Hello Folks! Scott here! I promised to share my double-slider pull-tab card with you and here it is. I was on a roll for a couple of months and made these three cards.The Balloon Card, The Moon Card and the Dream Card  – Yes, those of you paying close attention, I added the blue and purple balloons after I had posted my video – those extra balloons fill up this card front nicely.These are all based on the “double slider card” that has been around for a while – you can find bunches of instructional videos on YouTube for a variety of these –

Here’s a mock-up I made for you to show you the mechanism – – it’s basically just a track with a plastic conveyor belt in the middle (plastic shopping bag) with the moving pieces attached to both the front and the back.This is a little too big for these cards, so I just needed to shrink the mechanism down a little bit – this is all there really is to the action – a track piece with a plastic conveyor belt that has the pull-tab attached on one side and the moving piece on the other.Let’s make a mock-up first. We have a card base (4.25”x 5.5”), the card front (4”x 5.25”), the track piece (with a partner)(just under 4”x 5.25”)  the pull tab (1”x 5.5”) the moving piece, the plastic conveyor, and we’ll need to make the paper hinge that attaches the moving piece to the belt. So let’s cut an inch off of the pull tab to use for our hinge – we’ll get back to that later.

We want to make a track for the conveyor belt to travel along so I cut two ½” notches on the top and the bottom of the track piece right in the center. I have stepped up from shopping bags to zip lock bags but any reliably strong plastic sheeting could be used for the conveyor belt.

I’m loving the new Tim Holtz Glass Media Mat for cutting – simply tape down your plastic and using a craft knife and a metal ruler, cut off a ½” strip so easily – and  this isn’t even a new blade! Wrap your plastic around the track and use some strong double-sided adhesive (I use scor-tape) to join the ends and trim off the excess – be careful not to pull your conveyor too tight – it needs to be able to slide easily. I’ll take the partner piece and trim it down to fit on the front of the track piece on either side of the belt just to give the belt a little room to slide easily.

Score your pull tab down the center and scor-tape it together. We need the extra thickness so you can pull AND push it! I arrange the seam of the plastic towards the top of the track piece (on the back side) and attach the pull-tab right on to the seam. Again, using a couple pieces of scor-tape! Remember, this is the back of the track piece, so make sure your pull-tab faces forward.
Let’s move to the card front – we need to make a slot for the hinge to go through to attach the moving piece to the conveyor. We know it’s going to be right in the center, so let’s

draw a line right down the middle of the card front –  the track is ½” shorter than the card front on the top and bottom – let’s mark those on our line so we don’t cut past them.  Using my craft knife, I cut the slot on either side of the pencil line to make a very thin slot through the card front – remember to erase any stray pencil marks! While we’re here,

might as well add a thumb notch at the bottom – I just use my ½” circle punch for that. Now take that 1” piece we removed from the tab piece in the beginning, fold it in half – I

find it helps to fold it over my TH Retractable Craft Pick (so the hinge isn’t too tight). Trim the hinge down to 1/4″ either side of the fold line so it will fit on the conveyor belt,

and then split the hinge on both sides at different places.

Now, depending on the length of your slot on the card front, you may need to mark your conveyor belt to show you where the bottom edge of the hinge should be attached. Just layer your card front and track piece together and mark the bottom of your slot onto your plastic conveyor belt (make sure your pull-tab is in the start position!). Here, we have the longest possible slot on the card front so we know that the hinge goes at the bottom of the conveyor belt. Add scor-tape to one side of your hinge – on OPPOSITE sides

at the cut – we will splay the hinge where it attaches to the conveyor belt. Make sure it moves freely, and if everything is working, we can attach the track piece to the back of

the card front – ATG comes in handy for that – just be sure to feed the hinge through the slot! A little exercise for the mechanism ensures that all is working properly.

I use my 1/2″ circle punch to add a thumb notch to the card base – there’s an extra 1/8″ on the card base so I choke up on the hole punch and trim the extra curve off with scissors.

Foam tape is used to attach our mechanism to the card base. Since the pull-tab is double thick, the extra wiggle room is helpful. Line your card front up with a 1/8″ border all around and press it down.

Now all we have to do is attach the moving piece to the hinge. Add Scor-tape on the opposite wings of the hinge and, attach your moving piece right in the center.

Now, depending on how big your piece is, you have some leeway in where you attach that piece as well as what ever other pieces you are using for your card.

I really enjoyed making these cards! I actually tried doing a how-to immediately after my first card but I did something wrong to the video – OOPS! However, I did get another rocket card (with a girl this time!) assembled with that episode of trial and error!!!

I know I will be on the lookout for more opportunities to use this technique – these would

work on a landscape card just as well where the action would move sideways… I think the possibilities are kind of endless! I hope this was illuminating for you and helps describe the process for these Double Slider Pull-Tab cards. I encourage you to give it a try! My video of this assembly is right below, and may help if you have any questions.  Please let me know if you need anything I may be able to help you with! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here, and Happy Crafting!

 

Hello Folks!  Scott here with my 10 Cards from the Simon Says Stamp Feb. 2018 “A Colorful Crafty Life” Card Kit. This kit is loaded with supplies and features the exclusive “Crafty Friend’ clear stamp set. We are also treated to the new SSS Craft Tacky Glue, 1water brush pen, 12 double-sided sheets of Echo Park’s “I’d Rather Be Crafting” 6″ x 6″ paper pad, and 5 Prima crafty wood veneer pieces (I received 4 different cameras and one spool). A big surprise was the “Twiggy” curved blade portable scissors, and we got a bag of Studio Katia “Cupid’s Kiss” crystals (VERY pink!). Another product I’ve never seen in a SSS card kit was two Tim Holtz Texture Fade embossing folders (‘Dot Matrix’ and ‘Gridlock’)! We also received a Daniel Smith watercolor pallet with Minnesota Pipestone Genuine, Serpentine Genuine, Quinacridone Gold, Brown Iron Oxide, Mayan Red and Cascade Green. To finish off this plethora of supplies, we got three SSS envelopes in Metallic Bronze, Metallic Orange Peel, and Mint as well as 1 sheet each of SSS 100# card stock in Slate, Banana, Burnt Orange, Audrey Blue, and a 120# white. PHEW! This is my 12th kit from SSS and this kit has more supplies than ever before. I don’t know if the price increase (subscriptions to the Card Kits went up $5.00 this month) dictates more materials but I will try my best to use as many supplies as possible on my 10 Cards.

Since I received 4 camera veneer pieces I decided I should do a camera card to begin with. There was only one sheet of pattern paper that featured only cameras, so that’swhere I started. I cut a ‘corner’ of cameras from the pattern paper and matched that up with the reverse side which was the dark wood-grain pattern. I actually tried adding Glossy Accents to all of the camera lenses, but there were so many that it started pulling focus from my veneer pieces, so instead, I fussy cut another batch of cameras and foam taped them directly over the the de-glossied cameras – that’s much nicer – nice dimension without pulling too much focus! (I did add some glitter from my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen to the lenses ) I colored the two wood veneer cameras with my Tsukiniko Delicata metallic inks in Gold and Copper and attached those directly to the card front. I could not resist the punny (on my first card no less!) “Snappy Birthday” sentiment I created and cut with my Silhouette Portrait (4 layers glued together) using the Brady Bunch Remastered font and a couple of starburst ‘flashes’ I created. The whole brown/camera panel is cut to size with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die and foam taped to the white card base. For a touch more shine, I added some brown peel off pin-stripe stickers (from a Love From Lizi card kit) to the  top and left sides of the card base and the edges between the two pattern papers. If you know someone into photography, this would be a perfect HB card!

This stamp set had 2 border stamps – a dashed line and a wide diagonal stripe – I think Simon Says Stamp likes border stamps or they are just an easy filler for a stamp set – out of the past 12 months of kits, 7 of them have assorted border stamps for a total of 14 different border stamps this year. I thought it would be fun to try to use all of them on one card. I skipped the 2 heart border stamps (hearts were sideways) the Happy Birthday border stamp (wrong sentiment!) and the plain stripe border stamp (boring!), but I managed to use 10 different border stamps on this card, and one of the sentiments from the stamp set. I stamped the brush, pencil, marker and paint tube across the top of a plain piece of white card stock with SSS Intense Black Ink, and stamped the ‘colorful’ sentiment in the middle with the same ink. I masked off the sentiment and gathered all my border stamps together to use as the ‘drawings’ coming out of these implements. The blue brush stroke and square box borders are stamped in Manganese Blue Ranger Archival Ink, and the dashed line in the center is stamped in Deep Purple Archival Ink. The green, yellow, orange and red borders were stamped in Simon Says Stamp Hybrid inks from the Fresh Fruit ink cube set that came with the April ’17 SSS card kit. I did use the thin ‘brush stroke’ border stamp (from the Oct ’17 kit) twice as there are eleven  implements..! For the yellow and orange stamps on the right side, I used washi tape to mask out a thin-to-thick space to stamp the diagonal stripe stamp (from this month) and the wave stamp from the July ’17 kit. I think I like that orange wave stamp the best here… I will have to remember how nice that looks! I trimmed the white card stock down with a Stitched Rectangle die, and mounted that to a black mat from my stash, and used some black fun foam to mouth that to the striped pattern paper (cut with another Stitched Rectangle die) and glued that all down to the Burnt Orange card base with the SSS Craft Tacky Glue. I did use this glue as much as possible with these cards, and I have to say that it is a very good glue… a touch thick, perhaps, but it glued the card stock to the fun foam with no problems whatsoever, and dried quickly and quite firmly! I did use my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers to color in available white spots on the tool stamps to match the colors coming out of them, but added no further shine or sparkles, thinking that the rainbow stamping gave this card all the punch it needed! “You Make Everything Colorful” is not my favorite sentiment, but it works nicely here!

The largest sentiment in this stamp set was “Sending You a Handcrafted Hello From So Very Far Away”. Again, the sentiments in this kit didn’t thrill me, I think everyone who receives a card from me KNOWS that they are handmade, so this feels a little like tooting your own horn, but I do TRY to use all the stamps in a stamp set with my 10 Cards 1 Kit postings. (I could not bring myself to use any of the strictly ‘crafty’ sentiments: ‘Crafters Gonna Craft’, ‘New Stamps = Love’, ‘Hello, Crafty Friend’, ‘I’d Rather be Crafting’, or the ‘Handmade by someone super crafty named: _____”) Maybe you could cut away the ‘super crafty’ line to just get “Handmade By”. Nonetheless, I WILL use the other four sentiments!I stamped this sentiment on some vellum with the Fired Brick Distress Oxide ink and clear embossed that with my Ranger clear embossing powder. I used the ‘Gridlock’ embossing folder from Tim Holtz on the Slate card base and loved how easy that folder worked on the front of a card – perfectly sized and small enough to go through my Cuttlebug without having to fold the card in half – in other words, the folder is under 6″ wide! I LOVE THAT! I found a USA map shape on line and used my Silhouette Portrait to cut that crafty pattern paper (nice angle!) and a mat from the cork pattern paper. I stamped the dashed line border stamp with SSS Intense Black Ink in a curve on the map (from NYC to Oregon) and clear embossed that as well. The envelope stamp is white embossed on the included watercolor paper two times, colored in with the Daniel Smith watercolor pallet, and fussy cut to be the terminals for the ends of the dotted line. The map is foam taped up on the card base, the envelopes are foam taped up on the map, and the vellum sentiment is foam taped to the map as well. (I hid the foam tape behind the H, E, L, L, and O!) I thought the Fired Brick ink matched the pattern paper very well, and I really like the simplified yet recognizable USA shape as my focal point. I think all the embossing on this card provides plenty of shine so no further embellishments needed.

Finally I get to a couple of the sentiments that have nothing to do with ‘crafts’ – The ‘THANKS’ (in typewriter keys) and ‘HUGS ENCLOSED’ stamps. There was one piece of pattern paper that had a nice typewriter pattern on one side, and a typewriter key pattern on the other side so here we go with a bit of a writing theme for the next card.Very straightforward, simple Thank You card! I cut the typewriter pattern paper to 2″ x 5.1/4″ and matted that on black card stock (from my stash) cut at 2.1/8″ x 5.3/8″ and glued that all down to the left side of the Banana card base. I stamped the THANKS sentiment in SSS Intense Black Ink, fussy cut that out and mounted that with foam squares to the card base. Since the typing paper in the typewriters had hearts on them, I thought that gave me the opportunity to use the heart stamps (solid and outline) from the stamp set. Then I realized that the HUGS ENCLOSED stamp would work perfectly here as well (it was a little small to be used as the solo sentiment on  card). I know lots of writers I could use this card for, and I think they would get a kick out of the ‘retro’ notion of typewriters!

Working with that THANKS stamp reminded me that I had an image file from Sillhouette called ‘Circle Distressed Alphabet’ and I thought I could use that to come up with my own ‘typewriter sentiment’ for another card – I do still have 4″ of that pattern paper to use!Here we have a fun Valentine card in the same typewriter vein. I cut a 2.5″ strip of the pattern paper for the center panel, cut the reverse down to two strips of  3/8″ and glued them down to the Slate card base that I had embossed with the Matrix embossing folder. I sized the ‘Circle Distressed Alphabet’ letters down to 3/8″, printed and cut them on my Silhouette, and used my 1/2″ circle punch to make white mats for each letter. Those are mounted to the card front with foam squares. I cut two thin strips of matte black card stock to cover the seams between the pattern papers, and added an old heart brad beneath the sentiment. I did continue the sentiment on the inside of the card, with ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ in Typewriter Hand font. I think this is the first time I’ve used that circle alphabet and I like it very much as typewriter keys! I realize Valentines has just passed, but I think this is a very masculine card any guy would be happy to give.

I wanted to play with the Daniel Smith watercolors, and knew I wanted to use one of my favorite ‘art’ sentiments kit, so I looked around on line for an interesting ‘sketchy’ image of the earth to watercolor, and this is what I came up with!I stamped all the art implements with Versa Mark ink down the two sides of the Audrey Blue card base, printed out the earth image on the watercolor paper from the kit, and used the DSmith watercolor pallet to color the globe. I fussy cut the globe and mounted it to the card front with foam tape. The sentiment is printed and cut 4 times on my Silhouette, and those are all glued together to make a nice chunky sentiment without having to use foam tape. I actually broke into the Studio Katia ‘Cupids Kiss’ crystals and dug out some of the clear crystals to add a touch of sparkle to this card.  I really like all the blues on this card and I LOVE THIS SENTIMENT!

I did get a spool of thread wood veneer die-cut along with my cameras, and there were a couple of pattern papers with a sewing theme, AND I have been watching some videos of people sewing and doing cross stitch on cards so I had to give it a whirl myself.I happened to have some Perforated Paper in my stash (Mill Hill, 14-count) and found a nice cross stitch pattern for this heart on line, so I stitched this up using 3 strands of DMC Floss 666 Bright Red.  This pattern sized down well for a standard card! I cut the sewing pattern paper to a 2.75″ strip, stamped the diagonal stripe border stamp with SSS Intense Black ink on some scrap white card stock, trimmed that down and glued it to the back of the pattern paper leaving a touch more than 1/8″ exposed on the top. I stamped the scissor and the the dashed line border along the bottom of the Burnt Orange card base (still using Intense Black ink), and glued the pattern papers directly to the card front. Naturally, I went to dafont.com to look for a cross-stitch font and found the ‘Simple Stitch’ font – Perfect! It’s a heart… It’s a valentine… It’s a PUN! I printed and cut the sentiment on my Silhouette (4 layers glued together again) and gave a light wash of the Mayan Red DSmith watercolor to the middle of the stitched heart. I glued the sentiment down to the perforated paper, and attached the whole heart to the card with foam tape – I was able to hide some of the foam tape behind the sentiment! I wrapped and glued the thread coming from behind the heart around the veneer spool and mounted the spool up with some foam tape as well. I love this! I will definitely play with some more stitching on my cards now – maybe in a larger format though. LOL!! Since this card was all about the cross stitching, I didn’t add any sparkles, gems or sequins to distract from the art!

I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with the circle stamp that had the envelope in the middle. I figured it would make a nice stamp on an envelope flap – maybe along with ‘HUGS ENCLOSED’ but it wasn’t speaking to me. I stamped it a few times to see how it stamped, and started doodling on one of the stamped images and came up with this.There’s some SNAIL MAIL for ya! LOL!! I think this little guy is so cute! (Of course the googly eyes help a lot!) I am just really taken with the kind of stark nature of this card and how it really pulls your eye to our little snail friend! Here we’re on the Audrey Blue card base sponged with a little Faded Jeans Distress Oxide ink along the bottom, a piece of the orange polka-dot pattern paper cut with a simple Stitched Hillside die and sponged with a touch of Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink. The hillside is actually glued flat to the card base but that sponging makes it look like it’s dimensional. A couple of clouds stamps from the SSS July ’17 card kit (Sea You Soon stamp set) in Avery Elle Pure White ink and lightly brushed with my Ink Duster brushes to soften them up a little. I stamped the circle letter stamp using a my Signme Aquarelle Brushes (cheap alternative to TomBow) and got a nice almost wooden texture. I drew ‘Sluggo’ here on some Bristol smooth card stock with a Pigma Micron 08 pen, and colored him with my Zigg Real Brush Markers. I fussy cut both pieces (taking care to remember the googly eyes) and attached both to the card front with foam tape. Of course, I rarely (if never) do a card without a sentiment on the front, so is there something inside? Of course there is! We all of us miss someone’s Birthday every now and then, so what better to blame a belated birthday greeting on than SNAIL MAIL! I created this sentiment with my Silhouette software using the Brady Bunch Remastered font and printed that up on some scrap white card stock and cut it out with a stitched rectangle die before gluing it down to the inside of the Audrey Blue card base  I think ‘Sluggo’ is worthy of continued use!!

While doing a little research for this kit, I found a terrific quote from Albert Einstein and immediately knew that I wanted to use it on one of my cards from this kit.I pulled out my ‘Gentleman Crafter’s Handy Guides for Pattern Stamping’ and used the Oval grid with eighteen sections to stamp my radiating lines of the brush, marker, and pencil stamps on some plain white card stock. I used the SSS Hybrid inks again and did a little ink blending right on the stamps. I did set the center of the oval off to the lower left quadrant of the card stock for some added interest. After stamping the initial 18 lines, I realized there was room for more, so I rotated my card stock to add another 18 rays between the first 18 and removed the paint brush and added the paint tube stamp, turned them in the opposite direction and stamped another set radiating out between the original rays. After completing the stamping, I trimmed the card stock down to 4″ x 5.25″ and matted that on a piece of black card stock from my stash cut to 4.1/8″ x 5.3/8″ and glued those both directly to the Banana card base. I created the sentiment sunburst in my Silhouette Portrait using the Noteworthy font and cut that and a black mat out and glued them together. I mounted that to the card front with foam tape and WOW! Lots of bang for the buck here – If you don’t have them, I highly recommend those pattern stamping guides… so many options and so many uses for creating interesting patterns with your stamps. LOVE this card and I simply ADORE this sentiment! I think this is a great booster for any crafter or artist who needs some encouragement sent their way!

Which brings us to the final card for this kit. I still haven’t used the artist painting palette stamp so enough talk about crafts – let’s make some ART! I’ve hardly used much of the Daniel Smith watercolor pallet included with this kit, so I was itching to do a watercolor background. I’ve already used pieces from the watercolor paper from the kit, so I broke out my Strathmore cold press 140# watercolor paper and painted this background. I LOVE IT! There are many layers of watercolor here – I completely used up the Pipestone and Serpentine paints from the palette, as well as most of the Gold and Green, but I was thrilled and very proud of the background I created here. Sometimes the secret is in knowing when to stop fussing with it! I cut the watercolor background and black mat with my Stitched Rectangle dies, glued them together and foam taped them to the last white card base. I stamped the artist palette and the brush in SSS Intense Black ink, colored the spots on the pallet with the DSmith watercolors, and fussy cut them both out. I tried to imitate the sentiments from the stamp set for the ‘You Color My World’ sentiment using the Lucida Grande font and I sized it to fit within my smallest Stitched Rectangle die. I did cut four of them (three from plain white) and glued them all together – I am becoming more enamored of this technique – it gives you great dimension without having to fuss with foam tape! And this may be the first sentiment I’ve created that imitates the ‘white embossing on black card stock’ look. I Like It! Needless to say, I love this card a lot and I feel like this sentiment is very useful. These DSmith watercolors are some of the best on the market and his dot palettes are a great way to experiment with his colors without breaking the bank!

That concludes my 10 Cards 1 Kit post for the Simon Says Stamp February 2018 ‘A Colorful Crafty Life’ card kit. A lovely batch of cards that are usable for many occasions.

This kit marks the end of my one year as a Simon Says Stamp Card Kit subscriber. When I started doing card kits (two years ago), I decided to do one single brand for a whole year (covering all the holidays) before I moved on to another company. I have enjoyed my year with Simon Says Stamp very much and have created some truly great, fun cards. Here’s a summary of my thoughts (if I may!) on the Simon Says Stamp Card Kits. PROS: 1. First off, the quality of the products included in ALL of their kits is superlative – the SSS card stock is very high quality and their stamps sets are unimpeachable. Of course I didn’t LOVE every kit that came out this past year, but I was determined to take the good with the bad and see what I could create. As a subscriber, you can skip a month if you don’t care for the offerings, but that wasn’t an option for me in my exploration of available card kits out on the market. CONS: 1. I felt like the quantity of products included with the kits varied wildly month to month – the number of card stock papers fluctuated from 3 to 6, and some kits were overstuffed with product while others seemed rather light. 2. They appear to really like PINK over at Simon Says Stamp – if your kit doesn’t have any pink card stock, you can trust that there will be plenty of pink in the pattern papers and/or accessories. 3. Shipping is $6.99 per kit in America and you do not have the option of adding product from their store to be included with your monthly kit – thus avoiding additional shipping charges. 4. The monthly cost of the subscription kits went up this month by $5.00 with NO NOTICE given to their subscribers. After 11 months of being charged $31.94, I was surprised to find my charge for the February kit was $36.98. I sent a note to service@simonsaysstamp.com asking if the increase was only for this month (extra supplies) or was a permanent increase – I NEVER received a reply, and only after looking at the subscription prices on the website did I discover that it was indeed a price increase. This really irritated me and kind of soured my (otherwise fun) year with SSS. If I have given permission to charge my account a certain amount every month, I feel like it is only GOOD BUSINESS to alert me when that price goes up. I’m sure there is some fine print in their contract somewhere that says they are allowed to change their prices without notice, but that lack of notification felt a little underhanded to me. It’s not like they don’t have my email address! I’m sorry to end this post on a bit of a downer, but this really irked me. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here – I hope I was able to provide you with a little inspiration and a couple of laughs! Stay tuned for the announcement of my next Card Kit subscription – I might take the month of March off, but will be continuing as part of the design team at Love From Lizi. Thank you so much for your encouragement and support and, Happy Crafting!!!

Hello folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi February Card Kit. This kit has sold out now, but I hope I can provide a little inspiration for those of you who have already bought this kit and are eagerly awaiting delivery! As usual I like to dig into the stamp set to begin with, and though there aren’t any stamps to color in this set, there are a lot of solid balloon shapes with decorations and text. This kit was screaming Happy Birthday to me so I set out to make a bunch of birthday cards!

For my first card this month, I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a pattern using the stamps, and creating a sentiment built in to the middle of the card. On a piece of 4″ x 5.25″ white card stock from my stash, and using my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform, I stamped the ‘Happy” balloon, the ‘Birthday’ balloon and the plain balloon 16 times in a simple grid pattern using Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks in Broken China, Cracked Pistachio, Fossilized Amber, and Fired Brick. I reserved the center four spaces for the “Happy 50 Birthday” sentiment and embossed the ’50’ with VersaMark ink and Ranger White Embossing powder. I mounted the stamped piece to a mat of black card stock cut to 4.125″ x 5.375″ and foam taped the pieces to the Mint card base. I tied six little bows from plain white twine (from my stash) for the center balloons and added the small blue sequins from the sequin mix to add a just a touch of sparkle and to keep the shiny embossing company! The text on these balloon stamps is very fine so a LIGHT hand is called for when inking them up – that text and those patterns will fill up with ink if you’re not careful..! A very colorful  birthday card, and right off the bat, I’ve used five of the stamps from the stamp set already! We’re off to a great start!

One of the 12″ x 12″ cut apart card stocks in the kit had this great HB sentiment with a bunch of candles. Never one to go the simple route, I cut the HB sentiment off, and fussy cut all the candles and flames. The black background showed off these candles much better than the off-white background they were printed on, and I added a touch of playfulness by mounting the candles on slight angles instead of perfectly straight up and down. I used my Zigg 2-Way glue pen to draw little highlights in the center of the flames and, once that dried, used the Nuvo Gilding flakes from the kit to add a touch of gold to the flames. Everything is foam taped onto a Black mat (from the kit) cut at 4″ x 5.25″. I added two corners of the wide gold glitter peel off stickers from the kit to the black mat and the thin ones around the sentiment, and realized that the flames needed a touch more bling so they weren’t overpowered by the peel offs – gold Stickles to the rescue – right in the center of the gold gilding – they matched the sparkle almost perfectly, and helped draw your eye to the flames! I mounted everything directly to the pink card base (almost hid that pink completely..!) and I think this birthday card is quite eye-catching!Sometimes I think I’m a little too literal in my thinking, but when I’m looking for ideas, the stamps and sentiments in a kit will usually provide some inspiration. One of the balloon stamps had the sentiment ‘Flying by to say HI!” so, being faithful to that sentiment, here’s my flying balloon card…! On a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock cut with the largest Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die, I used my Ink Duster blending brush and some TH Distress Oxide ink in Broken China, along with a new My Favorite Things Cloud Stencil to ink the puffy clouds for the background. (LOVE THAT!!) I stamped the balloon with Ranger Archival Ink in Manganese Blue, fussy cut it out, and covered that with a good layer of Glossy Accents. I dug up some blue and white bakers twine from my stash (not a perfect match, but close enough!) to use as the string on the balloon – just a simple knot around the neck and some extra for trailing in the wind. The balloon is mounted with foam tape and the string is glued down with my Multi Medium Matte, and everything is mounted directly to one of the white card bases. Still, something was needed to bring this card all together, and sequins and sparkly bits didn’t seem copacetic  in the sky… but wait! I dug out my ‘Sea You Soon’ stamp set from Simon Says Stamp and I remembered how much I liked these three little flying bird stamps – I stamped those in Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink and WOW! Almost a “tromp l’oeil” effect! It added so much depth and perspective to this card. Once again, sometimes the simplest of cards have the greatest impact. I like this card more and more every time I look at it!Here’s another example of my being literal! This ‘gift’ stamp has the sentiment ‘It’s a Special Day’ so I figured I could use that stamp to highlight a particular DAY for someone’s birthday! I fiddled around with some monthly calendars for a bit but came to the realization that all you need is a box and a date to specify someone’s actual birth day! And to make that day “special” why not show a list of famous people born on that very day! (If you Wikipedia a specific date, they will have a list of people who share that birthday!) On my Silhouette, I added the (partial) list of people born on April 18th, and added my calendar box and date (in Lucida Grande font) to the center of the list, and cut out the whole piece  measuring 4″ x 5.25″. I also cut the date box away from the background as well, and mounted that on a small mat from the striped ombre pattern paper. I cut an oval frame using my stitched oval dies from the glitter card stock specialty paper (and a piece of black fun foam) to make a stylized ‘circle that date’ frame for the gift stamp (stamped in Ranger Archival Vermillion ink (pigment inks work pretty good with these stamps!)) I mounted the date box to the background with some foam tape and attached all directly to the second pink card base. A thin strip of the glitter peel offs (between the years and the names) and a few gold sequins with the Nuvo Crystal Drops in the centers adds a nice touch of bling and keeps the glitter paper oval in check! I believe this is the MOST PINK I get with this entire card kit (glad that’s over! LOL!). I really like the idea of pointing out how ‘special’ a birthday is by showing who you share your birthday with! I will use this idea again!I’m still trying to use all the stamps in the kit, so let’s put the “It’s Your Birthday” hat stamp on one of the balloons! I also have that great stamp booklet to dig into as well, so I stamped the hat in Fired Brick Distress Oxide and the balloon in Broken China Distress Oxide (masking the bottom edge of the hat) on the right half of one of the white card bases, added the balloon string stamped in Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink, and added the stripe and polka-dot pattern paper to the left side. I picked the “Enjoy every moment” sticker from the booklet, and removed the sticky with my  EK Tools powder tool and mounted that to the pattern paper with some foam tape for a touch of dimension. A medium strip of the peel offs next to the pattern paper and an assortment of sequins, gems and enamel drops to add a little sparkle. I did add a ‘Happy Birthday’ to the inside of this card using the die from the kit and the black ‘matte mirror’ specialty paper.  I really enjoy the ‘balloon with a hat’ image and I LOVE the gold foil on these stickers!I really liked the “simply amazing’ sticker from the booklet, and decided to try a gold and white card. I stuck the sticker down to some of the black card stock from the kit, and fussy cut a mat around it. I cut apart the “YOU ARE” off of a different sticker, matted that on black and used that to complete this sentiment. Since the ‘amazing’ sticker had some chevrons on it, this was my opportunity to use the gold mirror chevron pieces from the kit. I added some of the ‘liquid gold’ ribbon on the left side of the card base, added some of the thin black satin ribbon to the center of the gold ribbon, and used a couple of peel off strips on either side of that. I did run the ribbon(s) through my Xyron sticker maker to apply adhesive to their back sides before sticking them down to the white card base. I added the chevron mirror pieces to the top, and the three chevron stickers from the booklet to the bottom (that’s what I call really sticking with a theme!!). A few gold sequins from the sequin mix help give focus to the sentiment, and here we have a very sharp, highly reflective Birthday card. And yes, I did add another die-cut Happy Birthday sentiment on the inside of the card cut from the gold glitter paper. More glitz!!Some of the stickers from the sticker booklet didn’t have white borders on them at all, and I was drawn to this ‘live the life you love’ sticker. Since that sticker had fish-tail ends, I decided to use the harlequin diamonds pattern paper and fussy cut two pieces to frame out this card. I did cut the outside edges of the patter paper pieces with my LF Stitched Rectangle die, and to bring in a little extra gold to match the foil sticker, I used my Zigg 2-way glue pen to trace the fussy cut edges of the pattern paper onto the card and, once dried, used the gilding flakes to foil the glue lines. The pattern paper and the sentiment banner are foam tape mounted to the yellow card base and that brings this whole card together, especially when I added the gold foil arrow stickers to either side of the sentiment. I did add a die-cut Happy Birthday to the inside of the card using the glitter specialty paper, and we have a very unique, colorful Birthday card suitable for any guy on your list! The foiling on the stickers is really nice and provides all the glitz needed!

Now my obsession with using all the stamps in this stamp set started to set in and I was wondering how I was going to use all the numbers in the stamp set. Just stamp them randomly for a background? Make a pattern with them? I don’t know anybody celebrating their 9,876,543,210th birthday..! Then I remembered those new “Turnabout Stamps” that Concord and 9th came out with this last year. HMMMMMM…!! Could I create my own ‘turnabout stamp’ using the numbers from the stamp set??? After much trial and error (obsessive? ME?) I finally came up with a layout that worked splendidly! This is all done on a 5.5″ square piece of card stock and it uses all 10 of the number stamps! I stamped the first pass in Wilted Violet Distress Oxide ink, and turned the page 1/4 turn to the right (clockwise) to stamp the second pass in Fired Brick.Another 1/4 turn clockwise for stamping the third pass in Cracked Pistachio.And the last 1/4 rotate clockwise for the final stamping in Spiced Marmalade!SUCCESS!! I am so jazzed that this came out so nicely!! This arrangement gives an apparently random look that is, nonetheless fairly regimented and reproducible! Though the complete pattern is only a touch over 4″ square (square cards anyone?!), I figure there are a lot of uses for a pattern like this. Like in this next card for instance..!I used my ‘turnabout’ stamping as background paper for this Happy Birthday card. I paired that up with the polka dot pattern paper from the kit, the ‘A Very Happy Birthday to You’ balloon stamp and the Happy Birthday banner from the color-able sticker sheet. I stamped the balloon in SSS Hybrid ink Orange Slush and fussy cut it out. I found that the hybrid inks worked very well with these balloon stamps – just keep a light hand when inking them up! I matted both pattern papers with the black card stock from the kit – each layer is 1/4″ smaller than the layer previous – the back piece is mounted directly to the mint card base, the numbers layer is mounted on foam tape, and the banner and balloon are mounted on foam tape as well. I colored the banner with my colored pencils and used my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush markers to color in the sentiment (boy that’s some tiny coloring!!). I tied a piece of Spellbinders Lumberjack Days Collection Jean Cord to the neck of the balloon and straight down to the edge of the top layer. Since the banner had stars on it (some of them in glitter) I used the banner die from the kit to cut some stars out of the glitter specialty paper and added those around the edges. That’s enough sparkle for this very colorful, Happy Birthday card. And 11 stamps used! LOL!!Okay, enough with the color! Let’s go monochromatic!! In honor of all the chalkboard cut-aparts that came in the kit, I fount this great quote from Elizabeth Taylor. Perfect sentiment for one of the big wood-veneer gems in the kit!. Now, I don’t have glorious handwriting, so I usually turn to my Sillhouette for sentiments such as this, but I was a little concerned with matching up the sketch function of my Silhouette with one of the chalkboard pieces from the pattern paper, so I simply went ahead and created my own chalkboard label on the black card stock in the kit. I used my Signo Broad white gel pen in the sketch mode of my Silhouette Portrait, to draw the label and the sentiment (in Typewriter Hand font) and then cut it out. I also cut a mat for the label (hard to see in this pic) from the black matte mirror specialty paper. I then outlined the mat with my Zigg 2-way Glue pen, let that dry and added the Nuvo gilding flakes to the glue line. The label and it’s mat are mounted with foam tape on a card base made from the black matte mirror specialty paper (I couldn’t resist!) The diamond veneer piece is foam mounted to the card base as well, and simply covered with – get this – gold Stickles!! SO PERFECT!! A small bow made from the ‘liquid gold’ ribbon in the kit adorns the top of the label, and here’s a card I think most woman the world over would love! I do go on to complete the sentiment on the inside of the card, actually using one of the chalkboard cut-outs from the kit and the Happy Birthday die cut out of some white glitter card stock from my stash. A perfect little addition to complete this stunning card. I am very impressed with this Happy Birthday die – it is very accurate and cuts perfectly no matter what material I used. This one is for all the ladies out there!!

Now we get to the last card from this kit – and I have to beg your forgiveness – or at least your indulgence – because, yes, I did it, I made another 2-way pull-tab slider card for you!! This mechanism has caught a lot of attention since the first of the year, and I figured what the heck! Third Time’s a Charm! Right!?

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After all, a rising balloon makes perfect sense!!! So, once again, this uses the ‘double slider card’ mechanism to raise the green heart up from behind the other balloons. These balloon are stamped in the SSS hybrid inks in Watermelon, Orange Slush, Lemon Zest and Key Lime. The orange, red and yellow balloons are all glued together and mounted with foam tape to provide a little ‘garage’ to park the green balloon. A tug on the pull tab raises the green balloon that has the ‘4’ stamp embossed with white embossing powder and I added the ‘th’ with my white gel pen. This is all created on top of the small heart ‘chalkboard’ pattern paper, and my white twine is tied to the necks of the balloons and gathered together at the center and attached behind the notch. The pull-tab has another piece of white twine attached that reveals itself as the balloon is revealed. I LOVE THIS CARD! When I saw that this stamp set featured balloons, I knew I would do another slider card! This is yet another way to use this trick to actually make something appear! I promise to work on a how-to video that shows how to make these 2-way pull-tab slider cards. As soon as I get caught up with my Card Kits…! SO….That’s my 10 Cards for the Love From Lizi February 2018 Card Kit… 9 Birthday Cards and 1 Flying Balloon card. A very colorful, clean, and eye-catching collection of cards! And, by golly, I used EVERY stamp in the stamp set! WOO-HOO!!  LOL!!! Mission accomplished! Speaking of ‘every stamp’ – here’s a BONUS GIFT for all you folks that purchased this stamp kit – if you would like to receive my pattern for the homemade ‘turnabout’ numbers stamp grouping, go to the CONTACT page at the top of this post, and send me an email asking for the ‘turnabout stamp pattern’. If you are a follower of my blog and send me an email message, I will respond with a PDF file that shows the layout of the 10 number stamps so you can do your own turnabout stamping! SCORE!! And Remember! If you go shopping at Love From Lizi, please use my link: http://bit.ly/LFLlink 

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. I appreciate all your support and encouragement. Don’t forget to request that pattern, and Happy Crafting!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my un-boxing of the Love From Lizi February 2018 Card Kit. I had some delivery issues with my local post office and just received my box today (February 1st) so let’s dig in and see what we have in our kit this month! Card stock – 5 sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ in Matte Black, White (2), Soft Yellow, Pink (sigh), and Mint Green. I like that Lizi has gone to standard USA paper size for her kit card stocks.

Our Specialty card stock this month is an A2 sheet of Matte Black mirror card stock (think chalk board) and a half sheet of gold glitter card stock – that glitter is truly a part of the paper and hardly sheds at all – which is also true of the Gold Glitter peel off stickers – I LOVE THESE (and ALL the LFL pin-stripe peel off stickers!!).  We are also treated to a sheet of coloring stickers that have little gold glitter accents on each sticker.

We get three sheets of 12″ x 12″ cut-apart card stocks in this kit – all double sided that feature pretty large cut-apart pieces with full patterns on the back. Really like those candles and that colorful heart pattern paper.

Even larger cut-apart pieces on the second sheet with gorgeous flowers on a black background as the pattern paper on the back – love that!!

And a sheet of ‘chalkboard’ cut-aparts – some with sentiments, but most blank – very interesting! Some terrific stripes in assorted patterns on the back side as well.

12 sheets of 6″ x 6″ single sided pattern papers finishes out the paper portion of this card kit – all very color-coordinated with the kit – lots of graphic patterns and only one real flowery pattern – but, nevertheless, there are a couple of pinks included as well…!! LOL!

Now we come to the exclusive stamp set for this month – Balloons, party hat, gift box and 0-9 number stamps! Oh! and there’s a balloon string too for good measure! The one balloon that doesn’t have a sentiment is useful for stamping the numbers on! Not particularly a stamp set that lends itself to coloring, but perfect for all the birthdays in your life! Seems like I ALWAYS run out of Birthday cards!

Now here’s the contents of our Embellishment bag this month – just about the best part of any LFL Card Kit!! Top row, left to right: LFL Sequin Mix with a couple of pinks, mint greens, gold and black heart sequins, some Nuvo Gilding flakes in Gold (these go a LONG way..!!), Nuvo Crystal Drops in Bubblegum Blush (more pink!) some self-adhesive gold mirror chevron pieces, two golden ‘diamond’ paper clips, and two wafer dies – a Happy Birthday die (nice detail!) and a small banner die that also has three star cut outs in the center. I think this is the first ‘banner’ die I own!! Bottom row, left to right: RIBBON! 1 meter of 5 different ribbons – a thin (1/8″) Mint satin and Black satin, a 1/4″ ‘liquid gold’ ribbon and a 3/8″ soft Yellow and light Pink ribbon. That’s a lot of ribbon! We get 5 wood veneer heart die-cuts (with a hole in the top) and 2 large golden veneer die cuts in a diamond and a heart shape with twine ties and little white banners. Very interesting! Now, Lizi usually includes a 12″ x 12″ sticker sheet with her card kits but this month she mentioned that she couldn’t get her hands on enough of those so we get this little sticker booklet instead. This booklet has 5 sheets of gold foiled stickers with a wide variety of sentiments and assorted accent pieces – I REALLY like these – looks like you could make 20 cards just using these stickers!

So that rounds up the supplies included with this month’s Love From Lizi Card Kit. There are STILL a few kits available, so if you like what you see please use my link to go and grab one of these kits for yourself! http://bit.ly/LFLlink  I will get to work right away on my 10 Cards 1 Kit for this month,  and Happy Crafting!!!

 

 

Hello Folks, Scott here with my 10 cards from the Simon Says Stamp January 2018 Card kit. This kit was obviously geared toward Valentine’s day with all the reds and pinks, and is still available at Simon Says Stamp.com! This kit comes with the ‘Really Like You’ clear stamp set; 12 single-sided sheets of 6″ x 6″ Pebbles, Inc. ‘Forever My Always’ pattern paper; a Crate Paper ‘Main Squeeze’ puffy sticker sheet; a Tsukineko Delicata ink cube in Pink Shimmer; a full jar of Tim Holtz’ Distress Glitter Dust in Vintage Platinum; Six SSS metallic envelopes in Doll Pink, Schoolhouse Red, Cotton Candy, Ivory, and Cream; five sheets of SSS 100# card stock in Schoolhouse Red, Mint, Black, Cotton Candy, Doll Pink, and one sheet of Neenah Desert Storm 100#  card stock. I would usually begin my 10 cards by coloring the images in a stamp set but, as you might be able to tell, besides a couple of heart stamps, there are no images to color. This is my 11th month as a subscriber with the Simon Says Stamp Card Kits and out of the last 11 months, only two stamp sets actually had NO hearts on them at all…  LOL!  I get it!! I get it! They really like hearts at SSS!! I did go ahead and make 10 card bases from the 5 sheets of SSS card stock. My goal with this kit, was to try my best to make some lovely Valentine’s Day cards that a guy wouldn’t be embarrassed to give to their sweetheart.

For my first card, I wanted to see what kind of Valentine card I could make using the black card base, so reached for a couple of pattern papers – one with the ‘candy hearts’ (almost black on some of those hearts) and a wide stripe from one of the two pages of cut-apart pattern pages. I did manage to trim the ‘xoxo’ strip from one of the top strips ofthe pattern papers and pieced the strip together where the display hole was. I was going to use the Desert Storm card stock to die cut the heart, (with a Darice “Nesting Hearts’ die) but I thought that my Recollections Kraft card stock was a closer match to the kraft colors on the pattern papers, so I stamped the ‘XOXO’ stamp with VersaMark ink and embossed that with my Ranger Ultra Fine White embossing powder on top of the kraft die cut. I did cut the main background with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die and attached that directly to the black card base. I used foam tape to attach all the pieces to the background, and, lo and behold, we have a pretty masculine Valentine’s Day card. I thought the die cut matched the ‘candy hearts’ on the pattern paper really well, and the pinks and reds don’t really dominate the color pallet. NICE!

So, would I be able to create a card with NO pinks and reds with this kit? Here we go!:I cut out a quarter of the sheet of Desert Storm card stock with the same stitched rectangle die, and stamped the ‘I Really like you’ sentiment in Cracked Pistachio Distress oxide ink (matched that mint card base really well!) and embossed that with some Ranger clear embossing powder. I usually strive to use ALL the stamps in a stamp set on my 10 cards, and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use all of the ‘block text’ stamps in the set, but after running across the ‘block text’ pattern paper, I decided to use them all on one card! I literally mounted the stamp set to my Tim Holtz stamp platform, and stamped ALL the text blocks in the exact same place where they were mounted on the acetate. I used Distress Oxide ink in Walnut Stain, and added a couple of rows of the heart border stamp as well. I added a strip of the pattern paper directly to the top of the Desert Storm piece and then mounted the whole piece to the Mint card base on a piece of fun foam for a touch of dimension. A few SSS Moonshine Confetti sequins adds a touch of sparkle, and the result is a Valentine’s Day card without a single spot of red or pink! YAY!

Well, I knew that I had 6 red and pink card bases to use, so I embraced the pink and went with the color flow! This Happy Valentine’s Day banner arrangement was one of the bigger images in the pattern papers, and when I discovered that I had a scalloped die that fit it perfectly, I decided to go ahead and use it. That scalloped die is one of the very first dies I ever owned, and I have no idea where it came from anymore… sorry! I paired that piece with the matching pattern paper (I like that the sentiment flowers are on white and the background flowers are on black – nice contrast while still matching!) and punched a scallop on the edges of that pattern paper with my American Crafts border punch. The Vintage Platinum Distress Glitter Dust looked enticing in the bottle, so I wanted try it out! Using scor-tape, I glittered the edges of a scrap piece of card stock to make a mat behind the sentiment, and added two stripes to the Cotton Candy card base with 1/8″ scor-tape. I attached the pattern paper directly to the card base, and used foam tape to mount the mat and the sentiment for some nice dimension. I LOVE the look of that glitter, but when they say glitter DUST they mean DUST! This stuff is SO FINE that it went everywhere -even with me being super careful to try to contain it! I will have to try mixing it into some texture paste or something to see if I can achieve the same effect while cutting down on some of the mess! TBD! Yes, this is PINK but not overly fussy and feminine…!

Okay, that’s one of the Cotton Candy card bases, let’s try using the Schoolhouse Red base. I did really like the heart shape created with xoxo’s  from the cut-apart sheets and paired that with the xoxo pattern paper. Again, the kraft color on the pattern papers matched my Recollections Kraft card stock better than the Desert Storm card stock, so I used that for a mat behind both pieces of the pattern paper, attaching the XOXO paper and mat directly to the card base, and the heart shape paper and mat with some foam tape. In my continuing efforts to use ALL of the stamps, I used the xoxo border stamp (I found both border stamps in this set a little short – neither would go clear across (horizontally OR vertically) an A2 card base – odd) stamped with VersaMark ink and embossed with my Ranger Silver embossing powder on the top and bottom of the card. Now, I was looking for a long sentiment for this card, but all the sentiments from the stamp set were pretty short, so I reached for my Lawn Fawn ‘I Love You’ border die and cut that out of some silver metallic card stock and a piece of craft foam. I glued those together for a really nice and chunky, yet delicate sentiment. I really like all the different xoxo’s on this card, and I have to admit that I truly LOVE that Schoolhouse Red card stock!

SSS has included the Doll Pink card stock in some of their other kits, and, if I have to use pink, I do like this Doll Pink.  In our March 2017 card kit from Simon Says Stamp, we got a sample of the Nuvo Embellishment Mousse in Peony Pink, and I thought that was a pretty close match to the Doll Pink card base, so I grabbed a Julie Balzer “Swirly Garden” stencil and a piece of black card stock from my stash and created a background for my fifth card. I did have to add some water to my old pot of mousse and let it re-hydrate in  order to get it to spread enough to go through the stencil (that mousse dries out fairly quickly no matter how tight you screw the lid on..!) but I got some good coverage with the leftover mousse, and, after it was sufficiently dry, cut it out with my Stitched Rectangle die. I liked the color, the texture, and the pattern so much that I thought a simple sentiment was all this card needed. I did attach the stenciled piece to a black mat and attached those directly to the card base, then took that old scalloped rectangle die to cut another piece of black card stock from my stash for the sentiment. The ‘You’re My favorite” stamp is from the stamp set, and I stamped that (multiple times!) with the Delicatta Pink Shimmer ink cube using my stamping platform and attached that to the card with foam tape. I like the brightness of that ink on the black, but I don’t think the ‘pink’ particularly reads very well. However, the shimmer from the ink and the shine of the embellishment mousse are really very eye-catching and I think the pink and black work really well together without being too girly-girly… Do you think so?

Now back to the 2nd Cotton Candy Card base. I’ve used three of the four sentiment stamps by now, so I started doing my own sentiments on my Silhouette. I really love the ‘Always kiss me goodnight’ and created that using the Ballerina Script font. I used my Silhouette to print and cut that sentiment and also cut two mats for the heart (one in plain red and one in gold metallic) on the Silhouette as well. I decided to use the gold because all the stickers were outlined with gold – a touch odd to have gold stickers but  silver glitter in the kit… I kept reaching for the puffy stickers only to realize that I needed some gold to match! So that’s where the gold metallic accents come from…! I used that great striped pattern paper from the kit, and outlined that with some thin strips of gold directly on top of the card base. There are 4 layers of the pink printed card stock glued together, 3 layers of the red mat glued together, and a single gold mat on the bottom – that whole assembly is foam taped to the card base. I stamped all of the tiny heart stamps in Distress Oxide Fired Brick and used clear embossing powder on them all for a little shine. One of the puffy stickers from the kit and an old red heart brad complete the embellishments here, and I think the clean unadorned lines feel very masculine! LOL!

I was starting to feel a little guilty about using all those ‘word block’ stamps on one card, so I though it would be fun to pair a couple of those up with an oversize ampersand. On the Mint card base, I created three mats – the bottom is Recollections Kraft card stock (3″ wide), then the teal polka-dot pattern paper (2.75″ wide) and the xoxo pattern paper (2.375″ wide) on top. I cut the ampersand on my Sillhouette out of 3 layers of my kraft cardstock in the Chopin Script font, glued them all together, covered that with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen and glued it down to the card front. I stamped the ‘HUGS’ and ‘KISSES’ block word stamps in Distress Oxide Walnut Stain on my standard Staples ivory card stock and fussy cut simple boxes around them before attaching them to the card with foam tape. The heart and lips puffy stickers added a nice touch of whimsy and shine to a fairly simple, but very handsome card – and not necessarily a ‘Valentine’s Day’ card.

I ran across this great sentiment on-line, and thought it would work very well with the stitched heart stamp from the kit – and here’s that terrific Schoolhouse Red card stock!I used my stamp platform to stamp two rows of that stitched heart stamp along the top and bottom sides of the card base with VersaMark ink and embossed them with Ranger White super fine embossing powder. I cut a piece of red glitter card stock from my stash (1.5″ wide) and created heart scallop border on a piece of the red gingham pattern paper with my American Crafts Border punch, glued that and glitter card stock directly to the card base. Back to my Silhouette (have I mentioned how much I love my Silhouette Portrait in this post yet? LOL!) for this great sentiment. ‘you are my’ is in the DIN Condensed font and the ‘Happily Ever After’ is in the Smoothie Shoppe font. I cut three of those and glued them together and then glued those to a mat cut from vellum, and used foam tape to attach the whole sentiment to the card base. I love how the vellum kind of blurs the edges of the pattern paper around the sentiment. I used my Spectrum Noir sparkle pen to fill in the centers of all the stamped hearts, and a few tiny Fimo Fun hearts from Queen & Co. add just the perfect finishing touch to this non-frilly valentine.

I still have the large solid heart stamp to use, so, for a little adventure with color, I stamped a row of six hearts on some white card stock with my stamp platform in a rainbow of Distress Oxide inks: Wilted Violet, Broken China, Cracked Pistachio, Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, and Fired Brick. I really like the way the Distress Oxide inks are translucent and layer on top of each other so nicely. I was determined to use that fantastic ombre pattern paper and thought that this Lawn Fawn ‘Big Scripty Words’ stamp and die matched with the script on the paper extremely well. I cut the pattern paper with my Stitched Rectangle die, mounted that to the card base with some fun foam, fussy cut the row of stamped hearts and attached them with foam tape to the card front. I stamped the ‘love ya’ sentiment in Worn Lipstick Distress oxide ink on some plain white card stock, and embossed it with clear embossing powder to add some shine and a little depth. I used the matching die to cut four layers of the white card stock (including the stamped sentiment) and glued them all together for a real chip-board effect with the sentiment. I added that great skinny washi tape (I just got that for Christmas!) to the top and bottom of the pattern paper and I am amazed at how perfectly that new tape goes with this card! I did think this was the only sheet of patter paper that actually matched the Doll Pink card stock, and I am pleased at how the colors stand up and demand to be seen on top of all that pink..!! Not necessarily masculine, but clean and modern at least!

Now we get to my last card of this kit. The only stamp I haven’t used is the ‘Love You’ stamp, and I have the last black card base to use, so, in lieu of a shaker card or a slider card this month, I created this fun pull tab interactive card.

This action is based on a double slider card, but instead of pulling the tab and having something come out of the other side of the card, you pull this tab and the heart goes up to the moon revealing the rest of the sentiment: ‘to the moon and back’. And yes, if you push the tab the heart returns to it’s starting point. I simply added a small slit to the front of the card that allows the heart to be attached to the plastic bag ‘conveyor belt’ with a simple paper hinge. The galaxy paper, moon and continuation of the sentiment were printed and cut with my Silhouette (that’s the Arabella font) and I stamped the sentiment with VersaMark ink on my red card stock, embossed it in white and die cut it with my Darice Nesting Heart die. Lots of Sheer Shimmer Spritz makes the galaxy really sparkle, and now the ‘Love you to the moon and back’ sentiments becomes almost literal as you move the heart to the moon and back..! LOVE this so much! Now here’s a very macho Valentine’s Day card with a little engineering magic to convey your deep manly feelings for your loved one! LOL!!! This was so much fun to figure out and create! I LOVE IT!!

Here we have a very handsome set of Valentines that avoid the frill and frippery so often associated with the holiday, yet still feels artistic, sincere, clean and modern. I did have a fun time with this card kit, and am proud to say that I did use every single stamp in the stamp set, and I used a little bit of everything that came in this kit. Now THAT was the fun part! I do have plenty of ink and glitter left over and a few sheets of pattern paper and, of course, the ‘Really Like You’ stamp set will find a loving home in my stash! That about wraps up the SSS January 2018 card kit on this end! The last I looked, this kit was still available at SimonSaysStamp.com if you want to partake in some of the loving..! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me, I hope you enjoyed my cards and somewhat wacky ideas – It’s always a pleasure to be able to share with you here. If you have any question or comments please use the comment button and if you’d like to contact me directly, go to the contact page and send me an e-mail! Spread the Cheer, (and the LOVE) and Happy Crafting!!

Hello Folks! HAPPY NEW YEAR! Scott here with my 10 cards featuring the Love From Lizi January 2018 ‘New Beginnings’ Card Kit. As usual, this kit was jam-packed with supplies and surprises in bright beautiful colors starring a couple of youngsters and child-themed stamps and papers. Almost TOO many choices for someone like me! I habitually try to use as many kit supplies and stamps as possible with my 10 cards in an effort to show you as many options as possible. This kit HAS sold out – as do most of the Love From Lizi card kits, so, if you would like to get in on the fun, I highly recommend subscribing!

To begin, I did create ten 4.25″ x 5.5″ card bases from the 5 sheets of card stock in the kit, and I stamped all the image stamps on Bristol Smooth card stock with my SSS Intense Black Ink, and colored them up using the Tangerine Chameleon Pen from the kit (on the dress and shorts), and my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I did use my Sakura Black glaze pen to highlight the eyes of all the boy and girl stamps used on these cards.  For my first card, I was drawn to the ladybug die that demonstrated the great amount of detail that is possible with a wafer die-cut. On the vanilla card base, I matted one of the cut-aparts (in red to match a ladybug) on a piece of the green harlequin pattern paper and mounted those directly to the card base. I did outline the cut-apart with the thin Grass Green Mirror peel-offs and created a partial frame around that with the wide peel-offs. I think this type of incomplete frame really pulls the eye in, while still keeping the overall card light and unencumbered. After researching ladybug images on the web, I die cut the ladybug in dark blue and red and fussy cut a black background for the body. I used my Ranger Enamel Accents in Classic White and Black Tie to fill in the spots and eyes on the body of the ladybug. I used a pin to get the white enamel spread around the big black spot behind the head, and then I covered the whole thing with two coats of Glossy Accents. Some foam tape provides a little dimension for attaching the bug to my card. I was thrilled at the accuracy I was able to achieve with this die-cut and I think the over-sized ladybug reinforces the ‘dream BIG’ sentiment from the cut-apart piece.

On the back of one of the cut-apart sheets was a bunch of building blocks that (maybe because I’m a guy..?) really caught my eye, so, intending to build a ‘bigger and better’ structure, I fussy cut a lot of the blocks out of the pattern paper and started looking for an appropriate pattern paper for the background. A lot of the 6″ x 6″ pattern papers were simply too busy to use as a background for my building blocks so I went back to the original cut-apart page and used my Lawn Fawn Stitched rectangle die to cut out a background that included the blocks – AHA! now my block structure can be multi-dimensional! I stamped the “Dream big LITTLE ONE” sentiment from the stamp set in Fired Brick Distress Oxide ink and embossed that with my Ranger Clear Embossing powder before attaching it to the Slate Grey card base. I added my cut-out blocks on top of that with foam squares, fussy-cut the boy, and foam taped him standing on the blocks. I really like the disparate scale of the blocks and the boy and I love his satisfied look!

Now, for some equal time with the girl stamp. I thought it would be especially great if this card showcased the girl, while not pandering to gender-specific hopes and dreams, so I created this card featuring a little girl who wants to be the captain of a ship! On the Sky Blue card base, I cut a background from the alphabet pattern paper with my Stitched Rectangle die and used some Broken China Distress Oxide ink to sponge around the edges. I added the blue patterned border sticker with waves cut on one edge (with a 1/2″ circle punch), and then added that directly to the bottom edge of the pattern paper. I stamped the “Let your dreams set Sail” sentiment from the stamp set with SSS intense Black ink on a scrap of white card stock, cut it into a simple banner shape, and lightly sponged the edges with the same Broken China ink. I fussy cut the girl and the ship stamps and added a little folded newspaper hat on the girl’s head. (This might be a little morbid, but the smallest print I could find in the New York Times was the obituaries / stock listings!) The girl in her hat, the ship and the banner were all attached with foam tape to the background paper and a few sequins from the kit added some sparkle. I adore the simple addition of the newspaper hat and LOVE the girl dreaming of the high seas!

Lizi mentioned in her un-boxing that she included some pink ribbon and specialty card stock in this kit because she knows how much I love pink…! So, let’s tackle the PINK! I took the vellum cut-apart that had the terrific “You Are Loved” sentiment in yellow with pink-ish flowers and green leaves, ran that through my Xyron Sticker Maker and mounted it to a scrap piece of white card stock. I mounted that to a mat of the pink embossed specialty paper and outlined that with the thin peel-off stickers and foam taped the back of that assembly for attaching to the Apple Green card base. I took the pink ribbon from the kit and ran that through my Xyron Sticker Maker as well, and created a corner-ribbon trim on the top and left side of the card base. I mitered the corner of the ribbon at the top left, and added a simple bow to the corner. A few round gems from the kit at the bottom and a couple drops of the Nuvo Jewel Drops around the sentiment add a touch of elegance. I don’t think I would call this a ‘pink’ card, but the pink is a great accent color and totally appropriate for a card that is more in tune with Valentine’s Day than with kids and dream sentiments!

How about some equal time for the parents! Parents are the unsung heroes of child rearing and there was a cut-apart sentiment that spoke directly to them.My parents read to me as a child, and sparked a life-long joy of reading that continues to this day! This is a TERRIFIC sentiment and I can’t wait to give this card (along with a book!) to a deserving parent. On the Sky Blue card base, I attached a strip of the bookcase pattern paper along the left side (there was a strip down the center of the pattern paper that was devoid of the A B C’s so that’s what I used) and added a thin strip of the silver  pearlescent specialty paper to finish off the ‘side of the bookcase’ on the right edge. I mounted the cut-apart on a mat of the same specialty paper and foam mounted that to the card base. I wanted to try adding a little ‘ethnicity’ to the boy and girl stamps, and was able to achieve a decent skin color that could be interpreted in many ways…! I fussy cut both of the kids’ heads and the book and created a little vignette towards the bottom of the card. A few sequins from the sequin  mix, and a few spots of the Nuvo Jewel drops add a touch of shine. LOVE this sentiment!!

I often like to create my own sentiments on the vellum pieces usually included with Lizi’s kits – I print them with toner on my work printer and add deco-foil to them with my laminator. WELL – my printer was not in a very good mood and I ruined the vellum piece with the Humpty-Dumpty image…  FORTUNATELY, there was the same image on one of the cut-apart pieces, so I used the home printer to add a sentiment to the card stock piece. I thought the cut-apart image looked better than the vellum piece after all..!Here’s a decent, very kid-friendly pun for this month! I used my Silhouette Portrait to design this sentiment in (drum roll, please…!!!) Brady Bunch Remastered font and printed it directly on the cut-apart with my home printer. I mounted this on the Sunshine Yellow card base and outlined it with the thin green mirror peel-offs. A couple of strips of that great rainbow stripe pattern paper at the top and bottom fill out the rest of the card front. I did add a “Happy Birthday” to the writing surface on the inside of the card (in the same font) and here’s a simple single-layer card appropriate for young-uns!

One of the ‘surprises’ in this month’s kit was a lower-case alphabet of large wood veneer die cuts… these almost threw me due to their size and lack of repeats, but after working with this kit for a while, a great idea finally presented itself to me – ‘dream BIG’ !!I covered the die cuts with the rainbow striped pattern paper taking care to line up the stripes across all three letters. I decided to use the Vanilla card base to make the rainbow pop, but found that the color of the alphabet stickers from the sticker sheet a little bit too light to show up on pale papers so I colored the sticker letters with a Silver Metallic Sharpie and they show up just fine with that added color. I used my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Dies to create a frame from the silver mirror specialty card, and covered the big letters with two heavy coats of Glossy Accents – I don’t think I have ever used as much Glossy Accents as I did with this card kit, but it was definitely worth it for the great enameled look – not the most perfect application wise, but I think photos tend to  highlights the tiny imperfections that aren’t as noticeable in real life. This is perfectly in line with this kit (my seventh card and the third to feature ‘dream big’!) I LOVE this card!

This is the third month that Lizi has treated us to a meter of shaped puffy trim – this month is was silver stars – I kept seeing Mylar balloons, and since one of the dies included in the kit was a balloon die, I decided to throw a big birthday party!I fussy cut a strip of the colorful ‘arrow’ pattern paper to mimic a picket fence and attached that directly to the bottom of the Sunshine Yellow card base. I cut a strip of the green harlequin pattern paper with my NEW Lawn Fawn Grassy Border die and foam taped that up over the ‘picket fence’. I colored up another girl stamp (a red-head!) and fussy cut her out along with the rocking horse, the doll, the sucker and the candy, added the wood veneer die-cut present with a bow from the ribbon included in the kit, and the little metal teddy bear charm and tucked them all in with her behind the grass. (Almost lost the picket fence with all the bounty at this party!) I added the wood veneer party hat with a white pom-pom and the Nuvo Jewel Drops on top of the girl’s head. I stamped a Lawn Fawn ‘Happy Birthday’ stamp on a scrap of white card stock and cut that out with a Darice Banner die and ‘hung that in the air’ with four ‘Mylar Balloons’ using some plain white twine from my stash. I cut three balloons using the balloon die in the kit using different pieces of card from the cut-outs and pattern paper – more white twine puts those balloons in the girl’s hand and the party is ON! This is one special little girl!!! LOL!

Even I can get tired of the relentless march of bright colors presented in this kit, so let’s try something a little more monochrome – the alphabet stickers will work well with the Graphite shimmer specialty card stock, and I still have a Slate Grey card base so…I cut the Graphite shimmer card with my stitched rectangle die and mounted that to the card base. I trimmed that with the scallop sticker border from the sticker sheet on the top and bottom, and tucked pom-poms between each scallop. The alphabet stickers worked great for this sentiment, and I underlined that with a thin Silver Glitter peel-off from Lizi’s September ’17 card kit. Love the grey/black tones here, but the best is on the inside:

This makes me laugh every time I read it! And this card definitely skews a little older too!

Now the only stamp I haven’t used is the rocket stamp – and I have a little inter-active something special planned for this one! I stamped and colored one more boy, and have the Apple Green card base left, so let’s see if we can launch this rocket – One of the vellum pieces (with a kite) had the”May your dreams take flight” sentiment so I mounted the vellum to some white card stock with the Xyron Sticker Maker and die cut the sentiment with a Spellbinders Deckled Rectangle die. I trimmed a strip of the green pattern paper down with a stitched hillside die, temporarily attached that to the blue pattern paper and die cut them both with a stitched rectangle die. Now, I’m sure most of us have seen ‘magic slider’ cards where you pull one side of the card and a matching piece comes out of the opposite side… I think they make a great platform for gift cards. After way too much experimenting, I was able to take that concept and create a reversible pull-tab card. By cutting a small slit in the card front, I was able to make a small paper hinge that slides through the slit and is attached to the back of the rocket. So the rocket is attached to the front of the ‘trash bag’ conveyor and the pull-tab is attached to the back of the ‘conveyor belt’. OH BABY IT WORKS!! The boy and the sentiment are attached to the card with foam tape and I also left a little gap in the hillside to hide the rocket flame until the ship takes off…!  I used the My Favorite Things ‘Interactive Labels’ to stamp the ‘PULL’ on the end of the tab, and, of course, I had to decorate the pull strip because it reveals itself as it is pulled – I simply drew some ‘puffs of smoke’ on some white card and trimmed that down to glue on top of the tab. PERFECT! I added some shine with a frame of the grass green mirror peel-offs around the card base and a couple of the gems on the ship’s windows. Oh my stars and garters! I am completely bowled over with this card! The rocket flies right to the top of the card and returns to the hillside with a simple push back on the tab. SO MUCH FUN!!! I don’t think I will ever be able to part with this card…! But now I know that you can adapt the magic slider mechanism to make something move on the front of a card… straight run penny-slider cards may be a thing of my past!!

Naturally, I have tons of supplies left over with this kit – I didn’t even touch six of the pattern papers and I still have a bunch of the stickers, vellum and card cut-aparts, as well as a big chunk of that mottled pink specialty paper. I didn’t use any of the chalk-board labels or the bow die but I believe I used a little bit of everything else in the kit… I think you can tell that I had a great time playing with this card kit and coming up with card ideas to share with those of you who are getting (or have gotten) this kit. If you want to get in on the fun, I highly recommend subscribing to the monthly card kits or follow Love From Lizi on social media where she announces when kits are available AND her affiliate links are actually working, so if you go to buy anything from Lizi please use this link to access her shop:

http://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1122545&u=1697228&m=76572&urllink=&afftrack=

Thank you so much for sharing your time with me, and I wish you all Happy Crafting!

 

 

Hello Folks! Scott here with the UnBoxing of the Love from Lizi January 2018 ‘New Beginnings’ Card Kit. I think this is the most colorful kit I have ever gotten from Lizi and it features an adorable exclusive stamp set and some unique embellishments as well!

Again, Lizi has given us standard letter size card stocks at 8.5″ x 11″ and we are treated to an extra full-size specialty embossed paper in that mottled pink pattern. Our regular 5 card stocks this month are in Sunshine Yellow, Apple Green, Sky Blue, Vanilla and Slate Grey. High-quality card stocks and always enough to make (at least) 10 card bases.

More specialty card stocks in 4.25″ x 5.5″ (A2 card) size in a shimmer Graphite, Silver Mirror, Copic-friendly smooth White and Silver Pearl. A regular item in Lizi’s kits are her peel-off stickers, this month  – Grass Green mirror peel-offs. I LOVE LIZI’s PEEL-OFFs!!

We get 12 single side, 6″ x 6″ pattern papers with this kit – very colorful with lots of stripes, patterns, crayons, stars, apples, books and blocks. Perfect accompaniment!

We get a number of 12″ x 12″ sheets with this kit including these two double sided sheets filled with a couple dozen cut-apart images on one side and bold patterns on the other.

One of my favorite regular items in the Love From Lizi Kits are her vellum sheets – this 12″ x 12″ vellum sheet has brushed silver foil highlights on over a dozen images and a couple of border strips too. I love these vellum sheets and I rarely see them in other kits.

And if that weren’t enough, we also get a 12″ x 12″ sheet of card stock stickers. A full alphabet, lots of images, borders, pennants and tags all in matching colors. WOO-HOO!

That brings us to the Stamp set for this month. One of the cutest stamp sets I’ve seen in a long time and a big departure from Lizi’s usual stamp sets. I love the boy and girl stamps and all the toys and we even get a couple of age-appropriate sentiments. I can’t wait to start coloring all these images! This is the first stamp set I own with images of kids! FUN!

On to all the extras and the embellishments for this month – always one of the best parts to all of Lizi’s kits! 4 ribbons and trims with a meter each of white satin ribbon with silver trim, pink satin/organza ribbon with silver trim (In Lizi’s unboxing, she mentioned that she included the pink ribbon and pink specialty card stock because she knows how much I love pink! LOL!!) and silver puffy stars – this is the third month in a row now where we have gotten some extremely interesting shaped trims! ALSO a couple of feet of white pom-pom trim! How long has it been since I’ve seen pom-pom trimmings!? WOW!

More to come! From the bottom left corner and clockwise – A silver teddy bear charm on a silver chain, 9 wood veneer die-cuts, our (almost) monthly Chameleon pen in OR3 – Tangerine, smoky grey self stick jewels in circle and star shapes, two ‘chalkboard’ tags, 3 wafer dies (a bow, ladybug and balloon) the New Beginnings sequin mix, and a full size bottle of Nuvo Jewel Drops in Orange Marmalade. I am looking forward to trying these Nuvo drops which are supposed to be translucent with just a tint of color. PRETTY!

And finally, we get a full lower case alphabet of wood veneer die-cuts! These are large pieces averaging about 2″ square! I will have to do some brainstorming on how to use these pieces on a card, but that is one of the delights of the Love From Lizi Card Kits – we always get supplies that stretch your imagination and some out-of-the box thinking!

That’s it for me this year folks! I am off to Kansas tomorrow for some post holiday celebrations with my family – as a result, my 10 Card 1 Kit video for this kit will be a little late this month, but I promise I will get some cards made and posted just as soon as I can!

I want to send you and yours all my best wishes for a Happy, Healthy and prosperous New Year! – Thank you SO MUCH for being a part of my on-line family and blessing me with your encouragement and support. Each and every one of you mean so much to me!

See you next year!!

 

 

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Simon Says Stamp December 2017 ‘Milk and Cookies’ card kit – FINALLY !! The holidays really kept me busy this year and it was difficult for me to find time to sit down at my desk and work on this kit. Add to that the fact that we made and sent 120 Christmas Cards this year (video and post to follow soon..!) and you might see why I am a little bit behind!. The Milk and Cookies Card Kit came with the “Christmas Squad” stamp set featuring Santa and Mrs. Clause, a gingerbread man, a cookie, glass of milk and a dog and a cat as well as a few holiday sentiments. We received a dozen double-sided “Milk and Cookies” pattern papers from Doodlebug with an exclusive set of matching ‘sprinkles’ (enameled stickers) and a Tsukineko Delicata stamp cube in Rose Gold. Also included in the kit were three sheets of glitter card stock (A4) from Tonic in Silver Screen, Tropical Tide and Candy Floss, and one sheet of Simon Says Stamp Ivory card stock and one sheet of Neenah 100# Desert Storm card stock, and a teaspoon of Colorful Confetti sequins. This whole kit is very cute and very Christmas-y. • As usual, I stamped a couple groups of images with SSS Intense Black ink on some Bristol Smooth card stock and colored one set with my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers. These are very nice images, but, other than the heads, they have very small areas for coloring – that’s why I like the Zigg brush markers for coloring images like this – the brush tip will get into those tiny areas with no problem. I did like the pattern paper that featured Santa sitting in his chair in front of the fire and Christmas Tree, but I thought the image of Santa was comically tiny – kind of looked like Edith Ann (Lily Tomlin) in her giant rocking chair (and that’s the truth! THBPBPTHPT!). The stamped images were much larger than the printed images, so I decided to fussy cut the colored images and group them together in such a way that they covered up the Santa and the cat on the original image. Now, I may be old and behind the times, but I had to look up to see what #squadgoals meant. Not something I have ever used or have ever even seen used, but obviously a modern reference to ‘family’. I ignored the ‘squad’ sentiments and created a simple “From our family to yours” sentiment (Arial font) to use with this first card. I used a white card base from my stash, and covered the front of that with the tiny polka-dot pattern paper and trimmed down the ‘living room’ paper to fit. I did add a couple of strips of the tiny red polka dot pattern paper to the sides of the image for a bit of extra framing, and added a touch of the larger red polka dot paper as a mat behind my sentiment. I used foam tape to mount the characters and sentiment to the front of the card, and now the characters are the focus of this scene instead of the living room. I used a black glaze pen on the characters eyes, and a few confetti sequins from the kit on the wreath and tree, and some Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen on the fire, star and white ‘fur’ parts of the costumes. I did stamp the ‘Merry Christmas’ stamp on the inside of the card, and  voila! my first card for this kit came together very nicely. • There were a couple of sheets of cut-apart images and sentiments included in the pattern paper set, and I went with the ‘we belong together’ sentiment for my second card. Since that cut-apart sentiment was in the blue with candy-cane stripes, I decided to use the Tropical Tide glitter card stock for my background and the striped pattern paper for my focal image. I used my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies to cut the glitter card stock and some plain red card stock from my stash (excellent match!) and used my We R Memory Keepers Next Level embossing folder to add some hearts to the red pattern paper. Those are glued flat to the Ivory card base (from the kit) and then I used my stitched oval dies to cut more blue glitter card stock and the red and white striped pattern paper and a scrap of white card stock for the base of my Milk and Cookie (and heart) stickers from the kit. I used foam tape for the top two layers and for the milk and cookie stickers as well. I also cut a small blue glitter card stock mat for the sentiment and mounted that with foam tape as well.  Nothing Christmas-y about this card! I only wish the milk and cookie stamps were larger so I could make more cards of this kind rather than more Christmas cards. • Though I am not really one to use a lot of cut-apart images on my cards, I did like the “December 25” image, and when I discovered that the gingerbread man sticker was the same size as the printed gingerbread man, I decided to use this image and paired it up with the Christmas tree cut-apart and the holly pattern papers. I did use Glossy Accents for the gumdrops to the left of the gingerbread man (the gumdrop stickers were not the same size) to match the g-bread man, and chose two of the cut-apart sentiments – “Santa Clause is comin’ to town” and “have a holly jolly Christmas”. I cut the holly pattern paper to 2.5″ x 5.5″ and glued that straight down to a white card base from my stash, and (because of the pink berries on the pattern paper) added two thin strips of the Candy Floss glitter paper to the top and bottom edges. I added the holly stripe from the pattern papers below the center piece to punch up the ‘holly’ theme and sentiment, and used foam tape to mount all the sentiments and images to the card. I did cut out the tree circle and added a thin mat of the pink glitter to that piece for a little extra pop. Some of the Colorful Confetti sequins on the tree and by the sentiments adds a nice touch of bling and pulls your eye to the sentiments. It wasn’t until I finished this card that I realized that both of these sentiments are actually holiday song titles! And, even though I did use some pink accents, this card doesn’t scream pink at all! • Now, I think this is the first time I’ve actually held the Neenah Desert Storm card stock in my hands and it was good to see and feel what appears to be the ‘go-to Kraft card stock’ these days. I wanted to experiment with coloring on the card stock directly, so I stamped the Santa stamp on the Kraft card base (using SSS Intense Black ink), and colored him up with my colored pencils. I did put down a light layer of white pencil over the entire stamp before I colored it, and also cut some stamping mask paper to cover Santa, so I could create a soft blue (Broken China Distress oxide ink) halo around the image. I did use my new Ink Dusting Brushes and I love the soft effect that those brushes create. That highlights the stamped image very nicely. I did re-stamp Santa after coloring to reinforce the outline of the stamp which tends to get a little ‘fuzzy’ when colored with colored pencils. I simply left the stamp in the same place on my stamp platform to facilitate a second stamping. That really added a lot of detail and a crisp black outline to the colored image. Of course I also dotted his eyes with my black glaze pen! I cut an oval window in a 3″ wide strip of the small red polka dot pattern paper and mounted that to the card base with foam tape for some dimension. I used the ‘HAPPY HOLIDAYS’ cut-apart sentiment and since the text was blue, added two 1/4″ strips of the Tropical Tide glitter card stock to either side. Foam tape for attaching the sentiment adds a little more dimension, and some snowflake sequins from my stash along the edges of the window really highlights the opening. I did add a touch of Ranger Enamel Accents in Caribbean Coast to the center of the sequins, and this is my Holiday card starring SANTA! I really liked coloring this on the Kraft card base and hope to experiment with that technique more!  •  I do really like the “Christmas is Clause for Celebration” sentiment in the stamp set and decided I had to feature Santa on one more card! I went ahead and colored the second set of characters with my Crayola Fine Line markers that we received with the SSS May ’17 Card Kit, and I was pleased at how nicely those markers move on the Bristol Smooth card stock. Using the second Desert Storm card base, I used the mini polka dot pattern paper (1.75″ x 5.5″)  and the red and white striped pattern paper (2.125″ x 5.5″) and glued those directly to the card base for my background. I fussy cut the Santa (leaving a white border this time), and mounted him with foam tape to the Santa head pattern paper cut with the stitched oval die, foam mounted that to an oval cut from the Silver Screen glitter card stock and foam taped the whole assemblage to the background. I stamped the sentiment on a scrap of white card stock with Ranger Archival ink in Vermillion, and cut that out with a small Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die. I  did add two silver glitter peel-off stickers (from the Love From Lizi September ’17 Card Kit) to the sides of the background to pull the focal image and the background together, and I used a few Colorful Confetti sequins, black glaze pen for the eyes and a little bitty tree gem from my stash (can’t find those anymore!) for a final touch of bling. I really love the full Santa on top of all those Santa heads on the pattern paper!  • I did go back to the ‘sprinkles’ sheet and used the milk carton sticker and the other cookie sticker to do a shaker card. I used the milk and cookie cut-apart square as the background for the shaker because the cookie sticker was the same size as the printed cookie, and the carton of milk would cover up the printed glass of milk while still being able to use the ‘straw’ (and hearts!) as part of the image. I did use a little bit of white-out correction tape to cover up the second cookie on the cut apart print. I liked the way the Tropical Tide and Candy Floss glitter card stock worked together, so I cut a mat of the pink glitter at 4″ x 5.25″, and the blue glitter at 3.75″ x 5″ and used a simple Darice Nesting Heart die to cut the shaker shape. I glued the pink glitter mat directly to a Kraft card base from my stash. I doubled up my foam tape for extra shaker dimension behind the blue glitter card stock, and used the confetti sequins for the shaker bits and the stickers for the focal image. I couldn’t find another appropriate sentiment for this card among the cut apart pattern papers, so I created one of my own using the sketch function on my Silhouette to write “We are better together” in Paprika font (that’s a Silhouette font) with a Pilot G-2 red ink pen on a scrap of white card stock. I LOVE that sentiment and being able to ‘draw’ it in red made me a very happy camper! I cut out the sentiment with a small LF Stitched Rectangle Die and outlined it with some pink peel-off stickers (from the Love From Lizi July ’17 card kit) for a little extra pop and then felt the need to add a couple of pink ‘racing stripes’ down the sides of the blue glitter card stock. I also really like how the straw and the hearts on the printed cut-apart work with the stickers attached to the top of the shaker acetate. The last two heart stickers from the sprinkles sheet highlight the sentiment, and we have another card that is more oriented towards Valentine’s Day than Christmas.  • Okay! Back to the stamp set! I stamped this scene of the cat and dog and tree with SSS Intense Black Ink using stamping masks on some Bristol smooth card stock, and colored everything with my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers. I wish the animals had more interesting expressions on their faces, but I figured they would do here. I ‘drew” the sentiment (love my Silhouette!) in the Typewriter Hand font with my red Pilot pen (again) on a scrap of white card stock and cut it out using a Darice Word Bubbles die. I cut out my little scene vignette with a Darice Nesting Circle die and hand cut mats for both the die cuts from pattern paper and my own red card stock. I used my new ink blending brushes (again) to add a little Cracked Pistachio (Distress Oxide ink) halo on the Ivory card base. I used my Signo Broad white gel pen to add some stitching around the circular red mat, and added the ‘treats for santa’ pattern paper strip (matched the cracked pistachio ink!) along the bottom. Colorful Confetti Sequins provide ornaments on the tree (I even cut a couple to fit around the dog) and some black glaze pen for their eyes and I have a pretty funny Christmas Card!   •  I wanted to feature the Mrs. Claus stamp on a card so I grabbed another Kraft card base from my stash, and fussy cut the Mrs. Claus stamp colored with the Crayola markers and kind of combined a couple ideas from earlier cards to come up with this card that uses the “All I want for Christmas…” sentiment stamp from the kit. I masked and hand-stamped Santa’s head, the gingerbread cookies, the round cookies and the hearts directly on the card base and colored all the images with my colored pencils. This took a little bit of practice to get the stamping placed just right and I wasted a little bit of my Kraft card stock in the process, but I finally got the images where I wanted them. I also did a light white ‘halo’ around the images to help make it look like they were ‘in her thoughts’. Two stitched ovals from the pattern paper and my red card stock provide a mat for Mrs. Claus, and I stamped the sentiment in VersaMark ink on a strip of pattern paper and embossed that in Ranger white embossing powder. A few stickers of sweets from the Doodlebug Sprinkles, black glaze pen on the eyes, some Spectrum Noir sparkle pen on the cookies and Santa, and that’s plenty of bling for a card starring Mrs. Claus!  I was shooting to make this card look like Mrs. Claus was day-dreaming about Santa and cookies, and I think I achieved that!   •  Now I have a number of extra Gingerbread men stamped on Kraft card stock left over from my practice runs on the Mrs. Claus card, so let’s use those to make a card that features the gingerbread man stamp! My red card stock from my stash (Recollections) was such a good match I decided to do the last couple of card bases on red. I fussy cut four of the gingerbread men and lightly colored them with my colored pencils and used both my glaze pens (on the outside two) and Nuvo drops (on the inside two) for their decorations. I foam mounted them with a couple of the gumdrop sprinkles to a double mat of pattern papers (hearts cut at 1.625″ x 5.5″ – brown pattern paper cut at 1.25″ x 5.5″) down the center of the card. I did add .125″ strips of the Silver Screen glitter paper to the edges of the pattern paper and and matted two of the cut-apart stripes to the glitter card stock as well for the top and bottom of the card front. The “have a sweet Christmas” sentiment is cut from the pattern papers and foam taped up on the bottom strip, and here we have an adorable Christmas card starring the Gingerbread Man Stamp! • Now it seems the only stamp I haven’t featured in a starring role is the Christmas Tree, and I am sorely in need of a little bit of a pun, so let’s remedy that right now! Let’s do some paper-piecing! I stamped the tree  (in SSS Intense Black Ink) three times on the green polka dot pattern paper and fussy cut the three different layers and then stacked them up with a little foam tape at their bottom edges. I did fussy cut a trunk from the brown pattern paper and of course outlined all the cut edges with a black brush marker.  I actually had this brick piece already cut because I was thinking of using that with the ‘Santa colored with pencils on Kraft’ card but the white on the pattern paper was too white when compared with the white on the kraft colored Santa, so I had this piece already ready already! I used a square of the merry Christmas pattern paper for the background behind the tree, and mounted the brick pattern paper to the red card base with foam tape. Back to my Silhouette and my Red Pilot pen for this pun-y sentiment that is perfect for this card! Again, I ‘sketched’ this sentiment with my Silhouette (Paprika font) on a scrap of white card stock and die cut it out with a Darice Banner die. I did add a couple of .125″ strips of the candy floss glitter card stock down the sides of the card front (some of those bricks are rather pink!) and used the Colorful Confetti sequins for all the ornaments on the tree. I really appreciated that these sequins fit on the tree stamp perfectly. A gold star gem from my stash and couple more of those adorable tree gems (I know I got those at Oriental Trading Company an number of years ago, but I can’t seem to locate them now!) highlight the sides of the sentiment and now there’s a pun-y card starring the Christmas Tree Stamp.!  •  SO… that’s 8 Christmas Cards and 2 ‘love’ cards from this card kit. I know this took me a long time to get out, but I hope you enjoyed what I came up with this month. I did think this card kit was a little high on the ultra-cute scale but, as usual, once I got started working on my cards, ideas started flowing a little easier. Though I didn’t use the Delicata Rose Gold stamp pad, I did use some of the pink in the kit for highlights, and I think I was able to avoid any real pink overload!! And now I have a real honest-to-goodness Christmas stamp set with images in my stamp collection. All in all a very nice, almost retro, vintage-y feel with these holiday cards. I have plenty of extras left over from this kit and I am looking forward to making some valentines with the Simon Says Stamp January Card Kit. Now even I can deal with some pink in my Valentine’s Day cards! Thanks for joining me here today and sharing your time with me! Please like me, List me, Pin me, Post me, Follow me and by all means… Happy Crafting!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi December ’17 Card Kit. This kit is sold out but some of the items may become available at lovefromlizi.com in the coming months. The pattern papers, sticker sheet and vellum images included with this kit felt very Victorian and Valentine-y to me, so that’s my mind set for this collection. • I was initially interested in the small tear-off calendars included in the embellishments bag, and wanted to do an easel card (a first for me!) featuring one of those calendars. I used a top-folding Peach card base to build on, and stamped out three copies of the blooming rose stamp on Bristol Smooth Cardstock using Distress Oxide ink in Spiced Marmalade. I colored in the stamps with an orange colored pencil and fussy cut them out. I attached the calendar to a plain white mat colored with the Spiced Marmalade ink, and use a touch of the thin burgundy ribbon from the kit to highlight the top of the calendar. I used the ‘trellis’ pattern paper for the main background and added two 1/4″ strips of the striped pattern paper to the sides. I pulled out some Darice Gold leaf sequins from my stash to help define the roses, and cut two super-thin strips of gold mirror card stock for some matching glitz between the pattern papers. I even stamped the flourish from the stamp set below the calendar – fit perfectly!  I stamped the sentiment from the kit in Spiced Marmalade Oxide ink on a piece of my ol’ stand-by Staples Ivory card stock and die-cut that with a Darice Banner die. That die fit the calendar perfectly so I just ‘wrapped’ the edges around the sides calendar and attached both pieces to the mat. I wanted the cluster of roses to be the ‘shaped’ top of the calendar when the card is folded into an easel shape, so I attached the roses and leaf sequins to the back of the calendar assembly – I did use some foam tape to add a little dimension and definition to the roses, and scored the card front 2.5″ up from the bottom. I did look through the pattern papers and stickers to find something that would work as a ‘catch’ to hold the easel in shape, but decided that another rose would work perfectly – I stamped a fourth rose on the Ivory card stock writing surface inside the card, and used my craft knife to cut the top of the rose free so I could curl it up and use it as the easel catch. I am very pleased with my first easel card and I love the fact that it serves as a useful desk calendar as well as a greeting card! And orange roses seem slightly out of the ordinary (yet not unheard of) to me! • Now, I generally don’t think of myself as much of a sticker person, but there were some terrific stickers included with this kit that I was very eager to use. A couple of the stickers actually had the exact same sentiments that were included with the stamp set, so I had to avail myself of at least one of those – “If you can be anything be KIND.” I used a grey cardbase for this card (because the background of the sticker was grey) and two different pattern papers. I punched a scalloped edge on the lovely floral pattern paper with my American Crafts Border Punch and fussy cut the edge of the pink geometric paper following along with the pattern. I separated the two pattern papers with a strip of the Platinum specialty paper from the kit and added a single ‘soft peach’ peel-off from the kit between the platinum and floral papers. I also added some of the burgundy ribbon to the left edge of the pink paper and glued everything down to the card base. I cut a piece of vellum from my stash with a Spellbinders Deckle Rectangle die and attached the sticker directly to the vellum and used some foam tape to attach those pieces to the card for a little dimension. The vellum helps the sticker pop on top of the pattern papers, and that platinum glimmer paper provides all the shine I needed for this card. A fairly simple card, but I do like the combination of the pattern papers with the sticker. • Now, I don’t think I have ever used a paper doily on any of my cards, but Lizi included 3 silver doilies with this kit so I was determined to use at least one of them! Another sticker caught my eye because of it’s unique shape and terrific sentiment, so I decide to stick with the stickers for another card. This card is on the Peach card base again, and I cut a couple of mats with my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies out of the grey glimmer paper and theorange and white polka-dot pattern paper. I did cut about a half inch from the middle of one of the doilie to make it more oval instead of  round to better match the sticker. I attached the sticker to the doily and glued those down to the polka-dot paper and used foam tape to add some depth on top of the grey mat. I did add some of the grey pearl dots from the kit to the edges of the sticker and I tied a double bow with the thin burgundy ribbon and attached that to the top of the sticker piece. Between the pearls and the silver doily, we have plenty of sparkle and shine on this card. Again, a basic, simple card that feels very Victorian to me. Must be those roses! And, of course, that doily!! • Back to the stamps! I did want to use the nice long-stemmed rose stamp on a card so I reached for the Forest Green card base and a panel of my Staples ivory card stock. Using my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform, I started in the center of the panel and stamped out a whole row of roses in Distress Oxide Fired Brick ink. Using colored pencils again, I lightly colored the roses with red and the leaves in green. I like the way the stamps work when stamped with colors and filled in… I think it keeps the cards bright and colorful! The curly-cue border sticker worked perfectly to ‘tie’ the roses together, and, since that sticker is wood-grained, I grabbed the wood plank pattern paper to use as a base for the sentiment. I did fussy cut the top of the roses for added interest – I’m surprised and delighted at how nicely that detail catches the eye!! The pattern paper is glued to the ivory card stock and those are foam taped up on the card base – that helps the top edge pop as well! I did use my WRMK corner chomper to round the bottom corners of all the papers – I don’t tend to do that a lot, but I though it worked especially well with this card. The ‘love’ sentiment is made from the alphabet stickers in the kit, and I centered that over the white boards on the pattern paper. I used one of the silver bows from the kit to ‘tie’ on to the center rose, and decided we needed a touch more silver to help justify that ribbon – the Love From Lizi peel-off stickers in Silver Glitter (from the September ’17 card kit) to the rescue! One thin peel-off at the top of the pattern paper does the trick and provides just the right amount of sparkle for this card. I didn’t want to leave this card just saying “love”, so I did add the “You are so loved.” sentiment from the stamp set on the inside of the card (more ivory card stock for the writing surface) with Versa-Mark Onyx Black ink, and added two flourish stamps in the Fired Brick Oxide ink for a bit of decoration. Very Victorian! • I did notice a few people on line talking about the fact that some of the stickers in the kit were way too big to be used on a standard A2 card – well, I’m never one to turn down a challenge, and I particularly liked the ‘DREAM. BELIEVE. DO.’ sticker that was a touch longer than 5 and 3/4 inches – too long for a straight application, but it fits on a diagonal!Just barely! On a Wine Red card base, I cut a 2.25″ width of the swirly embossed pearlescent specialty paper (gorgeous) from the kit and centered that corner to corner on my card base. Since the sticker had those stripes as its background, I added two 1/4″ strips of the striped pattern paper to the edges of the pearl paper, and added the thicker burgundy ribbon to the outside edges of the pattern paper, and glued all of that directly to my card front. Of course, I used the peel-offs to define the edges of the card stocks, and, after removing the sticky from the sentiment sticker with my EK Tools Powder Tool, I  used foam tape to pop the sticker up in the center of the card. A small, simple bow to accent the ribbon and we have another faintly Victorian inspiration card! I do like that sentiment!!  • Now, these first five cards are my ‘serious’ cards from this kit, and things do get a little sillier from here on out. If you have seen my other LFL kit videos you know I like to print on the vellum pieces with my laser printer (at work! – shhhh!!) and then use deco-foil and my Laminating Machine to foil my printed sentiments. This kit was no exception, and I was looking forward to using my Silver deco-foil for the first time! I chose the vellum piece with the door and flowers on the right side, and, using my Silhouette Software, printed my sentiment in Smoothie Shoppe font with my laser printer in the open area of the vellum. I used my silver deco-foil to cover the printed sentiment and ran it through my laminator two times. Success! Excellent silver foiled sentiment that goes along with the silver highlights on the vellum images. I sent the foiled vellum through my Xyron sticker maker and attached the vellum directly to the top of the Ivory card base. “If you don’t have anything nice to say…” Of course, this sentiment is continued on the inside – “come sit by me.” but I didn’t foil the inside of the card – just a plain black print directly on the card base and accented with a die-cut rose. That is a great rose die we got with this kit – I didn’t play with it much for this batch of cards, but I know I will use this die over and over again in the years to come! This is a very simple one-layer card that actually packs a good punch!! This card makes me laugh a lot, and I am really looking forward to being able to give it to someone soon! • As usual, we do get a sequin mix in this months kit – Wild Rose is the mix – so I naturally want to make a shaker card! I used the Wine Red card base and the polka-dot vellum piece for  this card – I was going to attach the vellum piece to my ivory card stock but I didn’t think the blue polka-dots showed up very well on top of the ivory – but I did like the ivory better than white in the open area inside the frame. So, I cut a piece of ivory card to match the frame, glued that in place and then added white card stock behind the ivory extending to the edges of the vellum. That worked very nicely, and the vellum actually gives the white card stock a bit of an ivory tint! Now that my vellum piece is stabilized, I cut out a heart window with my Darice Nesting Hearts die right in the middle, and traced the actual die with an Emboss It pen and embossed that with silver embossing powder. I added acetate behind the window, and used the matching polka-dot pattern paper for a couple of stripes on the card front and as the background for my shaker window. I added a “u” and an “r” from the alphabet stickers to the shaker background, and lightly filled the shaker with some sequins – avoiding the green sequins and not putting too many in the window so they don’t block the ‘u’ ‘r’. A random scattering of the Nuvo Drops (‘Neptune Turquoise’) from the kit match the polka dots and kind of ‘brings the shaker outside of the window’. Naturally, we need to finish this sentiment, so, on the inside I stamped the “Always in my heart.” sentiment from the stamp set on the ivory writing surface. SO…  “U  R … Always in my heart.”  Makes me giggle..!   • Let’s try that wooden cart stamp now! I stamped the cart in SSS Intense Black ink on Bristol smooth card stock, colored it with my Spectrum Noir markers in TN1, TN2 and TN4 and fussy cut the whole image including the wheel spokes. Now what to put in the cart…? The fabric roses of course! I trimmed down their stems and taped them down to the back of the cart. I did stamp some of the leaves from the long stemmed rose stamp in Distress Oxide Peeled Paint and fussy cut those out to add around the edges of the roses in the cart. I took a piece of the tulle netting and using a light touch of spray adhesive, attached the netting to the front of my grey card base. I cut a piece of the wavy lined embossed pearlized specialty paper just following one of the lines to be the ‘ground’ for my cart, and cut a piece of that polka-dot pattern paper for the top. I punched a scalloped heart border with my AC border punch on the pattern paper, and used the Nuvo Drops on the middle two rows of polka-dots. That piece almost feels like an awning on the street! I created the ‘Love you a bunch!’ sentiment on my Silhouette (Ballerina Script font) and printed that on a piece of my Staples Grey card stock. I took one of the wood veneer die cut frames from the kit, and cut 1/4″ out of two of the sides to shrink it down a bit and, after gluing it back together, used silver embossing powder on the top for some shine and an almost pewter look to that frame! All is glued directly to the card front but the cart is attached with some foam tape. I love the way the red roses play off of the greys and light blue, and how they really pop on the front of this card! And a sweet simple pun. • I haven’t used that single wagon wheel stamp yet, but how can I use it and keep to my ‘romantic Victorian valentine’ theme…? And wheel puns are all too easy! I though it would be interesting to see if I could use whole wagon wheels to create a heart shape for this card. I ended up with a bit of a ‘wheel collage’ that I reinforced with a heart shape die-cut from the embossed pearlized card stock and the red pattern paper. After trying all the wheels stamped in the same brown color (BORING!) I decided to stamp them in all different colors of Distress Oxide ink – Fired Brick, Spiced Marmalade, Broken China, Cracked Pistachio, and Wilted Violet. On the Ivory card base, I ran the wide glitter-berries ribbon down the center of the card, added two thin strips of the embossed pearl card on either side of the ribbon, and added the wide burgundy ribbon to both sides as well. I attached the fussy cut wheels (yes, I cut out the spokes too!) to the heart mats with foam squares and added one of the metal wheel buttons from the kit to the point of the heart. I was actually able to push the thin burgundy ribbon through the holes of the button and tie a little bow on the front.  I created the “Wheel you be mine?” sentiment with my Silhouette software in Typewriter Hand font and printed that on my ivory card stock and cut it out with the same Darice banner die used on my first card. A sweet simple pun on a bit of a wacky valentine card – I’m surprised that the rainbow wheels actually seem to work on this card – I almost went back to the brown wheels at one point, but I’m glad i didn’t! • And now we are at the final card for the month! I debated this card for quite a bit, but was ultimately won over when I figured out how to ‘sell’ the idea…! Here we have another rebus puzzle…   I stamped the cart in SSS Intense Black ink on Bristol smooth card stock and colored it with my Spectrum Noir markers in RB1, RB2, and RB4. I found the eye (in green to match the card base!!) on line, and printed the letters in Gaudy Heavyface BT font and fussy cut and foam taped everything to the red pattern paper background. SOOOOOOOOO… the cart – which is not a wheelbarrow because it (appears) to have two wheels, is also known as a ‘tumbrel’ (if you have ever read A Tale of Two Cities you’ll remember the term) SOOOOOOOOO… the rebus reads “I’ll tumbrel for ya” If you were listening to rock and roll in the early eighties you remember Culture Club (Boy George) and “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” was one of their first big hits. ANYHOW…! I thought this addition to the inside of the card would help the unknowing.This is the actual Webster Dictionary definition of tumbrel… and naturally, I wouldn’t give this card to anyone younger than 50!! LOL! This may be off the beaten track, but I do think it makes a handsome card, and heaven knows, it has given me a lot of good hearty laughs, and I hope it gives you a giggle as well! • That’s my 10 cards for the Love From Lizi December 2017 Card Kit – I hope I was able to provide you with a little crafting inspiration (whether you get this kit or not) and a smile or two. If you like this style of card kit I highly recommend subscribing or at least following LoveFromLizi.com to be able to pounce when the next months kit is offered! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today – If you have any questions or comments don’t hesitate to say something and if you go to the Contact page, you can email me directly! Please Pin and Post and Share me wherever you can! Happy Crafting!

 

Hello Folks, Scott here unboxing my Love From Lizi December Card Kit. Unfortunately, this card kit HAS sold out! If you want to get in on the fun, go to lovefromlizzi.com and subscribe to her monthly card kit! As usual, this kit is bursting with goodies! Here we go!This month, we go back to receiving a Chameleon Pen in RD5 – Burgundy. Love a deep red and this should provide just that!Once again, Lizi is featuring 5 sheets of letter-size card stock (8.5’x11″) in Wine Red,  Ivory, Peach, Forest Green and Grey. I really like being able to make full-size A2 cards (makes measurements for matting and layers easier!) instead of the slightly-slimmer card bases made from A4 papers. I hope Lizi keeps giving us letter-size card stocks! We also receive a 12″x12″ sheet of vellum in our kit this month! I always look forward to thevellum images included with the LFL kits and this month is no exception! Foil embossed in silver, and featuring some beautiful floral images, and a wagon wheel, and even a skull with foiled antlers (hope that’s not one of Santa’s reindeer! LOL!). We are also treated to a 12″x12″ sheet of stickers this month featuring a complete alphabet and lots of sentiments with floral highlights. Looks like dark red, silver, and lots of flowers are being featured in our kits this month! Not very New Year’s oriented, but Valentine’s day is coming soon, so this included piece of white tulle should come in handy when making Valentine’s Day cards! This is a very sturdy, stiff tulle and should be fairly easy to work with! (ruffles, anyone?? LOL!)  Now we get to the specialty papers included in this month’s kit, and they are very special indeed! We get three half-sheets of this beautiful pearlescent white card stock in three different patterns – this swirly, almost painterly pattern,

 

 

 

 

a thin wavy line pattern,

 

 

 

 

and a wider softer wavy pattern on the third sheet. These are totally gorgeous papers – the movement that happens when the light reflects on these papers is almost magical! I’m looking forward to playing with these!

 

 

To finish out the specialty papers, we get two quarter-sheets of  glimmer card stock in Platinum and Slate Gray. Both of these measure 4.25″ x 5.5″ so they are the same size as a standard A2 card. Very pretty.

 

Naturally, we do get our Love From Lizi peel off stickers as well! This month they are in Soft Peach and are very shiny without being glittery…! I love Lizi’s peel off sticker strips, (in three different widths!) and even though “soft peach” isn’t REALLY pink… it’s close enough in my book!!

That brings us to the pattern papers in

this kit – 12 sheets of 6″x6″ single-sided pattern papers with a good assortment of patterns and colors, lots of images that match the vellum and sticker sheets, and, of course, some touches of dark red (cranberries, anyone?) and one sheet covered with beautiful roses.

And that brings us to the stamp set for this month. This set features roses – – a full bloom, a small rosebud and a long-stemmed partially open rose. There is also a wooden wheelbarrow and an extra wheel as well as four sentiments. I really like the “Live everyday with purpose” stamp, and I can see why we got that burgundy Chameleon Pen this month! The wheelbarrow will be interesting to play with as well…! Now we get to the fun stuff – – the embellishment bag! We get four different ribbons this month – a meter

each of 1/8″ and 1/4″ satin burgundy ribbon and a 2″ wide linen ribbon with glittering cranberries all over. We also get another ‘shaped’ ribbon (about 20″)  this month – silver leaves on a vine with stitched lines embossed on the vine, and veins on the leaves. All three types of ribbon are lovely and I can’t wait to figure out how to use those leaves!

Continuing on, we get 3 silver paper doilies, 6 paper roses, 6 shiny ‘cranberries’ and the ‘Wild Rose’ sequin mix featuring pinks, whites, black and brushed gold sequins in assorted sizes. Hmmmm… is there any silver in there? I will have to look closer!!

We get another LFL embossing powder this month – Fluffy Snow embossing powder which is supposed to puff up when heated… very interesting…! Our Nuvo Crystal Drops are in Neptune Turquoise this month – lovely! We also get 2 small silver glitter tags, two 2018 tear-off calendars, three silver bows (pre-tied, thank-you-very-much!), three metal wagon wheel buttons in two sizes and two wood-veneer die cut frames. Still more…

Self-adhesive enamel dots in pearl and grey – very shiny! And our monthly die – a nicely intricate Rose die – I did run a die-cut just to see how it looks and I am very pleased with this die – very intricate and detailed with a few leaves around the edges. Excellent! I believe Lizi mentioned that this was her ‘winter-y’ kit and that inspired her to bring all these pieces together. I will probably do some New Year’s and Valentine’s cards with this kit and see what all these groovy supplies inspire me to create! Stay tuned for my 10 Cards 1 Kit video featuring the Love From Lizi December 2017 Card Kit.! Happy Crafting!