Hello Folks! Scott here with a different post for you today. If you caught my post (or video) for the Love From Lizi August ’17 card kit you may remember my ‘extra project’ I created with one of my favorite vellum images included in the kit. You can check out that full post by clicking here: 10 Cards 1 Kit Love From Lizi August 2017 Shortly after posting that LFL August Card Kit, fellow crafter Beverly Stotz contacted me and mentioned that she had come across some pattern paper from Bo Bunny (on sale!) that would work perfectly with this gift book. The BoBunny Family Recipes Collection – both their 12″x12″ Recipe Cards and the 6″x6″ Family Recipes Collection:

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I was especially taken with the 12×12 recipe card pattern paper – I actually just used 4×6 index cards in the original book and it looks like there are 6 recipe cards on the 12×12 pattern paper, so that would make each card a 4×6 recipe card! PERFECT FIT! I decided then and there to get these papers and upgrade this Recipe Book for some actual Christmas presents this year. I didn’t have any more of the foiled vellum pieces that said “Let’s Cook Something Special Today” nor did I have any more of that lovely strawberry pattern paper that the vellum is mounted to, so I figured I should be able to use the 6X6 pattern papers to help me re-create that image on the cover. Unfortunately, I thought most of the pattern papers were either a little too busy or the patterns a little too large to stand in for the strawberry paper, so I turned to my Silhouette (and the laser jet printer at work!) to create the cover piece. I really liked the red polka-dots that were on the original vellum image, so I found a nice red polka-dot pattern on line and printed that on my Staples Ivory card stock (my tried and true all purpose card stock) and cut it to size on my Silhouette. There was a fun piece of mini ‘milk bottle cap’ pattern paper in the Family Recipe Collection that matched the ivory card stock quite well so I cut strips of that paper to stand in for the strawberry pattern paper on the top and bottom of the red polka-dots. I did use the brown LFL peel off stickers from the August kit for the top and bottom of the strips, and used my American Crafts border punch on the top and bottom edges. Now for the foiled sentiment piece! I went to my Silhouette again and used curly brackets { } to make the shape, and created a sentiment that I felt echoed the original vellum piece. I laser-printed and cut the shape on my Silhouette and used deco-foil in gold to foil the sentiment. Ok… so I got a little ahead of myself here…! I hadn’t given much thought to personalizing the covers yet, so when I got around to doing the names, I had downloaded a few new fonts by that time, and fell in love with the Smoothie Shoppe font. That font has ‘and’ ‘the’ and ‘with’ as complete words at a saucy angle and worked perfectly for my “John and Jane’s Favorite Recipes” part of the cover. However, with the foiled ‘Let’s Cook…’ in a different font, I thought things were getting a little disjointed on the cover. Therefore, I redid the “Let’s Cook..” sentiment using the Smoothie Shoppe font – laser printed, cut and foiled – and that pulled everything together for the cover. I tried to find book plates that were as large as the one included with the LFL August ’17 Card Kit, but could only find metal ones in a smaller size – actually they worked quite well, and didn’t pull too much focus. I printed the ‘Favorite Recipes’ in Lucida Calligraphy font on my Ivory card stock, and cut them down to fit the book plate – I did do a light touch of ink blending (with Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink) on the edges of the card stock before gluing them to the metal plate. I didn’t want the brads poking through the cover of my book, so I just spread the prongs open on the back and glued the whole plate to the cover with Ranger Multi Medium Matte. To personalize the covers, I used my Silhouette to create the pairs of names on the same red polka-dot background, and cut 4 pieces of each so I could glue them all together for a chunky, ‘chip-board’ embellishment. Okay… I think that covers all the pieces for the front cover… Let’s work on the actual ‘book’ part and the insides. I based the dimensions of this entire book on using a half-sheet of card stock for the pages – so all the pages are 8.5″ x 5.5″.  For the front and back covers, I used black chip-board cut at 8″ wide by 5.75″ tall for the cover, and7/8″ wide by 5.75″ tall for the ‘spine’. I punched 1/8″ holes in the spine pieces for the twine binding, and used one as a pattern for punching holes on both of the spine pieces and all the pages. For the hinge, I used Tyvek from UPSP Priority Mail envelopes cut to 5/8″ wide by 6″ long – two pieces for both the front and back ‘hinge’. I did use Antique Linen Distress ink to add a little color to two of them (the front cover and the back ‘hinges’ will be covered with the red heart washi tape) and used my Spectrum Noir Dark Red 7 alcohol marker to color the inside hinges before use. I used 1/4″ scor-tape to attach the Tyvek hinges to the chip-board leaving 1/8″ in the center of each strip for folding. That Tyvek material will fold and fold and fold over and over and over again and never break, come apart or fail. Best material I ever found for making ‘paper’ hinges! Once the spines and covers were attached I added gold eyelets to the holes for some decorative reinforcement, and covered the Tyvek with some washi tape (I did add a touch of glue to the ends of the washi tape to help keep it from pulling off accidentally). I attached all the completed pieces to the cover and let them dry while I worked on the inside pages. Since I ended up printing the pattern for the cover, I ended up having a great deal of the 6×6 pattern paper left… what to do?? I figured the back of the pages seemed a little bare, so I decided to make a little “notes” section for the final recipient to jot down any notes they might find relevant. I actually scanned the back of one of the recipe cards into the computer so I could match the lines and font for my ‘notes’ section which I printed on my Ivory card stock and cut to 5.25″ wide by 2.125″ tall. Since all of the recipe cards had a little scalloped border around their edges, I decided to make a scalloped background for the ‘notes’ section. I created the scalloped rectangle on my Silhouette and sized it so I could get 2 pieces cut from the 6×6 pattern papers – That’s one of the things I love about working with my Silhouette Portrait – if you are careful and line things up accurately, you can cut right to the edges of most papers. Here you can see that I hardly wasted anything from the pattern papers I used and was able to get 2 ‘notes’ background pieces from each sheet of pattern paper. SWEET!   As far as the recipe cards, I didn’t think slots in the page to hold them was very classy, so I found some gold photo corners and used those on opposite corners to hold the recipe cards. There is more room on the back of the cards for ‘directions’ so you do need to be able to remove the recipe cards, and you don’t really want to take the whole book into the kitchen when you’re cooking, so I thought this was a sensible and decorative solution. I did create a couple of templates to help in positioning both the recipe cards and the ‘notes’ pieces on the pages, so the only thing you really have to pay attention to is matching the ‘note’ papers on the back of one page to the recipe papers on the front of the next page.

Now that the pages are complete and the cover is dry, we can bind our book together. I found that some simple twine was the best option – thick enough to hold tightly, and it contributes to the very rustic, handmade quality of the whole book. The more I thought about it, the more I was intrigued by the notion of giving someone a present that they have to do something with, and then they get to re-gift it! It feels very ‘recyclable’ to me, and, besides, aren’t we getting to the age where we don’t really need Christmas presents anymore?  LOL!!!  I hope our friends like these as much as I do, and they don’t get irritated at me for putting something else on their ‘to-do’ lists! Who knows, I may end up getting them all returned at Christmas next year !!!!  At least I’ll have a bunch of new recipes!!! Thanks for sharing some time with me here today, Your support means the world to me!

BONUS GIFT: Go to my COMMENTS page and send me a note requesting my “Let’s Cook Something Special Today” medallion for yourself! Simply specify whether you would like the file in a PDF format, or, for all the Silhouette folks out there, you can request a copy of my Silhouette file (You will need to have the Smoothie Shoppe font installed on your computer for the file to register properly). Simple enough to cut out by hand, I thought some of you might like to have this sentiment available in your own stash!

I hope you enjoyed this posting, and that you might be inspired to think about other purposefully re-gift-able presents this year!  Spread the Cheer!!!

 

Hello Folks!  Scott here with my 10 card posting for the Simon Says Stamp November 2017 “Kind Flowers” Card Kit. I made it just under the wire to get this posted on WORLD KINDNESS DAY!! This kit is unfortunately sold out, but I will provide links to individual products if they are available. Featured here is a big 6″ x  8″ ‘Kind Flowers’ stamp setwith a flower arrangement around a block lettered “KIND”, lots of individual flower and leaf stamps, a lovely script “kind” and “kindness” stamps, block letter “KIND” and “NESS” stamps, a border stamp and (of course) a couple of small heart stamps, and a plethora of kindness sentiments. We also get a KIND bold outline wafer die that matches the “KIND” on the flowers and the “KIND” stamp. This is paired with 16, 6″ x 6″ single-sided pattern papers and a 12″ x 12″ accent sticker sheet from Pebbles, Inc. ‘Heart of Home’ collection, and get a bag of Darice Large Leaf Gold sequins, We are also treated to 1 sheet of Silver embossed paper, 1 sheet of Bronze embossed paper, and 1 sheet of Gold embossed paper. All three of these papers are heavily textured and outright beautiful! To finish up the supplies in this kit, we get 4 sheets of SSS 100# card stock in Green Apple, Green Leaf, Dark Chocolate, and Cream. I haven’t ever seen such a large stamp set included with a card kit, so that is amazing, and there are lots of products featured this month. I guess I just have to resign myself to the fact that Simon Says Stamp Card Kits will almost always have some pink in them. LOL!! I did feel like the pattern papers and sticker sheet, though perfect matches with each other, did not really match the card stock colors, and (with the exception of one ‘kindness’ sticker) even matched the stamp set. Granted, flowers go with everything, but the stickers and pattern paper were very ‘home’ and ‘family’ oriented and had very little to do with the “kindness” stamp set. Ce la Vie! To get started on this kit, I decided to do some water-coloring this month, so I stamped the large flower grouping on Strathmore 140# cold press watercolor paper four times – twice with VersaMark ink  embossed with gold embossing powder, and twice with VersaFine Onyx Black ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I reached for my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers to color the “KIND” sentiment for this first card and was able to achieve a really nice ombré effect using just pale green and yellow. I was so pleased withhow my shading came out – and how well it matched the Green Apple card base – that I stopped right there and didn’t add any more color to the stamp! I cut the water color paper and the gingham pattern paper with my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies (large and small) and used a Green Apple card base. The water color paper is foam taped to the pattern paper which is attached directly to the card base. I trimmed the “kind” from the end of one of the sentiment stamps and stamped that in VersaFine Onyx Black ink on a scrap of watercolor paper, trimmed that down to size, and mounted that with foam tape above the colored “KIND”. The liked the fact that the gingham pattern paper is kind of a magenta-ish pink and went very well with the green card base. A few sequins of mine add a touch of sparkle, and “Be Courageous and Kind” is a great encouragement card.  For my second card, I used one of my gold-embossed stamps and added the “KIND” stamp (also gold embossed) and die-cut with the included die on top of the flower group.Using the Green Leaf card base, I once again, die-cut the watercolor paper and pattern paper with my Stitched rectangle dies and added a small ‘intermediate’ mat of gold glitter paper between them. I used the sap green color on the Daniel Smith watercolor pallet that was part of the Simon Says Stamp June ’17 Card Kit to create another ombré effect on the sentiment which is foam taped on the flower grouping. I also cut the “kind” word from the end of the “YOU ARE ONE OF A KIND” sentiment, stamped that with VersaFine Onyx black ink on watercolor paper and mounted that on foam tape above the KIND sentiment. The gold embossing is very reflective and shiny, so, no sequins required here! I like that that the large stamp is so intricate and detailed,  it hardly needs any color! Though very similar to my first card from this kit, I think this feels very earthy and (dare I say) much more masculine! But enough of that… let’s watercolor those flowers!Since there was a good deal of gray on the pattern papers, I decided to supplement the card stock in the kit with a piece of gray card stock from my stash. I water colored the stamp with my Pelikan Opaque watercolors and fussy cut the image to mount on foam tape to that lovely gray and gold-foiled pattern paper. Each of the 6″ x 6″ pattern papers has a complimentary strip of different paper along the top of each page, so I cut the thin strips from the top of this gray pattern paper and used them to define the edges of the pattern paper. I did create the “IT’S COOL TO BE” sentiment in my Silhouette software in the Arial 9pt. font, and was thrilled to discover that my watercolor paper would piggy-back through my printer with no problem! I like the pop that the gray affords the colored flowers, and with a little Spectrum Noir sparkle pen on the “kind”, and clear embossing on the stamp, and the gold foiling on the pattern paper, no further glitz is required! But enough of that stamp!!  Let’s move along to those embossed papers and the sticker sheet and see what I can come up with… It didn’t take me long to dive into some simple punswith this kit. On top of my gray card base, I have that gold embossed paper (I swear it looks like granny’s wallpaper..!) and die cut a ‘frame’ from the bronze embossed paper with two of the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies. A scrap of black card stock provides a background for the silhouette sticker from the accent sticker sheet, and the frame is mounted up on some foam tape for dimension. I created and cut the sentiment in my Silhouette using the Ballerina Script font. I cut 5 copies and glued them all together to make a nice chunky sentiment for the bottom of the card. I fiddled around quite a bit with a bunch of the stickers before I settled on the silhouette as my ‘art’. I really like the fact that the flower on the silhouette echoes the embossed paper. Both pretty and funny! The accent sticker sheet featured a variety of styles from silhouettes to black-and-white line drawings to colored flowers and leaves and trees and interesting house stickers. There was one sentiment featured on the sticker sheet AND on one of the pattern papers so I chose to use that “you are my home” sentiment (the one on the pattern paper was larger than the one on the sticker sheet, so I used the larger one). That sentiment is on some wood-grained pattern paper so, (after having such good results stamping on wood with my last card kit) I snagged some wooden coffee stirrers at my local coffee shop and used them for accents on this Cream card base. I stamped the border stamp on one of the stir sticks with Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink, and paired that up with two more to make a little ‘foundation’ for the house sticker. I split one of the tree stickers in half to provide some foliage behind the house, and I cut a couple of rectangles from the silver embossed paper to be ‘stone’ walls in front. I paired up 7 pieces of the stir sticks on a piece of scor-tape and cut them out (scissors cut the sticks easily) to be a bit of a mat behind the wooden heart. I did use my Distress Crayon in Picket Fence to ‘whitewash’ the heart mat, and added another stick (cut to size) to the top of the card for balance. A gold heart from the sticker sheet and a few sequins from my stash adds a nice sparkly touch. I like the clean symmetry of the scene set off with the asymmetrical placement of the hearts. The stir sticks are so thin (I have foam tape that is thicker!) that they lend themselves extremely well to card-making. I really LOVE this sentiment, and I will be looking for ways of using (and stamping on) wood in my cards every chance I get! FUN!Now here’s where the stickers and the pattern paper and the stamp set came together to make a truly wonderful card. I stamped the script-y “kindness” stamp on watercolor paper with VersaMark ink, and embossed that with the Love From Lizi Emerald City embossing powder. That is really gorgeous embossing powder – so smooth and shiny – I thought it worked very well on the Green Leaf card base. I used the pattern paper that matched the flower stickers for the background of this card, and I did trim the pink stripes from the top of that pattern paper for top and bottom accents behind the sentiment strip. I created the “MATTERS” sentiment on my Silhouette in the Sign Painter font and managed to match the color of the embossing powder pretty well..! I assembled two bunches of sticker flowers (a perfect match!) and attached them with foam tape to both sides of the sentiment and let a little bit come over the edges of the watercolor paper. I added two of the Darice gold leaves to the sticker arrangements and a few spots of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Carnation Pink on top of the sentiment paper. I was a little surprised that we didn’t get a stamp that said “matters” since it seems to me that ‘Kindness Matters’ is at the heart of the whole kindness movement… nonetheless, I love that stamp and I actually enjoyed using the pink flowers and pattern paper together… pink and green will always be a go-to combination for me! Great sentiment! Lovely card! As I continued to search through the pattern papers, there was one of the square sentiments that kept catching my eye and my funny bone, so I decided to use that piece with the Dark Chocolate card base and ignore all the kindnesses and family sentimentsfor at least one card! A smart, simple masculine hello card is the result. I mounted the ‘hi’ square from the pattern paper on foam tape to a different square from the pattern paper as a mat and glued those to the gold foil stripe pattern paper. I added two strips of the bronze embossed paper to the sides and used my peel off stickers in chocolate brown and soft gold for some delineation between papers. A few sequins from my stash, a gold heart sticker from the kit, and I’ve got a very snazzy, fairly simple hello card for anyone!  I do still have one more of the large stamps embossed in gold on my watercolor paper, and I wanted to see if I could disguise or even just cover up the KIND sentiment in the middle of the flowers. I stamped the two largest single flowers from the stamp set on watercolor paper and gold embossed them to match, and, lo and behold, no more words in the middle of the flowers! I water-colored the flowers with my Pelikan watercolors (to match the gray/daisy pattern paper), and glued the 2 individual flowers right over the KIND in the middle of the flowers. To highlight the ‘new’ bouquet, I used it vertically on this Green Apple card base. I did a kind of half-and-half fussy cut with the flower piece and foam taped the whole thing up on the card. I did use that grey pattern paper with the daisies for a mat behind the rectangle part of the watercolor paper, and used the silver pebble embossed paper as a mat behind that. I cut that sentiment stamp into three pieces and stacked them to make the sentiment here – stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and embossed that with clear embossing powder. I did use some Ranger Enamel Accents in Electric Lime to add the green dots to the stamp and the card. With the gold embossed stamp and the enamel dots, we’ve got plenty of shine on this ‘adapted’ spray of flowers! Now I still haven’t used the block print “NESS” stamp, so I paired that up with it’s natural predecessor “KIND” to make a trendy ‘sentiment only’ card. I simply adore this card.I stamped both stamps with Versafine Onyx Black ink, clear embossed them on the watercolor paper, painted them with my Pelican opaque watercolors, and fussy cut them all apart. I love this sentiment! It is the moral from The Lion and the Mouse fable by Aesop. I used my Silhouette to print the “A    IS NEVER WASTED •AESOP•” on the Cream card base. Without even owning a machine, you can use the Silhouette software to outline your card and place whatever sentiment you wish to print anywhere on your card. Check out my “Printing Sentiments for Cards” posting for even more information on my ‘piggy-back’ printing technique. I used the Arial Black font in a blueish-green and attached all the letters to the card with foam tape. (I actually mixed up the Ns at first, and couldn’t understand why the rainbow looked so weird, until I realized that I had the yellow and the blue in the wrong place!) And can we talk about those leaf stamps in the stamp set that that come in pairs – mirror image pairs! LOVE those stamps! One set of those leaf stamps is stamped on either side of the “A” at the top of the sentiment and lightly colored with a dark green colored pencil – don’t want to use watercolors on the Cream card base..! (Those leaf stamps are going to get LOTS of use!!!) I did use some of my Wink of Stella pen to add some sparkle to the letters, and an old heart brad (with the tabs cut off) glued underneath the sentiment ties everything together for one of my favorite cards of all time! The big reason this card came about was when I realized that the open block KINDNESS stamp was SO large (actually 4.25″ across on this card) that I figured it should really be THE focal point of the whole card. And that great sentiment from Aesop lent itself so nicely to this idea. LOVE IT!! I can see me making a lot of these…! Since I have only dabbled with one pun-y card so far, I thought that I needed to wrap this 10 Cards 1 Kit posting with with one more. (I’ve been holding back on this one till now..!)YES! It’s my ‘Random Axe of Kindness’ card!!! LOL!!! I recently got an axe die from the Spellbinders Lumberjack Days Collection “Camp Out” dies (discontinued, so I got it on a great sale!). I used my Sticky BARC wood sheets to cut out the handle of the axe and some silver mirror card stock for the blade. Of course, this is the Dark Chocolate card base, the bronze embossed paper for a mat and that lovely gold foiled pattern paper (both cut with the lawn fawn stitched rectangle dies). I actually printed the speech bubble and sentiment (again using Arial Black font) on the back of one of the pattern papers and fussy cut the speech bubble and cut the sentiment out with another LF Stitched Rectangle die. All of the background papers are glued flat to the card base and everything else is attached with foam tape to the front of the card. A little bit of a frame on the sentiment with my soft gold peel off stickers highlights it quite nicely. This card gives me the giggles every time I speak the sentiment! A perfect finish for this card kit and a nice heartfelt laugh to celebrate WORLD KINDNESS DAY! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today – please post a comment if you like, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to go to the CONTACTS page and send me an email! Happy Crafting!!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 Cards post featuring the Love From Lizi November Card Kit. This kit is sold-out (setting another speed record) but some of the items may become available individually in the coming months. This kit features actual letter-sized card stock (instead of European A4 sized card stock) something new Lizi is trying out, so making your A2 card bases couldn’t be any easier… I personally love this format better! I generally use the colors of my card bases to compliment my card designs, so you will rarely see me covering up a card base completely with pattern paper or card stock.This kit is holiday oriented with kind of a ‘wood-grain’ theme reflected in the stamp set featuring a star, tree, heart and stag head rendered in wood-grain. The usual over-abundance of pattern papers, card stocks, embellishments and specialty items round out the supplies in this kit – everything from wood-grain paper to puffy reindeer trimmings, matchsticks to mirrors – this kit has a little bit of everything!  I usually start with the stamp set in a new card kit, but I wasn’t particularly in the ‘holiday spirit’ yet – so I ignored the sentiments and went for a simple pun to start. I was a little obsessed with the notion of stamping on the match sticks and loved the stag head stamp so here we go…I had to split the matchsticks in half (lengthwise) in order to create enough surface area for the stamp – I simply attached them in a slightly off-set pattern onto a piece of 1″ scor-tape and stamped the stag head with a Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink pad right on top of the ‘raft’ of matchsticks. Truly amazing! The combination of the wood-grained stamp and the actual wood texture of the matchsticks gave me a truly unique focal point for this first card! I attached the ‘raft’ with foam tape to a piece of the stag head pattern paper, and matted that on some of the glossy wood-grain specialty paper and added some of the peel off stickers to the sides. I pulled out my old stand-by card stock (Staples 110# Ivory card stock) and printed the sentiment using my Silhouette software and the Smoothie Shoppe font. (I actually filled the text with a little wood-grain pattern). I cut the sentiment out with a Lawn Fawn Stitched rectangle die and distressed the edges with the Walnut Stain ink using a mini ink blending tool, and also added the smallest peel off stickers around the sentiment for a little added sparkle. The sentiment is foam-tape mounted to that great embossed Kraft card stock from the kit, and a few Nuvo Glitter drops in Chocolate Fondue add just the right touch of shine to the front of this card. No Holiday here, just matchsticks…! I was having a bit of a problem figuring out how to incorporate a heart stamp into a batch of holiday cards, and figured this was the perfect opportunity. I (of course) created a writing surface on the inside of the card (cut with another Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Die) with my Ivory card stock and stamped the wood-grain heart at the top again using the Walnut Stain Oxide ink. Perfect use of that heart for this out-of-season Valentine or friendship card with a simple pun that actually highlights the theme of this month’s kit! I really like how this card came out, and I will keep my eyes open for more opportunities to stamp on something other than card stock…!    Now BRING ON THE HOLIDAYS…!I was fascinated with the puffy reindeer fabric trimmings in the embellishment bag and knew I wanted to ‘hitch’ them all together to make an “eight tiny reindeer” card! I LOVE this card. I used a light blue card base and the dark blue shimmer specialty card stock for the background. I used the bronze cording included with the embellishments to ‘hitch’ two rows of the reindeer together – on the front for the front row and on the back for the back row (I did have to use Glossy Accents to get the cord to stick to the fabric) – and tried to keep a little slack between each deer (don’t want to strangle them)! I used the smallest soft gold gems from the kit to disguise the glue spot on the front row of reindeer and, after attaching the back row directly to the card stock, I used thin foam tape to add some dimension to the front row. I used my White Sharpie ultra fine point marker to add stars to the background, and the sentiment is a sticker from the kit mounted on the gorgeous blue shimmer card stock with foam tape. Other than the foam tape, some glossy accents and the white sharpie, this card is created completely with items from the kit…! I did take the time to add a little something to the insides of all my cards this month, so I used another fabric reindeer and one of the sentiment stamps from the stamp set that completes the “BELIEVE” sentiment on the front of the card. Stamped in the Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink down in the bottom left corner of the ivory card stock writing surface, this is a nice completion of the card. I did find the small sentiment stamps in the stamp set a bit fussy to stamp – they are very tiny, and I had to practice a bit to figure out how much ink the stamp would take before it all smushed out into a big blob… Most of my stamp pads are pretty juicy, so that probably didn’t help me when trying to get a good impression with these small stamps. The dark blue shimmer card stock has great depth to it and actually feels like a night sky. No sleigh with this card, but here’s eight tiny reindeer to take us straight into the holiday season!We were treated to a full 12″ x 12″ sheet of coordinating stickers with this kit and I was immediately drawn to this large “Merry and Bright” sticker. I mounted the sticker to a mat of the gold linen specialty paper and then to a mat of the gold glitter card stock from the LFL July 2017 Card Kit. I wanted as much sparkle for this card as possible (merry and BRIGHT!) I did hand letter the ‘may your days be’ above the ‘Merry and Bright’ with my Pigma Micron pen to help complete the sentiment, and used Glossy Accents to add a little shine to the Christmas lights and actually colored the “Merry and Bright” text with my Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust pen – to make the whole sentiment very sparkly. I foam taped the matted sticker on top of a strip of that very dark wood/snowflake pattern paper and added more gold glitter card stock strips to the top and bottom on that dark chocolate card base. I did use the ‘Merry Christmas’ sentiment stamp on the inside of the card to finish things up, and here we have a toasty warm, rather masculine holiday card. Lets do a shaker card now! I created a shaker using another great sticker from the kit. I did have to die cut the center “Merry Christmas” circle from the square shaped sticker, and I die cut a frame from the warm gold specialty card stock using my Darice Nesting Circles dies. I thought it would be fun to make a kind of merry-go-round shaker where the sequins go around the center circle instead of just shaking around behind it. It was simple enough to create a foam circle behind the center and with that simple step, we have a circular path for the shaker bits to follow. I used the blue satin ribbon with gold trim to embellish the bottom of this card front and added a small bow to give it a finishing touch. The light blue snowflake pattern paper provides a background for the shaker, and I packed it quite full of sequins from the ‘Merry and Bright’ sequin mix from the kit. Everything is mounted to the dark blue card base, and despite being quite full, there is really some good shaker action with this card. Now I want to experiment with other ways of creating paths for shaker cards… the possibilities seem endless!In addition to the sticker sheet we also got two 12″ x 12″ pattern papers. We did have a sheet of bright white (letter-size!) card stock in this kit, so I was on the lookout for something that would work with a white card base. This ‘NOEL’ piece on the white wood worked perfectly. Since I was trying to keep to the ‘wood’ theme with this kit, I found some real wood sheets in my stash that I had purchased on sale somewhere and never got around to using… Now’s my chance! The mat right behind the cut-out image is a piece of Sticky BARC Wood in Cherry that I ‘white-washed’ with the Ranger Distress Crayon in Picket Fence. I simply colored the wood with the crayon, and then, using a baby-wipe, rubbed the crayon into the wood to smooth it out and soften the ‘white-wash’. I love these wood sheets – Great texture and a great look – you can almost tell that this is real wood just from the picture, and that just can’t compare to how it feels in your hand. The ‘NOEL’ cut-out piece is foam taped up on the wood mat, and (believe-it-or-not!) the mat behind the wood is that dusty pink shimmer card stock from the kit – matches perfectly! One of the gold crystal star gems from the kit fit on top of the printed star on the ‘Noel’ arrangement, and a beautiful, soft, wintry, wooden Holiday card comes to light. I really love the simple beauty of this card and am thrilled to be able to experiment with those Sticky BARC wood sheets – You can cut them, you can die-cut them, you can even PRINT on them! WOW! For the inside of this card I die-cut the BARC wood sheet with the ‘Merry Christmas’ die from the kit. I was actually worried that this die was so small that it would be very difficult to use and too small to make any kind of an impact, but I was pleasantly proven wrong – a GREAT die that is readable and just large enough to make an impression – and the great thing about the Sticky BARK is that it is sticky-backed – and with good adhesive too!!  Instant wood stickers!! I will use this more!

Now, ever since I saw Lizi’s unboxing, and saw that full-sized sheet of acetate with the snow print, I knew I wanted to make an actual acetate card using that sheet!So I cut the acetate to 5.5″ x 8.5″ and scored it down the middle to make an A2 card base. I used a Darice Cityscape background die that I bought on sale a couple of years ago and haven’t ever used, to create the city background out of some black card stock from my stash. The die is very interesting in that it doesn’t cut out all the windows, but it embosses them, and then you can use the die as a stencil to color in the windows – so you can see some of the windows have a little bit of ‘light’ showing. I used a stitched hillside die to cut the shimmer white specialty paper into a snow bank for the front of the card and used my Silhouette and a gold extra fine tip Sharpie to sketch the sentiment (Ballerina Script font) on the snow bank. I added a small strip of ‘snow’ to the bottom of the Cityscape die cut and used a Darice Nesting circle die to create the crescent moon from the same glimmer white card stock. All of the pieces are adhered to the acetate with dry (ATG) adhesive, and all the shapes have matching pieces attached to the back so you can’t see the adhesive through the acetate. I did stamp the Merry Christmas sentiment from the stamp set on the strip of snow inside the card, and added a golden snowflake sequin from my stash to the front with a little soft gold gem in the center. I DO live in NYC and this card feels very much like home to me! There is plenty of room on the back of the card to add whatever writing you may like – though you will need a gel pen of some kind to write on the black…! This card has a great sense of movement as you open it and, even though it’s a black-and-white card, It does feel like the holidays in NYC to me.When I created the windy swirl sketch on my Silhouette for the LFL Thanks Giving kit, I knew I wanted to use that sketch on a card with this kit. No leaves this time, just lots of snow! I drew my swirls on that frosty pine branch pattern paper with a Copper Rose extra fine tip Sharpie and mounted that with some foam tape to a piece of the dark wood-grain paper on top of the light blue card base. LOVE the snowflake die in this kit! Cut the snowflakes from the white-washed BARC wood sheet, and added the soft gold gems to the centers and points. I used two of the wood veneer die-cut snowflakes from the kit, and if you look closely, you can see that those are on top of two of the gold mirror triangles – major light reflection from those!! I added three snowflake sequins from my stash and a scatter of sequins from the Merry and Bright sequin mix. The sentiment is from the sticker sheet, mounted on a thin mat of the dark wood-grain paper, and foam taped to the card. I love the mix of snowflake styles on this decidedly chilly holiday card.Now I need to use the star stamp for a card. Here, I stamped the star with Delicata Golden Glitz ink on my Ivory card stock and cut three of them out. This is also the Stag die from the kit cut from my BARC wood sheet and attached to die-cut black fun-foam for a little added thickness. The Stags are mounted to the stars and then to a piece of the shimmer gray specialty card stock from the kit. That is all mounted to the dark chocolate card base framed with the golden woven ribbon on each side and some peel off stickers at the edges. The Delicata ink gives a very nice shine to the wood-grain stamps, and helps set off the wooden stag die-cuts. And… if you haven’t gone there yet… this is on the inside:LOL!! Printed on the BARC sheet with the ‘Futura’ font in bold, and mounted to a scrap of black card stock for pop. I was amazed that the BARC wood sheet would print so well!It only seemed appropriate to make this a gift card holder! I have found the easiest way to include a gift card is to cut a slit the width of the gift card, add angled slits at the end about 3/8″ long and then punch the tiniest hole at the end of the cuts to relieve the stress. Careful placement of adhesive on the back about a half inch below your slit will hold everything together nicely. This card cracks me up! With the seeming ubiquity of Starbucks gift cards during the holidays, this card will certainly get some use this year!I did want to use that nice 2.5″ linen ribbon with the deer printing, so, here we have another fun pun featuring that ribbon on the embossed Kraft card base. I really enjoy the rhyme with this pun – printed on my Ivory card stock in the ‘Ballerina Script’ font, I cut that out with a Spellbinder Deckled Rectangle die, distressed the edges with Walnut Stain ink, and mounted that to a small mat of my Ivory card stock that has peel off stickers all around the edges – I think that really highlights that deckle edge. I did remove the wire from the sides of the ribbon, and ran the ribbon through my Zyron sticker maker to cover the back with adhesive and positioned that on the card base from corner to corner. I really like using the Zyron adhesive with ribbon, if you burnish the adhesive down nicely, you can trim your ribbon right at the edge of the card with no fear of fraying or having to wrap the ribbon around the back of your card. The golden woven ribbon on the ‘Star Bucks’ card is attached the same way. I used some peel off stickers on the edges of the ribbon, followed that up with two 3/8″ strips of the lovely blue stripe pattern paper and finished off with the small peel off stickers. I did mount the sentiment to the ribbon with foam tape at the same angle as everything else. Another lovely guy card..!!

Now I haven’t used the stencil included with the kit, and I haven’t used the tree stamp in the stamp set… though I have to say a tree stamp in wood-grain seems a little redundant to me… !  LOL! I decide to use my iCraft Deco Foil Transfer Gel and my Deco Foil sheets with the stencil on the dark blue card base. I used the great Thermoweb / Gina K Designs Fancy Foil gold sequin sheets for the foiling. WOW! Truly lots of bang for your buck here!Now the stamped trees kind of got lost on the stenciled foil background, so I ended up just cutting out two strips of the foiled triangles, and used the large ombre pattern paper to be the background for the tree stamps.  I stamped the trees in three different brown inks: Walnut Stain Oxide ink and Stampin’ Up ink in Early Espresso and Chocolate Chip. Subtle differences… After fussy cutting the trees (very easy) I did outfit them all with little crowns and presents. I used all the gold specialty paper included in the kit as well as some of that blue wire, sequins, gems, and another golden mirror triangle to make these fun little crowns and presents. I rarely make cards with no sentiment on the front, but for the second time with this kit, the ultimate pun is revealed inside the card. Again, this makes me laugh out loud! I don’t know if it’s the simplicity of the pun or the unconventionality that strikes me as funny, but I just can’t help myself!There’s that ‘Brady Bunch Remastered’ font again – works perfectly! I printed this with my Silhouette software directly on an Ivory card base (I cut up the dark blue card base to get the two strips of foiled trees), and added the die-cut Merry Christmas (from the dark brown wood-grain sheet) towards the bottom and next to the wood veneer die cut of a gift that I colored up with a Gold sharpie. “Bearing gifts we traverse afar..” LOL! Not only do I adore this pun, but I love how this card all came together and the triangle theme that developed and is even reinforced with the design of the tree stamp! SO MUCH FUN! There we have a very handsome set of cards – mostly holiday in unconventional colors with a unique wood theme running throughout. I realize I didn’t have pictures of every card’s inside, but if you check out the 10 Cards 1 Kit video on YouTube, I do show every one. As with almost every Love From Lizi card kit, I have bunches of leftovers to add to my stash – LOTS of pattern papers, stickers, embellishments and ribbons. I love all three of the wafer dies, and the Heart and Star stamp should be very useful all year round! I had much more fun with this kit than I originally thought I wood, (LOL!) and am perfectly thrilled with the results. If you have any questions or comments, please ask away, and if you want to contact me directly, just go to the CONTACT page and send me an email! Thanks for joining me here today! I hope you enjoyed, and I was able to share some laughter and a little inspiration with you. Happy Crafting!!!

Hello folks! Scott here with a little bit of an extra for you today. I received the Love From Lizi Special Edition Thanksgiving Kit – the ‘Happy Harvest’ card kit recently, and this card kit is actually currently available at LoveFromLizi.com!I believe this is Lizi’s first kit to come in a 12″x 12″ box and zip-lock bag, and is jam-packed with 12″x 12″ pattern papers, stickers, vellum images and cut-out sheets along with 6″x 6″ pattern pages, chip-board stickers and 5 specialty card stocks including a green cardboard with gold glimmer, a brushed gold mirror sheet and a linen textured gold card stock as well. A ‘Happy Harvest’ sequin mix, three leaf dies and an exclusive stamp set complete the set. Be sure to check out my video for a complete piece-by-piece un-boxing for this kit. I don’t generally make or send ‘autumn’ or Thanksgiving cards but after completing this batch of ten cards, I just might have to this year!!

I usually LOVE the vellum images Lizi includes in many of her kits, and the vellum in this kit was no exception – so that’s where I went to begin my 10 cards for this kit. Thank You cards are always in season, and I adored this bunch of carrots and sentiment on the vellum sheet. I ran the vellum piece through my Zyron sticker maker and adhered that to a piece of my old stand-by card stock – Staples Ivory card stock.  A strip of that green/gold cardboard topped with a couple of retro fruit advertisements from the patter papers provides a background for the vellum which is foam-taped to the orange shimmer specialty card stock. (LOVE that card stock!) I die-cut two of the short leaves from the linen textured gold card stock to add a bit of dimension, and finished it off with a few sequins. Since there is such a plethora of images in this kit, I decided to do something to the insides of each of my cards this month. I found the perfect compliment to this card on the 12″x 12″ cut-out sheet and I think it adds a lovely touch mounted on more of my Ivory card stock. See how closely that Ivory card stock matches the banner on this cut-out – I find myself constantly reaching for this card stock for so many cards – I recommend it as a budget ‘use it for anything’ card stock to have on hand in anyone’s stash!        Having rarely used chip-board stickers on any of my card kits, I was very interested in seeing what I could create with the chip-board stickers included in this kit. There was a lovely line of leaves that drew my attention right away and inspired me to make this card. This is on that great Kraftembossed card stock included in the kit (There is a piece of this card stock in the November subscription card kit as well)! I trimmed the scallops off the burlap scallop sticker from the sticker sheet to make the strip down the left side of the card, and created this sentiment on my Silhouette using the Staples Ivory card stock (with the ‘Marguaritas’ font) and cut six pieces to glue together to try and approach the thickness of the chip-board pieces. Two more chip-board leaves and a few sequins from the mix finish off this card with a little touch of sparkle. I did add liquid glue to the backs of the chip-board stickers since they didn’t want to stick very well to that specialty card base. I absolutely LOVE this sentiment and adore this card – though autumnal in theme, this sentiment elevates this card beyond a simple Fall Card.   Since I wanted to save the two gold specialty card stocks and the green/gold cardboard, that only left me with the Kraft and Orange shimmer card stocks for card bases, so I did bring in some card bases from my stash. This is on a core’dinations Auburn Pearl card stock from my stash. (I also used 1.5 sheets of Kraft card stock and a half sheet of the Staples Ivory card stock for a total of 6 card bases from my stash.)I used the maple leaf die from the kit to die-cut the center leaf from the brushed gold mirror card stock and used my Lawn Fawn ‘Quinn’s Capital Abc’s‘ to die-cut the letters from the linen textured gold card stock. I added some veining to the leaf with my Embossing Stylus Set and foam taped all the die cuts to some more of that Ivory card stock from my stash. I used one of the Ellen Hutson Stiching Lines die to add the cross-stitch detail on the edges, and glued that to a mat of the burlap pattern paper and foam taped that to a mat of the ivory polka-dot pattern paper. The Auburn Pearl card stock adds a lovely shimmer to this card, and I really like the simple rebus puzzle sentiment demonstrated here. Another card not necessarily autumnal themed..!     Okay… it’s time to stop fiddling with all the groovy cardstocks and pattern papers and dig into the stamps from Lizi’s exclusive stamp set. Finally, I get a chance to color something! I start with the pumpkin stamp and with some simple masking, stamp three pumpkins in a row using my Tim Holtz Oxide Distress ink in Walnut Stain on my ivory card stock, and colored the pumpkins with my (vintage) Prismacolor colored pencils. I cut the pumpkins out (creating a little variety by cutting the stems at different lengths) and mounted them with foam tape to a strip of that green / gold cardboard from the kit – BOY! that makes those colored pumpkins pop! I used a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die to cut out a background piece from my Ivory card stock – wrapped a couple short pieces of burlap glitter ribbon (from the LFL August 2017 card kit) around the top and bottom, and foam taped that whole piece on a mat made from the striped pattern paper in the kit and mounted everything to one of my Kraft card bases. Those stripes have touches of blue, orange and ivory that match the pumpkins perfectly! I created this sentiment on my Silhouette Portrait and printed it directly on the Ivory card stock in the ‘Casual’ font – Love this pun – and yes, a pumpkin is a gourd! I tried to highlight that fact by coloring the pumpkins in different colors. I did take advantage of the ‘Fall’ sentiment to use one of the stamp set sentiments on the inside of the card, along with a small sticker from the sticker sheet. The burlap ribbon adds plenty of sparkle to this card – no need for sequins here – and I have to admit, I am really over the moon for these pumpkins!! No more strictly orange pumpkins for me!!      Ok – That’s one sentiment from the stamp set – let’s see what we can do with the others. I really like the ‘Sweater Weather’ sentiment in the kit but don’t find any pattern paper or images that seem to go along with that sentiment… If you have followed me at all, you know I rely on my Silhouette Portrait machine a great deal – from creating and cutting sentiments to cutting whole shapes to use on my cards. One thing I haven’t done with my Silhouette for any of my card kit videos is use it to sketch with… Yes, you can use your Silhouette to draw with! I spent a bit of time coming up with this pattern to use with my Silhouette but am completely thrilled with the result – and now I can draw with any pen (color) I have that will fit in the carrier! This is actually drawn with a Sharpie metallic gold extra fine tip marker which, I am pleasantly surprised, does fit in my Silhouette! I used a piece of the blue pattern paper (die-cut with a Lawn Fawn stitched Rectangle die) to draw the swirly windy dashed lines in gold and framed that with a thin frame of the brushed gold mirror card stock. I embossed the sentiment in gold on a piece of the polka- dot pattern paper and die-cut it with a Darice Banner die, distressed the edges with some Walnut Stain Oxide ink, and mounted it on foam tape to the front of the card. I die-cut all three of the leaf dies from assorted pieces of pattern paper and added veins with a simple brush marker. I attached the leaves with thin foam dots and made sure some of them went ‘off the edge’ of the card. Everything is mounted to the other half of my core’dinations Auburn Pearl card stock for the base, and a generous sprinkle of sequins complete the windy effect. I don’t know if it’s the blue pattern paper, or the gold wind swirls or the ‘randomness’ of the leaves, but I have a definite soft spot for this card! There was this great sentiment on a couple of the cut-out pattern paper images but I had a hard time seeing the sentiment printed on the patterns, so I decided to re-create this sentiment to go on top of this GREAT vellum piece featuring flowers made out of leaves. I did run the foiled vellum piece through my Zyron sticker maker and attached it to the front of my Ivory card-base. The foiled vellum piece was a touch narrower that the card base so I added a couple strips of the brushed gold card stock to the top and bottom. I did the sentiment on my Silhouette using the ‘Ballerina Script font and a simple Times New Roman font. I printed the sentiment on a piece of vellum because I still wanted to see the leaf flowers through the sentiment – one layer of vellum obscured the sentiment too much, but two layers highlighted the sentiment enough while still letting the background show through. Again, the sentiment is run through my sticker maker and attached directly to the card front. This card seemed a little flat at this point, so I die cut more of the rounded leaf die from the gold mirror card stock and added another ‘flower’ on the right and a couple of leaf pieces in the open areas of the pattern. I also used a piece of a spool-top sticker for the center of my flower. The added pieces filled out his pattern nicely, and, due to the beautiful gold foiling, sequins seemed like overkill. I really like this sentiment and the fact that it matched this vellum piece so perfectly.   There were so many vellum pieces that I liked, I had to continue on with the ‘leaf frame’ vellum piece.Yes, again with my Zyron sticker maker and I attached the vellum to more of my Ivory card stock before I fussy cut the center out. I trimmed the Ivory card stock down to 4″x 5.25″, filled the shaker with lots of the sequin mix and added a die-cut maple leaf cut from a piece of core’dinations Glitter Silk card stock in brown. I did double up my foam tape around the leaf frame to provide enough height for the shaker bits. The polka-dot pattern paper provides the background for the shaker, and I used a strip of the linen textured gold card stock to transition from the vellum to the card stock. Happy Fall Y’all is another sentiment from the stamp set, and I stamped that in Stampin’ Up Chocolate Chip ink before doing some clear embossing on the top. There was a long border sticker of that great striped pattern paper on the sticker sheet, so I trimmed two pieces into banners to throw focus on the sentiment. Everything is mounted to my Kraft card base, and I can’t think of a ‘happier’ card than a shaker card! Great shaker action here as well!Back to the chip-board pieces! I figured I had to do a true Happy Thanksgiving card with this kit, and there was a lovely chip-board sticker that worked perfectly. I used a piece of the pattern paper covered with seasonal words for my background, added strips of the pumpkin vellum piece to the top and bottom and framed them out with some LFL peel offs in Chocolate Brown (from the August ’17 card kit). I guess I couldn’t do 10 cards without some peel off stickers somewhere! A thicker piece of the peel off stickers goes behind the chip-board sentiment, one of the chip-board flourishes is added below the sentiment and glittered up with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen, and all is glued down to my Kraft card base. The shine from the peel offs, the foiling on the vellum strips and the touch of glitter on the flourish told me no sequins were needed on this card, but I did take special delight in adding a cut-out from the kit to the inside of the card. ‘Lettuce Celebrate’ is a terrific pun and totally appropriate for this Happy Thanksgiving card (note the added chocolate peel off ‘underlining’ the cut-out)!      There are still a couple of the stamps I haven’t used yet, so before I get completely lost in the land of pattern papers and chip-board stickers, let’s do some coloring! I stamped the sunflower stamp (on Bristol smooth card stock in Versafine Onyx Black ink) and colored it with my Spectrum Noir Alcohol Markers. I added some dots of Sakura Glaze pens in black, orange and clearto the center of the flower which adds some nice texture and shine without having to resort to glitter. This stamp is large enough to be the solitary focal point on a card, so, after fussy cutting the sunflower, I simply die-cut some of the green pattern paper with the medium leaf die from the kit to provide an anchor for the sunflower. The brushed gold mirror card stock piece is actually the center cut out (Stitched Rectangle die, again) of the frame on the  ‘Sweater Weather’ card (waste not, want not!). The golden yellow mat and sentiment are some leftover pieces from a Recollections Jewel Tone card stock pack (which has since been discontinued), but it compliments this card perfectly. I found this lovely quote from Helen Keller that I printed in American Typewriter font on my Silhouette and die cut with a small stitched rectangle die and glued to a mat of that Glitter Silk card stock in orange. The sentiment and sunflower are mounted with foam tape but everything else is glued directly down to the orange shimmer card base. Since sunflowers literally keep their ‘face to the sunshine’ I thought this quote made a perfect sentiment for a lovely sunflower card. This is certainly not just an autumn card at all! Now I get to use the ear of corn stamp! This stamp is the unique stand-out of this set!I stamped and colored these ears on Bristol Smooth card stock with VersaFine Black Onyx ink and colored them with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I knew I wanted to use this ‘rows of corn’ pattern paper with this stamp, so I created the pun-ny sentiment on my Silhouette (Typewriter Hand font) and printed it directly on the pattern paper. In order to kind of drive home the -maize- part of the pun, I did color two ears as Indian ear corn, and that provided the right pop of color this card needed. Two more strips of that striped pattern paper down the sides correspond with the blue and red on the ears of corn. Everything is attached flat to the embossed Kraft card base with the center ear of corn attached with foam tape.  I thought sequins would distract from the earthy, harvest feel of this card, so I avoided anything shiny or sparkly, and like the pumpkin stamp before, I may never color a simple yellow ear of corn ever again!! Between the pumpkins and the sunflower and the ear of corn stamps in this stamp set, I know I will get a lot of use out of them over the years. And can we talk about left-overs..! I still have masses of pattern paper, chip-board stickers, card stickers, a few vellum pieces and good-sized chunks of the specialty paper that will go directly into my stash! I am surprised at how much I enjoyed this kit, and am thrilled at the truly beautiful cards inspired by all the supplies included. If you have any questions at all please leave a comment or you can go to the Contact page and email me directly. I hope you enjoyed this sojourn into Autumn and the Special Edition Thanks Giving ‘Happy Harvest’ card kit from Love From Lizi, and remember, this kit is still available at LoveFromLizi.com!  Happy Crafting!

Hello Folks, Scott here unboxing my Love From Lizi November Card Kit. Unfortunately, this card kit has sold out – in record time, again! I’m going to try something a little different with my unboxing post today – I will try to do an actual list of all the supplies included in the kit, and if any of the pieces are available individually at Love From Lizi, I will provide a link. Here we go!This month Lizi has gone to a different format for her cardstock – Letter-size cardstocks (8.5″x11″) for all us North Americans who haven’t adopted the metric system!!5 Sheets of  8.5″x 11″ cardstock in Bright White, Sky Blue, Dark Blue, Deep Chocolate, and tiny pin-stripe embossed Kraft cardstock, and 1  8.5″x 11″ wood grain gloss paper.1  A4 size acrylic sheet featuring a printed snowfall pattern.

12  6″x 6″ single sided pattern papers.

2  12″x 12″ double-sided pattern papers featuring 12 3″x 4″ image fronts which reverse to a brown and gold ‘stag head’ paper, and an assortment of ornate gold frames which reverse to an ombre pattern in brown and blue. 1  12″x 12″ Sheet of cardstock stickers.  Our specialty cardstock is in a little different format this month as well – we get 8 sheets of 4.25″x 5.5″ cardstock in a Bronze shimmer, Dark Blue shimmer, Warm Gold shimmer, White shimmer, Grey or Graphite shimmer, Brushed Gold mirror cardstock, Rose Grey shimmer, and a Golden linen textured paper as well.1  8″x 8″ sticky-back stencil featuring a triangle pattern.1  sheet of ‘Gold Moon-dust’ peel off sticker stripes (brushed gold with glitter highlights)

1  4″x 6″ clear stamp set with wood-grain images and assorted holiday sentiments.

And now, on to the ever-envied embellishments bag! This month, instead of the usual Chameleon Pen, we get a Tim Holtz Distress Crayon in Picket Fence (white).

1 meter of 3/8″ dark blue satin ribbon with gold trim, 1 meter of bronze cording, 1 meter of 1/2″ woven gold metallic ribbon, 1 meter of thin blue wire, and about 20″ of satin deer die-cut puffy trimming – you kind of have to see this to believe it! AND 1 meter of 2.5″ kraft linen wired ribbon printed with dark brown stags.3  Tags (2 large 1 small) with wood-grain patterns and 3 natural twine ties.1  bottle of Nuvo Glitter Drops in ‘Chocolate Fondue’.92  Soft Gold sequins in 3 sizes. 5  Soft gold star-shaped gems along with 15 wooden matchsticks.

9  Christmas themed wood-veneer die-cuts, and 9 Snowflake wood-veneer die-cuts.10  self-adhesive triangle mirror pieces in Gold.     1  sample bag of the ‘Merry and Bright’ Love From Lizi sequin mix.3  dies – a Stag Head, a Snowflake, and a ‘Merry Christmas’ sentiment.

PHEW!!! Is that quite enough product for you! I am looking forward to diving in and putting together my 10 Cards 1 Kit video for this kit! Please stay tuned!!!

 

Hello folks, Scott here with my 10 cards from the Simon Says Stamp “Brushstroke Messages” Card Kit for October 2017. This kit is chock full of mirrored card stock, embossing powder, and embossed pattern papers – lots of shine this month.

As you can see, this kit has sold out at Simon Says Stamp, but most of the kit supplies are available on their own. This month the stamp set is the “Brushstroke Messages” Stamp set which includes 5 bold brush stroke stamps and a little brush stroke heart along with six different sentiments – “thank YOU”, “YOU ARE loved”, “happy BIRTHDAY”, “YOU’RE GOING TO ROCK THIS”, “JUST WANTED TO SAY YOU’RE AMAZING”, and “YOU GOT THIS”.  We get 12 double-sided sheets of  My Mind’s Eye 6 x 6 BLUSH Designer Card stock Paper with rose gold foil accents – the gold foiling is very nice, and the papers feature dark navy blue, a blush pink (sigh), and ivory to go along with the rose gold foil. We are treated to a die this month – the Small Spiral Flower wafer die which is about 1″ square, and a full pot of Simon Says Stamp Steel Navy Embossing Powder, as well as a Ranger “Emboss It” pen in clear and Ranger’s .5oz. Mini Multi Medium Matte Glue,  and a disposable mini applicator adhesive brush. The card stock in this kit includes a sheet of Tonic Studios Burnished Rose Mirror card stock, and 1 sheet each of Simon Says Stamp 100# card stock in Ivory, Smoke Gray, and Soft Navy. Only 3 sheets of card stock, so I have to add to that to get card bases for 10 cards. I search through my stash and discover that I don’t have any card stock that matches this color pallet. My Ivory is much darker, my Gray is much lighter, and none of my dark blue card-stock is even close to the same color. So I do something that I have never done before with any card kit – I cut the Soft Navy and Smoke Gray card stock into quarters and mount them onto simple white card bases from my stash. I guess there’s a first time for everything, and I do end up with 4 Soft Navy card bases, 4 Smoke Gray card bases and 2 Ivory card bases. I worried that I didn’t have any ink pads that would match this kit either, so I did a little stamp test and did find that my Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Spot in ‘Night of Navy’ matched the Soft Navy card stock very well! I have to admit this stamp kit and color pallet did not particularly inspire me (more pink and no images to color!) so let’s see what I can come up with…I started with a piece of the pattern paper that had a large swatch of the gold foil paired with the ivory, and cut that out with one of my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies. I ended up using almost all of the Stitched Rectangle dies in my stash – both the large and the small – I do love the sharp detail that the stitching adds. I decided to use some of my Gray card stock from my stash (Staples Cover Stock in Gray) and cut a mat at 4″x 5.25″ to go on top of the Soft Navy card base. I used the Emboss It pen to draw corners on the top left and bottom right corners of the gray mat and embossed those with the Steel Navy embossing powder – really nice embossing powder – great color and great shine! I felt like the gold embossing was a little overpowering, so I took the medium brushstroke stamp and stamped it vertically on the foil with VersaMark ink and embossed it with some of my own silver embossing powder. I figured I could add silver embossing to this pallet in compliment to the grey colors, and this vertical stripe did break-up the large expanse of foil on the pattern paper. I DID have something in my stash that matched this kit – the Nuvo Crystal Drops in Navy Blue matched the navy blue in the kit perfectly! Three drops of those on the silver embossed ‘brushstroke’ added just the right touch of texture and shine. I stamped the sentiment in VersaMark ink and embossed it with the Steel Navy embossing powder – REALLY nice embossing powder!! I like this card a lot, and discovered that the ‘rose gold’ foiling on the pattern papers reads a little more like copper when it isn’t paired up with the blush pink in the pattern papers. Aha!! Let’s see if I can create 10 cards from this kit that are real elegant, masculine cards!For this card, I wanted to try to emboss the Spiral Flower Die on the mirror card stock without cutting it out. It took me a couple of tries to find the right pressure on my die-cutting machine, but I got a good embossing of the die on the top of a 1.5″x 3.25″ piece of the mirror card stock. I added two rectangles of the navy pattern papers to match, and mounted all three on 1.625″x 3.375″ gray card stock mats that I embossed on their edges with my silver embossing powder. I embossed the sentiment on the mirror card stock with the Steel Navy powder from the kit, which worked very well. I thought three dots of the Nuvo Crystal drops under the mirror card stock would finish this card but, with everything mounted on foam tape to the Soft Navy card base, the card felt a little dark to me. I reached for my Love From Lizi Silver Glitter Peel Off stickers to add touches of glitter over and above the rectangles – that brightened up the whole card quite a bit! For the next card on the Soft Navy card base, I embossed some scrap card stock with my silver embossing powder and the Steel Navy embossing powder, and die-cut the Spiral Flower die three times from each. I used the negative space from the die cuts and glued them to the card base along its opening edge. I took one of the navy pattern papers and embossed some irregular stripes of Steel Navy using the Emboss It pen from the kit. I cut one edge of the navy pattern paper with one of my stitched hillside dies and cut a matching curve on a piece of my gray card stock to use as a mat – the left side of the gray card stock has a stitched detail using my Ellen Hutson Stitching Lines die. The gray and blue are glued together and foam taped up on the card base. I again embossed the sentiment on my gray card stock with the Steel Navy embossing powder, cut that out with one of my Stitched Rectangle dies, and mounted that on the pattern paper with foam tape. I think the negative pieces of the Spiral Flower die are a little more abstract than flower-y and I really like the lack of any gold foiling on this sharp Thank You card. One more Soft Navy card base to go…! I die cut three Spiral Flower die cuts from the mirror card stock to add to the silver and navy die-cuts left from the previous cards, and layered them all together (three times) to make this card. I was going for a ‘fireworks’ thing here and I think these look like fireworks (everyone who has seen this card live still thinks they are flowers, but what can you do with people who have no imagination?  LOL!!). I did draw the trails and ‘explosions’ with the Emboss It pen and embossed them in my silver embossing powder – maybe if I had forgone the firework ‘trails’ they might look less like flower stems…?? Nevertheless, I added dots of my silver Sharpie extra fine point metallic pen to the ‘explosions’ and made a simple banner from the mirror card stock to which I embossed the sentiment in Steel Navy. I added a tiny gray card stock mat behind the banner and foam taped it up on the card base. Fireworks or Flowers, I like this card a lot and think it’s a very classy, very potent, birthday card. Now I move along to the Smoke Gray card bases. I take the Emboss It pen and draw a ‘mat’ on the Smoke Gray card base and emboss it with the Steel Navy powder. I cut one of the navy / gold foiling pattern papers with a Stitched Rectangle die and glued that to my card base. I selectively cut three small rectangles (with another Stitched Rectangle die) from a second piece of pattern paper (avoiding the blush pink portions) and added those to the navy pattern paper with foam tape. I actually double-embossed the sentiment on the center rectangle. I used my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform to stamp the sentiment in VersaMark ink, embossed that with the powder from the kit, then returned the piece to my stamp platform to stamp it a second time with VersaMark ink and embossed it a second time. This gave me a nicely textural sentiment with lots of shine. I love that Steel Navy embossing powder! And card #5 is another dashing guy card! I am working my way through the sentiments in the stamp kit, and only have the “YOU ARE loved” sentiment still left to be used. I’m still trying to keep things masculine here, so I cut a heart shape out of one of the pattern papers (capturing a little slice of the foiling on the left edge) with one of my Darice Nesting Heart Dies and stamped the sentiment on that with my Night of Navy Stampin’ Spot. I mounted that up on foam tape to a square of the polka-dot pattern paper (cut with a Darice Nesting Squares die) glued down to the Smoke Gray card base and highlighted with a couple strips of the mirror card stock on the top and bottom. I used the brush stroke heart stamp to stamp a single heart at the bottom of the die cut and to create a pattern across the bottom of the card base – both in Night of Navy ink. I think this is about as masculine as you can get with this sentiment! Now that covers all the sentiments in this stamp set. Last month’s Simon Says Stamp card kit was all about birthdays (I made 6 Happy Birthday cards) so I decided to add more Thank You cards to this batch. Second only to Happy Birthday cards, Thank You cards are always useful to have on hand! Now, I really like this card a lot, and think of it as kind of hyper-masculine! (it’s the pin-stripes!) Again, on the Smoke Gray card base, I cut a piece of that great pin-striped pattern paper and glued it to the center of my card base, and added two thin strips of the mirror card stock to the sides. I double-embossed the sentiment (again) on the ivory & gold foil pattern paper cut out with another Stitched Rectangle die. I really love the sentiment spanning both the foiling and ivory parts of this pattern paper – textural and shiny – I think that Steel Navy embossing powder really holds its own with the gold foiling! I  used foam tape to mount the sentiment to a piece of the polka-dot pattern paper (you know I love stripes and polka-dots together!) and glued those to another piece of the mirror card stock cut out with a larger Stitched Rectangle die. Those three layers are then foam taped over the pin-striped pattern paper and another Thank You card fit for the stout-hearted is borne!  Though I don’t have any gray ink pads in my stock, I know that stamping with VersaMark ink will create a ‘watermark’ on your card stock – so I stamped the large squarish brushstroke stamp in the middle of another Smoke Gray card base. I figured I would then emboss the ‘Thank You’ sentiment on top of that watermark. WELL… I don’t know if it was the humidity or what, but I couldn’t get my VersaMark ink to give up its stick! I tried using my heat tool, my EK Powder tool, and nothing I did would completely remove the sticky from that ink. SO… I ended up just stamping the sentiment on the watermark with the Night of Navy ink pad and then embossing the entire center stamping with clear embossing powder from my stash. The Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies make great frames when paired up, so I cut the smallest frame from the random ivory & foil polka-dot pattern paper, and the third frame from the regular ivory & foil polka-dot paper. The second and fourth frame are cut from the mirror card stock. I glued the polka-dots down to the card base and elevated the mirror card stock frames with the Darice double-sided sticky foam strips that we received with our SSS July card kit. I think this card is very striking and it’s amazing how much the dimension of the frames really pulls your eye into the center sentiment block.   Now I still have 3 of the brushstroke stamps still to use, so I paired up the long skinny and the long thick brushstroke stamps and stamped them with my Night of Navy Stampin’ Spot on the top and bottom of the Ivory card base. I added a strip of the random foiled polka-dots pattern paper down the middle, and two thin strips of the mirror card stock right in the center. I like how the mirror stripes echo the stamped stripes. For the sentiment, I recently purchased this Spellbinders “Be Amazing” stamp and die set on sale at Scrapbook.com and thought the “Be Amazing” sentiment went right along with the theme of this kit re: ‘just wanted to say you’re amazing’. LOVE these stamps that have an outline die!! I stamped and embossed this on vellum with the Steel Navy embossing powder – WOW! Really sumptuous!! I die-cut the vellum and a piece of white fun foam with the included die, ran the vellum through my Xyron Sticker Maker, and stuck it down to the foam die-cut. A little Scor-tape to attach the sentiment and it makes a very chunky  embellishment that I didn’t have to cut and glue 5 pieces of card stock together to create! After using all the navy in this kit, I really enjoyed the light feeling and brightness here! Now I have one more Ivory card base and one final brushstroke stamp from the set to use, so another Thank You card couldn’t hurt, and as much as I like the Steel Navy embossing powder, I was getting a little tired of the navy and the grey and the gold….Anybody looking for some color this month!!?? LOL! I decided to throw caution to the wind and go for some really big color! With the assistance of my Tim Holtz stamp platform, I stamped the brushstroke at an angle across the Ivory card base with Ranger Archival Ink in Deep Purple, Manganese Blue, Emerald Green, Monarch Orange, Vermillion, and I used the SSS Hybrid ink cube from the April ’17 kit in Lemon Zest for the yellow. The sentiment is a Lawn Fawn Scripty Thanks die and I used some Stick It adhesive sheets to attach some white card stock to one side of a piece of fun foam, added more Stick It to the back of the foam, and then I die-cut the sentiment and colored the card stock side with some red Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I was able to use the Stick It adhesive on the back of the fun foam to attach the sentiment to the card front. I did use my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen to add some sparkle to the brushstrokes and the die-cut. Here’s another nice chunky sentiment that’s casual yet quite lively! Of course, I love this card and actually felt a little liberated making something truly cheerful and bright!!    That concludes my 10 Card 1 Kit post this month! That’s 4 Thank You cards, 1 Birthday card, and 5 cards of affirmation..!!! I think this is a very handsome set of strapping cards! I am quite proud and personally thrilled that I was able to complete 10 cards without using any of the blush pink!! WOO-HOO!!  LOLOLOL!! Thank you so much for joining me here – I hope you enjoyed!  If you have any questions, please go to the contact page and send me a note! Please, please share this post with others, and Spread the Cheer!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10C1K post of the Love From Lizi October 2017 Card Kit!

This month’s kit is loaded with all sorts of Halloween oriented goodies and a unique stamp set featuring skeleton bones and pun-y (you heard me right) sentiments! I was thrilled at the masculine qualities of this card kit – no pink in sight – and was eager to dive in!! Lizi’s kits feature European-sized card stock (always 5 sheets) and I usually begin by trimming down the 11.7″ x 8.3″ cardstock to 11″ long, and can then divide the sheets into two card bases measuring 5.5″x 4.125″ – just an eighth of an inch narrower than a standard A2 card. As usual, I start with the stamps to get the juices rolling…

This was possibly the most obvious pun in the stamp set..! I dug out my (what’s turning out to be invaluable) Staples Ivory cover stock to do my stamping on (you can see how closely that Staples cardstock matched the off-white card base from the kit). I used Tim Holtz’ Distress Oxide ink in Walnut Stain to stamp the humerus bone stamp in a bit of a parade across the card. I wanted to match the angle of the washi tape that was included in the kit, so I used my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform to help me line everything up correctly. I scooted the cardstock over a 1/2″ between stamps. I lightly colored the bones with the Chameleon Pen included in the kit (in BR1 Taupe), and stamped the sentiment in the same Walnut Stain ink. I used that great washi tape from the kit to frame the stamping and added little strips of the black shimmer specialty paper to the edges of the tape. All of this is glued down flat to the off-white card base from the kit. I am really struck at how sharp and masculine this card turned out, and it really doesn’t have to be used for Halloween – I believe that’s the most interesting thing about this stamp set – what one would think of as Halloween images but NO Halloween sentiments! I liked this so much, I decided to continue the theme through a few more of the stamps and sentiments.

I think I was just so pleased to be able to make a pure unabashed masculine card with lots of style, that I wanted to run with it for  little bit..! Here I used the rib-cage stamp and the ‘Stole my heart’ sentiment on the Ivory cover stock and added a die-cut ‘you’ (trimmed from a Lawn Fawn I Love You Border die) cut from the bronze shimmer specialty paper. Again, using the washi tape to frame things up and I repeated the bronze shimmer paper in strips down both sides. Again, everything glued flat to the off-white card base and VOILA another hyper-masculine card. No sequins or sparkles, but the specialty paper adds a nice shine to the card. I could do a whole set of cards like this..!

So I shall!! Here I’m using the pelvis stamp and thought I could clarify the sentiment by adding the “Hip” “Hip” die-cut from that same bronze specialty paper. I used a text die from my stash – “Marker Micro” from Die-Versions – to die-cut the letters, added the strips of washi tape, two strips of the bronze paper and a couple strips of the black satin ribbon from the kit. Here, all was glued down to the chocolate card base, and I completed the sentiment on the inside of the card. I thought it was great fun to have to open the card to  finish the sentiment! Again , that Staples Ivory cover stock was used for the inside, (trimmed down to 5.25″x3.875″) and it makes me giggle to see the simple “Hooray” all alone inside. I suppose if the ‘Hooray’ was on the outside, you wouldn’t have to clarify things with the ‘Hip Hip’, but I really liked the ‘you’ on the last card and wanted to continue along with that same feeling. Well, three cards do not make a complete set, so I had to do one more masculine card.

What better way to represent ‘I Love You to Pieces’ than with all of the bone pieces from the stamp set! (Though I almost ran out of room!!) I did color the stamps with the Chameleon pen from the kit (almost got the skull too dark) but it does add a nice dimension to the stamps. I printed the sentiment using my Silhouette software in Sign Painter font on the bottom of the Staples Ivory cardstock, and had enough room to add some (thin) washi tape to the top and bottom, and strips of the black shimmer specialty paper along the sides. Once again, all is glued down flat to the chocolate card base, and my sojourn into masculine, non-Halloween cards is complete. I do like the fact that you don’t HAVE to make Halloween cards from this kit, and think it was very smart to have different non-Halloween sentiments featured with the stamp set. I wasn’t finished with these stamps yet, and wanted to see if the seemingly innocuous sentiments could be manipulated into something that WAS Halloween oriented.

Here’s my shaker card for this month. I thought it a little macabre to have someone’s spine on display in a bell jar, and that certainly adds another (darker) dimension to the ‘Got your back’ sentiment! Instead of creating a frame for the shaker, I used vellum to create ‘reflections’ around the edge of the acetate and that did a pretty nice job of hiding the foam tape. I also used a bit of my white gel pen to add more highlights on the vellum. There is also vellum behind the spine to add to the illusion, and the spine is stamped, fussy cut and mounted on foam tape to kind of ‘float’ in the bell jar. A few ovals cut out with my Silhouette creates a nice base for the bell jar on top of a black cardstock ‘table’ and mounted to that intricate pattern paper that looks like wallpaper. I stamped the ‘Got your back’ sentiment in Walnut Stain oxide ink on a scrap of the Staples Ivory cover stock and die-cut with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die. The sentiment is attached with foam tape and the whole assembly glued down to the black card base. I added stripes of the Pumpkin Pie embossing powder on either side of the pattern paper, and thin strips of the green specialty shimmer paper to add some pop! I pulled all the smaller sequins out of the sequin mix to use for the shaker bits, and added a Halloween sentiment from my image stash to the inside. This is a fun card though rather subtle in its scare value… certainly a double entendre in any case! The embossing powder is very interesting and gives you a glitter-y textured effect when heat-set – not shiny and smooth. I think the bell jar is very old-fashioned and a little reminiscent of Frankenstein’s laboratory, and I had a great time creating a (seemingly) frame-less shaker element. This bell jar shaker concept is something I will have to experiment with some more – Maybe with some colored vellum?

When I first saw Lizi’s unboxing, I knew I wanted to make bottles for the large extract labels included in the kit. It took a little finessing (the labels were a little larger than I anticipated) but I was able to come up with a decent apothecary bottle shape that would fit the labels. I created the shape and cut it out using my Silhouette and some core-dinations Auburn Pearl cardstock that I have had in my stash for years – it has a nice glass-like shimmer to it. My favorite part of these labels is the description of what each extract is for – the Spider Hair “Improves perception” and so on…! You could easily personalize these ‘treatments’ based on the descriptions. I really wanted the bottle to actually be the card for this design so the surprise with this card is how it opens – the

bottle itself flips up to reveal the Happy Halloween inside. Some thin cork sheeting from my stash adds just a touch of a stopper to the bottle top and the assemblage is mounted to some black and kraft cardstock from my stash. I did Shimmer Spritz the black for a good bit of sparkle (the close-up shows the sparkle), and added some highlights to the bottle with a gold sharpie. I loved these labels quite a bit and had a blast picking out ‘concentrates’ for friends and family.

I knew I was going to make a whole set of these bottle cards (I will probably turn the other 6 labels into cards as well..!) so I didn’t really include these on my 10 card count so on we go with some real Halloween Greeting card fun..!

This card makes me laugh just looking at it. Yellow card base, strips of that groovy black lace from the kit down the sides, purple mirror peel-offs on the edges of the bookcase pattern paper, and the focal image. I cut out a head shape on my ivory cover stock, and colorized the gauze in the kit with a CT4 Spectrum Noir marker, printed and cut a couple of eyeballs out of the same Ivory cardstock to glue to the head shape, and then I started wrapping! There are at least 2 layers of gauze on this head. I did find that folding over an edge of the gauze helped to define the ‘wrapping’ and soon I had a pretty convincing mummy head. But why the yellow? Surely you saw this pun coming from a mile away..! I couldn’t resist the bright colors and I concluded that  Lizi expects us to make mummies with her inclusion of surgical gauze in the kit. I fount the yellow and black calibration circles on-line and, after sizing them, printed and cut them out with my Silhouette and glued them to the appropriate spots on my mummy’s head. The medium size googly eyes from the kit fit my printed eyeballs perfectly, leaving a touch of color around their edges. I added a touch of shading around the head with a Spectrum Noir GB2 marker and just left the stray threads of the gauze as they were. This fellow looks like he has been through one too many crashes, and tickles my funny-bone to no end!

This month Lizi included another 12″x12″ sheet of vellum images and I loved the bats with the moon and the trees. I found a pic of the moon on-line and printed that on my Staples Ivory cover stock, ran the vellum through my Zyron sticker-maker and mounted them together to create this background. I cut some of the ‘woven wood’ pattern paper with a couple of stitched hillside dies and inked them up with the Walnut Stain oxide ink and some Black Soot Distress Ink to give them a little more of an earthy feel. The coffin pattern paper caught my eye and I immediately wanted to try something with the idea of opening the lid of a coffin. I cut out a single coffin from the pattern paper and glued it to some scrap black cardstock to make a little ‘mini-card’ that I could add some surprises to on the inside. I fiddled around a bit and came up with a simple pop-up that says ‘BOO” (there’s that Brady Bunch Remastered font again!) with a little trick-or-treat graphic as well (all highlighted with a little stardust glitter pen). I did stamp a simple ‘OPEN’ on top of the coffin with a MFT ‘Interactive Labels’ stamp that I recently bought. I also broke down and purchased a Versafine Onyx Black Ink Pad to use with these little fine stamps and I’m pleased to say the ‘OPEN’ stamped perfectly on the front of the coffin. I trimmed the back attachments from the gravestone buttons and added them to the hillside as well as a couple of thin strips of the yellow shimmer specialty paper to the top and bottom to complete this scene on the front of this black card base. Of course, I can’t leave well enough alone, and had to add a bit of a pun on the inside of this card as well. Again, printed up with my Silhouette software on the Staples Ivory cover stock in the Typewriterhand font. Just another little bit to drive this card home and give an appropriate Halloween wish to the recipient. I have to admit, I love the moon here, and the coffin that you can pull up out of the ground with a little pop-up action. Add a simple pun, and you have an interactive card anyone would enjoy.

As far as my personal Halloween craft stash goes, I literally have only 3 stamps and 1 die in my collection that are Halloween oriented. I was thrilled to be able to finally use my Darice Spider Web Background die with this kit. With the inclusion of the spider sequins, the plastic spiders, the decorative webbing, and the spider web pattern paper this was my chance to bring it all together for a fun Halloween card.

I die-cut the spiderweb from vellum and trimmed off the bottom right corner. I added a few spider sequins here and there on the spiderweb pattern paper, and covered them all with  light layer of the webbing. I die cut a heart from a scrap of red shimmer cardstock and topped it with a good layer of Glossy Accents. A single strand of grey DMC embroidery floss wraps around the heart and attaches to a bit of the web on the top right. I did (again) cover the edges of the yellow card base with the black lace, and glued my assemblage on top with the smallest purple peel-offs for a frame. I printed the sentiment (Typewriterhand font again) with my Silhouette on Ivory cardstock, cut with a stitched oval die and layered that with foam tape on a piece of the purple glitter ribbon and then on a scrap of shimmer red cardstock that matches the heart. The inside of this card sports the same Happy Halloween sentiment as the shaker card. I did cover the plastic spider’s back with the Nuvo Glitter Drops from the kit, and used my stardust glitter pen to draw fine lines on the vellum webs. I got the spider to glue down to the card fairly easily using Ranger Multi Medium Matte for glue, and weighing the spider down with a jar of jelly while it dried. I was a little worried that this card might turn out to be overly busy, but was actually surprised at how pretty this is. On to Card #9 (or #10, or #15) depending on how you’re counting!

Pretty self-explanatory here…!! I actually traced the hand image from an old AllState Insurance logo I found on-line using my Pigma Micron pens on Bristol smooth cardstock and colored with my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers. Appropriately Frankenstein-y! I found the bloodshot eyeballs on-line and topped them with some Glossy Accents for a little dimension and shine. I cut the fingertips to be able to slide the eyes behind, and mounted it all on foam tape to the miniature Extract Label pattern paper. I edged the labels with strips of the diamond pattern paper, and the medium purple peel offs. I printed the sentiment on the extra strip cut away from the off-white pattern paper in the kit using Lucida Blackletter font and added a spot of the Nuvo Glitter drops on the ends. The inside of the card has the same Halloween graphic as the shaker card, and this is about as ghoulish as I could manage while still keeping my tongue firmly in my cheek…!  I haven’t used the door die included in this kit, yet so let’s wrap this month up with that.

I love this card! I die cut the door die twice from some old dark blue and dark red Recollections textured cardstock from my stash, and swapped the inlays between them. I did die-cut the windows from my Ivory cover stock and added a touch of alcohol markers to add a little life to the light behind the doors and I also die-cut the doorknobs from some gold cardstock. I found this ghost image on line, and managed to add some tie-dye patterns to his sheet and a peace sign to his bag (using my Silhouette software, of course). Everything is foam taped to the glimmer black specialty paper that I scored to suggest siding and a curb. I did use the peel offs for a frame on the orange card base – love the shine on these purple peel offs!!  If you haven’t jumped to the pun yet… here it is… “Hippy Halloween!” LOL! This probably dates  me way more than I would like to admit, but I adore this fun Halloween Card. The sentiment is printed on my Ivory cover stock in the Brady Bunch Remastered font – I think that font is going to get the prize for ‘Most Used Font’ this year! I really enjoy the colors that the tie-die introduced with this card and I really like the simple ‘scene’ created with the doors and scored shimmer paper. I think this little trick-or-treat-er is coming to your door next! WOW! That’s 16 cards for this month! I tried to create as much variety as possible with this kit and I hope I was able to inspire you to reach beyond the obvious and create cards that are usable all year round! Thank you so much for joining me here – if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to send me a comment here. THANK YOU and Happy Halloween!!   – Scott

Hello Folks! Scott here with my Unboxing of the Love From Lizi October 2017 Card Kit!

As usual, the October Card Kit is chock full of great supplies, and this month the kit is Halloween themed! Let’s start with the LFL exclusive Stamp Set:

Now, I have a bone to pick with this Stamp Set! (Sorry! I couldn’t help it!) What a great set of stamps! One could almost assemble a complete skeleton here..!! And to make things better, the sentiments are all puns!! This is a very interesting combo of great Halloween images paired up with fun sentiments that can be used most anytime! Very cool!

We get 5 sheets of A4 Cardstock (11.7″x8.3″) in Black, Cream, Bright Yellow, Deep Brown and Orange. This is standard letter size paper in Europe. It is easy to trim it down to 11″ and then split the 8.3″ in half for a standard A2 card base (just slightly smaller at 4.15″). Then we get 5 half-sheets of ‘specialty’ metallic cardstock in Copper, Golden Yellow, Graphite, Burnt Orange and Citrus Green. We also get that interesting piece of black lace that’s fairly stiff and lightly shiny – very interesting!

Pattern paper is next with this great collection of 12 6″x6″ single-sided pattern papers – great Halloween colors, and fun patterns… love the yellow coffins and blood splattered handwriting! Green and black stripes is quintessential Halloween, and the harlequin patterns are great fun as well.

WE also get this great 12″x12″ sheet of bottled extract labels (cut below the horizontal labels for shipping). The Chicken Toes and Spider Hair make me laugh! Though I do believe Octopus Ink is a usable cooking ingredient these days!

On the back of the Extract Labels is this great tree and bat pattern in  oranges and reds.

And vellum images return this month with this 12×12 collection of 7 Halloween panels with black embossing. I love playing with the vellum images that Lizi often includes, and I think of them as a very European craft staple. Love the moon and bats!

Of course we get a Chameleon Pen – this month in the color BR1 / Taupe, and the Love From Lizi Peel Off Stickers!!! PURPLE MIRROR PEEL OFFS!  STUNNING! (I wanted to break out last month’s peacock die when I saw these peel offs!) Can’t wait!

And now the goodie bag of embellishments! We get over a yard each of Orange and Black 1/4″ satin ribbon, black rick-rack, and black and white baker’s twine. Middle left to right is a FULL roll of washi tape in Taupe, Black and Cream stripes, a jar of LFL Embossing Powder in ‘Pumpkin Pie’ which is orange and brown with glitter. The die this month is this great Door die which seems very intricate and begs for inlay die-cutting! We have three RIP plastic Gravestone buttons, and 3 sets of googly eyes in three different sizes. We get more glitter with the Nuvo GLITTER Drops this month in ‘Midnight Sky’ – kind of a grey-blue with tons of multi-color glitter throughout. We also get 2 plastic spiders on a nest of ‘spider web’ flossing, and on the bottom, actual surgical gauze in 2 widths (did someone say “mummy”?) and that lovely 2.5″ wired ribbon of glittery purple!

This month’s Card Kit seems to be right up my alley…!!  There’s NO pink and puns are included!! I can’t wait to start playing around with this kit and see what I can come up with…! I’m not real big on Halloween celebrations, and I don’t think I’ve ever sent anyone a Halloween card, but this kits sparks my imagination and I see Halloween cards in many of my friends and families future…!! Thanks for joining me here, and I will do my best to come up with some fun and unique ways to use this kit! Spread the Cheer!!

 

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 Cards 1 Kit post for the Simon Says Stamp September 2017 “Best Birthday” Card kit. This Card Kit comes with the “Best Ever” clear stamp set,

a custom paper pack (8 double sided 6″x6″ sheets) inspired by the Doodlebug Fairy Tale collection, custom Doodlebug Sprinkles epoxy sticker assortment, 2 Jillibean Soup “Small Heart” shaker tags, 2 Jillibean Soup “Balloon” shaker tags, 1 Jillibean Soup “Small Heart” shaped shaker, 1 Jillibean Soup “Balloon” shaped shaker, and 5 sheets of Simon Says Stamp cardstocks in Audrey Blue, Doll Pink, Lavender, Cotton Candy, and 120# White. I found it a little odd that we got 4 tags but only 2 shaped shakers, and even odder that we got no sequins, no rhinestones, NO shaker bits of any kind? In contrast to other SSS Card Kits I have received, this kit feels rather light on supplies. But, I do seem to constantly run out of birthday cards, so I eagerly dug in did my best to come up with a nice variety from the supplies provided. We did get 5 sheets of cardstock, which I cut down and folded into 10 card bases.

As usual, I started with the stamps on a piece of white cardstock (die cut with the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die) from my stash. I stamped the cloud with my SSS Intense Black Ink, cut a mask for the cloud from 1″ Post-it tape, and then stamped the rainbow stamp coming out of the top of the cloud. I colored the rainbow and cloud with my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers, blending the rainbow to lighter shades on the left. After coloring, I stamped the other sentiments (I do really like that script-y ‘happy birthday’ sentiment), but this still felt a little bare to me. I remembered that I had received the SSS ‘Magical Birthday’ stamp set as a freebie on one of my first SSS orders, and it did have that great ‘wishing you a’ stamp that finished out the sentiments very nicely. I did cut the ‘FROSTING YUM.’ away from the cake sentiment and moved it into the inside of the cardfor a bit of a finale.  I used my EK Tools Powder Tool to neutralize the sticky on the epoxy sticker, and used a spot of foam tape to give the cupcake a little more dimension. I mounted the white cardstock using foam tape on the star pattern paper and mounted that on the Audrey Blue card base. A lot of these sentiments were quite small but the ‘FROSTING YUM.” font was extremely small. I may have to break down and get a Versafine Onyx Black ink pad to help stamp these small sentiments a bit more legibly…!

I have seen these style of plastic shaker containers around for a while and wanted to try one for myself, so I reached for the ‘Small Heart’ shaker tag and shaped shaker for this card. I covered the tag with that great rainbow heart pattern paper, used one of my American Crafts Border Punches on the bottom edge of the Doll Pink card Base, and used some black cardstock from my stash to mat behind both. When I saw the original reveal of this kit, and realized that there were no shaker bits included, I happily purchased some Queen & Co. ‘Toppings’ to use with this kit. I had been pining for these ‘Fimo Fun’ Toppings ever since I saw them a number of months ago, and here was the perfect opportunity to add them to my stash. The heart shaker is full of red and pink hearts from this topping set – they really look like little polymer ‘Millefiori’ slices and I thought they worked perfectly as the shaker bits for this card. I do like the repetition of heart shapes throughout this card – definitely a theme going on here…! I used some of my pink peel off stickers from the Love From Lizi July Card Kit to form a frame around the card, and used some pink and white bakers twine (from the same LFL July Card Kit) tied in the hole on the top of the tag. Another one of the (tiny) stamp set sentiments in the bottom corner and we have another card completed. Though I am getting a little tired of all the pink in my card kits this season, I do really like this ‘Doll Pink’ cardstock.

Now on to the ‘Balloon’ shaker tag and shaped shaker. I thought this looked more like a hot-air balloon, so I covered the tag with the smiling clouds pattern paper, added a purple pattern paper hill and matted that all on top of a piece of scrap white cardstock. I used that terrific rainbow stripe pattern paper behind the balloon, and filled the shaker with Queen & Co. ‘Tiny Bubbles’ Toppings in all six rainbow colors (yes, I also bought this set along with the Fimo Fun set!) – these almost look like little candies inside the balloon! I cut a crude little ‘gondola’ out of the orange pattern paper, outlined that with my Pigma Micron Pen 03 and drew a couple of straight lines to suggest the rigging. The “You Send Me Soaring” sentiment is from the Stampin’ Up ‘Sky is the Limit’ Sale-A-Bration stamp set from 2016. A few of the epoxy stickers from the kit and another shaker card is air-born!

Back to the stamps… I really think stripes and polka-dots work great together, so I used the big polka-dot pattern paper to cover 2/3 of the Cotton Candy card base (more pink!) and die cut a circle through the front of the card so that great rainbow heart gets seen both on the front and on the inside of this card. I cut a frame for the window out of a scrap of white cardstock with my stitched circle dies (because my stash of pink cardstock is almost nonexistent!) and colored it with my Spectrum Noir BP1 (bright pink) alcohol marker. I used that same marker to color the heart along with LV1 (lavender), IB2 (ice blue), LG3 (light green), CT4 (citrus), OR2 (orange), and DR2 (dark red), and then covered the whole heart with my Spectrum Noir clear sparkle pen. I took great pleasure in figuring out where to stamp the ‘best birthday ever’ sentiment over the heart where you can’t see it until you open up the card. The simple ‘Happy Birthday’ sentiment is stamped on the outside of the card, and with a few epoxy ‘sprinkles’ and one pink peel off sticker, we have a very cute (albeit very pink) card with a little bit of a surprise inside.

Just a couple of colored rainbows, and I’m already itching to see how else I can color and use these stamps beyond the simple obvious rainbow approach.

Here, I’ve stamped the rainbow stamp 5 times in a row, overlapping both ends at the width of the rainbow. I really like the Gothic arch effect where the stamps overlap. I colored the stamps with colored pencils, letting the overlapped ends blend naturally. Lots of color achieved here without using the rainbow motif. I fussy cut the rainbows out, and used foam tape to mount them on some of the purple pattern paper with the scalloped edges punched with my American Crafts Border Punches. I stamped the heart border along the top of the pattern paper using Archival Ink Deep Purple, and the ‘best friend’ stamp (in SSS Intense Black ink) over one of the arches. I stamped the ‘sending lots of color your way’ on a scrap of white cardstock and added a thin strip of the rainbow stripes pattern paper to the bottom. I used foam tape to mount the ‘color’ sentiment at the bottom of the rainbows, and everything is attached to the Lavender card base. Three of the epoxy dots from the included stickers – blue, green, purple, add a little sparkle and shine, and just happen to match the three central arches. Now, this could be used as a birthday card, but I avoided a birthday sentiment so I can use this card for other occasions – that’s three Birthday cards and two love / friendship cards so far…

And now I’m having some fun with the small candle stamp. I am not and have never been a great stamper, and have used stamp platforms to assist me for most all of my stamping.  I am proud to say that the candles here were all hand-stamped – no stamp platform used!  I did find The Gentleman Crafter’s handy guides for pattern stamping on-line and used the circular grid with eighteen sections on top of my light board to stamp the candles in a radial circle. I used the Tim Holtz distress oxide inks in Wilted Violet, Broken China, Cracked Pistachio, Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, and Fired Brick. I did do a practice run on some plain paper which helped me figure out how to line the stamps up to get a nice even circle in the center. Though the distress oxide inks are not a PERFECT match, I thought they were close enough to suffice. I do not have a lot of stamp pads in my stash, so I found it a little difficult to perfectly match the pattern papers in this kit with the ink pads that I own. I did stamp the sentiments in SSS Intense Black ink and mounted the white cardstock with foam tape on the rainbow stripe pattern paper (my favorite!). I did cut out the center of this rainbow mat to conserve some of that paper for other uses. Everything is mounted on the 120# white card base, and I added a few Fimo Fun Toppings for accents. That candle stamp is a great stamp, and I can see many uses for it in the future. I do love this card, and the juxtaposition of what is a basically a simple card, with a little more complex pattern of stamping! Maybe this will encourage me to embrace the chaos and try a little more hand-stamping with other cards!

I still have the two shaker tags left, and, even without the ‘shaped shakers’, I figured I can use them make more shaker cards. I decided to embrace the PINK and made this card.

I opened up the shaker tag and cut off the tag ends to make a full size panel down the front of this card. Once again, displaying my affinity for stripes with polka dots, I used the solid stripe stamp from the set to stamp and clear emboss a couple vertical stripes on the sides of the shaker tag using Worn Lipstick distress oxide ink. I covered the center of the heart shaker tag with the pink-on-pink pattern paper and mounted that on foam tape to the pink polka dot pattern paper. I decided that the heart opening was a little small for this arrangement, so I enlarged the window a little bit with one of my heart dies. I backed the shaker window with some core’dinations Glitter Silk cardstock in pink, and filled the window with whatever pink sequins I could find. I did add some Martha Stewart heart shaped glitter in Sugar Plum (discontinued) and some of the clear Tiny Bubble toppings to finish filling out the shaker. The sentiment is from the Paper Pumpkin July 2016 “What a Gem’ kit, and after adding a couple of the epoxy hearts from the set, I finished out the sparkle on this card with the Love From Lizi pink and silver glitter peel off stickers. The three horizontal stripes of pink peel offs in the center were useful in camouflaging the fold line in the center of the shaker tag. I think the abundant use of sparkling, shining, and glittery accents reinforces the ‘Brilliant’ sentiment!

Even though I am not a huge pink fan, I did like that card a lot and, since I still had one Doll Pink card base to use, decided to make one more perfectly pink card.

This card is pretty self-explanatory. I stamped the ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY” border stamp on a scrap of white cardstock, added more of that pink polka dot pattern paper on top, and mounted those flat on the Doll Pink card base. The circle die cut is actually the piece I cut out of the window card (#4) stamped with the ‘best friend’ sentiment (curved a little more than natural to fit). I liked the two sizes of polka dots together and I did have that pink frosted cupcake sticker to use as well, so I mounted the sticker to the die cut with a spot of foam tape and used more foam tape to attach the die cut to the card. I outlined the pattern paper assemblage with more LFL pink peel off stickers (I’m addicted!), stamped the ‘birthdays are for…’ sentiment on the card base (I did not use the ‘frosting yum.’ portion) and added 3 epoxy dots (polka dots!) from the sticker sheet for some added shine. Surprisingly, I didn’t turn into a big pink blob of quivering cytoplasm after completing two VERY pink cards in a row…!!

I have now used all the stamps in the ‘Best Ever’ stamp set except for the little smiley faces. Now, I’m not much for putting cute little smiley faces on things, but I did come up with an idea that would justify the use of one of these faces.

I used my stitched sun die to make an ‘epoxy’ sticker that would match the cloud and rainbow stickers from the Doodlebug Sprinkles collection. I did have to cut the sun down quite a bit to make it more size appropriate to use here, but after stamping one of the smiley faces on it (with a little touch of blush) and covering it with Glossy Accents, I think it looks like it could have come with this set! I used the + and = stamps from the SSS August Card Kit to complete the equation (stamped in SSS Key Lime and Orange Slush Hybrid inks from the SSS April Kit) and clear embossed them to match the shine of the stickers. The stickers are mounted flat to a scrap of white cardstock edged with the Ellen Hutson Stitching Lines die and foam taped up on the ‘confetti’ pattern paper with little strips of that great rainbow stripe pattern paper top and bottom, and all mounted to the Lavender card base to finish it off. I added little raindrops with the tip of my Spectrum Noir alcohol marker in AB1 (a new color – Aqua Blue) under the cloud, and topped them all with a tiny spot of Glossy Accents. I think this is great fun, and just needed an appropriate sentiment to complete. I found this quote which seemed very appropriate.    I created this sentiment in my Silhouette software in the ‘Times’ font and printed it directly on my cardstock then trimmed it down with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die. This perfect sentiment ties everything together and makes this card one of my favorites!

I have now used all the stamps in the ‘Best Ever’ stamp set, and I still have the ‘Balloon’ shaker tag and a 120# white card base to use, so I got this wild idea to abandon the whole colorful rainbow theme of this set to make a monochromatic card.

And here’s my Silver and White Christmas Card!! I outlined the tag and the right edge of the card base with my Love From Lizi Silver Glitter peel off stickers, (ADDICTED, I said!). I had to make some homemade silver glitter paper (I actually did not have ANY silver glitter paper in my stash – lots of silver papers but nothing with glitter!!) to die cut the branches with a Darice Border die, (I used the branches to cover up the crease on the tag) and to make the little ornament topper to cover the balloon nipple. I used Sheer Shimmer Spritz on the tag and the scrap of grey cardstock on the back of the ornament shaker to add some more glitter, and used more of the LFL peel off stickers to add a little pattern to the grey backing of the shaker window. I did outline the ornament with my Sakura Stardust pen, and I used some silver cord from my stash for the hanger and bow, a silver grommet in the tag hole and a tassel I made from DMC silver metallic thread, and some old silver rhinestones for the shaker bits. The sentiment is from the Paper Pumpkin November 2016 ‘Wonderful Winterland’ kit, stamped with VersaMark ink and embossed with Ranger silver embossing powder.  I did try stamping the sentiment with my Delicata Silvery Shimmer stamp pad, and also tried it with the WOW! Cloud 9 glitter embossing powder (from the SSS August kit) but I think the Silver embossing was the easiest to read. I love this card a lot – I think I was a little overdosed with all the rainbows and colorful papers in this kit and I found it extremely satisfying to do a simple silver and white card.

I do like this ‘Best Ever’ stamp set quite a bit even though it doesn’t give us a lot of images. While in the midst of making these cards, someone at work celebrated a birthday and I was able to come up with a quick and easy gift card using this stamp set.

The package is actually a set of inexpensive alcohol markers for my colleague who recently discovered the joys of coloring, so the sentiment was extra perfect!

So that makes 6 Birthday Cards, 3 friendship/love cards, 1 Christmas card and a gift card for this month’s kit. I really did enjoy all the bright colors in this kit, and I hope I was able to provide a little inspiration for you and your card making adventures, whether you bought this kit or not. Thank you for all your support and Happy Crafting!!

For the Love From Lizi Birthday Hop, we were all given this great ‘Peacock Feather’ die from Sizzix. I love the fact that this die not only cuts the feather, but also cuts two smaller pieces for the ‘eye’ at the end of the feather.

 

Since I had an extra card base and all my materials from the LFL September Super-Card Kit still out, I decided to stick to that theme for my Birthday Hop Card.

Here’s all the supplies I used for this card: a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die, the Peacock Feather die, Spectrum Noir alcohol markers in BT2, BT3, BT4 and the Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen, My Zigg 2 Way Glue Pen, and EK Tools 3D Dots. I love these foam squares – they are in two sizes and very thin – actually listed on the label as 1/16″ thick – so they cut very easily and the adhesive is quite strong. I used my leftover Mint card base and die-cut the feather from the green and purple pattern paper (I covered the pattern paper with the sparkle pen BEFORE I cut the die). I cut the background out of the purple pattern paper with the stitched rectangle die, and cut the center of the ‘eye’ and a background mat from the dark blue specialty paper, and the larger ‘eye’ piece from that spot gloss pattern paper. I also used a piece of vellum. I wanted to give a little lift to the feather, so I traced the feather die on the vellum, and fussy-cut it with a little bit of an extra border to go behind the feather die-cut. This cut vellum backing is a little trendy right now… Lots of dies (especially sentiment dies) are coming out with a background / outline die in addition to the main die. I thought this would help the feather pop a little visually as well as adding a touch of dimension.

I used my Silhouette to create the sentiment in Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold font and printed that directly on my purple pattern paper background, which is mounted to the dark blue specialty paper mat and then onto the mint card base. I did some coloring and shading with the Spectrum Noir markers on the feather itself, and then glued that to the cut vellum backing with the Zigg glue pen. I added the ‘eye’ pieces to the feather and then used the foam squares (trimmed very thinly) to mount the feather assembly to the card. I thought “your are not here to be AVERAGE you are here to be AWESOME” was a perfect sentiment that played right along with the inspirational theme of the September Super-Card Kit – and I do think that Peacock Feather die is pretty awesome! Very detailed, very feathery, and unmistakably peacock..! I can see me using that die on a regular basis!

The Love From Lizi Birthday Hop is a GIVEAWAY!

– To enter the giveaway you must like and comment on each video by 18^th September
– The grand prize is a years free subscription to the Love From Lizi monthly card kit (including shipping)
– There are several other prizes that include stamps, dies, embossing powders and more
– The giveaway is open worldwide
– The winner will be announced within the Love From Lizi Channels October card kit unboxing on September 19^th.

– https://lovefromliziblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/02/love-from-lizi-first-birthday-celebrations-and-giveaways

Needless to say, that grand prize is worth  more than $500.00… Please play along and help us celebrate www.lovefromlizi.com’s First Birthday!!  GOOD LUCK TO ALL!