a fine point Sharpie!

Here’s the card all put together. I colored the camera using grey and blue-grey Spectrum Noir alcohol markers, and glued a small clear crystal from the Studio Katia mix right on the top of the hole in the middle of the flash. I did hand cut the heart frame by outlining the edge of the heart die on another die-cut piece of the black glitter card stock. I printed the sentiment (Courier font) on a scrap of white card stock and die cut it with my Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment die. I glued the puffy hearts in place, and used foam tape to add the sentiment banner. Naturally there is more to this sentiment continued on the inside of this card. Pretty good camera sentiment I think! Great valentine for any shutterbug or photography enthusiast! Let’s see this card in action!

I love that the puffy heart is the “switch” – I’ll probably have to keep refreshing that PUSH instruction… at least until I give this card to someone! I hope I was able to shed a little more light on how I do these interactive light-up cards!

One camera stamp to go, and I will have used every stamp in this stamp set! WOO-HOO!

A fun interactive “congrats” pop-up card! Two pieces of white card stock cut at 4-1/4″ x 7-1/2″ and both scored at 5″ and 6″ to make two z-fold pieces. The z-fold is on the left of the front piece and on the right of the back piece. But we won’t glue them together till the end. I stamped the “PULL HERE” with Onyx Black ink (MFT interactive labels stamps) on both sides of the front piece, and then I  covered the three panels and the sides of the two stamps with that fun black pattern paper. I stamped the camera on a piece of Bristol smooth card stock using VersaFine Onyx Black ink and embossed that with LFL Golden Crown embossing powder, and reached for my Stabilo markers again to color this. I added the “enjoy this moment” gold foil sticker from our kit underneath the camera, fussy cut the top edge of the camera and then cut straight down the two sides about 3″ making a large square below the camera.

The “congrats” sentiment is cut (Lawn Fawn Scripty Congrats die) from the Satin Gold specialty card stock and some black fun foam, glued together and then glued down to the card front. To assemble, you want to score the bottom right corner of the cut-out stamp at 45 degrees and fold that triangular tab forward. Then you’ll glue the back of that tab to the Z fold on the left side of the back piece. In essence, when the card is closed, the camera tab is folded (camera hidden), and when the card is open, the camera tab is flat (camera showing). It’s fairly easy to line things up so you can see the whole camera and the sentiment when they’re popped up!

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I did manage to film this card assembly, and I’m sure taking a look at my video will help explain this mechanism. It is really a very simple, yet effective pop-up technique! I think this is a terrifically fun card, and if you pop it open really fast, the camera “magically’ appears! There’s a link to my 10C1K video at the beginning and end of this post.

That’s my 10 cards using the Love From Lizi May 2019 “Snap Happy” Card Kit. As you can tell, I managed to create a wide variety of cards using this kit. From Birthday to Thank You, from Valentines to Friendship, from Hello to Congrats, this kit has so many options that you can create cards for almost ANY occasion! And as usual, I have gobs of supplies left over! I used a lot more stickers and ephemera than I thought I would, and pieces from about half of the pattern papers, and while I did manage to use all the stamps in the stamp set, I didn’t get around to using any ribbons or those four heart dies. SEE!?  Even MORE options!!  LOL!! As of posting, this kit is still available at Love From Lizi – If I’ve managed to ignite your imagination and you’d like to get in on the fun, please use my link when shopping at lovefromlizi.com: http://bit.ly/LFLlink.

I extend my deepest heartfelt thanks to all who follow me here (and everyone who take a look!) – I know your time is important, and I am honored that you choose to share some of that time with me! I strive to bring you some grins and giggles and a little unique inspiration every time I do another post! If you have any questions or comments just let me know!  Please Pin me, Post me, Like me, List me, share this post with all your friends, don’t run with scissors… and HAPPY CRAFTING!

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Hello Folks!  Scott here with my 10 cards featuring the My Monthly Hero April 2019 Kit! “La vita bella” (the beautiful life) is the theme for this kit from Hero Arts this month – featuring seven (count ’em – seven!) fancy dies. If you’d like to follow along with my 10C1K video just click here: https://youtu.be/vJsXUHaPJw0

In addition to the fancy dies, we get a 4″ x 6″ stamp set featuring a number of Italian sentiments, some English sentiments (a few translations!) and an assortment of scene-building images – clouds, birds, a sun, some waves,  a cancelled postmark, etc. We also get a  collection of the new Hero Hues Premium Cardstock in Sand, Mustard, Pumpkin, Cherry, Plum, Adriatic, and Arctic colors – we get two 8.5″ x 5.5″ sheets of each color and two similar sheets of vellum. I’ve been itching to check out this card stock ever since Hero Arts released it, and I have to say it is extremely high quality and the colors are bright and vibrant! To round out our kit this month we get a Tombow Mono Drawing Pen in black, and two rolls of 1/2″ foam tape (2.2 yards) in two different thicknesses. Perfect additions for layering your die-cuts!

I believe this is the first MMH kit I have received that is really all about the dies and less about the stamps. No extras for me this month – As usual, I want to challenge myself to come up with 10 different cards using just the supplies included in the monthly kit – and, of course, I want to try to use ALL of the stamps in the stamp set! I did cut all the dies out of some white card stock and fiddled around with those pieces for quite a while before starting to assemble my cards. I do want to stay true to the Venetian spirit of this kit with my 10 cards, so, let’s see what I came up with!

My first thought was to try to narrow the focus down from a full card front to more of a ‘vignette’ approach – that opens up a lot of options!

Thank You cards are always useful! I die cut a 3.5″ circle of white card stock and, using my Life Changing Cheapo brushes,  ink blended some Broken China Distress Oxide ink on the bottom portion, and blended a nice sunset above that using Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, and Abandoned Coral. I cut a thin mat for the circular vignette, as well as the gondola die, and half of the background building die from black card stock, and cut the water die from dark grey card stock. I glued the water and cathedral cut-outs directly to the background and actually added a little bit of an extra building to the right side of the cathedral with the included foam tape to balance the dimension of the gondola. I stamped one of the bird groups in the sky and the sentiment with VersaFine Onyx Black ink and clear embossed the sentiment.

There are actually 11 sentiments in this stamp set, so I knew if wanted to do a sentiment or two of my own, I was going to have to start doubling up on some of the kit sentiments! There are a few ‘double sentiments’ in this stamp set – Italian and English versions of the same sentiment so, I figured, let’s translate!! I stamped the ‘thank you’ sentiment (Onyx Black ink) on the inside of the card (just in case the recipient doesn’t know what ‘grazie’ means) and glued the completed circle vignette directly to my white card base. I know that using these dies in a smaller format helped to free my mind and opened up some other possibilities for me!

Now, I have been tempted many times, but I’ve never used the backing card images from our stamp and die set on one of my cards, but the photograph of Venice  this month was SO beautiful that I couldn’t resist! Those domes on our ‘building’ die, are modeled after the church seen in this picture – the Santa Maria della Salute Roman-Catholic church that is something of a landmark in Venice – and makes for a striking die-cut!

I grabbed one of my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies and selected a portion of this photo just to the left of the My Monthly Hero logo and die cut that away for this card front. I matted that on a thin white mat and a thin purple mat from my stash (great match!) and glued those down to another white card base. Since we did a translation on my first card, I figured I would continue that concept here and turned to my Silhouette Portrait to print and cut this sentiment. This is printed black on white using the Arabella font – a pretty close match to the stamp set script – and I did cut a shadow for this sentiment from that same purple card stock so everything matches very sweetly! I attached the layered sentiment to the card front with some included foam tape for a touch of dimension. “Augurandoti il meglio” is Italian for “wishing you the best” which I stamped on the inside of the card with Onyx Black ink. When I found that I had some card stock in my stash that matched the purple in this photograph SO nicely, I knew I had to bite the bullet and make this card. I don’t think I’ve seen any cards out there that feature this photograph… I just couldn’t resist!

I stopped playing around with my white die cuts long enough to color them for this card.

Everything is die cut from copic-friendly white card stock and colored with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I was happy I remembered to put some flowers in the windows with irregular outlines! I backed both of the ‘houses’ with some yellow card stock from my stash and colored in the ‘brick’ cut-outs and window openings for some contrast. I also outlined the windows and doors for a suggestion of ‘trim’ using a white gel pen and a brown Pigma Micron pen. I ink blended a simple Broken China Distress Oxide background on a white card base and also blended the left half of the ‘background’ die with the same ink. I backed the distant building and the water die with black card stock (I added some Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle Pen to the black behind the ‘water’ for a little aqueous shimmer), and glued those three pieces to the card base.

I colored the bridge and used a white gel pen to outline some stonework, and I trimmed the bottom of the bridge off to bring the railings in line with the houses. I added the bridge to the center using the thin foam tape from the kit. I trimmed the angled bottoms of the houses off to expose more of the water, and attached them to the card front with thin foam tape. That gave me room to add a couple of “pali da casadas” (poles of the family) to the left and park my gondolier-less gondola between them. Did you know there is a Venetian law decreeing all gondolas have to be black? Yup! I also colored all the laundry on the line and added detail to the gondola and laundry with a white get pen. Phew! LOL!!

Finally, I stamped a different group of birds in the top right corner using HA Soft Granite ink, stamped and embossed the sentiment on some vellum using Onyx Black ink, and die cut that into a circle and glued that to the center of the card. I think this satisfied my anal-retentive obsessive instincts all in one card! LOL! I do believe all the added details really brings these dies to life… I really wish we had detail stamps that went with the dies… then you could choose to use them or not..! Nonetheless, I did use all seven die cuts on this card, and was able to cross off a couple more stamps in the set as well!  LOL!!

Let’s get back to my original, smaller, vignette idea. I thought these dies could make a nice facsimile of a travel poster! And I’m itching to use some of the included card stock!

I die-cut the house from white card stock and taped the back of the cut-outs down to hold all the ‘stones’ in place. I removed the window cut-outs and added some yellow glassine (kite paper) over the window openings, colored the stones a dark red-brown, and then glued a matching Cherry die-cut over the top.  I cut the water, bridge and background cathedral from the Adriatic, Pumpkin and Plum card stocks. I cut the Mustard card stock with a 4′ x 2.75″ LFSRD and printed “Venezia” on the top left using the Arabella font. I arranged the die-cuts together and cut them all with the LFSRD so everything would have that nice stitched edge. I glued the 3 background pieces to the Mustard base and mounted the house with thin foam tape. I like the subtle shine that the kite paper adds to the windows, and I think this suggests a travel poster quite nicely!

I did use one of the Sand card stock sheets for my card base here – I printed “contento la pensione” on the lower right corner in the Arabella font, and stamped five of the image stamps on the card base using HA Soft Granite ink. I even managed to get a couple of those bow-tie pasta (farfalle) stamps on this card front as well! Yes, this printed sentiment is Italian for another one of our stamp set sentiments, so I simply stamped the ‘translation’ on the inside of the card! I think this makes a very effective retirement card – you don’t have to move to Venice for your retirement, but you can certainly travel there – or anywhere else! I really like this colorful ‘travel poster’!

Then I got the idea of trying to create some different cut-outs using these dies and some partial die-cutting techniques.

This background was inspired by the “Buon giorno” stamp which means ‘good day’ or more specifically, ‘good morning’. I cut a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock with the largest LFSRD and blended the sunrise with Wild Honey, and Broken China Oxide inks – being careful not to go completely green where they meet. I cut simple masks from the two cloud stamps, attached them to the background and then added my homemade sunburst stencil over the top. I used HA Unicorn White ink through my sunburst stencil, and that gave me the cool morning streaks of sun emanating from behind the cathedral. I removed the cloud masks and used Soft Granite ink to stamp them in their proper places. I used masks for the clouds because often, when you stamp on top of Unicorn White pigment ink, the white has a tendency to bleed through most dye inks. I got nice, solid clouds that look like they are in front of the rays. Just what I wanted!

With some careful partial-die cutting, I did manage to get the two ends of the ‘background’ die to meet up in the center for a whole different look. I die cut that from black card stock and left a couple of inches extra at the bottom. I glued the buildings flat to my card front and added some Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen to the bottom of that extra black for some glimmer in the water.

I die-cut the water die twice using the Adriatic card stock, and darkened that up a bit with some grey alcohol markers, and glued them on top of the black card stock. Again, using partial die-cutting, I was able to die-cut a double bridge from some of my plain blue card stock and did a little shading on that with grey alcohol markers. I attached the bridge to the card front with the thin foam tape and die cut the gondola from the same card stock and shaded that with grey alcohol markers before attaching that to the card front with the thick foam tape. That does a nice job of camouflaging the water seam!

I stamped the “Buon Giorno” in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and clear embossed that for some texture and shine. I also stamped the birds using HA Soft Granite ink and then took my thinnest white gel pen to add highlights to the edges of the buildings and to the bottom of the clouds and the sentiment. A final sprinkling of dots using my Stardust glitter pen adds some nice sparkle in the dawning light, and I did continue this sentiment on the inside of the card with the “Ti Amo” (I love you) stamp. I thought these two sentiments went well together and didn’t really need any sort of translation! I was quite pleased to find that it was fairly simple to re-jigger these two dies to give me something new and unique – I especially like that group of buildings at the center of my card front, and I just may have to try three bridges in a row which would cover end to end on a landscape orientation. YES! There ARE some options here!

I was intent on using the Happy Birthday sentiment(s) with the small wine glass stamp.

I dug around in my stamps and dies for some kind of a ‘frame’ that I could stamp this little vignette into when I realized that the Italian flag was PERFECT for this! Most flags of the world have a 2:3 ratio, so I cut each color panel at 1.25″ which then makes the proper height of our ‘flag’ to be 3.75″. That is the Cherry card stock from our kit and the white and green pieces were pulled from my stash. I taped the edges of the three panels together on the back, cut them all together to the correct height, and glued them down to a thin black mat for contrast.

I stamped the sentiment and images using Onyx Black ink (embossing the sentiment) and colored the images with my alcohol markers. I did wipe away the straight line of wine in the glass stamp and re-drew it with a Pigma micron pen so I could tip the glasses towards each other. It took a little trial and error to figure out how to double up that leaf stamp but I’m very pleased with this arrangement. The red wine echoes the red part of the flag,  and the green leaves echo the green! Of course, I did add the “Happy Birthday” stamp on the inside (just in case!) and here we have a Birthday card that is right on theme without having to use any dies! A perfect card for an Italian or an Italophile!

I’m slowly getting to that special age where many of my friends and colleagues are starting to retire, so I wanted to do another retirement card for my New York City peeps, and I wanted to try making a gate-fold card from these supplies…

I thought both of the ‘house’ dies in our kit could stand in for most any city, and thought they had a particular “brownstone” feeling to them as well. I die-cut the buildings on a 4.25″ x 5.5″ piece of sturdy white card stock so their straight edges were 2.125″ away from both sides (right in the middle). I did do some partial die-cutting to remove the angled bottom of both houses. That left an extra paper tab on the top and bottom of each house cut-out. I ink blended the background with Broken China Distress Oxide ink and added clouds using the Iced Spruce Oxide ink and the MFT Mini cloud edges stencil. I added the cityscape in black using my Darice Craft Die Backgrounds Cityscape die, adding window highlights with a white gel pen and glued that to my two panels. I stamped the large bird stamp in Soft Granite and filled in the ‘streets and sidewalks’ with black and grey card stock from my stash. That gave us a nice, fairly stylized, NYC card front. I think we all know that “ciao” means hello, but it also means good-by – especially when doubled-up like this “ciao, ciao” sentiment. I stamped that sentiment twice with VersaMark ink and embossed them with LFL Very Vanilla embossing powder. Finally, I glued the 4 (2 on each side) tabs to the back of a 4.25″ x 5.5″ piece of our Arctic card stock. When you open the gate-fold we get:

Transported to the canals of Venice! The inside of this card uses all seven colors of our card stocks with very few adaptations. I did ink blend Salty Ocean Distress Oxide ink on the top of the Arctic background, and glued all the die-cuts flat to the background. I did play around with the clothesline die, and trimmed the two of them into more banner shapes then laundry shapes… a little more celebratory than domestic! I stamped the sentiment using MMH Reactive Blue Water ink, and blended the same clouds from the card front on the inside of the gate-fold panels. I ultimately spent way too much time on this card, but I really like the contrast between the inside and the outside. Fussy but fun, this card sports all seven dies again – I believe I only adulterated the bridge die (trimmed it a little shorter) – and this crosses that “Ciao” sentiment stamp off my list as well!  Looks like this is one retirement you can really look forward to!

I’m getting to that point in my 10 cards where I start itching to do some puns! The vellum sheets that came in our kit inspired this silly card!

Perfect for any Star Wars fan! For those who have no idea what I am talking about, the first episode of the Star Wars saga is titled The Phantom Menace… so this is kind of a perfect pun for this kit! LOLOL! Fairly simple here… the background is actually the Altenew Galaxy Washi Tape laid on a white card base, with all of the vellum die-cuts glued to the top. I tried using some spray adhesive to attach all the die-cuts, but had a little problem getting them to adhere to the smooth surface of the tape… Next time I’ll run my vellum through my Xyron sticker maker before die-cutting – I swear that Xyron  adhesive will stick to anything!! I used a 1″ circle punch to make my crescent moon, and turned to my Silhouette Portrait to create this sentiment. I used the Death Star font for the punny title here, and gave it a little perspective with the Silhouette software. I cut a couple of sentiments, glued them together, and added them to the card front with the thin foam tape. This would be a good card for any major Star Wars fan for almost any kind of occasion. Maybe a May 4th card!!  May the Fourth be with you!

When I was fiddling around with the die cuts in the beginning, I cut three of the ‘left house’ die from some Kraft card stock of mine, and glued them all together side-by-side. They looked just like row houses, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them…

Back to a nice vignette again! I die cut a 3.5″ circle out of a piece of medium grey card stock from my stash cut to 4″ x 5.25″. I covered the grey die-cut circle with the Altenew Watercolor Nebula Washi Tape. (I bought both of these wide wash tapes when they first came out but haven’t had the opportunity to use them until now!) I covered the yellow window with 4 layers of yellow glassine, and covered the back of the die cuts with black card stock – making sure to cut a hole for my window! Then I glued the nebula circle to the back of that (another hole for the window) and taped the circle back into its opening in the grey card stock. I was able to die-cut a thin black frame using a couple of my circle dies, and outlined the circle vignette with that.

I used a yellow chibi light for the light source and laid out the wiring on the front of a black card base. There are gobs of Chibi how-tos on YouTube. I attached the grey card front to the black card base using one layer of the thick foam tape and one layer of the thin foam tape – that gave me just enough height to hide and activate the battery. I white embossed the “press” sentiment from the MFT Interactive labels stamp set on some black card stock and die cut that into a small circle and glued that down in the appropriate place on the card front. I think I am most pleased with this very simple yet surprisingly effective sentiment printed with the Arabella font on the inside of the card. I stamped the little sketched heart below my printed sentiment for a bit of a loving touch. I can think of many opportunities to use a card like this! I think this is SO SWEET!!

I had an idea for my last card that kind of hinged on my ability to bring some detail to the gondolier on the gondola die-cut. I grabbed my thinnest markers and micron pens and practiced a few times before I came up with this:

WHEEEEEEEE!  A magic slider gondola with a gondola pun! LOL!! I think that’s a fun way to wrap up our “la vita bella” kit this month! I knew I wanted my gondola to move across the center of my card so I took a card front and cut a slit right down the middle of that panel stopping a half an inch away from the sides. That water die-cut is right at 1″ tall, so I masked off an inch below my slot and ink blended Broken China Oxide ink for the background of the water and just enough of a sky to give our gondolier some color to glide past. I stamped  the sentiment below the water line using Onyx Black ink and embossed that with some clear embossing powder.

I cut the water die from the Arctic card stock twice, and glued one to the left side of the card front with the top edge right at the center slit. This die is only 4.25″ wide so I added the right edge of the second die cut to the right side of the card front and trimmed it off where it met the other water die. The big pole is hiding the seam… Sneaky!

I used the angled stripe stamp from the SSS Crafty Friends stamp set  to stamp both the big and small “pali da casadas” (poles of the family) using the MMH Red Reactive ink and outlined them in black before adding some simple toppers to both. I set them aside to work on the magic slider mechanism.

On another full size card panel. I cut my ‘trash bag conveyor channel’ from the center line to half an inch down from the center, and a half inch in from the sides. That’s a half inch square notch on the right and left sides just below the center line. I wrapped a half inch piece of plastic trash bag around that channel and used a couple of pieces of scor-tape to weld the ends together.

I always make my pull tabs from a 1″ wide piece of card stock, scored at 1/2″, folded and glued to itself for stability. I stamped some waves in Broken China Oxide on the pull tab and stamped the “pull” (MFT interactive stamp set again) on the end. I scor-taped the left end of the pull tab to the back of the trash bag conveyor belt and scor-taped a small, 3/4″ tab of acetate to the front of the conveyor on the opposite (right) side. The gondola will attach to this acetate tab. I added some thick card stock on the front of the mechanism panel, above and below the conveyor belt, to allow some room for the belt to move freely, slid the acetate sheet through the slit on the card front, and, after punching a thumb notch in both,  glued the front of the mechanism panel to the back of the card front.

I used the Arabella font and my Silhouette Software to print this sentiment on the inside of my card base. A real honest-to-goodness Italian pun! LOL! And a perfect sentiment for a card! If you want to see exactly how I print unique sentiments for my cards, I have a quick video that explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9YuZSqC9fo 

Since the pull tab moves on the back side of the card front, I added the thick foam tape to the back of the mechanism panel, leaving a channel for the pull tab. I punched more matching thumb notches through the white card base, and attached the card front to the base with the foam tape.

I did die-cut the gondola from some thick black card stock, and added some boat detail with a thin white gel pen. I cut another gondola from some white card stock and colored the gondolier and his pole before trimming them off the white gondola, and gluing him (and his pole!) on top of the black gondolier. I thought that gave us a much better looking gondola (and gondolier) than one simply colored black! Then I attached the gondola to the acetate tab using a piece of the thin foam tape. (The water die cut adds enough thickness on the card front that the foam tape is needed here)

All that’s left is adding the “pali da casadas” (poles of the family) to the card front. Of course, the big pole is hiding the seam on the water die(s), and, though I didn’t plan it this way, I thought it was kind of perfect to hide the gondolier behind the big pole! I decided how far to the left I wanted the gondola to go, and glued the smaller pole directly to the card front at that point. That pole will stop your acetate tab from moving any further to the left so be sure it’s where you want it before you glue it down! WOW! I love this card!!

That’s my 10 cards from the My Monthly Hero April 2019 Kit! I really like all of these cards  a lot, and was pleasantly surprised at the variety I was able to conjure up! I did spend an inordinate amount of time on these cards, but I am particularly thrilled that I was able to create a couple of fun interactive cards, and, hopefully, a couple of good options for using these dies and stamps! This kit is still available at Hero Arts, so, if I’ve managed to spark your interest in this unique kit please use my link when you go shopping at Hero Arts: http://bit.ly/2sBmuMCHeroArts.

Forgive my verbosity on this post… I guess I had a lot to explain with these cards!! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me – you know I appreciate it so very much! Please share this post with any and all interested parties, Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, Share me with friends and enemies alike…! Don’t run with gondoliers… and, as always, Happy Crafting!!