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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!!

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

Hello Folks! Scott here, unboxing the new Love From Lizi May 2019 Card Kit! Lizi is calling this the Snap Happy Card Kit and we get bunches of cameras, and springtime related stamps, stickers, pattern papers and some unique embellishments!

For our card stock this month, we get 5 sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stock in (from right to left) Violet, Aqua Blue, super smooth alcohol-marker-friendly White, Black, and Sunshine Yellow. We also get two full-size (8.5″ x 11″) sheets of Specialty Card Stock in a pearlescent Rose and Satin Gold Mirror. I love getting BIG sheets of specialty card stock!!

Here’s something old AND new!! Our peel off sheet this month is a new peel off design! Lizi is calling this design SWAY peel offs and they are flat on one side with a wavy edge on the other! I’ve always loved Lizi’s pin-stripe peel offs and now she has given us a completely new design to play with! I can’t wait to start using these!!

We get 12 sheets of 6″ x 6″ double-sided pattern papers this month. Lots of vivid patterns with a good amount of black and dark backgrounds (yes, plenty of PINK too..!!!) One side seems to feature rather bold patterns and colors…

while the reverse sides emphasize a softer palette, and smaller, all-over patterns. Plenty of options with these designs, and I always love pattern papers with black backgrounds!

This month we are treated to a generous batch of unique stickers!

Six sheets of stickers printed on thin acetate – so, NO white borders around our stickers in this kit! VERY cool!! These stickers include colorful images and sentiments, black images and sentiments, gold-foil images and sentiments, and WHITE images and sentiments – all the black sentiments on the bottom left sheet are repeated in white on the sheet behind! Very interesting!!! We also get two sheets of normal paper stickers – one with an assortment of heart shapes in gold foil, assorted colors, white, black and a subtle wood-grain, and a sheet of calendar / seasonal stickers perfect for planners or scrapbooks or any card referring to an actual day or date! SO MANY OPTIONS HERE!

That brings us to the Snap Happy Stamp Set that features 3 different cameras (love the one with the flash – can you say Instamatic? LOL!), 4 different sentiments, some small botanical stamps and a perfect little heart. You’ll notice more cameras on one of the pattern papers and a couple of the sticker sheets! I hope no one is camera-shy!!

That brings me to the always-surprising, stuffed-to-the-brim Embellishment Bag!

We start out with five meter-length 1/8″ satin ribbons in Peach, soft Lilac, Black, soft Yellow, and White. These thin ribbons make tying a bow so easy!! Then, (from left to right) we get six faux-leather flowers (or pom-poms if you like!) in six different colors with sticky foam dots on the back – very unique! Our usual full-size bottle of Nuvo Jewel (translucent) Drops in Honeysuckle, twelve puffy hearts that are completely reversible – the same colors and designs on the front and the back! We get five dies this month with a lovely THANK YOU label die and four assorted heart dies (love that tiny heart!!) Of course we get our sample pack of the Snap Happy sequin mix with gold and black and teal and violet sequins in a variety of sizes, and six faux-leather bows in silver, white, brown, black, tan, and gold – these have sticky foam backs as well. I’ve never seen anything like these before!! SO CUTE!

As if that weren’t enough, we get a bag filled with ephemera!! LOTS of die-cut images, sentiments, banners and journal cards with touches of gold foil – there’s another camera here too! And even more to come…

Included in our ephemera bag are these Kraft die-cuts with more gold foil highlights and some interesting stencil-like die-cuts as well. That’s about 35 different pieces in our ephemera bag alone!

There are also a lot of Add-ons for this kit this month! I did get this great set of painted binder clips with shaped handles. I don’t know if I’ll ever use them on a card but I can’t wait to use them at work!! As binder clips!! LOL!!   Other add-ons include a second set of the 6″ x 6″ pattern papers included in the kit, a Washi Tape collection, A full bag of the Snap Happy sequin mix, Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pens in Onyx Black, Sterling Silver, and Spun Gold. The add-on Snap Happy peel off bundle has two SWAY sheets in Gold Mirror and White (remember you can color Lizi’s white peel offs with any alcohol marker!) and two pin-stripe peel offs in Black glitter and Soft Peach. Unfortunately, the peel off bundle has already sold out

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And there are extra add-on stickers! A 12″ x 12″ sheet of Kraft stickers with touches of gold foil AND alphabet stickers, and a 12″ x 12″ Chipboard stickers sheet all in black white and gold with lots of sentiments. The card stock bundles assembled to compliment this kit include the Pearlescent Bundle in Rose, Black, White, Mint, Peach, and Violet; the A4 Specialty Bundle with holographic Silver glitter, Ivory embossed, Copper, Blue, and Gold textured card stocks and a white on white gloss pattern. There’s also the Glitter Bundle with Black, Rose, White, Violet, Gold and Rose Gold card stocks.

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As is always the case, this month’s Love From Lizi Card Kit is chock full of goodies, and the Snap Happy theme can encompass a wide range of cards and layouts! I think there’s a little something for everyone with this kit! As of posting, this kit and most of the add-ons are still available at Lizi’s online store. And remember! Subscribers can add anything in the shop to their card kit orders without extra shipping charges through 7pm EST on April 25th.

If you do go shopping with Lizi, or want to become a subscriber, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. It is always appreciated!

Thank you so much for joining me today, please Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, Share me with all your friends – don’t run with scissors – and by all means… Happy Crafting!!!

DISCLAIMER:  This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi April 2019 Card Kit. This is Lizi’s “Bon Voyage” Card Kit, and it is stuffed with bunches of pattern papers, embellishments, cut apart sheets, stickers and a great collection of large detailed dies! This kit features a pretty masculine color palette, with all sorts of retro travel images and sentiments that seem to beg for some good old-fashioned collage type cards! If you would like to follow along with the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zMeOv7bn5g

As always, I did make A2 card bases from the fives sheets of card stock in our kit (substituting my own plain white card stock for the LFL super smooth white card stock). I took that collage theme to heart for my first card this month beginning with the ‘half of a large globe’ pattern paper – the one that says “there’s no time to be bored…”.

I fussy cut the globe and “layered” strips from the pattern paper, did a little distress inking (Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink) on the edges, added some brown and white twine and fussy cut the bottom edges of the banners. I covered the wood-veneer geotag with our Bottle Green Nuvo Drops, and glued that over the printed geotag on the globe, and added a light blue brad to the middle of the curly bracket strip. I trimmed away a single London Bus ticket from another sheet of pattern paper and three small tickets from the colorful ticket pattern paper, and glued those just off-center on the Peach card base, and edged the sides of that with medium thick peel offs from our kit. I did round the right corners of the card base with my corner chompers and used some Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink to distress the edges.

I stamped the sentiment in the lower right corner of the card base with Distress Oxide Faded Jeans ink, and embossed that with some clear embossing powder. I mounted the globe piece to the left edge with foam tape (being sure to add an extra little foam square behind each banner). I trimmed an EMBRACE THE DETOURS strip from another pattern paper and mounted that across the front of the card with foam strips. I discovered that the cancelled stamp images on the stamp pattern paper actually fit our wood veneer stamp frame, so I ‘white-washed’ the wood stamp frame with a Picket Fence Distress crayon and glued a stamp image to the back of the frame before adding that to my collage with a foam square.

WOW! This card includes pieces from FIVE different pattern papers, two wood-veneer pieces, some twine, a brad, Nuvo Drops, and one of our stamps… now that’s a textbook definition of a collage!! LOL!

This brings me to my one question about this kit. It seems to me that you don’t generally give someone a card when they are going traveling – that’s something they are supposed to send to YOU while they are traveling. SO I did make an effort to “find a use” for my 10 cards this month. This card is completed with a “happy retirement” sentiment on the inside printed in the Sign Painter font. That gives this card a definite purpose! Very masculine and multi-layered!

My attention was easily drawn to the dies this month – especially since we are treated to 5 different dies and they are pretty large compared to our standard kit dies.

I thought the scooter die was especially fun and quite unique, and I love this great pun of a sentiment! I cut that die from a piece of our Silver Mirror specialty card stock, glued that to a plain blue card stock from my stash and trimmed the blue paper to match the outline of the die (I did add a touch of grey alcohol marker to the tires and running board). I trimmed a piece of the map pattern paper to 2″ x 5.5″ (there’s more of that collage layering on the left) and glued that to the Soft Grey card base and lined the top and bottom with the “ADVENTURE” stamp in Hero Arts Reactive Blue ink.

I turned to my Silhouette Portrait to print and cut this sentiment using the Sign Painter and Ariel fonts, and cut four shadow pieces and glued them all together for a thick chunky sentiment. I mounted the scooter and the sentiment to the card front with foam squares and, true to form, added another bit of a pun on the inside, turning this card into a simple, straight-forward invitation – I think “let’s scoot” is pretty self-explanatory! LOL!!

Let’s talk stickers! As is often the case, when we get 12″ x 12″ cut apart sheets in our LFL kits we frequently get a big sheet of stickers too! Some terrific stickers in this kit!

I couldn’t resist the hot air balloon stickers – all three of them! On an Aqua card base, I stenciled some light clouds on the right half of the card using a MFT mini Cloud Edges Stencil, some Hero Arts Reactive Sea Salt ink, and my life-changing cheapo brushes. Just a hint of clouds in the sky here. I glued down a 2.125″ x 5.5″ strip of our hot air balloon pattern paper  to the card base, and added a couple of strips of the blue-green polka dot pattern paper to the two sides. I trimmed out the “The World is Yours” sentiment strip and added that across the bottom of the card front and outlined that with peel offs.

The sentiment is from an old Stampin’ Up stamp set in my stash, stamped in HA Blue Reactive ink on a scrap of aqua card stock from my stash, (really close match!) and loosely fussy cut out. I attached the balloons and the sentiment to the card front with foam squares, making sure the two left balloons went over the edges, trimmed their excesses away and added some sequins for a final touch of sparkle. There was also another sticker that went with this card perfectly, so I added that to the inside of the card. “GO FAR” is a great compliment here, making this a perfect graduation or encouragement card!

And now I can turn my attention to the very unique stamp set featured this month!

I could no more resist turning this stamp into a treasure map than I could deny my own name! LOL!! I stamped this using Archival Acorn ink on a piece of ‘parchment’ stationery, and added all the little ‘landmark’ stamps on the islands. The ‘parchment’ gave me a little beige color to start with, and I sponged on more Distress Oxide inks in Frayed Burlap, Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain. Then I would wad the paper up and roll it around, open it up and flatten it down, add more inks and wad it up again. I tore the edges, added more inks and wadded it up again, this time I added a tiny spritz of water and rolled the wad between my palms quite a bit. That gave me the distressing I was looking for!

In fact, I distressed this so much, when I went to mark the treasure trail, my markers started bleeding… I finally took a red pen to the path and added a couple of thin strips of red paper for the “X”. I cut a piece of the tan stripe pattern paper to 2″ x 5.25″ and glued that to an Ivory card base. I stamped the compass rose with VersaMark ink and embossed it with the new LFL Copper embossing powder, stamped the sentiment with Walnut Stain ink and embossed that with some clear embossing powder. I added a brown peel off to the right edge of the pattern paper, and mounted the map to the card front with a solid layer of fun foam. I thought the “bon voyage” stamp would work well with this card so I stamped and embossed it on the inside to match the sentiment on the front. This would be a good card to give to someone who is moving (over land or overseas..!) or maybe close friends about to take their first cruise… definitely some possibilities here! At first I thought I would be doing a lot of coloring on this map stamp, but after creating this treasure map, I can’t really imagine this stamp any other way! BONUS: A Very Masculine Card!

Let’s play with some more of those groovy dies. I had an idea for a sailboat sentiment…

On one of the white tags from the kit, I ink blended this sky using the MFT Cloud edges stencil, Broken China, Salty Ocean and Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide inks with my ‘life-saving’ cheapo brushes. I cut a couple pieces of the blue-grey striped pattern paper (using the cloud stencil as a template) for the waves – making sure the stripes went in different directions – and sponged their edges with the Cracked Pistachio ink. I die cut the sailboat from the gold mirror specialty card stock, covered the back of the sail with a piece of vellum, and the back of the ‘portholes’ with a scrap of glitter red card stock. The waves and the boat are attached to the tag with foam squares, and now I need a cloud…!

I embossed a scrap of card stock with the new LFL Oh, Holla graphic embossing powder, and die cut the cloud from that – it catches the light brilliantly! (pun intended LOL!) and I glued it directly to the tag. I took the other white tag and covered it with the ‘London Bus ticket’ pattern paper and distressed the edges of that with some Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink, and tied that together with the first tag. I added 2.25″ strips of the same striped pattern paper to the center of the Soft Grey card base, outlined them with peel offs, and glued the back tag right down to the card front. Then I attached the front tag using foam tape and turned to the sentiment.

I fashioned this sentiment to echo the pattern paper that’s all repeating sentiment strips. Since this was the main sentiment, I made it a little bit larger than the ones on the pattern paper. I printed this in the Arial font (again) and simply cut the whole strip to go across the whole card. Of course you have to open the card to get the whole sentiment -“You can’t control the wind • but you can trim the sail.” A perfect sentiment for a variety of occasions! I did glue the knot of the twine down to the card front, and added a few Nuvo drops for a little bit of shine. I have to admit, I really like that sailboat die!

I was intrigued by that car die, but I thought I might try dry embossing it instead of actually die-cutting the whole thing. I figured it should be easy to trim out the shape!

I like that a lot! This sentiment is Rick Steves’ slogan “Keep on Travelin’.” Rick Steves is the travel writer and PBS host, and I love the fact that he believes international travel makes Americans more progressive, peaceful and kind. So very important these days! I printed that sentiment using my Silhouette Software on the right side of an Ivory card base. My favorite cut apart of all our sheets was this 3″ x 4″ plane/city/harbor image. I cut that out and matted that to a thin brown mat, tucked another strip of the “embrace the detours” strip behind that, added a strip of the tan striped pattern paper to the right side of the card front, and glued the cut apart assembly to the left. I’m still trying to keep the collage theme going here!

I mounted the car with foam squares, added the wood veneer compass to the top left corner and added three little copper gems (from the LFL March ’18 Card Kit) under the sentiment for a little bit of sparkle. I did add the “not all who wander are lost” sentiment strip matted on the polka dot pattern paper to the bottom of the inside of the card. I thought it a perfect compliment to the sentiment on front! I love that embossed car!I can see using this card for retired friends who spend 6 months of every year cruising around in their RV, or any truly devoted traveler!

Every time I looked at the 2″ x 2″ cut apart sheet, pieces of a story started forming in my mind… You know I love it when my cards “tell a story” and I thought there was an interesting story to tell using those cut apart pieces. But how to tell that story…?

Yes! This is a ‘waterfall card’! I’ve never made one before, but there are a bazillion how-to videos on YouTube, so I did a little studying and, being my normal, overachieving self, made this six-layer waterfall card. These are really pretty simple interactive cards. The cut apart pieces are 2″ square, I cut 2.25″ mats for each layer from the stamps pattern paper, and the mechanism is cut from 100# brown card stock to 1.75″ x 8.25″ and I scored that at 2.25″, 2.5″, 2.75″, 3″, 3.25″, 3.5″ and 3.75″. I also cut a band of the compass pattern paper at 2.25″ x 8″ to use as the waterfall anchor. For my background, I cut a piece of the plane pattern paper at 4″ x 5.25″ Lets take a look at how this card operates:

 

LOL! I adore this little “travelogue”! I matched each sentiment square with appropriate travel images tracing our “trip” from inception to return! To assemble the waterfall, you simply glue the center of the compass band to the 2.25″ end of the mechanism (scored) piece. Then I added one of the mats on top of that, and the rest of the mats just below the other score lines. That gives us seven mats. You simply fold the end of the mechanism piece back under the waterfall pieces, wrap the ‘band’ around the background piece and glue it in place. You really only need to glue the band on the back – but I got a little anal, and glued the ‘band’ to the front as well… that (and the thickness of six layers) makes the last flip a little tight. Lastly, I added all the sentiment squares and pictures on top of the mats. I trimmed another piece of the compass pattern paper (1+5/8″ x 4.5″) to mat on top of the pull tab, printed my bonus sentiment “We Missed You!” on that mat, rounded the corners on the brown card stock and the mat, glued them together and added a brad with a piece of twine to the end. Once everything was assembled, I glued the whole piece on a white card base. I am thrilled with my very first waterfall card and I think those 2″ cut apart pieces worked perfectly to tell a little story! Nothing on the inside of this card, just lots of room to tell your friends how much you missed them!

It seems that when I hit card seven or so in a 10C1K post, I tend to start getting a little silly… I’ve used all the sentiments from the stamp set by now, so I’m left on my own!

I could not resist using one of the embellishment keys from our kit with this terrific pun! Using my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies, I die cut the large frame from the blue-grey polka dot pattern paper. I used two of my SSS Frames dies to cut the thin silver frame, the scalloped oval frame, and the dark blue-grey background. I used my Silhouette Software to figure out where to print this pun-y sentiment – that is truly one of my favorite things about using that (free) software – you can lay out your whole card and figure out exactly where your sentiment can get printed on your card front! This sentiment is printed on the Aqua card base using the Typewriter hand font. I glued the square frames directly to the card front, mounted the oval frame and background to the card front with some fun foam, and glued the key to the middle of the oval with my Multi Medium Matte glue. (nice and STRONG) This card makes me laugh so hard… especially when you open it and see that there’s more! A terrific friendship card for all the pun-appreciative friends on your list!

On our sticker sheet there were some large letter stickers – “HERE” and “VIEW”. I fiddled around with those letters for a little while and came up with this amazingly fun card.

Yes, life is INDEED a grand adventure!!  LOL!! This makes me giggle so much! This is my sticker extravaganza card! On the last Peach card base, I glued two strips of the “explore and discover” sentiment stripes to the top and bottom, added a strip of my own striped washi tape under the fake washi tape sticker with the adventure sentiment. I fussy cut the compass away from the long sticker banner and added that to the card front (along with two of the sticker arrows) with some foam tape.

Turns out “VIEW” is about 1/16″ taller than the “HERE” so I evened the letters up by trimming off the bottom of the W and slicing the E between the top and middle legs. That made all the letters the same height, and I took the “I” from “VIEW” and punched out a small circle and cut the remaining letter into an exclamation mark! Just perfect! I think the punctuation actually makes this sentiment work! I mounted all the letters with foam strips and I am a little overjoyed at coming up with a “WHEEE!” card! LOL!!! This is one of my favorite exclamations (especially in texts and on-line) and this card would work for many occasions! From birthdays to graduations and most any type of celebration! WHEEEEEEEEEE!!  LOL!!

There were a couple of things in this kit that I haven’t used yet, and that colorful globe from the sticker sheet was calling my name… and I haven’t used the airplane die yet… and I couldn’t help thinking about the original classic Universal Pictures movie logo that had an airplane circling the globe…

For our last card this month, we have a simple interactive pull-tab card!! I cut that globe sticker in half right along the equator, and attached the southern hemisphere to the center of a piece of white card stock cut to 2.125″ x 5.5″. The northern hemisphere is attached directly to the center of the card base. I stamped the small compass rose all around the globe with Hero Arts Soft Sky ink – that’s the last stamp from the stamp set I had left to use! I dry embossed the airplane die in the Silver Mirror card stock, and fussy cut the shape. I made the pull-tab from a 1″ piece of white card stock folded in half lengthwise and glued together, and I stamped the arrow on the end using my MFT Interactive labels stamp set and Hero Arts Summer Sky ink. I added foam tape to the back of the bottom piece to make a channel for the pull-tab and attached the airplane to the pull-tab with a piece of acetate just behind the wings.

 

I laid the airplane on top of the card front, the pull-tab behind, and attached the bottom half to the card front. (Just remember not to glue the top of the pull-tab channel to the card base – it needs to be free for the acetate to move!)  I added two more of our sentiment strips “We are Adventures” and “Wander More” to the top and bottom of the card front and trimmed them with the LFL Clear Silver Mirror peel offs. For a finishing touch and a little surprise, I added the “great adventure” sticker on top of our pull-tab. Very simple but pretty effective – I almost used the airplane sticker here, but thought the airplane die gave us a little bit more bang for the buck!  “Let’s Travel the World Together” is a terrific valentine or best friend card. I love that globe sticker!

That’s my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi April 2019 “Bon Voyage” Card Kit! A wide assortment of mostly masculine cards flavored with a vintage collage esthetic! And hardly any pink! LOL! Naturally, I have gobs of supplies still left over… I did manage to use a little bit of most everything… It seems I really liked the pattern papers in this kit… I used 9 different pattern papers so I only have three uncut sheets left… I pretty much decimated the 2×2 cut apart sheet but only used 1 image from the other two… I used a good amount of the stickers but there are bunches still left. I did manage to use a little of most everything in the embellishments bag including all five dies, but I didn’t seem find a use for the clothespins… and I did get to use every stamp in our stamp set!  WHEEEEEEEE!!!  LOL!!  LOL!!

Once again, Lizi has given us a kit loaded with so many interesting and unique products that you can let your imagination take flight (pun intended) and create whatever sets your heart on fire! I enjoyed this kit quite a lot and am particularly fond of all these cards… I did end up with a couple of ‘travel’ cards, but we also have a number of encouragement and congratulations cards, some friendship cards and even a couple of funny puns! A good variety by all counts!!

As of posting, Lizi still has a very few of these kits still available! If you go shopping at lovefromlizi.com please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink

Let me know if you have any questions or comments, and which card(s) float your boat (pun intended!). LOL!!  Remember to Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, Share me with all of your friends, DON’T travel with scissors, and, as always, HAPPY CRAFTING!

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Hello Folks!  Scott here with my 10 cards featuring the My Monthly Hero March 2019 Kit! “Aquarium Dreams” is the theme coming at us from Hero Arts this month – featuring a full A2 card-sized aquarium die. If you’d like to follow along with my video click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjverNsymQ

This month our 6″ x 8″ stamp set is full of all sorts of fish, plants and aquatic silhouette stamps – we even get some bubbles and a scuba diver as well as six sentiments..! A few puns there too!! 27 frame cuts are included to cut out most all of the stamped images, and 2 fancy dies! An A2 card-sized frame and inner aquarium stamp. Very intricate! Once again, we get some stamp cubes this month – all water reactive ink pads in Sea Salt, Blue Water and Sea Glass. Last but not least, we get a package of blue and green droplet embellishments in assorted sizes. I think these are my first ‘droplet’ embellishments to grace my stash… I really like them! Let’s go swimming!

I had a little free time the weekend before I received my kit, so I thought I would work on some watery backgrounds for my ‘aquarium’ cards. I can always use some practice working with my alcohol inks, so I grabbed some Yupo paper and a felt applicator and started playing around. I admit to having a hard time just letting go and allowing the inks do ‘do their own thing’, but I’m pretty pleased with the backgrounds I achieved!

In my efforts to add some nice watery effects, I thought a stencil would help, so I turned to my Silhouette Portrait and created this water ripple design which I then cut from some Silhouette Stencil material. I really like this stencil material because it has a nice light adhesive on the back which makes stenciling almost foolproof!

Here are a few examples of my background experiments – these two  are both alcohol inks (Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue, Stream) blended on yupo paper, and the bottom one is topped off with HA Unicorn White ink brushed through my stencil – it worked very well on the alcohol ink background.

This background is all Distress Oxide inks – Broken China, Cracked Pistachio and Faded Jeans. I used my life-changing cheapo brushes to blend the background and then added the stencil and more color on the top. Of course I am much too anal-retentive to simply sprinkle water on top and blot it away for some “bubble” texture so I reached for my falling snow stencil to create the bubbles – I just wiped away the ink through the stencil with a baby wipe. That completed satisfied all my control issues while giving us some great bubbles!

 I did channel my inner Sandy Alnock and used my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers to create the top background here – very happy with that one! Of course you simply use a colorless blender to make the little bubble texture with alcohol markers.  The last background here is simply Unicorn White ink through the stencil on a piece of light teal card stock – no additional inks or colors – just the card stock and the stencil – almost looks like it could be an iced-over stream or a pond once the ice starts breaking up..! I am very pleased with that stencil, and will definitely keep it on hand for the next batch of cards calling for a watery background!

You know I always try to use all the stamps in a stamp set, so I figured I would start this kit with cards featuring each of the sentiments. And, naturally, I want to play with the fancy aquarium die for my first card!

I first cut the aquarium die from some black card stock but I didn’t care for the solid silhouettes of the plants, so I reached for some of my green glassine paper. I tried to die-cut a single sheet of that, but the paper was much too flimsy to hold up, so, using my Xyron Sticker Maker, I stuck two sheets of green glassine (aka kite paper) together and then die-cut that combination. That worked! I trimmed the black botanicals away from the aquarium outline and glued the green die-cut behind the black card stock frame.

The green kite paper matched my alcohol marker background very nicely, and the translucent quality of the plants lets my background images read quite well even along the edges. I stamped the school of fish stamp twice with VersaMark ink and embossed the fish with silver embossing powder – reminds me of the moon fish in Finding Nemo! I stamped a few more fish in the background using Hero Arts Soft Granite ink and I white embossed the sentiment under the arc of the moon fish school. I added thin strips of foam tape behind the aquarium frame before mounting to the card front – that dimension adds a lot to the overall effect!! A few blue and green droplets complete the scene and I couldn’t resist adding to this sentiment with a nice “tank you!” on the inside of the card. I printed that on the writing surface using the Raustila font. Seems perfectly appropriate to me!! In fact, I kind of wondered why this sentiment wasn’t included in this stamp set. At least Tank You is a good pun and is perfect for ‘Aquarium Dreams’!

I spent way too much time fiddling with that fancy die on my first card, so I wanted to try a different idea with the “I would swim the seven seas…” sentiment.

Seven circles to represent the seven seas…!! I die-cut and punched my plain stenciled background into seven different sized circles, stamped the 7 images with VersaFine Onyx Black ink and clear embossed them all. (That tiny fish is cut away from the fish school stamp!)  I added thin, dark blue mats around each of our ‘bubbles’ and arranged them on a matching light teal card base. The sentiment is identically embossed on the card front, and the ‘bubble’ images are glued directly to the card or mounted with foam squares. I did round the corners of this card with my corner-chompers and I added more of the droplets for a little accent of color and shine. Once again, I wasn’t satisfied with this sentiment all on it’s own, so I added “if there weren’t sharks!” on the inside of the card and highlighted that sentiment with an embossed shark stamp! LOL!  I think that’s funny! The block letters are the Arial font and the Rustila font is used to replicate the handwriting font in the Stamp set. I like this idea a great deal even if nobody ever notices that there are seven ‘bubbles’… LOL!!

Let’s get back to our fancy aquarium dies…! This time I cut the die from some super smooth alcohol marker friendly white card stock – let’s try coloring all those plants!

I used my alcohol markers to color all the plants (and coral) on the white die cut and then added another black card stock aquarium frame on the top – though it is a bit fiddly, I like trimming away the plants from a black die-cut and gluing the black ‘frame’ on top of the plants – In fact, I would have rather had an aquarium frame die (without plants) than the simple 4.25″ x 5.5″ open frame die included with the kit. That would have given us LOTS of options! I do think this is a terrific die and probably the most intricate die I have yet received from MMH!

I took my Distress Oxide background and stamped some of the plants and bubbles around the edges with the HA Soft Granite ink, and attached the aquarium die-cut with thin strips of foam tape. That adds a surprising amount of depth to our aquarium! I stamped the two angel fish using watercolor markers on a scrap of white card stock. This is my first attempt at adding some extra color and detail to these silhouette stamps. That worked very nicely! I die cut the fish and white embossed the sentiment to match the white borders of the fish die-cuts. There’s a bona-fide pun there! A few more of the green and blue droplets adds a nice touch of shine, and here we have a lovely friendship card!

Three sentiments down…  Good thing I can always use more birthday cards!

I do tend to take things literally, so I figured why not try a birthday cake decorated with fish! Okay, so the conch shell is actually a mollusk but I think you get what I mean! LOL!! I did create a little cake template to assist with my stamping, and used Distress Oxide inks to stamp all the fishes. I used Walnut Stain, Spiced Marmalade, Salty Ocean, Candied Apple, Wild Honey, Abandoned Coral, Peacock Feathers and a Wild Honey castle on top. I taped my template to the front of a plain white card base and stamped rows through the template. Once the stamping was done I realized things were a little stark so I took the negative part of my template and attached that to the cake and used my life changing cheapo brushes to add a nice halo of the Wild Honey around the ‘cake’. Then the cake looked too white, so I replaced the cake template and did a light blend of Peacock Feathers on the cake itself. That adds a bit of dimension and shading to the otherwise flat cake, but I thought I still needed some extra definition so I outlined the cake with a blue Pigma Micron pen. There we go! No mistaking this for anything but a cake!

I stamped the sentiment with the Blue Water ink from the kit and clear embossed that as well. I was looking for a little more sparkle on the cake so I used some translucent Candy Floss Glitter peel-offs on the base of each layer – a nice subtle touch of sparkle! A bunch of ‘confetti’ droplets completes the party theme, and we have a unique birthday card for any fish lover..!  I really like the castle ‘candles’ as the cake topper, and this is basically a One Layer Wonder card – Lots of Fun!

I think my favorite stamp from this set is the ‘school of fish’ stamp and I played around with that stamp a lot to see what kind of patterns could be achieved with those fishes!

Since I had already snipped the last fish away from the ‘school of fish’ stamp, I went ahead and  snipped the second trailing fish away from the pack as well. Without those pesky stragglers, I was able to get this great pattern! Almost a double helix or a rough take on the infinity symbol. LOL! I LOVE IT!

I did blend this background using the Sea Glass and Blue Water inks from the kit, and used my stencil with the Sea Salt ink for the ripples. The fish are stamped with the Blue Water ink, and I added touches of the bubbles stamp on the edges with Soft Granite. I did add little highlights to the bubbles with a white gel pen, trimmed the panel down to 2.25″ and glued it down to a dark blue card base.

I embossed the sentiment in white and added more droplets for some shine. I really like how they read on this dark card stock! I edged the water panel with a couple of Love From Lizi White Peel Offs, and rounded the right corners with my chomper. I think this groovy pattern of fish and this terrific sentiment work really well together!

I shared this pic with my Instagram followers showing my attempt to add some detail to our stamps. I stamped all of these multiple times in a combo of Sea Salt and Unicorn White on black card stock. I let that dry thoroughly and it’s a perfect foundation to color!

Colored pencils worked great on top of the ink and I am totally thrilled with the results! I did use an 02 Micron pen for the black details, and I think the lionfish is kind of amazing! So I die-cut that lionfish for my next card using the last sentiment from the stamp set.

I die-cut one of my alcohol ink backgrounds with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die (I know… I know..!) and stamped the plants and all the silhouettes looking towards the center with StazOn Jet Black ink. I did find it difficult to get a smooth stamp on the alcohol ink even using StazOn, but I figured that was fine since they’re only silhouettes and we are underwater! I embossed the sentiment in white and added my colored, die-cut lionfish above the sentiment with some foam squares. A little sparkle pen on the lionfish and more droplets add the finishing touches – to the outside! Of course I have more to say here too!!!  LOL! A GREAT pun is all set to be had – I couldn’t stop myself! “you’re a reel catch!” seems almost too perfect! LOL! I love the fact that I’ve got one of the ugliest fish imaginable as the ‘chosen one’… LOL!! Makes me giggle!

That covers all six sentiments from the stamp set. I was pleased to be able to add some fun puns and other commentary to some these stamps! These last four are all mine! LOL!

I happened to stumble across some “silver carp” while doing some research for this kit and knew this card was a necessity! LOL! On a plain blue card base, I lightly stenciled some Sea Salt ink for a touch of texture and silver embossed the ‘school of fish’ stamp four times. I did use my homemade Wreath Builder Template to help position the carp in exactly the right place. I printed and cut four copies of the “Carp Diem” sentiment with my Silhouette Portrait, glued all four layers together and then down to the card base. The teal ribbon from this kit wouldn’t cut it, but the Blue Ribbon from the MMH July 2018 kit matches perfectly. Of course I can’t stop myself, and have more for the inside of this card! “Seas the Day!” really drives it home, huh?  LOLOL! I don’t know… maybe I have some kind of a pun disease… do I need a punectomy?? I think this card is terrific fun! Fairly simple, yet highly effective!

When I colored all the fish silhouette stamps I did have plans for the two turtles…

I trimmed my stenciled alcohol ink background to a 2″ X 4.25″ strip for this card. I turned to my Silhouette Software to create and print this pun-y sentiment on a plain white card base. I was die-cutting some thin scallop strips from black card stock with my SSS Frames die to line the water panel, when I realized that the negative of  that scallop would work much better! I glued the background and ‘negative’ scallop trim to the card front, added the die-cut turtles with some foam squares, and a few more droplets for the finishing touch. If your say “you’re turtle-y awesome” in a heavy valley girl accent it’s way funny! Maybe there IS something wrong with me!  LOL!!!

Beyond the school of fishes stamp, I think I am in major love with that jellyfish stamp!

This is an alcohol ink background where I set my control issues aside, threw caution to the wind and just played… adding more and more layers of ink till I was happy – I do think this is one of my favorite alcohol ink backgrounds I have ever done. I LOVE IT! I trimmed the background to size with a LFSRD, added a spritz of my Sheer Shimmer Mist for a little sparkle, and glued it to a black card base.

I embossed the jellyfish stamp with some Pastel Purple Party and Powder Pink Party embossing powder on some black card stock and used the included die to cut it out, and some thin foam tape to attach it to the card base. Love that glitter in those embossing powders – perfect for a jellyfish! LOVE this jellyfish stamp!

I printed and cut this sentiment using my Silhouette Portrait, cut four copies and glued them all together for a nice chunky chipboard-like sentiment, and glued that to the card front. The ellipsis indicates more to come, and of course I have to finish this off with “I would totally pee on you!” on the inside. That’s a totally unique friendship / love card if I do say so myself!! LOL! I MUST HAVE A PROBLEM! LOLOLOL!! Oh, my goodness!

I must note a big DISCLAIMER here to stem the tide of folks telling me that this is wrong. Despite what Monica and Joey did in that infamous FRIENDS episode, you ARE NOT supposed to pee on a jellyfish sting. Although urine contains urea which DOES neutralize the sting, it is in such low concentration that it really doesn’t help. BUT, I still think this card is pretty hilarious, and I hope it makes you giggle too!

Now you may be asking yourself, “What happened to the rest of the colored fish stamps that Scott showed us in the middle of this post? He’s only used the lionfish and turtles!” That brings us to my last card with this kit.

On a black card base, I brushed across the front with some Salty Ocean and Unicorn White inks for some watery texture and stamped a bunch of the fish and coral using ‘second generation’ Salty Ocean ink. That is, I stamped off once before taking the stamp to the card base. I wanted the crowded feel in the background, but didn’t want competition with the colored fish. I actually stamped the rock formation stamp in the bottom right corner but it got overrun with the anemones!

I stamped the anemone stamp 9 times with Distress Oxide inks (Abandoned Coral, Candied Apple, Spiced Marmalade and Wild Honey) on black card stock, die cut them all and bundled them together in the bottom right corner. Some are glued directly to the card front and others are attached with foam tape. I trimmed their edges back to card size and added the rest of the colored fish with more foam squares. The angelfish, sting ray and crab all went beyond the edges of the card so they got trimmed down as well.

I did stamp, color and die-cut two more clownfish. Those are so easy to color – stamp the stamp in white, color the orange stripes and outline them with black – Nemo! – I attached them in a little group to the card front with small foam squares. I printed this sentiment using my Silhouette software and mounted it to the card front with more foam tape. “keep your friends close” And the final pièce de résistance comes at you on the inside of the card: “anemones closer!” OH BABY! Now THAT makes me laugh out loud! Now the three clownfish looking at all the rest of the fish makes perfect sense! I think this is a terrific pun, and so very appropriate! Another unique friendship card! I think I may have broken the all-time pun record with these cards! I guess I do need some professional help! LOL!

I had so much fun coming up with all these aquatic cards this month! I won’t ever let silhouette stamps intimidate me again! I hope I was able to share some unique approaches to this kit with you and illustrated that you needn’t feel boxed in to your aquarium die (pun!) when playing with this kit!

So, we have a lot of friendship / love cards, a birthday card, a thank you card, some encouragement cards… a really nice variety of useful and fun cards with this kit. I grew to really like this stamp set – love that jellyfish – and the aquarium die is so intricate and unique. Heck, I even love those blue and green droplets! I got in some great practice with my alcohol inks and markers with this kit, and we ended up with a very handsome set of cards! Anyone know of a Marine Biologist who’s birthday is coming up! LOL!

This kit is still available at Hero Arts in case I’ve sparked your interest or your courage! Please use my link when you go shopping at Hero Arts: http://bit.ly/2sBmuMCHeroArts

Thank you so much for joining me here and sharing your time with me! I hope I was able to provide some inspiration for you as well as some grins and giggles! Please let me know if you have any questions, which card(s) you like best, and remember to Like Me, List Me, Pin, Me Post Me, Share me with all of your friends, (I promise I’ll seek professional help) and, as always, Happy Crafting!!

 

 

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Hello folks! Scott here with the unboxing of my new Love From Lizi April 2019 Card Kit! Lizi is calling this the Bon Voyage Card Kit and we are treated to a smorgasbord of travel related stamps, cut-aparts, stickers, pattern papers and embellishments.

If you’ve been looking for products of a more masculine nature for your card-making, then this is the kit for you!  If you’d like to follow along with the video post click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExjozzGQhSw

As is standard, we get five sheets of letter-sized card stock – 8.5″ x 11″ in (from right to left) Peach, Ivory, Soft Grey, Aqua, and Lizi’s super smooth alcohol-friendly White. Our specialty card stock this month is also full 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of brushed satin Gold and Silver. That’s some BIG specialty card stock this month!

We get three sheets of double-sided 12″ x 12″ cut-apart sheets this month. Tons of pics, patterns and sentiments.

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The first sheet sports nine 4″ x 4″ cut apart panels featuring seven travel-themed sentiments and a couple of plain travel images and the reverse is this two toned text of travel related dictionary entries.

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Our second cut-apart sheet features twelve 3″ x 4″ panels with only a few sentiments and some great patterns and pictures – a mixture of real photos and retro art images – I like these a lot! The back of this sheet has a great pattern of colorful travel tickets. Tickest?  Tickets?  Show me your tickets please!

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On our last cut-apart sheet we get 36 2″ x 2″ panels with lots of sentiments, lots of images and an interesting mix of photos and artwork. The reverse side of this sheet has a nice colorful pattern of polka dots on a darker green background. So many options!!

When cut-apart sheets are in a LFL kit, it usually means we get a sticker sheet too!

A big 12″ x 12″ sticker sheet! These are very thick, sturdy stickers featuring some over-sized banners perfect for scrap-booking, a couple of patterned words, tickets, stamps, balloons and, again, mixing up some photos with some great retro artwork. And look at those 12 sentiment strips on the bottom! A GREAT set of stickers!

And that brings us to our pattern papers – we get 12 double-sided 6″ x 8″ pattern papers!

I love this larger format! This side of the pattern papers feature images and patterns and some large sentiments and even a couple more cut-apart sheets. The stripes on the top left have repeating sentiments on each stripe, we have some hot air balloon patterns, airplane patterns, stamps, maps and some actual photo images as well.

The reverse sides of the pattern papers lean more towards subtle backgrounds not necessarily travel related with stripes and polka dots in matching and contrasting colors along with a few patterns repeated from our cut-apart sheets…  Looks like there’s one pattern that is just a little bit pink… (third from left on the bottom) but it’s more of a salmon pink than a girly pink..!  LOL!! So many more options with larger pattern papers!

That’s a LOT of card stocks included in this kit! Before we get to the embellishments we do have our stamp set and our peel-offs!  Can’t forget those!

Clear Iridescent Mint peel-offs… need I say more..??  LOL! Though tinted a light minty green, these peel-offs let whatever is behind them shine through and highlight the glitter accents. Lovely! And our Bon Voyage Stamp Set features a large antique-looking map stamp with three ‘islands’ surrounded by seas and charted with routes and demarcation lines. There’s a tiny ship between the small islands and we get an assortment of landmark stamps of mountains, mountain ranges, trees, a church, a couple of compass roses and 4 sentiments. I can’t wait to stamp that map!!

Finally, we get to dig into our embellishments bag!

We start with our full size bottle of Crystal Nuvo Drops in Bottle Green and, continuing counter-clockwise, we get seven strands of bakers twine, each a meter long, with four thick twines in Gold/Ivory, Silver/White, Tan/White and a glossy Grey/White, and three thin twines in Brown/White, Orange/White, and Dark Blue/Light Blue/White. Phew! That’s a hefty ball of twine! We get nine wood-veneer die-cuts this month with an arrow, geo-tag, globe, stamp frame, camera, compass, airplane, suitcase and a hot air balloon. Look at the detail on that balloon basket! We also get more metal accents this month with the addition of these two metal keys in a kind of bronze color.

I don’t believe we’ve ever received brads in a LFL kit before, but this month we get 30 brads in six colors: Pale Blue, Peach, Pale Grey, Mint Green, Stone Grey, and Tan – that’s five brads in each color, complimented with 6 mini-clothespins. (I’m  getting an awful lot of those clothespins building up in my stash…!) As befits a Bon Voyage Card Kit, we get some tags this month – Two large white tags with brown twine, and a large and small Kraft tags with a thin white twine. As always we get a sample size pack of the Bon Voyage Sequin Mix that features assorted sizes of sequins in Graphite, Copper, Brown, Peach and Ivory.

Last, but by no means least, we get some truly special dies this month! A large (card-sized) car, airplane, cloud, scooter and a sailboat die that all feature interesting curly-cue cut outs in specific portions of the die – can’t wait to see what these look like cut out!

I did get some add-on products this month including 9 new embossing powders…!

I did little sample squares of these new embossing powders for you – lots more sparkle and glitz with these! I’m especially fond of the two Copper colors, the Lemon Zest Party powder, The Oh, Holla Graphic powder and the Atlantis Green which is a combo of green and gold – very ‘underwater’ feeling!! I also got this new storage box from Lizi that not only holds 17 embossing powder pots, but is also sized to hold peel-offs! Oh, my heavens! Even though I did order 20 peel-off sheets during the free shipping sale last month (who could resist??!), I don’t think my stash of peel-offs would come close to filling this box!! I guess I’ll be filling it up with all my groovy new colors of embossing powders!

That covers the plethora of supplies included in the Love From Lizi April 2019 “Bon Voyage” Card Kit. As of posting, there are still a few kits available at lovefromlizi.com and if you are a subscriber, you have through the 25th of this month to add extras to your kit for no additional shipping charges. If you do go shopping with Lizi, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink !!

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today, please share this post with anyone who may be interested, and if you or your crafting buds have a difficult time creating cards for the men in your life, then this kit just might be able to inspire some great masculine cards from all of us! Stay tuned for my 10C1K video featuring this kit, and HAPPY CRAFTING!

DISCLAIMER:  This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards featuring the Love from Lizi March 2019 Card Kit! This is the “Fairy Garden” card kit featuring 8 more sheets of Lizi’s fun European Decoupage with lots of butterflies and plenty of pink! If you’d like to follow along with the video, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JVxPejJ43Q      Let’s play!

Of course, I turned to the decoupage sheets to begin with. I think this is my third set of decoupage from Lizi, and I always think these are fun to assemble and they look terrific!

I didn’t much care for the giant butterfly background on this decoupage sheet, so I created my own background with my LDRS Fancy Squares & Little Things dies – I cut a scrap of white card stock with the largest die, covered the edges of that die cut with VersaMark ink and embossed it with the new LFL Powder Pink Party embossing powder. Lots of sparkle and it matches the decoupage colors perfectly. I cut the smaller square from the pink text pattern paper and glued both of those together.

I grabbed a piece of Darice glitter pearl white card stock from my stash for my card base and used the half die from the LDRS set to die cut the bottom edge of the card front.  I glued the background in place and added layers 3, 4, and 5 from the decoupage sheet using the foam squares included in the kit – that’s plenty of dimension for this card! I ran a piece of 1/4″ scor-tape across the bottom of the card base and embossed that with more Powder Pink Party powder before foam taping the sentiment from the decoupage sheet over the pink stripe. A couple of flower stickers from the kit on the top corners adds a finishing touch and I love being able to see the sentiment on the inside of the card! I did add the matching sticker on the inside as well, so the sentiment wouldn’t feel lonely when the card is opened! LOL! Okay, now, that’s pretty darn pink, but I think it makes for a very attractive card! This is a good example of how versatile those decoupage sheets actually are – you can use all the layers or some of the layers – however you would like!

The ‘Magical Day Butterfly’ decoupage sheet has seven (count em’ 7!!) layers so I thought I could make two extremely similar cards from just one decoupage sheet.

I thought a lot of our pattern papers in this kit were a little too busy, and I didn’t want to distract from the decoupage elements, so I grabbed my homemade sunburst stencil and some Picked Raspberry Distress Oxide ink to create this background on the Cream card base. I did fall victim to the new “Life Changing Blender Brushes” set that seems to be all the rage these days. HOWEVER, I opted for the $15.00 set from Amazon instead of shelling out big bucks for the Picket Fence Studios set. These are really nice blending brushes… especially if you’re going for a very light touch or want your colors to fade away. I haven’t tried the Picket Fence Studios brush set but I can’t imagine them working any better than this inexpensive set! Now here’s a background that really focuses on that great decoupage layering. This first card is layers 1, 3, 5, and 7 from the sheet and this second card is done on a piece of my Staples ivory card stock with layers 2, 4, and 6.

The “Just For You” decoupage sheet has the “extra” butterfly to top off the layering on this second card. I used foam squares between all the layers on both cards but simply folded the final butterfly wings up so I could glue the body right to the top layer. I used the original sentiment on the first card and the extra sentiment from the “With Love” decoupage sheet for this second card – both attached with more foam squares. I added a sprinkling of Sweet Lilac Nuvo Drops on the fronts and a couple butterfly stickers on the insides for my final touches, and VOILA! Two cards with three layers of decoupage on both! I can only image how thick a card would be if it was made with all seven layers included on this sheet! I’m sure that card would require a box for mailing!!  We are still working with a lot of pink here… and I can’t seem to get away from those butterflies, but these are both very handsome (and very pink) cards!

When I start playing with those decoupage sheets it’s hard to put them down! I think the purples on the “Just For You” decoupage sheet would match the new LFL Pastel Purple Party embossing powder so let’s do one more!! I’ll count the last two as just one! LOL!!

I wanted to use the embossing powder for the background, so I die-cut a a 3.5″ circle from a scrap of white card stock, added VersaMark ink around the edges and embossed that with the Pastel Purple powder. I glued that to a thin mat of the Gold Pearlescent specialty paper and attached both to the second Cream card base. I used foam squares to attach layers 2, 3, and the extra sentiment to my embossed background, and again folded layer 4 (the ‘extra’ butterfly) and glued that directly to the top. I ran a piece of our purple “With Love” ribbon through my Zyron Sticker maker and glued it down to the bottom of the card front – “Just For You” is not one of my favorite sentiments, but I thought adding the “With Love” ribbon completed the thought with just the right touch. I added some Gold Moondust peel offs (from the LFL 11/18 kit) above and below the ribbon (matched that specialty paper perfectly!), a couple of sequins from our mix, and some Wisteria Purple Nuvo Drops (from the LFL 9/18 kit) for some last touches and splurged on the inside of the card using the matching sticker on the top. You know I’m not a big fan of pink, much less a fan of butterflies, but I think these four cards are truly lovely – that decoupage dimension is fascinating – and no fussy cutting!! I would be perfectly happy to make 10 decoupage cards, but there’s a lot more to this kit!

The stamp set in this kit has a nice dandelion stamp with five seed ‘parachutes’ that were just begging for me to use them. And lets try some more blending with my new brushes!

On a piece of plain white card stock I blended this background using Distress Oxide inks in Broken China and Faded Jeans. One of the most interesting things about those new brushes is the variety of sizes they come in – that made it pretty easy to create these ‘eddies in the wind’ on the background – I LOVE IT! I used Hero Arts Soft Granite ink to stamp (most of) the dandelion and the seeds as if they were all blowing away in the wind…! I did color the dandelion stem and a couple of the seeds with a grey watercolor marker and you can’t tell from the picture, but I did trace the ‘fluff’ on all the stamps with my Sakura Stardust pen so they do catch the light and glitter nicely – the little dots you see between the sequins (from the kit) are the Stardust pen too. I trimmed my panel down to 4″ x 5.25″ and glued it down to the Dark Grey card base. When I was a kid, blowing the seeds off of a dandelion was an occasion for making a wish, so I grabbed this sentiment from the sticker sheets and glued it to a mat of the silver pearlescent specialty paper. I did darken that mat with an alcohol marker to bring it closer in shade to the card base, and I added that to the card front with some foam squares. Some sequins in graduated sizes for a little more sparkle on the front, and a simple flower sticker on the inside adds just the right finishing touch. I really like this card! Putting it together was actually quite peaceful and calming… especially after all that pink and all those butterflies…!!  LOL!

I was very interested in the fairy die included in our kit. It doesn’t match any stamps or other images but I really loved the cut-out detail on her wings. Let’s play with that!

I turned to the silver specialty card stock to die-cut this fairy, and, realizing that the silver card stock was the same on both sides, die-cut another fairy so I could have a pair of fairies for this card! Of course the nature of a die-cut does produce slightly different results front to back, but it’s not really noticeable unless you look very closely!! I die cut a circle from the soft olive damask pattern paper and used my Silhouette software to print this sentiment using the Avenir font. I matted that with more of the silver specialty card stock and used foam squares to attach that down to a Dark Blue card base. I wanted to fill in the wing openings but didn’t want to do inlays, so I took some of my yellow glassine paper (vellum (colored?) would work too!) and glued that to the back of the fairies’ wings and trimmed away the excess… I really like that touch of transparent color!

I die-cut more of the same pattern paper with a Darice Border die and also cut some plain white card stock to match, glued them together, dry embossed the die and sponged some light touches of Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide ink for a little dimension and definition to these two leafy borders! Those are both glued down to the top and bottom of the Dark Blue card base, and I mounted the two fairies with more foam squares. A sprinkling of sequins on the two leafy borders and a crystal heart  between the fairy wands brings this card to magical life! I did add more of the song lyric on the inside of this card and originally thought of this as a birthday card, but realized it could be used for other occasions as well, so I didn’t add a ‘happy birthday’ on the inside. I did add a ‘fairy dust’ sticker for the final accent on the writing surface and I really like this fairy die. Although there isn’t much detail to the fairy body, the cut-out wings look great – especially with some translucent details!

Now lets turn to the “garden’ part of this kit and see what we get with the flower stamps.

I stamped this Japanese Lantern plant using Acorn Archival Ink on a card base of Lizi’s super smooth alcohol friendly white card stock, and broke out my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers to color this stamp. That took a little time… this is a very detailed stamp! If you are interested, I actually grabbed a picture of the markers I used coloring this stamp. Red Brown (RB), Coral (CR) Alpine Green (AG) and Green Grey (GG) I used the light grey to give a touch of shadowing under all the vines and flowers. Though not immediately noticeable, I think it adds a lot of dimension to this colored stamp! And I only used the blender marker to fix a few “outside of the line” mistakes… OOPS! LOL!

I masked out the “thanks” stencil on the card front and ran some DecoFoil transfer gel over the stencil with a palette knife and let that dry before covering it with some Silver Deco Foil and running it through my laminating machine. GORGEOUS! I love using Deco Foil on stencils – especially word stencils – and the “thanks” and “love” stencils in this kit are large enough to command attention on a card front – especially when foiled! I used my Sakura Stardust pen on all the stamped ‘dots’ to add a touch more sparkle and lined the top edge of the card with with a single Mint Moonstone peel off. Lastly, I defined the writing area inside the card with two of those nice vine stickers from the sticker sheets. Now, this is truly a “One Layer Wonder” card although I did cover the alcohol marker bleed-thru on the back of the card front with a piece of scrap white card stock. So sue me!! LOL!

That takes care of one of our ‘plant stamps’. The second ‘plant stamp’ in our set seems especially large to me… that gave me the idea to do a large format card!

I stamped this plant stamp using Archival Emerald Green ink in the two corners of a 9.25″ x 4″ panel of plain white card stock – YUP! That’s the dimensions of this card! It actually fits in a #10 business envelope! I was going to try to color this with my Zigg markers when I realized I hadn’t used Bristol smooth card stock, so I opted for some “palette painting” using my Stabilo markers. I scribbled some marker on my glass media mat, grabbed my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen to pick up the watercolor, and painted all the leaves with a light sparkly green. It doesn’t register in this picture but this whole card is super sparkly! I colored the buds in the same way with a light blue marker. After coloring the stamps I used a Life Changing Cheap blender brush to add some Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide ink around the edges of the panel and behind the foliage. Very soft and very verdant! I printed “And though she be but little, she is fierce.” on the card panel using my Silhouette software and the Mona Lisa Solid font.

That’s a quote from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and I do credit that on the inside of this card. This is a great encouragement sentiment and it seems very appropriate with our little fairy stamp..!

I do have to admit that I performed some stamp surgery on this fairy stamp before using her – that’s right! – I gave her a butterfly-ectomy!! It was killing the patient – ME! LOL!! I stamped her using VersaFine Onyx Black ink and colored her the same way I colored the plants… more glittery shine! I again used my Stardust pen to sparkle up all the stamped dots and continued those dots around the fairy – effectively, pulling her and the plants into the same picture. I was adding a few sequins among the plantings when I realized that our fairy seemed a little odd with her hands reaching out for nothing, so I grabbed a Moonshine Confetti sequin from Simon Says Stamp and gave her a little orb to play with – perfect!! I trimmed the front panel down a quarter inch and glued it to my card base (8″ x 9.25″ scored at 4″). For a final spot of green, I outlined the panel with more Mint Moonstone peel offs. I really like this tall card and thought this plant stamp lent itself to a larger format! A2 cards are still my preferred canvas but it’s fun to break out of the box on occasion!!

Putting that little moonshine orb in the fairy’s hands gave me an idea! Additionally, I was recently the happy recipient of another large batch of Chibi Lights sent to me by someone who didn’t think she would use them – A BIG SHOUT OUT GOES TO ANDREA!  WOO-HOO! I am so blessed!! That’s what inspired this next card!

Talk about MAGIC!  LOL!!! I cut a piece of my Staples Ivory card stock with my SSS Frames die and started digging around in my library to see if I had a font that matched the partial sentiments in this set. I do!! So the “SENDING YOU” is stamped, The “love” is Deco foiled again (in Gold), “AND MAGIC” is printed using the Avenir font (15pt.). I laid this all out using my Silhouette software, printed the magic part first, deco foiled the love stencil second, and stamped the sentiment last. Then I could get on with our fairy stamp!

Our fairy is stamped in Onyx Black ink and colored with my colored pencils – I gave her red hair and a red dress since the orb was going to glow red. I poked a tiny hole through the card front above the palm of her hand, then centered the front panel on the card base to mark through the hole for the location of the Chibi light. I wired the light directly on the card base making sure it lined up correctly. (there are TONS of wiring how-tos on YouTube!) Then I die-cut some gold card stock from my stash for the scalloped frame, taped that together with the Ivory panel, stamped the “press here” (MFT Interactive Labels stamps) in the correct location, and then mounted the front panel to the Dark Grey card base with a double layer of foam tape. A few golden sequins from our mix highlights the sentiment and I did go ahead and designate this as a birthday card. I stamped the Happy Birthday from the add-on stamp set on the inside accompanied by the matching fairy sticker. I do believe this will be my niece’s next birthday card!! (though it’s 10 months away) I hope the battery lasts!! LOL! I love this card so very much!!! I think my niece will love it too. She’ll be turning 5!

I know all of you are patiently waiting for me to use the “Thank You, Fairy Much” sentiment from the decoupage sheet but, goodness, that is one terrifically big, pink sentiment! I thought everyone might be interested in something a little different from me… Sometimes I just can’t help myself!!

It’s never too early to start making your Christmas cards!! LOL!! The pun-ier the better!  I think this is a hoot! This is the toadstool-sitting fairy from the “For A Special Friend” decoupage sheet. I thought I could give her something else to sit upon! I used my Silhouette Portrait to cut this ornament from the White and Gold pearlescent specialty card stocks. I glued the cut pieces together and added stripes of the Fairy Dust Party embossing powder to the ornament using my VersaMarker pen.

I used layers 4 and 5 of the fairy decoupage, and slipped a bit of her bottom wing behind the ornament as well for the illusion of more dimension. A bit of silver cord glued to the hanger and the ornament is ready to go! I printed and cut this sentiment using my Silhouette Portrait again, and the Smoothie Shoppe font. I embossed the cut sentiment shadow with more of the Fairy Dust Party Powder. I die-cut another scalloped frame from our white specialty card stock and glued that directly to the Navy Blue card base, mounted the ornament, fairy and sentiment using foam squares, and glued the cord to the top edge of the card. For a touch of bling, I trimmed the ring off the handle of the magic wand and glued that right under the sentiment. With all the sparkle on the fairy and the embossing powder, I didn’t think any extra sequins were needed, but I did add the green fairy sticker on the inside writing surface! Fairy Christmas!! I hope this card tickles you as much as it tickles me!  Makes me giggle every time I say it!

That’s ten cards now, but we’re counting cards 2 and 3 as one card, so that means I have one more to go. I took Lizi’s theme of this kit “Fairy Garden” literally for our final card!

This card thrills me to no end! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spinning shaker element on a card! This idea began when I was fiddling around with our fairy shaped sequins, and I glued their feet to a die-cut circle that was really close to the diameter of our round mini-shaker embellishment. That gave me the idea to do this spinning wheel card with a never-ending chorus line of fairies. A real “Fairy Follies” if you wish!!  LOL!! The flowers stamp is from the add-on stamp set, and I stamped that twice (right next to each other) with Onyx Black ink on Bristol smooth card stock. I used my new blender brushes to add some soft Cracked Pistachio ink over the stamped images and colored the flowers with my Stabilo Markers. Then I took my craft knife and fussy cut the colored flowers and set them aside.

I thought I was going to get through all of these cards without using my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies… but NO..!  I used the largest LFSRD to cut an extra card front from one of the Warm Blue card bases. I stenciled some very light clouds on the panel using a MFT cloud stencil and some HA Unicorn White ink. That dried a little lighter than I expected, so I used the Stardust pen to give the clouds a little silver lining..!

My spinning wheel is a 4″ diameter circle that I lined up to the right side and the bottom edge of our card front to mark where the center spin hole belongs. Then it was a simple matter of aligning the space between the 2 stamps with the ‘spin hole’ and trimming the colored flowers down to size. The spinning wheel and the Fairy chorus line attach together through the hole marked on the card front. You need to make sure that both pieces are glued tightly to your brad – scor-tape and an extra paper patch will help with that. Ultimately, when you turn the spinning wheel you want the fairy chorus line to spin right along with it. I used a 1″ punch for the finger notch on the right side of the card, glued the round mini-shaker to the top of the fairy chorus line and mounted the card front to the Warm Blue card base with enough space so the wheel turns freely, and then added the flowers with foam squares to the top – taking care to leave room for the chorus line to spin around. Interestingly enough, the dome on the mini shaker helps to lift the flowers up enough that you don’t have to worry about your fairy sequins running into the fussy cut flowers. An added bonus with that mini-shaker!

I love this sentiment – “Leave room in your Garden for the Fairies to Dance” – you can take it quite literally, or it can speak to you figuratively! I printed the sentiment using the Avenir font in italics and trimmed that down with the LFSRD before adding that at the bottom of the card – remember to leave room for the spinning chorus line…! I finished off the inside writing surface with a couple of the flower sprays from the sticker sheets and my new interactive card is ready for any occasion you deem worthy!!  I think this perfectly embodies the theme of this kit and it’s just plain fun as well! Busby Berkeley eat your heart out!

That’s my 10 cards (+1) for the Love From Lizi March ’19 Card Kit. I did manage to use all of the image stamps in the kit, and three from the add-on stamp set, but I only used a few of the partial sentiment stamps. I used both of the stencils, pieces from 5 different decoupage sheets and quite a number of stickers as well as three of Lizi’s new embossing powders! I did only use 2 of the pattern papers on these cards – I was much more interested in the stamps here, and I have no problems hording all those lovely papers!

I used a little bit of most all of the embellishments with the exception of the buttons – I guess they just didn’t call to me! LOL!! Again, Lizi’s kits are so chock full of supplies that it sometimes feels like I hardly make a dent in these kits even after my 10 cards are finished! That seems like a huge value to me!

As usual, this kit sold out in almost record time! If you want to get in on the fun I heartily recommend becoming a subscriber! If you do go shopping at lovefromlizi.com, or want to become a subscriber, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink !

I actually had much more fun with this kit that I initially though I would! I do think it’s interesting that after the first 4 decoupage cards, you don’t see any more butterflies and hardly any pink!! LOL!  That’s a very telling little tidbit right there! LOL!! I hope you enjoyed these cards as much as I do. I am so very appreciative of the time you spend with me here! Let me know if you have any questions and which card(s) you like best!  Remember to Like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, share me with all your friends, don’t frolic with fairies, and HAPPY CRAFTING!!

DISCLAIMER:  This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Hello Folks!  Scott here with my 10 cards featuring the My Monthly Hero February 2019 Kit! More Art Deco from Hero Arts this month inspired by the swinging jazz of the 1920’s. If you’d like to follow along with the video click here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OE7mLUCV9c

This kit comes with our standard 6″ x 8″ Clear Stamp Set featuring 32 different stamps of period images, and people dancing and quite a number of sentiments, along with 7 coordinating frame cuts and a 4.25″ x 5.5″ fancy die in a stunning art deco pattern. We are also treated to a 4.5″ x 5.75″ Stencil in another very retro art deco design. To round out this kit we get a package of Art Deco Mirror Confetti in gold and black, and 2 sheets of 8.5″ x 5.5″ reflective card stock in gold and silver. Perfect to use with that fancy die!

My last 10C1K post was an art deco inspired kit that featured peacocks, and I used that collection of cards to do some exploration of water color markers. So I decided to challenge myself to only using my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers to color the cards I create from this kit, and, of course, I always challenge myself to use all the stamps in the stamp set as well!

I know most folks will play with that fancy die to start with, but I was very intrigued by the man and woman stamps that don’t have complete heads… I kind of expected there to be some hats in this stamp kit to “finish off” the top of their heads… but no hats here… hmmmmmm… what were they thinking when they designed these stamps? thinking…

I contemplated putting one of the sentiments from the kit in their ‘minds’, but realized that this dancing couple stamp was a close enough match to these folks that they could both be ‘thinking’ about dancing with the other!

I stamped the deco corner stamp in the four corners of my card panel using Delicata Golden Glitz ink, and stamped all the people with VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I did a second-generation stamp for the dancing couple so they would appear more ephemeral. I colored everyone using my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers and tried to keep the dancing couple’s color lighter and more ‘dream-like’. I did sketch the ‘thought bubble’ by hand using an extra fine point metallic gold Sharpie – a good match to the Delicata gold ink – and finished off the card front with some of the gold mirror confetti in all three sizes. No more room on the front of this card, so, I turned to the inside of the card for the sentiment – “You’re the Cat’s Meow” is stamped in Onyx Black ink and the two flourishes are stamped in the Delicata gold again –  coordinates very nicely with the card front! Both the front panel and the inside writing surface are glued down to a black card base, and though I wasn’t planning on it, I ended up using 8 different stamps on this one card! That’s a good start to fulfilling my obsession with using all of the stamps on my 10 cards! LOL!!

OK… even I can’t wait anymore and am dying to start playing with that fancy die, but instead of going right to the reflective card stock included in the kit I reached for some glitter card stock from my stash – you know how much I like my red…!!

I did a little research on colors associated with the roaring 20’s and red was certainly used quite a bit, so that inspired this card using red and black glitter paper! I die cut the red glitter paper and layered that on top of two more plain black die-cuts before adding it on top of the black glitter card front. That makes the red die-cut pattern really pop off the front of this card! Great texture as well! I did cut that center window from a scrap of my standard grey card stock and stamped and embossed the double-sentiment with some clear embossing powder before gluing that place to the card front. I stamped and embossed the gent on a scrap of white card stock, used the frame die to cut him out, and mounted him to the card front with some foam squares. A few pieces of the black mirror confetti for a little extra bling, and I once again add a sentiment on the inside of the card. “It’s Your Birthday! is printed on more of my grey card stock using my Silhouette software and the Phosphate font, die cut with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die, and glued to the inside. “Kick Up Your Heels Daddy-O It’s Your Birthday” makes this a useful birthday card and uses that ‘Daddy-O’ stamp! And by the way, I have to admit… I LOVE that die!!

Let’s die cut that gold reflective card stock from the kit, and pair that with more black!

The ‘window’ in this die cut isn’t really very large… you can stamp an image in the window or you can stamp a sentiment in the window, but it’s a little tight to get both – my Daddy-O card was the only combo I found that actually fit an image and a sentiment in the window together. That’s what prompted this card from me and inspired me to cut through the black card front to make this a true ‘window’ card! I did cut the “You’re The” stamp in half so I could stack the words, and stamped that and the lady using Onyx Black ink. I colored her using my alcohol markers and added a lot of the mirror confetti tracing the shape of the window so you still get that art deco feeling when you open the card to see this sentiment completed with “Bee’s Knees”! I like cutting that window through the card front – I think it opens up the possibilities of what you can do with this terrific die.

Let’s do that window through the card front again… but let’s reverse the black and red!

I glued a dark red card front to a white card base and die-cut the fancy die from my black glitter card stock and cut the window through the red and white layers to expose the inside of the card. I really liked this ‘Jukebox’ stamp but I thought it was a little diminutive compared to the people stamps, so I decided to feature it on this card all by itself! I stamped the jukebox and all the extra music notes in Onyx Black ink on the inside of the card and embossed the extra music notes with clear embossing powder.

Before I colored the jukebox, I decided to add a little dimension to it, so I stamped that on another scrap of white card stock, colored it with my alcohol markers, fussy cut it out (without the included music notes) and topped that off with some of the Hero Arts Clear Lacquer pen for some added shine and dimension. A little Sakura Stardust gel pen for the ‘grill’ on the jukebox and you can almost see the records turning! LOL! I had to take extra care coloring these smaller stamps with  my alcohol markers but I LOVE how this came out! I didn’t find any sentiments in this stamp set that really spoke to me in combo with this image, so I turned to my Silhouette software again to create my own sentiment revealed when you open the card. “They’re Playing our Song” is printed using another great art deco font called Andes, and I think this card would be a perfect anniversary card, or even a simple friendship greeting! I really like having the ‘artwork’ from the front of the card on the inside as well on these last two cards . That fancy die is certainly capable of carrying it’s own weight as a card front while still giving us a peek at what’s inside. Surprise!

There was one more technique I wanted to try with this fancy die before moving on, and this card is the result of some experiments using that die to do some dry embossing.

After a few attempts with different weights of card stock, I came up with this embossed background using 80# Nina Classic Crest Solar White card stock. I misted both sides lightly with water, and embossed the back side of the die on the damp card stock. I trimmed the card stock down very close to the edge of the embossing, and glued it to a black bard base. I stamped the sentiment and flourishes using VersaMark ink and embossed those with Ranger gold embossing powder. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the super thin lines in the middle of the letters to register when using embossing powder, but the effect still works well! This sentiment felt a little incomplete to me, so, I added “I’m Savin’ My Love For You” (which happens to be the next lyric in the song) on the inside writing surface. (that’s the Phosphate font again) Now that gives some real purpose to this card as a valentine or as any kind of an “I Love You” card! Clean and simple is always elegant!

I think four cards using that die is quite enough… let’s get back to those dancing peeps!

My big challenge on this card was stamping the deco frame under the sentiment. This is much shorter than the actual stamp is, and I was only able to accomplish this using  a stamp platform and taking care to get that stamp as perfectly straight as possible… phew! I managed to get that stamped correctly and embossed that, along with the sentiment, with some clear embossing powder. I stamped a pattern of the martini glasses using Simon Says Stamp Barely Beige ink and colored the olives with very light alcohol markers (I love the light pop of color those olives add to this otherwise monochromatic card!). I did add some Spectrum Noir sparkle pen to the liquid in the glasses, though you can’t really see that on this picture. I stamped, embossed and die cut the two dancers and added them to the card front using foam squares, and added a row of the black mirror confetti to the bottom of the card. I glued the front panel to a piece of the silver reflective card stock included in the kit, added a thin white mat around that and mounted everything to another black card base.

Somehow, I got things way off center when assembling this card and I ended up slicing things up a bit to correct my mistakes… If you look closely, you can see an extra seam on the left side of the card front. I did add some Black Glitter peel offs to try to camouflage that seam and that helped a little, but you can still see the fix. It’s really not noticeable at first glance…  and I must remember… perfect is something Hallmark strives for! LOL!

Time to start working with that stencil – I believe this is the first stencil I’ve received with a MMH kit since I became a subscriber. Another great art deco pattern!

This stencil is 4.5″ x 5.75″ so it is actually larger than a card front. I taped the stencil down to a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock, masked off the center cross with some painter’s tape and used my finger daubers and Distress Oxide ink in Wild Honey and Abandoned Coral to add color to the four corners. Then I moved the center masking to the four corners and ink blended the center cross with Peacock Feathers and Seedless Preserves Oxide ink. LOVE IT! I die cut the stenciled card front with the largest LFSRD (which just happens to be the exact size of an A2 card) and glued it down to a white card base. I couldn’t bear to cover up much of this fun ink blending so I die cut this Lawn Fawn Scripty Congrats die from the gold reflective card stock in the kit. I though that sentiment needed some more gold accompaniment so I grabbed my Love From Lizi Gold Mirror peel offs to outline the edges and add some gold around the center of the card front. Some tiny foam tape pieces give the sentiment some dimension and it fits perfectly in the center without compromising any of our stenciling! I love the big color on this card and those gold accents go perfectly with the yellows! Wowza!

One of my favorite things to do with a full size stencil is to use it as a stamp – particularly, to use it as a stamp to do some combo heat/dry embossing.

I use my powder tool to wipe down and ‘anti-static’ some white card stock, covered the stencil with VersaMark ink and ran that through my Cuttlebug layered in an embossing sandwich. Added Ranger Gold embossing powder and heat set the background pattern before I die cut the card front with a LFSRD and glued it down to a warm grey card base. I stamped the sentiment and the cosmopolitan lady with Onyx Black ink, lightly embossed the sentiment with some clear embossing powder and colored the Miss with alcohol markers. I die cut the stamped piece with a Spellbinders Deckled Rectangle die and added more gold embossing on the edges of that. I found some gold pyramid brads in my stash that I added to the corners of the stamped piece and I mounted that to the card front with foam squares. Here again we have a sentiment that feels a little incomplete to me, so I added this fun “the Power of Pretty” on the inside writing surface. I used my Silhouette Software to lay out the inner sentiment and used Courier and Phosphate fonts. I guess that might make this card a little “look-ist”, but I though it was a cute way to complete the “Dollface” sentiment and a terrific encouragement card for any young lady on your list! This stencil works great for embossing – either dry or heat embossing! Or both!

Since this kit is all about the ‘sophisticated glamour’ of the 20’s, I thought heat embossing through the stencil would be another way to add some metallic shine to a card.

I taped the stencil to a piece of (anti-static’d) black card stock and used VersaMark ink right through the stencil and embossed that with Ranger Silver embossing powder. I trimmed that embossed piece down to be my card front and glued it down to a plain white card base. I stamped the automobile stamp in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and colored it with my alcohol markers before die-cutting it out. I embossed the sentiment on a strip of black card stock, added that to a strip of matching alcohol colored card stock and then to another strip of white card stock before gluing that all down to the card front and adding a few black mirror confetti pieces. The auto is mounted with foam squares above the sentiment – I love the pop of the green turquoise with the red upholstery on the silver and black card front.

I did think that the automobile was the one image in this stamp set that really illustrated the time period and compliments the sentiment thoroughly. Of course I made this a birthday card with the addition of a die cut sentiment on the inside of the card cut from some shimmer silver card stock from my stash. Of course you would be 97 years old now if you were born in 1922 but I think this would be a fun card to give anyone who was into this time period or was throwing a themed birthday party!

I only have 2 stamps left from this stamp set, and I’ve been saving them for this card!

I thought this diamond shaped accent stamp went really well with this old gramophone image! I stamped the diamond in a pattern and colored the verticals rows with Green Turquoise, Aqua Blue and Vintage Blue alcohol markers – I have certainly enjoyed using my Spectrum Noir markers on this kit – it’s always good to keep me practicing, and I’m very pleased with the results. Maybe now I won’t be so hesitant to use my markers on smaller images like this phonograph…! I cut out the image with a Darice Nesting Squares die (in a diamond format, of course!) and matted that on some black glitter card stock, die cut the background with a LFSRD and added a black glitter mat to that as well.

This stamp set had seven sentiments included, so I only have three cards sporting my own sentiments this month, and I really like this playful, slightly snarky birthday card. I created this sentiment using the Courier font and sized it to fit my smallest Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die. I matted that on more black glitter card stock, glued the matted background to another warm grey card base, and added the phonograph and sentiment with thick foam squares. Love the browns and greens together on this card, and I did add a Happy Birthday (Phosphate font) to the writing surface on the inside. I really enjoy this sentiment inferring that you’re old but still cool! That applies to lots of people! At least lots of people I know! Yup… we’re all getting older every year! There’s no denying it!! LOLOL!

There we have my 10 cards created using the My Monthly Hero February ’19 Kit. I had quite a good time with this kit and I am proud to say that I did manage to use every single stamp in this stamp set! WOO-HOO! I hope I was able to share some unique ideas with you, and a little inspiration and maybe a smile or two!

This is a nice variety of cards all together (though it would be easy to just use that fancy die for everything) and we’ve got some great colors on these cards as well! I think I managed to live up to the “sophisticated glamour and swinging jazz of the era” that Hero Arts uses to describe this month’s kit.

This kit is still available at Hero Arts (believe it or not!) and if you’d like to get one for yourself (I think that die and stencil alone are worth the cost!) please use my link: http://bit.l2-18y/2WUoUUzMMH.

There are also other terrific deco items included with the Hero Arts February release. You can shop for those as well using this link: http://bit.ly/2tcO9niHA2-18release.

And this is my general Hero Arts link: http://bit.ly/2sBmuMCHeroArts

Thank you dearly for sharing your time with me here! I always appreciate any questions or comments you my have!  Please remember to Like Me, List Me, Pin Me, Post Me, share me with all your friends… don’t run with die cuts… and HAPPY CRAFTING!

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER:  This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Hello Folks!  Scott here with my unboxing of the Love From Lizi March 2019 Card Kit! If you’d like to follow along with the video post click here: https://youtu.be/c_DtTnzm0OE

Lizi is referring to this as the “Fairy Garden” card kit and, as usual, this is chock-a-block full of all sorts of fun, fanciful, colorful and unique items all curated into another lovely card kit.

We do begin this kit with the standard five sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stock in Dark Gray, Navy Blue, a sheet of White super-smooth alcohol-marker card, Cream and a really nice Warm Blue. These are complimented with four sheets of 8.5″ x 5.5″ Specialty Pearlescent Card Stock in Dark Green (with golden pearl), White, Silver, and Gold. Always love Lizi’s Specialty Card Stocks!

From our 12 sheets of 6″ x 6″ pattern papers, you can see the “Fairy Garden” theme emerge… lots of butterflies, foliage, and Fairies! These are all single-sided pattern papers with some glitter accents on two of them (#9+#11), and a pearlescent  finish on another two (#10+#12). Back to pink this month!!  LOL!

And it’s decoupage time again! I love it when Lizi treats us to these! Here you can see we get 8 different sheets of die-cut decoupage designs. These are all glittered up and ready for layering on a card. All of these sheets sport sentiments and some have so many layers that it would be easy to make a couple of cards from a single sheet! LOVE THESE!

There’s a NEW peel off color this month! Mint Moonstone peel offs! Great color and shine with out being completely reflective. AND we get four sheets of stickers! Lots of glitter on these stickers, and they all coordinate perfectly with the pattern papers and decoupage sheets! You may know that I’m not a huge fan of butterflies, but I think those butterfly wreaths are very interesting!

That brings us to the largest stamp set I have ever received in a LFL kit – a 6″ x 8″ stamp set with large foliage stamps and sentiments that coordinate with the Love and Thanks stencil! Looks like that top stamp is those interesting Japanese Lantern plants, and the bottom stamp is a leafy climbing vine. Those are complimented with a dandelion stamp and little dandelion seeds in assorted sizes. Looks like another great opportunity to practice our coloring skills!

That’s all of the goodies in our large zip-lock bag – on to the embellishment bag!!

From the top… left to right… right to left… we get two sheets of foam squares – Lizi most always includes foam squares with her decoupage sheets. Nuvo Sweet Lilac Crystal glossy drops, Five meter length ribbons on a nice cardboard spool – all around 3/8″ wide with glitter or printed accents. Three silver metal ‘wands’ that have an embossed stripe pattern on one side and a smooth mirror finish on the other. Eight buttons in two sizes printed with images that match our pattern papers, and a sample size batch of the Fairy Garden sequin mix – brushed gold, mint green and soft lilac… yum!

Bottom row… left to right… Three mini shaker stickers! Two jar shapes and a circular shape with decorated backgrounds, already filled with silver stars and ready to mount. Very cool! We DO get another stamp in our embellishment bag this month – a nicely sized fairy with a butterfly stamp – just more opportunity to color! Our die this month is this fairy die with detailed cut-outs in her wings, and a batch of holographic shaped and embossed fairy sequins – there’s about three times as many in our packs as I show here.

I did get some add-ons this month as well – sometimes you just can’t resist!

Here we have another large stamp set (4″ x 8″) featuring two more garden clusters – the top cluster appears to be rather daisy-like flowers and the bottom stamp seems to be poppies! It appears I’m going to be coloring a lot this month! This stamp set also features more sentiment options in another font style… Looks like we could reconstruct Luxembourg Gardens with all these foliage stamps this month!

Lizi is introducing new embossing powders this month – some of which were inspired by customers and subscribers requests. Lots of sparkle and holographic dots in some of these powders, along with some new colors! I got all eight pots of the new LFL Embossing Powders.

I went ahead and swatched out all these new colors to give you a better idea of what they look like. The Sparkling Snow is like a clear embossing powder with lots of silver glitter, the Tutu Pink is too, too pink (LOL) with some additional sparkles, the Forest Green and Meadow Green are standard glossy embossing colors in beautiful, very useful colors, and then we get to the “Party” line of embossing powders! The Fairy Dust, Baby Blue, Pastel Purple, and Powder Pink Party powders have lots of shine, lots of glitter and holographic mylar dot sprinkled throughout. I haven’t had a lot of luck with glitter embossing powders, but these four Party powders melted very easily and are really something delightful to behold! Perfectly unique and very well suited to this Fairy Garden Kit.

As of posting, this kit is still available at lovefrom lizi.com. Remember, subscribers can add items to their kit boxes for no additional shipping charges through February 25th (midnight BST – 7:00pm EST). If you do go shopping at Lizi’s please use my link:  http://bit.ly/LFLlink

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here today! I hope you’ll join me for my 10 Card 1 Kit video featuring this kit. I appreciate all of your continued comments encouragement and support! Please share this post with others you think would be interested, and HAPPY CRAFTING!

Hello Folks!  Scott here with my ten cards featuring the Love From Lizi February 2019 Card Kit. This is an Art Deco themed kit featuring peacocks, peacock feathers and all the lovely blues and greens associated with them. If you’d like to see my 10C1K video now, just click this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ngoBC18fg

This kit sold out extremely quickly this month and I can see why…! From the intricately detailed stamps and dies to the lovely pattern papers, cut-aparts, stickers and unique embellishments, this month promises some unique design possibilities for everyone!

I did cut and fold all the included card stock into A2 card bases, and, as is often the case, I began playing with this kit by stamping that gorgeous peacock stamp with VersaFine Onyx Black ink on some Bristol smooth card stock. I was reaching for my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers when I realized I should try out some new watercolor mediums I received for my birthday (in December) and Christmas.

My sister-in-law got me this Kingart set of 48 dual tip brush pens for Christmas this year. These are just like Tombow Art Markers – a felted brush tip on one end and a fine tip on the other. I used these to color this first peacock. These markers did provide some movement on the Bristol smooth card stock but not quite as much movement as I have become accustomed to with the Zig markers. The inks are vibrant and there is a nice variety of colors and shades, and the markers certainly seem nice and juicy! The fine tip is not quite as fine as I would like but, overall, I was very impressed with these markers! Pretty as a peacock!

For my birthday, I was thrilled to get this Stabilo set of 40 fineliner pens from my oldest and dearest of friends. I used to have a small set of these markers but I passed them along to my mom when she started getting into adult coloring books. These pens are water-based but only have a 1mm felt tip – very sturdy nibs and fairly fine. Just as I remembered, these Stabilo pens are super vibrant and colored up my second peacock very nicely. I was VERY impressed with how well they moved on the Bristol card stock  and there’s a great variety of colors! I think I think I got little too much color at the top center of the tail feathers where those 10 feathers get very thin… even the 1mm nib on these markers had a hard time giving me a truly fine line… Quite lovely!

Now I can reach for my Zig brush markers! I have only ever had the 32 set of these markers so I have the fewest color choices with these markers but I have the most experience using them!

Of course, these markers move very easily on Bristol smooth card stock, and while I may not have quite the same color selection as the other two sets, you can easily combine colors to get most any color you want! This peacock is a little lighter overall than the other two, but the colors are every bit as vibrant and the shading a little more subtle… this isn’t the best picture of this peacock, but you’ll see how nicely this works on a card. BTW… I did outline the ‘eye’ of the tail feathers on all three of these peacocks with a dark blue glaze pen to add some color and shine to what amounts to be a simple black portion of the stamp. Now to figure out how to use these on my cards! I guess I am going to have to fussy cut these… ! Yikes!

After working so much with this peacock stamp (I’m in NO hurry to start fussy cutting!) I began to wonder how this super detailed stamp would work with some heat embossing.

Here we go! Nice and simple – very straightforward – and quite stunning! If you take some care, and get a good impression without smashing your stamp into the paper, you can capture a lot of detail with most any ‘ultra fine’ embossing powder.  I did try the Love From Lizi Emerald City and Golden Crown embossing powders but I thought my plain gold powder had a bit more ‘presence’ on this black card base. The peacock, the corner embellishment and the sentiment were stamped directly on the black card with VersaMark ink and heat embossed with Ranger Super Fine Gold embossing powder. A simple strip of Lizi’s Gold Mirror peel off (from the May 2018 LFL kit) down the left side completes our easy introduction to this kit. With those stamped corners, this almost looks Oriental! Nice and shiny and very art deco!!

There is one cut-apart that really caught my eye – you can probably guess which one!

Love this sentiment! I don’t think I have ever heard this proverb before! Since the ‘framing’ on this piece was in teal, I chose to add some of the Teal Mirror peel offs to the outside frame and added little extra touches among the corner flourishes. I also added some Glossy Accents to the ‘LAUGHING’ text for some added dimension and shine. Instead of using pattern paper with this, I decided to use the embossing folder to dry emboss the front of one of the Cream card bases. I did (very lightly) sponge some Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide ink over the embossing to highlight the pattern a little bit and, since embossing will warp most any card stock. I glued an additional panel of white card stock behind the embossed cover. I ran a couple more peel offs down the edges of the embossing and added the cut apart panel to the card front with foam tape. This card needed a little more something-something, so I reached for the small Champagne Gold gems and used them at the tip of each embossed ‘leaf’ spray. That’s the trick! The gems really highlight the embossed pattern and add some terrific bling!

I did consider how I could use this card, so I turned to my Silhouette Software to add a “Wishing you a Joyous Birthday” sentiment on the inside writing surface. This is using the Perpetua Titling MT Light font which I thought came very close to matching the smaller block text on the cut apart. That works! Now we have a very sharp Birthday card for anyone who enjoys laughing – or anyone who enjoys making others laugh! LOL!!

I did think one of the ladies on the 3″x 4″ panel cut apart sheet seemed very proud of herself and perfect to pair up with the ATTAGIRL! stamp.

I fussy cut that lady panel following along the lines of the printed deco frame for a little extra interest, and foam taped that to a 3″x 4″piece of the Mint Green specialty paper from the kit. On the Navy card base, I glued down a 4″x 4″ piece of the dark graphic pattern paper and glued the matted piece directly to the pattern paper. Now, how about the dies in this kit…! I had the perfect space to add a couple of the straight flourish die-cuts.

I did take some StickIt double-sided adhesive and applied some to a piece of the Mint glimmer card stock in preparation for die-cutting these intricate dies. I also used a piece of wax paper between the die and the card stock to help remove the piece when it’s cut (didn’t help much..!) but with some care and patience these incredibly skinny die cuts came free of the die very nicely. Thank heavens for that StickIt on the backs!

I embossed the frame and “ATTAGIRL!” sentiment stamp using Simon Says Stamp Steel Navy Embossing Powder (I don’t have any LFL Warm Navy) on a double piece of vellum – two vellum pieces glued together using the Xyron Sticker Maker. I fussy cut the vellum frame and was able to add two foam strips right behind the busy vertical bars on the left and right sides, and, since the doubled vellum is stiff enough to hold it’s own, I was able to add some extra depth with the framed sentiment foam taped to the card front. I think this lady and this sentiment were meant for each other!!

I actually have the same font used for the sentiments in this stamp set in my own font files so I did create a “Congratulation” sentiment on the inside writing surface to finish out the ‘AttaGirl’ on the front. I used my Silhouette Software and the Andes font for all my extra printings this month. I was so thrilled when I recognized this font! That doesn’t happen very often but I LOVE it when it does!

I was SO pleased to have an “ATTABOY” sentiment in our stamp set so now, at last, we get some equal time!! LOL! There aren’t any images of particularly proud men anywhere in this card kit so I decided to just go with the art deco theme! Those LFL Gold Mirror peel-offs were still on my desk too, so I just couldn’t resist!

Inspired by the corner stamps in the kit, I grabbed the Black Glimmer specialty card stock and taped it down to my TH media mat. I skipped the outer frame to begin with (1/4″ left and right and 1/8″ top and bottom and laid down three rectangles of peel offs in thin, medium, and thin again every 1/4″ with the peel offs running off the edges of the card. It was fairly easy to miter the corners on the two thin rectangles. To make the corner squares on the medium peel off rectangle that’s between the thin frames, I added shorter pieces of medium peel offs to make the outside edges of the corner squares and mitered the three corners on those squares as well.

I stamped and embossed (VersaMark ink and Ranger Gold embossing powder) the corner stamp four times matching up their edges to make this open stamped frame in the middle of the peel off frames. “ATTABOY” fit in that stamped frame perfectly! After everything was embossed and cooled, I added the thick peel off frame around the outside and attached the black glimmer card front to a white card base. A couple of the kit gems to camouflage the fact that the outside strip of the matched stamps didn’t quite meet up,  and we’ve got a truly masculine Art Deco congrats card! Nothing on the inside of this one… I was just basking in the joyful reality of an actual GUY sentiment! I LOVE THIS!

That’s three of the five sentiments in this stamp set – let’s go back to the ladies and the “GIRLS NIGHT OUT!” stamp for the next card.

It’s sticker time! I fussy cut these ladies from the long strip of “Femme Fatals” on the sticker sheet and removed their stickiness so I could add some foam tape on their back. I arranged four of the small sentiment stickers on the right and left sides of the center line of the black card base and used more gold peel offs on their top and bottom edges. (I know, I know, I just can’t help myself!!) I die cut two of the corner dies from the gold textured specialty card stock and trimmed a piece of the yellow damask pattern paper to 3″ wide by 2 and 5/8″ tall. I stamped and embossed the sentiment using VersaMark ink and that same SSS Steel Navy powder. Then I glued the little squares on the inside corner of the die cuts to the corners of the pattern paper before spray-gluing everything directly to the card base. I foam taped the ladies coming off the edges of the pattern paper, added three crystals to the top right and bottom left, and added a small swag of the pearl spray underneath the sentiment. Feels like a little pearl necklace! Hmmmm… SWANKY!!

This sentiment sounds like an invitation to me, and I was kind of itching for at least a little pun somewhere in this kit, so I turned to my Silhouette Software to create the inside of this card. On a piece of Staples ivory card stock from my stash, die cut with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die, I paired up these wine glasses from my image stash with the fun “WHINE NOT JOIN US?” sentiment using the Andes font and the Perpetua font for the party details. There’s a bit of a pun for us this month! I’m finding (mixed company) puns a little hard to come by this month! You know I seem to be a little obsessed with actually finding a purpose for my cards, and this makes a pretty classy invitation that’s not too complicated to make more than a few!

I have yet to tackle the feather stamp from this kit and if anything, it seems even more detailed than the peacock stamp. If such a thing is even possible!! While I was doing some peacock research prior to receiving my kit, I came across an Aesop Fable – The Jay and the Peacock and that inspired this card!

Now, I’ve been using my homemade wreath builder template fairly frequently lately, and I thought I could use the template and the feather stamp to create more of an oval shape on the front of this card. The feather stamp is large enough to cover the short ends of a card with just a couple of impressions. I designed this sentiment using my Silhouette software and the Andes and Perpetua fonts and printed that right in the center of a white card base. I turned to my wreath builder template and stamped the feathers using Stampin’Up Emerald Envy ink.

I laid my card base in portrait orientation in the template and positioned and stamped the feather in the top left corner. I turned the card counterclockwise 90 degrees to stamp the second feather. Then I turned the card another 90 degrees CCW with the opposite side at the top of the template for the third stamp and 90 degrees more for the fourth impression. That turned the feather stamp into a lovely oval shaped frame for this fun sentiment! A few of the Nuvo Glitter drops from the kit on the top and bottom and some Wedgewood Blue Nuvo Crystal drops (from the LFL Nov.’18 kit) added to the ‘eye’ of the feathers. That’s all the sparkle this card needs! I can’t think of a more interesting way to convey the message that “you’re perfect just the way you are”! This is a very nice ‘one-layer wonder’ card that features that lovingly detailed feather stamp!

Working with that feather stamp made me think of the special birthday present that LFL subscribers received in our Sept.’18 LFL Super Card Kit – the LFL peacock feather die! I haven’t had a chance to use that die yet, so I thought this kit was the perfect opportunity to try it out. AND I have that add-on Atta Girl A4 satin card pack – perfect!

I die-cut the peacock feather twice from each of the 5 sheets of blue and green satin card stock, and filled in the ‘eye hearts’ with the brushed gold vinyl included with the kit. I was determined to tame that Black Deco Mesh ribbon we received, so I die cut the gold mirror specialty card stock piece with a LFSRD and, using a good amount of scor-tape on the back and the edges, wrapped the deco mesh around the gold die cut. Great texture and some really nice shine from that mesh as well! I glued the gold panel to the damask pattern paper die-cut with another LFSRD, and mounted both directly to the Aqua card base before outlining that with more gold peel-offs. (so arrest me already!!  LOL!)

I arranged the ten die cuts in a fan (hopefully reminiscent of a peacock’s tail) and attached to the card front with a combination of foam tape and Multi Medium Matte glue. A little double bow using the Royal Blue ribbon from the kit adds a touch of dimension to the base of our fan and all that’s left is a sentiment for the inside. Again, using my Silhouette software and the Andes font, I printed this sentiment on a scrap of white card stock die cut with a LFSRD and mounted to the inside of our card. This is actually printed a very dark blue color with a bit of a drop shadow! I think this sentiment goes perfectly with the shiny colored feathers on the front of the card and all these encouragements go right along with the AttaGirl! theme of this card kit.

Ok… I have made you wait long enough… now let’s use those colored peacocks! I did take the time to fussy cut all three peacocks leaving a small white border around two of them.

On the Aqua card base I attached two strips of the blue squares pattern paper that I fussy cut along the edges of the squares, and outlined the inner saw-tooth edges with the medium Teal peel offs. I cut a strip of the peacock feather stripes pattern paper and in order to mute it just a little so it didn’t compete with the peacock, covered it with a piece of vellum – again using my Xyron sticker maker to glue the vellum to the pattern paper. I stamped the sentiment in Onyx Black ink (matches the stamped peacock) and added some clear embossing powder to it for a little shine. I glued that strip down to the center of the card front and added more peel offs to the sides. This is the peacock colored with my new kingart dual tip markers and fussy cut using my x-acto craft knife.  I mounted that to the card front using 1/16″ thick foam squares and, never one to leave well enough alone, I did add a little extra sentiment on the writing surface inside the card. “Just Because … I Love You” turns this into a very-non-traditional yet quite beautiful valentine!

I did cut the Zig clean color real brush peacock out without a white border simply so I could use one of the feathers included in our embellishment bag!

First, I printed this sentiment directly on the Cream card base using my Silhouette software and the Andes font. I used another strip of the peacock feather pattern paper down the left side and edged that with more of the Teal peel offs. I cut some of the pearl sprays into single pearl sprigs and glued those to the tips of all the tail feathers. I then trimmed off a tip of one of the black feathers and glued that behind the peacocks tail and added a tiny tuft of feather to the crest on his head. Foam tape attached the peacock to the card front, and we have a bona fide pun with this card!! HOORAY!!!   LOL!  I love this card and how much texture the feather and pearls bring to the table! And here you thought that peacock couldn’t get any fancier! This one is definitely the flamboyant one!

I still have a few items in the kit that I haven’t used yet, but I have an idea…!!

I die cut that intricate frame die from the brushed gold vinyl sheet quite early in my process and took great care to lay that right in the center of the pearlescent white specialty card stock. The dies cut that vinyl very nicely and if you lick your fingers (keep them just a little bit wet) it will help you handle the vinyl without it constantly trying to stick itself to you. That piece floated around on my desk for quite a while as I considered what exactly I should put inside that frame. I kept thinking it needed a sentiment in the center until I cut out this peacock (colored with the Stabilo pens) and held it in front of that deco frame. EUREKA!!

I only have a Navy card base left and I wanted to see that color on the card front but wanted something a little more striking than just a thin trim or an outline. That white glimmer specialty card stock is 4.25″ x 5.5″ – exactly the size of our card. That gave me the idea to do a kind of ‘reverse frame’ to highlight that great Navy card base! I taped two of my LFSRDies together and centered them on the white glimmer card stock and sent that through my die cutting machine. I simply glued the ‘leftover’ outer frame and the inner rectangle to the card base and TADA! That Navy card stock features quite prominently on our card front. I did reach for my thicker 1/8″ foam squares to attach the peacock to the card front with a little extra dimension, and I am totally in love with this gorgeous card!

I’m generally not one to leave a card without a sentiment so I turned to my computer one last time to do the “Be Proud” sentiment on the inside writing surface. Another lovely encouragement card to wrap us up this month! I think these last three cards really demonstrate that coloring and cutting that peacock stamp was worth every moment devoted to them!

So that’s my ten cards featuring the Love From Lizi February ’19 Card Kit. For some reason, this kit really inspired my anal retentive, ultra detailed, nerdy perfectionism that took up a little more time at my craft desk than usual, but, in the end, produced some truly stunning results and some downright gorgeous cards!

Naturally, I have gobs and gobs of extras left over from my kit, I only used 5 of the 12 pattern papers, I didn’t use any of the sequins, glitter or the wood veneer feathers, but I did manage to use all of the stamps and all of the dies – and that brushed gold vinyl as well! I used a little bit of everything else but not a lot of any one thing – unless you’re counting that peacock stamp!  LOL!!! Lizi continues to spark my imagination with her kits and the unique themes and embellishments she includes that practically beg you to think outside the box! As mentioned at the beginning, this kit sold out super quickly but there are still some add-ons available at Lizi’s shop. If you do go shopping at Love From Lizi or want to get in on the fun and subscribe, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink.

I am truly blessed and so grateful that you choose to spend your time with me here – I am constantly amazed at the generosity of spirit and heartfelt encouragement that all of you share with me! Let me know which card(s) you liked the best, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask, and remember to Like Me, List Me, Pin Me, Post Me, share me with all your friends, don’t run with peacocks, and HAPPY CRAFTING!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my unboxing of the February 2019 Love From Lizi Card Kit! I must beg your pardon for my absence – I took some time off and did a lot of traveling over the holidays so I skipped the LFL January kit. I had a wonderful time with so many friends and family, but it’s good to be back at the craft desk again!

This is a very Art Deco card kit featuring peacocks and teals and greens and some great deco patterns… I don’t think I see a hint of pink anywhere! LOL! However… this kit has already sold out – one of Lizi’s fastest sellers I believe…! If you’d like to check out the video of this unboxing on YouTube, just click here: https://youtu.be/WNVHO93z9cw

We get started with five sheets of letter size (8.5″ x 11″) card stock in Navy, Black, alcohol-marker-friendly White, Cream and Aqua. I often save Lizi’s white card stock for coloring, and substitute a plain card stock from my stash.

We get five sheets of specialty card stock in our kit this month! A full letter size sheet of Mint Green Pearlescent, and 4.24″ x 5.5″ pieces of Black Pearlescent, Gold mirror, White Pearlescent, and a Gold embossed – a nice, graphic linen texture. Very nice.

We get 12 sheets of 6×6 pattern papers this month. A few peacock feather patterns, some retro catalogue images and some damask patterns as well as some standard stripes and polka dots in this great color palette. I’m glad Lizi likes peacocks!

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We are treated this month to Three 12″x12″ double-sided cut-apart sheets! This first sheet has 3″x4″ panels on one side with a number of sentiments and some great retro graphics, and the reverse features a large peacock feather pattern in an off-white tone-on-tone.

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Our second sheet features 2″ tiles with lots of phrases, some retro images, and a few plain tiles as well. The reverse revisits the peacock feather pattern in color this time – that would be great for a scrapbook background..!

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Our third cut-apart is a conglomeration of all sorts of “retro” phrases on the front and that terrific very masculine striped pattern on the back side. I’ve going to have to look some of these phrases up! LOL!

We also get a 12″ x 12″ sheet of stickers!! Such a big variety here – from the long strip of ladies in the middle to frames and icons and small phrases. A great selection here!

This picture doesn’t show them off to their best advantage, but our peel offs this month are Teal Mirror. Really lovely! Lizi also included this 6×6 inch piece of matte gold vinyl in our kit this month. I imagine that it should cut with dies and that you don’t have to have an electronic cutting machine to use this… we’ll have to experiment a little with this!!

Which brings us to our stamps, dies and an embossing folder!! This embossing folder is a full card sized classic deco pattern. Looks like the lobby wall paper at the Tropicana!! We get a set of three Art Deco dies that are intricate and versatile and this terrific stamp set featuring one complete beautiful peacock and a single peacock feather. Can’t wait to color these stamps!! (and cut those dies and emboss that folder..!!)

And now we have our embellishment bag! We get 4, meter length 1/8″ ribbons in Royal Blue, Black, Pale Blue and Teal as well as a 1′ length of Black Deco Mesh. Ive seen that mesh used on bows and wreaths and larger dimensional crafts… it will be interesting to figure out how to use that on a card! Our Nuvo drop this month are Sunlit Meadow Glitter Drops. We get a Pistachio Green Maribou feather and two Black Maribou feathers, and three pearl sprays – I believe each spray has three strands – very cool dimension with these! We also get a strip of small Gold Champagne gems, two wood veneer feather die cuts, a small pack of Gold Champagne glitter (seems ultra-fine!) and our sample pack of the “Attagirl sequin mix” with gold, navy, teal and oyster white sequins in assorted sizes.

I did get a couple of the add-on paper packs this month – The Atta Girl Satin Card Pack with 6 A4 sheets in satin shine with a nice blue, a teal, three greens in light medium and dark tones and a gold. This picture does not do them justice! Perfect colors for this kit!

I also got the Atta Girl Pearlescent Cardstock Bundle. Eight letter size sheets in a peach, green, gold, antique gold, bronze, grey, dark blue (LOVE THAT ONE!!!) and another mint green. I love the glimmer on these heavy card stock sheets. I think I’m lookin’ for some shine this month!

I’m looking forward to digging in and exploring some art deco designs and lovely colors with this kit! I believe shipping begins this weekend so if subscribers want add-ons or extra items please use my link when shopping at Live From Lizi: http://bit.ly/LFLlink

Thanks for sharing your time with me here and keep an eye out for my 10 Card 1 Kit video featuring the Love From Lizi February 2019 Card Kit.