Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards featuring the Love From Lizi July 2018 Card Kit. This kit celebrates summertime with a unique ‘infinity’ shell stamp, lots of colorful card stock and pattern papers and eight decoupage sheets. Now, UK decoupage is all about layering up with foam spacers to create dimension, versus American decoupage which is all about gluing layers down as flat as possible. I have been with Lizi for just over a year now and this is the first time we’ve gotten decoupage in the monthly kit! I was really intrigued with that infinity stamp, so the first thing I did was grab my VersaFine Onyx Black ink pad and some Bristol Smooth card stock and stamped that infinity stamp six times – trying to be very careful with my placement. Came out GREAT!  Now, if you look very closely you can see some seams that are slightly off, but due to the nature of this illustration, it is virtually unnoticeable! This stamp has starfish, conch shells, whelk shells, nautilus shells and some oyster shells. I was eager to do some coloring on these groovy seashells, and knew that I wanted to use my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush markers so I could color these shells with some really fine detailing. That’s why I chose to use the Bristol Smooth card stock. I put some music on and lost myself in this pattern for a couple hours. I realize that the Zigg markers will blend with each other, but I have always liked using water and a brush to move these markers around… and besides, I was shooting for more of a realistic look and didn’t want the shells to be too bright.  I was completely thrilled with how nicely this turned out! I should be able to get a number of cards from this (just under) 12″ x 8″ infinity pattern. As I was coloring, I was looking for a shell that would lend itself to being cut out from the pattern, and, if you look at the stamp itself, there is only the one whelk shell (next to the starfish) that is on top of all the other shells and ready to be cut out. However, if you stamp the repeating pattern, you do end up with one Starfish (down the center) and the conch shells (though rather small..) that are on top of the other shells too, and can be fussy cut away from the pattern.  Hmmmm…!

I did take the colored card stock from the kit and cut them all in half to make card bases, with the exception of one of the sheets of smooth copic-friendly white card stock (in case I was going to do some alcohol marker coloring). I replaced that with a sheet of my Recollections Kraft card stock thinking that would be a good color for this kit. I wasn’t quite prepared to start cutting apart my colored stamping yet, so I reached for the decoupage sheets to get myself rolling with these 10 cards.

I liked the Happy Birthday decoupage sheet (despite all the pink!) and grabbed the striped pattern paper that matched the fabric on the beach chairs for my background. On the Sky Blue card base, I cut the pattern paper to match the width of the image minus the frame and glued that down to the card base. I added three strips of the glitter peel-offs on the middle horizon of the card and then built the decoupage in the center. We did receive some foam squares to use with the decoupage this month, but I grabbed my own ek tools 3-D dots just because they were a little bit thinner than the squares provided. When you have three, four, or five layers the thickness adds up! I enjoy and appreciate the fun dimension that decoupage adds to the card front, and this card is very cute (a kitten, a puppy , a bear – how could this be anything BUT cute!!) LOL!! I tied a double bow from the 1/8″ Teal Zeal satin ribbon for the top of the frame, and added one of the large sequins from the sequin mix to the bottom. Very cute birthday card, oriented towards a younger crowd, but that’s okay… I have plenty of youngsters in my life!

Time to start cutting the seashells apart…!!! I wanted to feature one of the starfish on this card and found a way to fussy cut an edge on this stamped pattern in line with the starfish, and also fussy cut one starfish completely away from the pattern. I wanted to use the sand included in the embellishment bag to cover some of my ivory card stock to go under the cut edge of my pattern, but I realized the sand was a touch damp (I know retailers dampen play sand to cut down on the dust) so I was having a hard time getting it to stick to anything. I threw all my sand in a low oven to dry it out and reached for my new Sand embossing powder from the My Monthly Hero June kit and used that for this card instead. That works terrifically well with this stamp – very nicely in scale with the shells! I glued the embossed ivory card flat to the Kraft card base, before adding a thin black mat on the square side of the shells and foam taping that up on the card base. I added some sparkle to the fussy-cut starfish with my clear Spectrum Noir glitter pen and foam taped that up on top of the star in the center before adding a few Nuvo Drops on the center five dots. I do want that one starfish to be the ‘focal point’ on this card so I didn’t add any sparkle or Nuvo drops to any of the other shells. I go to my computer and the Silhouette software for my sentiment here which I ‘sketched’ on some scrap ivory card stock (Papyrus silhouette font) using a brown Pigma Micron pen, and die-cut with a small Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die. I added the sentiment with some foam dots (tucking a corner under the starfish) and this “Wish Upon A Star” sentiment is useful for birthdays and other important occasions. I really like the cut edge on this card – looks like a big pile of shells has just washed up on the shore.

Besides the stamps, most of the images in this kit are on the decoupage sheets, so I started looking for images that would pair with the sentiments in the stamp set. The only decoupage that had any ‘waves’ was the sailboat sheet that had a “By the Sea” sentiment printed on the background (layer 1) piece. I cut a piece of scrap white card stock to match the dimensions of the ‘layer 1’ piece and added some clouds to that with a My Favorite Things Mini Cloud Edges stencil, some Broken China Distress Oxide ink and my Inkylicious Ink Duster brushes. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways of adding some clouds to your background, and the Broken China ink is a very good match with the blue on the decoupage sheets. I then went ahead and built the decoupage image on the  cloud background (still using my thin foam 3-D dots) and matted that on some yellow and black card stock from my stash. I stamped the “Happiness…’ sentiment in SSS Watermelon Hybrid ink on a scrap of the same yellow card stock, embossed that with clear embossing powder, die-cut that with a stitched circle die, sponged a bit of the SSS Orange Slush hybrid ink around the edges, and mounted that to the card front with some foam squares. Kind of echoes the look of the sun high in the sky. Everything is mounted to the Red Berry card base and a few red sequins from the sequin mix add a touch more bling to the top and bottom of this card. “Happiness comes in Waves” makes much more sense to me than “By the Sea” ever could..!  LOL!

By now my sand is nice and dry from it’s slow bake in the oven so I wanted to try using that again. I cut a Kraft frame with two stitched rectangle dies and cut a piece of ivory card stock with a stitched hillside die to make a bit of a ‘beach’ that fit inside that frame. I covered that piece with double-sided adhesive from my ATG and the sand stuck beautifully. I added the Kraft frame to the Sky Blue card base with some foam tape and glued the sandy beach flat to the card front. The decoupage piece of the frog lounging in a beach chair under an umbrella, has a “Just to Say…” sentiment printed on the background (layers 1 AND 2) and I wanted to use the “Best Escape Anyone Could Have” sentiment from the stamp set, so I built the decoupage image on the ‘sand’ starting with layer 3. I stamped the sentiment directly on the card base using Hero Arts Summer Sky ink pad and, what with all the glitter on the decoupage pieces, I thought there was no need for added embellishments.  I really like the Kraft frame on this card and how the blue card base becomes the blue sky inside the frame – and that sand looks terrific!

I mentioned the whelk shell from the stamp that was a complete shell just waiting to be fussy cut, so that’s what I did for this next card. On a white card base, I stenciled some ‘bubbles’ using the stencil included in the kit from the bottom left to the top right using some SSS Barely Beige ink and my finger sponges. I did selectively mask off some of the ‘bubbles’ to get the pattern that I wanted, and I really liked the soft tones that ink gave the stencil. I fussy cut one of the whelk shells from my colored sheet and mounted that to some circles die-cut from the Blush and Pink specialty shimmer card stock. I glued the circles together and mounted them to the card front with foam squares from the kit, and mounted the shell on top of that with the same. I die-cut and embossed a banner from Kraft card stock with one of my Darice Banner dies, and die cut that sentiment from the Oyster White specialty paper with an old alphabet die “Little Lizzie” I don’t think I’ve ever used this alpha die before and I really like it!! The “Shell Yeah! fit on that banner perfectly, and I traced around the letters with one of my Pigma Micron Pens for some extra contrast. I attached the banner to the card front with more foam squares, added a few sequins from the Summer Sprinkles sequin mix, and to finish this card up, I stamped a ‘congratulations’ sentiment (from the Hero Arts Many Everyday Messages stamp set) on the inside. Love how the die cuts echo the stencil and everything highlights that shell! I love the bright simplicity of this card!

We received a great ice cream cone die (with a Flake die!) in our kit this month and I wanted to do some fiddly inlay work with it! The cones are die-cut from Kraft and Ivory card stock and the ice cream is cut from the Pink and Oyster White specialty card stock and I dug up this ‘chocolate’ shimmer paper from the August 2017 Love From Lizi Card Kit (I TOLD you I keep all my scraps!! LOL!!). I simply colored all the cut out detail pieces with my alcohol markers before gluing them back in place. On the white card base, I glued a 3″ wide panel of the Blush specialty card stock down the middle and added the three small satin ribbons from the kit on the sides. I do run my ribbon through a Zyron Sticker maker to add complete coverage of adhesive to their backs, and can trim them off right at the edge of the card. I die-cut the glittery ice cream pattern paper with a stitched circle die, and used my ek success Orbis Circle Scissor to cut a blue mat for that. Those are foam taped to the card front and the cones are foam mounted to the pattern paper circle. That Oyster White shimmer paper didn’t shimmer as much as the other two so I added some sparkle with my Spectrum Noir glitter brush. Once again, I turn to my Silhouette software for this sentiment using the Smoothie Shoppe font (naturally!) and printed on a scrap of the Oyster White specialty paper. I die-cut that sentiment with a stitched rectangle die and attached that to the card front with foam squares. And, no… I didn’t forget a couple of Flake chocolate bars (that chocolate shimmer paper again) stuck into the strawberry and vanilla cones! This card feel like a whole ice cream shop to me! And I think that is a really sweet sentiment perfect for a loved one or a valentine!

I was so enamored of that whelk shell, that I cut two more out of my colored stamps for this fun card. On the Golden Sunshine Yellow card base, I glued down a 2 and 5/8″ strip of the green wood plank pattern paper, outlined that with some LFL Mirror Green peel-offs (from the LFL January 2018 kit – perfect match!) then a small strip of the dotted pattern paper and another thin green peel-off. I die cut three circles from the same pattern paper with my stitched circle dies and cut mats for them from the Forest Green specialty card stock with my Orbis circle cutter (I’m starting to love that circle cutter)! The sentiment was printed on the larger circle in the Black Jack font before I die-cut it. The circles are mounted to the card front with foam tape, and the shells on top of their circles with the foam squares. I dug out some of that paper wrapped wire from the LFL March 2018 card kit and coiled that around a paintbrush to make my ‘phone cord’. LOL! I think that wire was the perfect choice here and once I flattened it down a little, it doesn’t add too much thickness to this card. A couple of sequins and one of those small shells adds the perfect finishing touch to this pun-y card! Love the image of the two shells connected together!

Okay, I’ve still got one more good card front I can use from my original colored stamping,and that great pun of a sentiment from the stamp set. I trimmed the stamped and colored shell sheet down to 5″ x 3.75″, and matted that on a thin black mat. On my Kraft card base, I ran some 1/4″ scor-tape around the edges of the card and added the sand all the way around. It added some great texture and color, but it reads much better on a lighter color like ivory. I foam taped the background to the card front, stamped all the rest of the shells from the stamp set and colored them with my Zigg markers and fussy cut them all out. The four scallop shells mount in the corners with foam squares, and the three tiny shell stamps get covered with Nuvo Crystal Drops in Morning Dew for a little clear shine and I stamped the sentiment with Vintage Photo Oxide ink on a scrap of my Ivory card stock and embossed that with some clear embossing powder as well. I curved the stamp to fit another one of my Darice Banner dies, and mounted that with foam squares on the card front. The mini shell stamps adorn the sentiment and do double duty as the shiny bits on this card. WOW! Talk a bout a SHELLabration!! This card sports all of the image stamps and now I have actually used all of the stamps in this stamp set! YES!  LOL!!

I was kind of itching to use this sentiment on a card this month, and I thought the little beach house decoupage was the perfect image to go along with my “Beach, Please!” LOL! Once again, the “Summer Fun” sentiment printed on the beach house background (layer 1) really didn’t appeal to me, so I assembled the decoupage starting with layer 2. I cut a piece of light blue card stock from my stash to 5.5″ x 3.75″ and distressed the edges with Peacock Feathers Distress ink and glued that to the Red Berry card base. I cut a piece of my ivory card stock with a stitched hillside die and ink blended the beach with Antique Linen and Vintage Photo Distress inks before printing the sentiment (Noteworthy font) on my computer. I glued the beach hill on the blue sky and built the decoupage with layers 2, 3 and 4. On layer three I fussy-cut the windows on the doors out for a little backwards dimension (the decoupage sheet actually has those windows as another part of layer 4 but I thought the windows should go in instead of out! Since this little beach house had some banner hanging from the roof, I added a swag of banners across the sky with the puffy stickers. The sticker swag was a touch wider than my background, so I added a couple of thin white strips down the edges of the background for a final pop of white and to match the white outlines on those stickers. I think this would be a great card to send to someone to finagle an invitation to their beach house this summer!! LOL!

Now we get to my favorite pun out of this whole batch of cards…!Of course, “A Midsummer Ice Cream” is a pun on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”! This makes me giggle uncontrollably! I used the ice cream sundae ephemera piece for this card after fussy-cutting it away from it’s pink background! I used my Gina K. / therm-o-web stitched oval dies to cut some yellow and green card stock from my stash and the black mat behind. I used my stencil I made last month again here, sponging with SSS Orange Slush Hybrid ink behind the green ‘hill’. On the Sunshine Yellow card base, I glued down a 5.5″ x 2.5″ strip of the dotted pattern paper, outlined that with thin strips of the green pattern paper and finished that off with some of the glitter peel-offs. I mounted the ovals to the card front with foam squares and the sundae on top of that with more foam squares. I printed the sentiment using my Silhouette software on a scrap of white card stock in the Smoothie Shoppe font (I couldn’t resist!), die-cut that with my Darice banner die, and mounted that with foam squares as well. A few drops of the Simply White Nuvo drops above the ice cream finishes off this card very nicely and echoes the dotted pattern paper. Of course, I can’t leave well enough alone, and came up with a double pun for this card. On the inside we get “Lord, what cool these morsels be!” (Lord, what fools these mortals be!) LOLOLOL!! Knowing what’s inside sends me into fits every time I look at this card. I may have a warped sense of humor but I love the look of this card (invitation to an Ice Cream Social??) and I think that pun-y sentiment is terrifically funny and figure that most people probably know what A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, even though they may not recognize one of the most famous quotes from that play. I hope it tickles you as much as it does me!!

That wraps up my 10 cards for this month, folks! I really enjoyed working with this kit a lot, and I think I did pretty good job of avoiding all the pink…!! LOL! I really loved coloring that stamp and think I managed to come up with quite a wide variety of cards that are fun and unique! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! As usual, I have gobs of leftovers including one sheet of smooth white card stock, four complete decoupage sheets, lots of pattern papers, some specialty card stock scraps, and loads of embellishments including one whole sheet of foam squares. I did manage to use a little bit of most everything in this kit but I didn’t get to any of the wood veneer die cuts, printed or not. I love that infinity stamp, and that, with all the extras (including the ‘Bubbles” stencil) will find loving homes in my stash! Unfortunately, this card kit has sold out already, but I do know that Lizi still has the decoupage sheets, pattern papers and add-ons available, and will very likely release the ‘infinity’ shell stamp set for sale in her mid-July release! If you want MORE decoupage… Lizi has an Oh, Baby mini kit available (my Oh Baby kit video here) at a very reasonable price. Remember, if you go shopping at LoveFromLizi.com please use my link:  http://bit.ly/LFLlink.  Thank you SO MUCH for sharing your valuable time with me – it means so much! Please share this post with anyone you think might be interested, don’t run with scissors, and HAPPY CRAFTING!!

Hello folks! Scott here with 10 cards featuring the My Monthly Hero June 2018 Kit. This month we are treated to some layering stamps in our 6″ x 8″ stamp set – a set of three ocean layering stamps and 3 clouds-each with 2 layers. These are the first layering stamps I own – It’ll be fun experimenting with them! We also get 7 sentiments in this stamp set and 12 beach-y silhouette stamps as well as their 12 coordinating frame cuts. To compliment the layering stamps we get a set of four Hero Arts ink cubes in Soft Granite, Soft Sky, Summer Sky and Deep Ocean. My first set of gradient ink pads too!! We also get .5 oz. of Sand Embossing Powder (very interesting!), 1 fl. oz. of Sea Foam shimmer spray, and a set of 16 Beach Enamel stickers with a very cool matte finish in fun colors. Looks like this kit is the perfect opportunity for me to practice my ink blending! For a little extra challenge, I’m going to ignore my Bristol smooth card stock and do all my ink blending on plain 110# white card stock. I think that will encourage me to blend with a light hand!Since I had never played with a layering stamp I thought I would try out the ocean stamps with a variety of colors and see what I could come up with. Very interesting results here. Looks like you might even be able to flip those stamps around and make a cloudy sky… but first, lets make a card using the ocean stamps as intended and using the gradient inks included in the kit.

I feel like this is the card that the kit was encouraging me to make. I stamped the ocean stamps with the three blue ink pads and used the BACK side of one of the cloud stamps to stamp the little island on the edge of the horizon – I think I saw Jennifer McGuire stamp with the back of a cloud stamp to make an island – great effect! I added the palm tree stamp to the island but made the trunk a little bit taller (I though it was a little stubby..!) I did fussy cut an ‘ocean’ mask to mask off the ocean when blending the beach and sky, and I used one of the cloud dies to cut out a mask for the cloud and used my 1/2 inch circle punch to cut the sun mask before ink blending the sky with SSS Hybrid Ink in Lemon Zest (a little lighter at the horizon..!). I ink blended the beach with Antique Linen Distress Ink and in Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink. I removed the masks from the sky and softly brushed the Lemon Zest over those to soften the contrast. I stamped the shadow part of the cloud and the footprints with the antique linen ink and stamped and embossed the sentiment with Walnut Stain Oxide ink and some clear embossing powder. I tried using the Sand Embossing powder on the footprint stamp but it blurred out all of the detail – those footprints are very small stamps! To add some texture to the ‘beach’ I used my Micro Applicator Brushes to dab spots of Vintage Photo, Antique Linen and Walnut Stain Oxide inks all around the edges. I loved using those applicator brushes with ink because they give a different value each time they touch the paper… darker to lighter as the ink gets used up. I added the white dots with my Sharpie Water Based Extra Fine Point marker and (though you can’t really see it in the photo) I used my Gelly Roll Clear Stardust Glitter pen to add some ‘sun reflecting on the water’ glitter on the ocean waves underneath the sun. Makes for a lovely surprise as that glitter catches the light. I trimmed the card front down a bit, and mounted that to a dark blue card base from my stash. I love the footprints walking around the sentiment and the bright summer beach scene. NOW, the big challenge will be to keep from making 10 cards just like this one! I realize that the ocean stamps are only 4.25″ wide but I wondered if it would be possible to use them in a landscape orientation?

Well… I guess something like this works if you must have a horizontal scene! I used the same inks for this card as I used on my first card except I used Broken China Oxide ink for the sky and cloud shadows. Everything else is colored (and masked) the same here, and I punched out the sun with my 1/2 inch circle punch… I think I got the sky a little bit dark here… remember to use a LIGHT touch, Scott… but I like the end result very much! I die cut the scene with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die and mounted that to a Kraft card stock mat and a dark blue mat and then to a white card base. Here, I used my alcohol and water color markers to do the sand texture on the beach, but I don’t like that nearly as much as using the mini applicator brushes. I also need to remember that a new stamp pad is going to be JUICY! My sentiment is a touch chunky here from over-inking with the Deep Ocean ink pad, but every card is another chance to try something new and learn what works for you (and what doesn’t!). I did add the glitter pen to the waves underneath the sun (or is that the moon?) again… that is really a beautiful touch…! This is a pretty successful effort to use those ocean stamps in a horizontal format… The ocean stamps don’t match end to end, so you are kind of limited to a 4.25″ wide ocean vista…!Let’s try some different ocean colors! Again, very similar to the prior two cards but I only used two of the ocean stamps in Cracked Pistachio Oxide ink and Mowed Lawn Distress ink – leaving the ‘background’ of the water in white. I stamped the sailboat in the Soft Granite ink to suggest a bit more distance, and I used my cloud masks to make one long cloud formation in the Broken China sky. Soft Granite ink for the shadows on the clouds (getting better with my placement there…!), and I only used the Antique Linen ink for the beach. The card base here is my standard Staples Ivory card stock, the mat is Recollections Kraft card stock and the card front is again die-cut with a LF stitched rectangle die. I stamped the two starfish on the same Ivory card with Linen and Walnut stain inks and die cut those out for a little dimension. Now… for the sentiment… one of my co-workers celebrated a birthday on Saturday, and not only does he love going to the beach whenever he can, he also has a terrifically morbid sense of humor…! I had to make this one for him! I created this sentiment using my Silhouette Software (free!) and printed that directly on the card front in the ‘Freehand 575 BT’ and ‘Futura’ fonts. Of course the inside completes the pun-y sentiment and I LOVE the juxtaposition of the “Happy Birthday!” Makes me laugh every time! (and my colleague LOVED his card!)

Now I turn everything on it’s head and use those ocean stamps for a ‘cloudy sky’ horizon. No blues on this card at all! I stamped the layering stamps in the SSS Lemon Zest, Orange Slush and Watermelon Hybrid inks. I continued to ink blend the Lemon Zest into the sky and stamped the clouds with the same, and the cloud shadows in the Orange Slush. I did cut apart the birds stamp to give me two stamps with three birds each and stamped those in the orange ink as well. I used the Mowed Lawn Distress ink for the ground and the sentiment. I stamped the Adirondack chair in the Watermelon ink on my Ivory card stock and die cut that out before mounting it to the card front with some foam dots. The card front is die cut with that same stitched rectangle die and glued to a thin dark green mat and attached to an Ivory card base. I really like the effect the ocean stamps give us when used upside down… and when paired with the cloud stamps, I think they evoke a cloudy horizon very nicely! Everybody’s “happy place” isn’t necessarily a beach!! This here’s a card that evokes those endlessly vast Kansas plains…!  LOL!

Enough with the seascapes! Lets do something graphic! I covered a piece of white card stock with the Sea Foam glimmer spray from the kit – really nice color, great shimmer and a completely changing appearance as it moves through the light. I noticed that many of the beach-y icon stamps were very similar in size as well as the “Sea you soon” sentiment, so I arranged the stamps in a pleasant grid around the chair and stamped everything in Walnut Stain Oxide ink. I really like the sentiment off to the right side of the grouping, and I thought the chair was more important than the sentiment anyway! It is the largest of the 9 stamps! I cut the Sea Foam panel with a stitched rectangle die and glued that to a thin dark brown mat and mounted both to another Ivory card base. I really love the iconography and the color of this card!

There is a “With Sympathy” sentiment in this stamp set, and I thought it would be interesting to see if I could do a monochromatic card using the Soft Granite ink.I grabbed a piece of my standard Staples Gray card stock (110# available in stores) and stamped all of this with the Soft Granite ink. I did not stamp the solid ocean stamp – letting the gray card stock be the background color, and I used some clear embossing on the smallest (darkest) ocean stamp – love that shine! I had a great time overlapping the three cloud stamps to fill up the sky, and even got the cloud shadows to subtly show up too! The sentiment is embossed as well and again, the chair is stamped and die-cut and mounted with foam dots. I did do some ink blending around the sky and on the beach  with Iced Spruce Oxide ink (using my ocean mask again) and that gives this card a slight hint of green. I went back to my Stardust glitter pen for this card but instead of glittering up the waves (no moon here..!) I gave a the clouds a little silver lining on their bases. There’s the touch of grace that this card needed! Again, I die-cut the card front, used a thin white mat, and my standard grey card base. Actually, a very striking sympathy card!

I was looking to use that ‘drawn in the sand’ HELLO sentiment, and I noticed that it was the only stamp in this set that shows perspective – the top of the letters are smaller than the bottom of the letters because they are further away. That’s what gave me this idea.AHA!  I’m using the ocean stamps on a landscape card and they fill the whole card front!  VICTORY!!!  LOL!!! I’m calling this my ‘sandbar card..! On a white card front, the smaller wave stamps are stamped in Broken China and Faded Jeans Oxide ink to match the angle of the HELLO stamp, and the sandbar is blended with Antique Linen and Vintage Photo Oxide inks and here’s the perfect chance to use that Sand Embossing powder with the HELLO stamp! I think that powder is more effective in smaller doses than in large swaths. I mean… sand isn’t really that reflective, is it?  LOL! I thought it did work great on this sentiment, and I brought back the footprint stamp to indicate that someone trampled this message into the sand and then kept going…! LOL!! Lots of dots to soften the edges between the sand and water, die-cut the card front and another thin white mat and a dark blue card base. This is a very interesting card! The more you tilt the top of the card the more pronounced the perspective is – the illusion gets better and better! This card was great fun to create and I think the ‘sandbar’ illusion is unique and very cool..!

Back to some big bold graphics with the beach ball stamp! On a white card front, I used one of my Gentleman Crafter’s Handy Guides for Pattern Stamping to assist with hand stamping the beach balls in nine colors – all Distress Oxide inks – in a perfect circle around the sentiment which is stamped in Walnut Stain and clear embossed. Using my stitched and plain circle dies I die-cut the white stamped piece and the yellow and orange graduated circles as well but thought they needed a little more definition… and I remembered this circle cutting tool I got from friends many years ago and had hardly used – an EK Success Orbis Circle Scissor which will cut over 120 circle diameters from 25mm to 150mm. Aha! This will work! I managed to cut three thin black mats for my circles and layered them all together on my white card base. For a finishing touch, I stamped the smallest ocean stamp in Soft Granite on the top and bottom of the card front – a smart suggestion of water on this ‘balls within a ball within a ball’ card. If I had thought about it, I would have clear embossed all of the beach ball stamps, but I was so intent on getting my hand stamping correct, that it slipped my mind! LOL! Still, I like this very graphic and summery greeting card!

I still have to use that cute mermaid stamp and her rock stamp, but I was a little intimidated by the plethora of cards I saw that featured the mermaid. I reminded myself that this was supposed to be ink-blending practice, so I decided to do my first ever ink-blended galaxy background! This was definitely a well-earned learning experience!On a white card front, I started with my ‘galaxy’ – sponging in some Worn Lipstick, Broken China and Fossilized Amber Oxide inks in three sections. I used Seedless Preserves Distress ink to start bringing in some darkness around the edges and soon graduated to Black Soot Distress ink do go really, really dark! Not too bad for my first galaxy! Of course a light spray of Sheer Shimmer Spritz and some white paint spatters is what really sells the ‘galaxy’ illusion. For the ocean , I blended some Iced Spruce Oxide ink on the bottom and stamped the middle ocean stamp in Soft Granite and the small ocean, rock and mermaid in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and used clear embossing to shine up and intensify the black. I die cut the card front with a stitched rectangle die, mounted that on a black mat and glued all down to a white card base. I adore this mermaid stamp! I think she looks great against the pink ‘galaxy’. By now, I have used all seven sentiments in the stamp set, so I reached for my Hero Arts ‘Many Everyday Messages’ stamp set for the touching ‘miss you’ sentiment on the inside of the card. I just couldn’t bring myself to add any text to the front of the card! Of course, I will do many things differently the next time I do a ‘galaxy’ background – use smaller ink sponges, spatter with a smaller brush, add more color under the black, etc, but I’m very pleased with how this background turned out and I think this is a perfectly stunning card!

Which brings us to card #10. I know everyone likes interactive cards, and I thought I might have an idea on how to bring a little action to this card kit, so I reached for the dolphin stamp and some acetate and…

Yes! We’ve come across a small school of porpoises! OK… so that stamp is more likely a dolphin than a porpoise but I figured they were close enough that we could use this fun pun on this interactive ‘reveal wheel’ card. on a white card front I created another seascape using the Hero Arts inks for the ocean, Broken China for the sky, and Antique Linen and Vintage Photo for the sand. I did cover the ocean with clear embossing powder for a little watery shine, and I die-cut the clouds and did their shadow stamping in the Soft Granite ink. OOOOH!  I LIKE those die-cut clouds!! I also stamped those other three birds in the Soft Granite ink. I stamped the ‘porpoise’ stamp four times on an acetate circle with StazOn Jet Black ink, and fussy cut most of the porpoise stamps leaving a tab connecting them all together at the center. I showed the turning wheel I created on my Silhouette last month with the bicycling card and I used the same piece to power this animation. It sticks out beyond the edge of the card just enough for your finger to catch it and turn… SPLASH, SPLASH!! LOL! I LOVE this pun-y philosophical sentiment! I printed this directly on my card front using the Noteworthy font, and added the little starfish enamel sticker to highlight the sentiment. How much fun is this card! The ‘turning wheel’ is on top of the card base and behind the sky card stock (cut to 4.25″ x 5.5″), and the porpoise acetate is on top of the sky card stock and behind the  ocean and beach card front. So… the ‘turning wheel’ is turning the acetate wheel through a small hole in the sky card stock. This is a little thicker than my other spinning wheel cards because you are not just spinning the wheel by itself, but the wheel that you are moving is spinning a whole other wheel too. I think I have a completely unique method for making these spinning wheel cards, so, for the time being, I think I’ll keep this secret to myself! HOWEVER… a LOT of people asked for a How-To Video for my swinging card from the May MMH kit, and I have promised to do a video showing how I made that card. I will get that up as soon as I get caught up with my 10 card videos – so, if you’re interested, keep an eye out for that!

That’s my 10 cards for the My Monthly Hero June 2018 Kit. I managed 6 ‘seascapes’ that are pretty different from each another, a ‘sandbar’ card, a ‘great plains’ card and two strictly graphic interpretations of this stamp set. I did manage to work in a couple of puns, a ‘miss you’ card, a sympathy card, and a birthday card. I was worried that all my cards would look the same this month, but I think I got a pretty good variety of looks with this group! I really enjoyed playing with my first set of layering stamps, and am always thrilled to get new ink pads in a kit! And heaven knows I can use all the ink-blending practice that I can get! I did think this month’s kit didn’t have quite the same variety that the May kit offered, but I am very pleased with the assortment of cards I came up with this month, and can’t wait to see what Hero Arts has in store for us in July! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today… please pass this along to anyone who might be interested and I wish you Happy Crafting!

 

Hello Folks! Scott here with my LFL July 2018 Card Kit unboxing! As usual, this kit is over-stuffed with supplies and a few surprises as well, so let’s get right to it!As is the practice now, we get 5 sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ letter size card stock – 2 copic-friendly smooth White, one Golden Sunshine Yellow, one Red Berry, and one Sky Blue. We get four specialty card stock (half-sheets) all in a pearlescent shimmer – Forest Green, Oyster White, Soft Pink and (Lizi calls it) Blush but I think it’s more of a pinkish beige.We get 12 sheets of 6″ x 6″ single-side card stock featuring an assortment of beach-y icons and fun patterns. The circular floats, the ice creams, the shells and the bunting banners all have glitter accents for a little extra sparkle. Looks like we’re headed to the beach!I’ve been with Lizi for a year now and this is the first time our monthly kits include eight decoupage sheets!! Now, remember, European decoupage is all about layering images on top of each other for a 3-D effect, instead of the American version where decoupage is all about gluing multiple layers down as flat as possible. Every sheet is die cut so you just have to pop your images out, and they have numbered each layer so you know to start with Layer 1 for the bottom, add layer 2 on top of that with foam dots, layer 3 on top of 2 and so on to complete your 3-D image. Each one of the decoupage sheets is different and features little animals (or are they stuffed toys?) in various summertime activities. There is also a lot of glitter highlighting different parts on all of these pieces! Earlier this year, I did do a 10C1K video for Lizi’s “Oh, Baby” Special Edition Card Kit that shows off this decoupage technique nicely. You can check that out here if you’re interested: OH BABY video. IN FACT… Lizi has recently introduced an Oh, Baby Mini Kit that includes most everything from the original kit less the alpha dies. And it’s a mini kit so it’s affordable!The “Let’s Shellebrate” stamp set is extremely special this month. It is an ‘infinity’ stamp, meaning that the patterns match up on all four sides so you could actually cover a 12″ x 12″ (or larger!) piece of paper with this pattern stamp. A very nice pattern of assorted shells that is just begging for some intense coloring! There are also 4 individual shell stamps and 3 sentiments: “Happiness come in Waves”, “Let’s Shellabrate!” and “Best Escape Anyone Can Have” (BEACH). VERY interesting stamp set! We get another stencil this month: a 4′ x 4″ Love From Lizi exclusive stencil “Bubbles” (we didn’t get the negative cuts this month) – and our featured die is a nicely detailed ice cream cone with a chocolate ‘flake’ bar for dipping, and some Candy Floss Pink glitter peel-off pin stripe stickers. These are translucent glitter again and will change appearance depending on what color they are mounted on top of. Very cool!And that brings us to the Embellishments Bag! WOO-HOO! First, we get our ribbon for this month: a full meter of 5/8″ grosgrain ribbon in blue with little white cabanas, and three 1/8″ thick satin ribbons in Lemonade, Teal Zeal and Orange. Our Nuvo Crystal Drops this month are ‘Simply White’, and we get four large ephemera die cuts that match the beach-y elements of our kit this month. Lizi has thoughtfully included two sheets of foam squares to compliment the decoupage sheets in the kit, as well as a sample pouch of the ‘Summer Sprinkles’ sequin mix. Also included are 9 small beach-y wood veneer die-cuts and four little shell beads (yes, there are holes in those shells for stringing!). Lizi’s big “let’s throw in something unique this month” is a small bag of play sand. That’s right! Good old fashioned sand-box sand! What Fun! We also get two larger wood veneer pieces that are actually printed (the cabana and the ice cream) and a sheet of puffy banner / bunting stickers. Wow! Lots of fun items this month. I always love the fact that Lizi doesn’t fill her kits up month after month with different varieties of the same items, but actually tries to regularly change things up and keep us thinking on our toes!That’s all the goodies in the Love From Lizi July 2018 Card Kit. As of posting, there are still kits available at Lizi’s website, so if you’d like to get in on some of this summer fun, please use my link to shop: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. Subscribers have until midnight (British time) on June 25th to add items to their subscription box for no added shipping charges! If the decoupage sheets pique your interest, then I suggest adding the “Oh Baby Mini Kit” to your subscription for more chances to experiment with this European version of decoupage. That’s all from me today, please share this with anyone who you think might enjoy what Lizi has to offer! Thanks for sharing your time with me and Happy Crafting!

Hello Folks!  Scott here with a special showcase of the Flavor of the Month Card Kit by Scrapping for Less for May 2018 – “In the Countryside”. Teresa Russell – the owner of Scrapping for Less – asked me if I would do a feature for her May Card Kit, and, since I had considered this subscription kit for my “A Year With…” series, I readily accepted!

A unique feature of the FOTM kits is that they usually consist of four “collections” that are kind of like four little mini kits that comprise the ‘Double Dip Sundae’ level and an available extra collection of goodies that bumps you up to the ‘Banana Split’ level. Here’s a quick breakdown of all the supplies included in this kit:   Collection One: Six 6″ x 6″ ‘Country Kitchen’ pattern papers from Carta Bella; the Brutus Monroe stamp set: ‘Farm Emblems’; some Carta Bella Frames and Tags (ephemera); an alphabet sticker sheet (mine are pink!); and a small packet of matching Kennedy Grace Creations sequins. Collection Two: Six 6″ x 6″ ‘Down on the Farm’ pattern papers from Doodlebug; the ‘Miss Moo’ stamp set from Sunny Studio (exclusive for Scrapping for Less); Down on the Farm Chit Chat (ephemera) and Mini Icons (stickers); and another small pack of matching KG sequins. Collection Three: Six 6″ x 6″ ‘Tiny Checks’ pattern paper from My Favorite Things; the ‘Piggy Picnic’ stamp set from Scrapping for Less, about 12″ of Yellow Gingham Ribbon; Farm Animal Stickers from Pebbles; and more matching KG sequins.  Collection Four: Six 6″ x 6″ ‘Farmhouse’ pattern papers by American Crafts, the ‘Barnyard’ stamp set from Avery Elle created exclusively for Scrapping for Less; about a foot or so of black and white twine, Farm Friends stickers (nice acetate stickers with glitter accents!); and another matching packet of KG sequins.  In addition to the four ‘collections’, you also receive four envelopes and a great stack of letter-sized card stock (Scrapping for Less is now sending six sheets of colored card stock and two sheets of white in their card kits) – I believe all the colored card stock is from My Favorite Things – Wild Cherry, Sour Apple, Banana Split, Whip Cream,  Kraft, and Black Licorice. And the two sheets of white card stock is Neenah 110# smooth white solar crest card stock. All the card stock is terrific! You get all of these collections at the Double Dip level and you can upgrade to the Banana Split level for even more goodness! This month, the Banana Split level treated us to one full-size bottle of Nuvo Jewel Drops in Strawberry Coulis, Orange Marmalade, or Sea Breeze (I got the orange); a Rooster, Hen and Chick die from Frantic Stampers; about 16″ of 2.5″ wide burlap ribbon; and the  ‘Faith, Family, Farming’ rubber stamp from Technique Junkies.  Since the pattern papers , ephemera, stickers and the like are divided up in these collections, you may not receive the exact same items as other people.

Another interesting feature of the Flavor of the Month Card Kits is the four Card Sketches that Teresa provides for every kit. I am familiar with card sketches, have seen them around and in the free craft magazines you get from scrapbook.com, but I don’t think I have ever actually used a sketch to make a card. Now, Teresa said I didn’t have to use the sketches for my showcase, but I figured I’d give them a whirl and see what inspiration they provide. Then, of course, to make the challenge a little more thorough, I decided I’d make the four sketch cards using only items from one ‘collection’ at a time. I didn’t plan on it originally, but I ended up using sketch #1 with Collection One, sketch #2 with Collection Two, etc… Once I get through 4 cards using the sketches (and one card from the extra ‘banana split’ supplies) then I’ll open up the rest of these cards to a free-for-all!

Now, Collection One  – ‘Country Kitchen’ didn’t have any sentiments in the stamp set, and the ephemera that I received only said ‘Home’, ‘From My Garden With Love’, ‘Homemade with Love’, and ‘Tomatoes’, so I decided to create my own sentiment using the alpha stickers included in the collection. I was inspired by the two chicken emblems from the stamp set, and the chicken outline pattern paper, and that great salmon plaid pattern paper (hey, the alpha stickers are pink!). So, on a Whip Cream card base I assembled my first card using the suggested Sketch #1 and a fun sticker-ed birthday greeting.  This birthday card makes me giggle!!I did decide to use the black card stock (and some of the white) included in the kit for mats, accents and stamping instead of card bases, and I also used the second half of the Whip Cream card stock as the base for this sentiment and the round chicken stamp. I stamped the second chicken stamp on a strip of the background paper for my vertical stripe, then matted the sentiment with the chicken pattern paper and I am actually surprised at how closely this follows the card sketch. Other than my VersaFine Onyx Black ink, everything here is from Collection One.

Moving on to Card 2, Collection Two (Down on the Farm), and card sketch #2, my second card is created using only the kit supplies. Okay, I did use a stitched circle die on that last card, and here I use a stitched oval die from my stash, and you know I cannot live without my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies, but beyond my dies, inks, coloring mediums and one sheet of Bristol Smooth card stock, everything on all of these cards is straight from the kit itself. I stamped that cute cow stamp using VersaFine Onyx Black ink on a piece of the Neenah smooth white solar crest card stock, and colored her up with my Spectrum Noir Alcohol Markers before die cutting her out in a nice oval. That fun ‘cow on a blue field’ pattern paper and the cow hide pattern paper provided the stripes on the Sour Apple card base. I did stamp the little flower from the stamp set using SSS Key Lime hybrid ink along the right edge of the card base, and mounted everything up on some foam tape. You know I love me some puns, and this Sunny Studio Stamp set has three nice pun-y sentiments including this “Cow are you?” sentiment. Very cute card and, I was able to follow the card sketch pretty closely! Love that flower in her ear!

Card 3, Collection Three (Tiny Checks), sketch #3, and we’ve moved into the piggy stamp set (with a ‘tiny check’ stamp)! And that MFT Tiny Check pattern paper, so I wanted to play with some patterns on this card. Again, my card is very faithful to the card sketch, but I managed one piece of interesting construction here. I cut the light blue check pattern paper on a diagonal with a stitched rectangle die, and then I attached that to the dark blue check pattern paper and matched the pattern and then cut the dark blue into an eighth-inch mat before matting that on some more Black Licorice card stock. It is almost unnoticeable, but you can see it if you’re looking – I do think that it really pulls your eye in to the center image.On the Banana Split card base, I glued down my background layers and then stamped the check ‘tablecloth’ stamp using the SSS Watermelon Hybrid ink on the Neenah card stock –  fussy cut those rectangles out – and mounted them to the card front with foam tape. I stamped the two pigs in VersaFine black ink and colored them with my Zigg Clean Color real Brush Markers with a little blue halo from an alcohol marker. ‘Enjoy Life It’s Delicious’ was one of the fun sentiments from this stamp set, so I curved that to match one of my Darice Banner dies, and stamped that in black as well. I used one of my Darice Nesting Heart dies to cut out the pigs, and everything gets some thin foam dots before mounting to the card front. I really like the colorful sequins here and the pigs are so cute.

Card number 4, ‘Farmhouse’ Collection 4, and sketch #4 bring the cute lambs out to play. I stamped and masked the lamb stamp to make a pyramid of sheep with VersaFine black ink on the Neenah card stock and colored the sheep with my alcohol markers. There was some really beautiful pattern paper in this collection, so I paired up the green leaf pattern with the little flowers pattern paper and matted those on the Black Licorice card stock before gluing them down to the Kraft card base. I trimmed the stamped piece down to size, matted that on some black and added that to the card front with some foam tape. The sentiment is stamped in black on the Neenah card stock, matted on the black card stock and foam taped to the card front. As I was finishing up this card, I thought I would use some black glaze pen to add some shine to the sheep’s eyes but my glaze pen was too big and all my little lambs started looking crazed. Big fail! So I stamped six new sheep heads, colored them the same, fussy cut them out and added them back to their bodies with some foam dots. WOW! That really made this card POP! I added a small bow to my black sheep using the black and white twine and I have to admit that this card actually thrills me! SO nice!! I did enjoy using the card sketches for these first cards and was truly surprised at how closely I adhered to them. I can see their usefulness in providing folks with inspiration!

The extra goodies in the Banana Split level has a large rubber stamp this month so I decided card five would focus on that stamp and the materials included with it.I did use some of my Bristol smooth card stock and stamped this image using my SSS Intense Black ink – this is such a finely detailed stamp that I needed to use my ‘least-juicy’ stamp pad to get all the small details. I colored this image with my Zigg markers in a little bit of a vignette style and used one of my stitched rectangle dies to cut the stamp out. On the Wild Cherry card base, I added a 3.75″ strip of the red check pattern paper from Collection Two, and trimmed that with a couple of thin strips of the Black Licorice card stock on the edges. I used some spray adhesive to mount the burlap ribbon down the center of the card front, and used the included dies to cut a chicken family from the licorice card stock to parade across the bottom of this card. I love this barn, but am at a bit of a loss as to the meaning of this sentiment… feels more like a scrapbook sentiment than a card sentiment: “Here we are when we helped the Johnson’s add a second hayloft to their barn!” I do like that barn though, and these colors, and all those cute little chicks!

Now that we have covered all the card sketches and all the ‘collections’ we can have a little more fun combining all the materials for the next group of cards. I was lucky enough to get this ADORABLE cow sticker with my Sticko ‘Farm Friends’ acetate stickers. I actually found the whole sheet of stickers available on Amazon if you’re interested!!On the Sour Apple card base, I used a strip of the salmon check pattern paper (collection four) cut to 3.5″ wide and fussy cut along the long edges following the checked pattern. I don’t have any fancy scallop dies or straight decorative die cuts (really, my LF stitched rectangle dies are the only card-size dies I own) so I find it very effective to fussy cut pattern papers along the pattern lines. I stamped the ‘milk’ stamp from Collection One using Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink in two rows on the pattern paper for a little more detail on the background. The cow sticker is attached to a piece of the Neenah card stock and cut with a heart nesting die, and then matted on a piece of the dark red check pattern paper from the same collection. The sentiment is from the ‘Miss Moo’ stamp set in Collection Two, stamped in Distress Oxide Walnut Stain ink on more of the Neenah card stock and die cut into my shaped sentiment. The heart shape and the sentiment are foam taped to the card front and I added a few heart stamps around the cow using a Paper Pumpkin stamp from the January 2017 kit stamped in Distress Oxide Fired Brick ink. That matches the dark checked mat perfectly! I added a little shadow under the cow with an alcohol marker and finished off this card with a few sequins. I think this cow sticker is SO cute and, though I am not a huge fan of stickers, I am tempted to buy some of the complete sticker sets from Amazon. Adorable card with a funny pun-y sentiment!

There is still one more pun-y sentiment from that Sunny Studio stamp set in Collection Two that I am eager to use, so that sentiment is what inspired my next card.On a piece of the Neenah white card stock I stamped the cow from the ‘Barnyard’ stamp set in Collection Four six times. I actually stamped the back row on the BACK of the card stock so I could trace them on the front and have my ‘herd’ facing in different directions. So I really didn’t need any masks at all! I stamped one more cow on a scrap of card stock and colored her with my Zigg Markers and fussy-cut her out for my main image. To reinforce the pop of the brown cow, I colored all the other cows in black and white using colored pencils – nothing highly detailed, just enough to give them some color. I cut the card front with a stitched rectangle die, matted that on a thin piece of Black Licorice card stock and glued that all down to the Wild Cherry card base. The brown cow is attached with foam dots, so she’s the only real dimension on this card. I did add a touch of my Wink of Stella glitter pen to the bell on the brown cow, but that’s the only sparkle on this card. I really like the fact that this sentiment stamp came in two pieces so you could stamp a stacked or a straight sentiment as I did here with VersaFine Onyx Black ink. Such a fun birthday card that’s really pretty simple but packs a pun-y punch!

I really liked the barn stamp included with the Banana Split level extras but wanted to use a different sentiment with it, so I simply cut the ‘farming’ sentiment off of the stamp.I stamped this barn using my SSS Intense Black ink (my least juicy black ink pad) on a piece of my Strathmore Bristol Smooth card stock. I did cut a mask for the barn and colored the background using my Distress Oxide inks in Walnut Stain, Fired Brick, Spiced Marmalade and Fossilized Amber using my Ink Duster brushes. I did use the My Favorite Things Mini Cloud Edges stencil for a touch of clouds above the barn. I colored the barn with my Zigg markers and turned to my printer and my Silhouette Software to create this fun birthday sentiment. This is printed directly on the card front with the Noteworthy font and the Sign Painter font for the cursive ‘classic’. I love being able to create my own sentiments on my cards, and I have a more in depth video explaining my printing process here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9YuZSqC9fo&t=1s. I wrapped the yellow gingham ribbon from Collection Three around the bottom of the card front and added a little bow to the bottom left (it is a birthday card after all!!). I matted the card front on a piece of the orange-y pattern paper from Collection Four and glued all down to the Banana Split card base. I love this background combined with the barn and, since we are ALL getting older, (or at least know people who ARE) I think this is a very fun and useful birthday sentiment. Again… I really LOVE that barn image!

I knew I wanted to use those cute ‘chick’ stamps from the Avery Elle ‘Barnyard’ stamp set in Collection Four, but (possibly because I am a guy) I felt that the ‘you are one of my favorite chicks’ was a touch misogynistic…!  LOL!! So let’s do another printed sentiment!I stamped the three chick stamps on a small piece of Bristol Smooth card stock and colored them with my Zigg clean color markers, and die cut that out with one of my stitched oval dies. I cut the strip of hens and chicks from the stripes of pattern paper in Collection Two and used the yellow gingham ribbon (Collection Three) for a little trim on the edges of that strip. I cut a one inch strip of my own kraft card stock and used my Ellen Hutson Stitching Lines die to add the stitch lines on the top and bottom of that strip. I decided I needed something more on my focal image so I cut out the yellow bandanna square from the Doodlebug pattern paper in Collection Two, matted that on a thin black mat and cut that in half to go above and below my accent strip. I glued all the background pieces to a Neenah white card base, and mounted my chick vignette up on foam tape. Back to the printer and my Silhouette software for this fun sentiment printed in my favorite Brady Bunch Remastered font on some scrap white card stock and die cut with the Tim Holtz Compass Blueprint die. I cut three more of those shapes out of the Black Licorice card stock and glued them all together with the sentiment on top for a nice chunky chipboard-like sentiment. I added the sentiment to the card front with some thin foam dots and used my Orange Marmalade Nuvo Jewel drops for the two accent spots on either end of the sentiment. I like this ‘peep’ sentiment much more that the ‘chick’ sentiment and I adore these three little chick stamps! A very cheerful friendship card!

If you have followed me at all over the last couple of years, you know how much I love using puns and song lyrics as sentiments on my cards. Thus we have arrived at card #10.Go ahead… sing it to yourself… this is a GREAT pun for a cow card! I created this fun scene using a stitched hillside die and pattern papers from Collection Four (leaf pattern) Three (check pattern for sky) and Two (farm pattern). I did a little ink blending on the edge of the front hill with Distress Oxide Walnut Stain for a little added definition, and cut all three pattern papers out with a stitched rectangle die and matted those on a larger frame using some black card stock from my stash (not enough Black Licorice card stock for this last mat!). The front leaf hillside is mounted with some foam dots to intensify the perspective of this scene. I stamped the ‘Miss Moo’ cow from Collection Two on a scrap of Bristol Smooth card stock, colored her with my Zigg Markers and fussy cut her out leaving a small white border to help her pop. I mounted her and the ‘Down On The Farm Chit Chat’ “MOO” to the card front using foam squares and that completes this fun scene. Back to my printer for this sentiment using the Noteworthy font again and I was able to print the sentiments directly on the last Kraft Card base. Of course the sentiment completes on the inside (I couldn’t resist a double-pun!) and I am laughing even as I write this! SO MUCH FUN!

Though I have lived in New York City for almost 30 years now, I was raised in Kansas and still have those ‘countryside’ roots embedded in my psyche, so this was actually a fun kit for me – almost felt like a vacation! I have gobs of supplies left over, as well as those fun stamp sets! A big thanks goes out to Teresa Russell at Scrapping for Less for letting me experiment with her May Flavor of the Month card kit. I enjoyed the variety of supplies included in the kit and the great variety of stamps included as well. Most of the stamp sets here are exclusive to this specific card kit, so that’s something very special for subscribers. I do know that there are more “In the Countryside” Card Kits available in both the Double Dip and Banana Split levels, so if I have managed to pique your interest, head over to Scrapping For Less and get one for yourself – and if you like the huge variety Teresa includes in her Flavor of the Month Card Kits go ahead and subscribe!. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to visit with me here, please share this post with all your friends, don’t run with scissors, and Happy Crafting!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi June 2018 Card Kit. Lizi refers to this kit as the “Makers Gonna Make” card kit featuring lots of colorful papers, cut apart sheets, chipboard stickers and an exclusive ‘build-a-bust’ stamp set. Initially, I was a little intimidated by this kit because it is rather aggressively ‘girly’,  but after a little bit of experimenting, I figured out some unique ways to use these supplies and was actually able to create some truly masculine cards.

As usual with the LFL kits, I did cut and fold the included card stock sheets to A2 size for use as my 10 card bases.  We received three 12″ x 12″ cut apart sheets in this kit that had some great images and pattern papers on them, and this 4″ x 6″ sewing machine cut apart caught my eye first, so I figured why not add some stitching to this paper? I broke out the embroidery floss and my Tim Holtz Design Ruler along with my retractable craft pick to punch holes in the card stock for my stitching. I picked three colors of DMC floss (#3347-medium yellow green, #947-burnt orange, #973-bright canary) to match some of the sewing machines on the pattern paper and, with three strands of floss,  I did a simple back stitch on the bottom, a cross stitch in the middle and a chain / straight stitch on the top. The sentiment on this cut apart was a simple ‘sew very happy’, so I went into my Silhouette software and expanded that sentiment to be ‘you make me sew very happy’ (in the Typewriter Hand font) and sized that to cover the original sentiment at the bottom of the page. I matted the sewing machines to a thin black mat and glued those down to the Sunshine Yellow Card Stock. I mounted the printed sentiment up on some foam tape and added dots of the Nuvo Crystal Drops from the kit to the centers of the ‘stitch regulator’ dials – love that Liquid Mercury color! I confess I have a hard time NOT sewing on any pattern papers referencing stitching or sewing! Got to love the texture that adds! This is a fun, colorful, ‘crafty’ card with a little text adaptation granting us a useful sentiment!

Lizi usually gives us the option of purchasing matching chipboard stickers with the add-on products offered along with the subscription kits, but this month she included them in the kit to begin with! Plus for Us! There were three lady chipboard stickers and I noticed that two of them looked very similar… almost like sisters… and that prompted this card. For the background, I trimmed a piece of the lilac plaid pattern paper down to three and a half inches wide and (after splitting the lilac heart shaped ribbon down the middle) added those ribbon pieces to the two sides and glued that down to the Cerise Pink card base. I went back to my Silhouette software for the sentiment on this card using the Bradley Hand font and printing directly on the plaid pattern paper. “You’ll always be my sister…” on the front and we finish that out on the inside with  “my OLDER sister!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” LOL!!  I added some tiny gems for earrings on the girls, and a sequin to the hair flower on the right girl and then finished the card with some Soft Lilac peel offs down the two edges of the plaid pattern papers. Nothing crafty here – just a fun Birthday Card for your older sister! Though I am nobody’s sister, I’ve got to use those pink card bases somewhere!  LOL!

Now let’s play with the stamp set and see what we can come up with. The main ‘head’ stamp didn’t have a top to the head (so you could add one of two hairstyles) so… my devious mind began imagining what other things could be on top of this head…  LOL! So I ended up creating this fun image. I did a quick search for ‘mushroom cloud cartoon’ and found this usable image that I was able to size correctly. I did stamp the head with VersaFine Onyx Black ink on a piece of the ‘copic-friendly’ white card stock included in the kit, and simply traced the mushroom cloud on top of the stamped head with my Pigma Micron Pen.  I did have to cut a mask for this image so I could do the circular ray stencil on the background – I didn’t have a stencil like this in my stash, so I tried using the “Pretty Plaid” stencil from the kit but was not very successful with that. SO… I turned to my Silhouette Portrait to create my own stencil! I like the alternating wide and thin rays that I achieved with my new stencil. I actually used the Silhouette Stencil Material for the very first time to cut out this stencil, and am thrilled with the results! They sell this stencil material in sticky or non sticky versions (I went for the ‘sticky’ of course!) and now I have a great ‘starburst’ stencil in my stash that is unlike any other stencil out there!  I LIKE that!  I used my ink blending brushes to ink blend the rays with my Simon Says Stamp Hybrid Inks in Watermelon, Orange Slush and Lemon Zest, and then colored the image with my Spectrum Noir Alcohol markers. One (or two) things to be aware of when using this head stamp — there are no pupils in the eyes (so you can make the image ‘look’ in any direction) and there are no eyebrows on this face!  I thought this face was a little alien looking when I first stamped it, and it took me a while before I realized that there were no eyebrows – so don’t forget to add eyebrows!! After coloring, I die cut it with my Lawn Fawn Stitched rectangle dies, and I matted the image on a thin mat of the silver mirror specialty paper and a wider mat of the dark blue shimmer specialty paper and added that all to the Sky Blue card base. Of course, the “you blow my mind!” sentiment is printed on the writing surface inside the card in the Superclarendon font. LOVE this colorful, fun card! You can put anything on the top of this head stamp!

The dies included in this month’s kit were six assorted button dies, so I started wondering what I could do with some die-cut buttons! After belaboring every ‘toggle’ button pun I could think of, I ultimately came up with this very masculine card!Why not take advantage of some of that great “Got to Have Gingham” pattern paper from Lawn Fawn! Here we have a really nice representation of a shirt front… I cut the straight grey gingham with a stitched rectangle die, and cut a piece of the diagonal gingham at 2″ wide. I scored and folded that piece one half inch from each side so my ‘placket’ would have two folded edges. I drew some ‘stitches’ down the sides of the placket with a grey watercolor marker and glued that to the center of the card front. All that was left was die cutting 12 of the four-hole buttons from gray card stock, gluing four layers together for each button and threading some DMC floss (#3072-light beaver gray) through the holes. I attached the buttons on top of the placket with foam dots for a touch more dimension, and mounted the gingham to a thin black mat and then down to the Medium Gray card base. So whats inside?? I had a bit of a dilemma with this sentiment so I just went ahead and created two sentiments that would work with a card like this. Of course, I ultimately went for the pun-y sentiment but I really like the thanks for helping sentiment too! Both of the sentiments I created using my Silhouette software and the Typewriter Hand font printed on some plain white card stock from my stash and die cut with my stitched rectangle dies. I love the grey gingham and the grey buttons and the ultimate simplicity of this card – not to mention that this is great for a guy! Very masculine!

I do try my best to use as many items in these card kits that I can, and, though I would never call myself a ‘doily’ person, I was drawn to the large double layered crocheted flower ‘doily’ included in our embellishments bag. Can I color that with my alcohol markers?  Yes I can!! So I colored the double layer doily in oranges and yellows and colored the small flower doily in a couple of greens. I did add lots of white glue to theback of the small doily knowing that I was going to cut it apart to make leaves! Once dried, that small doily made perfect leaves! The texture and dimension that these pieces add to this card is so cool! I cut a piece of the blue gingham pattern paper with a stitched rectangle die and used the thinnest stripe on the “Pretty Plaid” stencil to ink in a stem with Mowed Lawn Distress ink. I matted that to a thin frame of the dark blue specialty paper and mounted all directly to the Sky Blue card base. My Ranger Multi Medium Matte was the perfect glue to attach the flower and leaves to the card front, and I added one of the faceted heart gems from the kit to the center of the flower. I created the sentiment using the Marker Felt font, and cut four of them with my Silhouette Portrait out of white card stock to glue together for a thick chunky sentiment on the front. On the inside, I just printed the rest of the sentiment on white card and cut it out with my stitched rectangle die. This is actually a quote from Picasso that I paraphrased a bit in order to make it gender neutral. I’m sure back in Picasso’s time it was generally assumed that all artists were men! Once again, here’s a terrific, colorful card that isn’t particularly feminine, and can be used for both young AND old artists! Now that’s my kind of card!

I thought the ‘measuring tape ribbon’ included in the embellishments bag was was far too interesting to pass up, so I chose to pair that up with a couple more of the chipboard stickers for another sewing themed card. On the Cerise Pink card base, I used the button pattern paper from one of the cut apart sheets die cut with a stitched rectangle die, added that cool ribbon down both sides, and mounted that to the card base with foam tape. I do like to run my ribbons through my Xyron sticker maker to completely cover the back with adhesive – be sure to burnish the adhesive into the ribbon well – then I can simply trim the ribbon off at the edge of the card stock instead of folding it behind. You occasionally may need a touch of liquid glue to tame the cut ends but over all, I like how secure it holds the ribbon and the fact that there’s very little waste! I noticed that last girl chipboard sticker was very much in the same scale as the sewing machine sticker, so I decided to seat her ‘behind’ the machine as if she was sewing away..! I did add foam dots on the bottom of the sewing machine to level it up on the card front, and added this sweet sentiment that calls attention to that special ribbon. “measure for measure, sewing’s a pleasure” was printed in the Black Jack font and sized to fit my smallest stitched rectangle die.  Another big dot of the Liquid Mercury Nuvo Drops on the ‘stitch regulator’ dial and a little ‘just for you’ sentiment on the inside completes this gift card that’s perfectly matched to any hand-made treasure you may be gifting! This is a new font in my library, and I like it very much – particularly the ‘just for you’ on the inside of the card is so very nice.

Since I made my first card from a 4″ x 6″ cut apart, I turned to the 4′ x 4″ cut apart sheet and chose the text that was the most graphic for my next card. I fussy cut all these letters away from their background to use on the front of my card – I did reinforce the white outlines once the letters were cut out with my white fine point Sharpie poster paint marker – just a loosely sketched outline was sufficient to add a little pop and provide some contrast between the letters and the background ‘watercolor’ swatches paper which matches the colors of the text perfectly! I did use my largest stitched rectangle die (4.25′ x 5.5″) to get the biggest possible die cut from the background piece so there would be plenty of room for the text.I also added some nice sparkle to the background card stock with some Sheer Shimmer Spritz and glued that to a plain white card base. I did mount all of the letters to the card front with foam dots and added the paint pallet and brush chipboard stickers along the bottom. The real fun of this card comes when you open it. The “Art is cheaper than therapy” sentiment is printed in the Marker Felt font on a piece of scrap white card stock die cut with a stitched rectangle die. LOL!!  Boy, ain’t that the truth!! LOL!! I did add a small ‘create’ sticker to the bottom right corner on the inside, and I love the dictum to ‘create’ coupled with a very good reason to do so! And this sentiment certainly applies to ALL!!

I couldn’t resist using this sentiment from the stamp set on a ‘mirror’ card! I have some old mirrored mylar in my stash and dragged that out to glue behind a frame cut out from one of the LFL November ’17 kit cut apart sheets. I told you I keep all my extras..!! Despite the ‘gorgeous’ in the sentiment (rather feminine) I was determined to make this as gender neutral as possible, so I embossed the sentiment on the dark blue specialty paper using VersaMark ink and my fine detail white embossing powder. I glued that down to the Medium Gray card base and added some of the dark blue ribbon to the top and bottom edges. Yes, I did use my Xyron Sticker Maker on the back of these ribbons too. I mounted the framed ‘mirror’ up on some foam tape and added a “Congratulations’ sentiment to the writing surface on the inside of the card using the Noteworthy font. I don’t think you can get much more interactive than a card that shows you your own reflection! Granted, a mirror has got to be absolutely flat to reflect correctly, but a little bit of distortion can be overlooked. On future cards, I would probably mount the mylar to a piece of chipboard to (hopefully) provide a perfectly flat surface for the mirror so the reflection would be more accurate, but you can certainly see yourself on the front of this card! Quite fun!

For the second month in a row, we received a stencil in our kits. This month it was the “Pretty Plaid” stencil which basically consisted of 7 different widths of stripes and a dashed line on one 4″ x 6″ sheet. Well… owing to my obsessive nature and my desire to create as many masculine cards as possible, I thought I would use the stencil to create an actual ‘tartan’ plaid. Though not a completely accurate representation, I did base this plaid on the Scottish Lion tartan. On a piece of plain green card stock from my stash, I sponged the next to the widest stripe on the stencil with Peacock Feathers Distress Ink both vertically and horizontally. Then I sponged Black Soot Distress ink in a smaller stripe on both sides of the first blue-green stripes. Then I used my Avery Elle pure White pigment ink to sponge in the dashed line stencil in the open green spaces. Finally, I drew a thin black line through the middle of the blue-green stripes with my Pigma Micron pen. That was the final little detail that really sold this simplified tartan plaid pattern. Though it was extremely fussy and involved a lot of measuring and masking, I think this plaid came out terrific! VERY masculine!! LOL! Of course I have to use a little pun for this card – “I’m tartan to like you” I find extremely funny and unique! I used the Skia font and my Silhouette software to make this sentiment to fit one of my Darice Banner dies and cut 4 of those from white card stock and glued them together for a nice thick banner. I cut a thin white mat for behind the tartan plaid and mounted those both to the Sunshine Yellow card base and used some foam dots to mount the sentiment banner. Of course, why use only one pun when you can have TWO!! LOL!! On the writing surface inside the card, we get a little continuation of the front sentiment with “and I’m so plaid!” LOL! I couldn’t resist! I truly adore this card – not only for the unique puns but for the truly striking tartan plaid I was able to create on the card front. I think it would be interesting to try some other ‘Scottish clan’ tartans with this stencil. I do wish the stencil was 2″ longer than it is because then you could do a diagonal plaid on an A2 card front, but regardless of size limitations, I do love this very masculine card!

I have to admit that when I first saw Lizi’s un-boxing of this kit I started wondering if I could possibly turn the woman on this ‘build-a-bust’ stamp set into a man… maybe something as simple as a different hair style could change the whole look… so I started experimenting with different ways to use these stamps and different things that I could accessorize the main stamp with. I fiddled around quite a bit and finally hit upon the idea for this fun card that actually goes with the “Perfect, just as you are” sentiment brilliantly! So… In honor of June being Gay Pride Month, this is my final card this month.

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Now this whole three-layer card lay-out was dictated by the arrangement of the third ‘dressed up’ image since that was where I wanted to put the sentiment. Since this stamp doesn’t have anything below the shoulders I knew I had to put some sort of a frame around the image. I reached for my stitched circle dies and chose a frame just large enough for the stamp with the up-do hair style. That fit well with the sentiment below, so I stamped the head on all three layers in the same place. I used my colored pencils to color all the images on this card because I didn’t want any alcohol marker bleed-through on the back of the three layers. I did wipe away the junction of the neck and shoulders on the first image before stamping so I could put our subject in a robe, but the other two heads were stamped with the complete stamp. For the first image, I used my Pigma Micron pen to sketch a robe and a towel-wrapped head as if he had just stepped out of the shower. A little beard stubble and some straight bushy eyebrows and VOILA! we’ve created a guy out of this stamp! For the second image, I simply sketched in some slicked-back hair on the top of the head (the top of the bangs on the up-do hair stamp is a good indication of the top of this head), removed the stubble (he just shaved!) and plucked his eyebrows down to an attractive curve and added some false eyelashes. I did try repeatedly to stamp the eyelashes using the stamp from the stamp set, but no matter how hard I tried or how careful I was, I could not get those eyelashes stamped correctly. After a while I just gave up and drew in my own eyelashes. I added a bit of a slip to his shoulders (maybe it’s a brassiere) and colored him with a little more blush and some eye shadow as if he were in the midst of putting on his make up. Finally, we go all out for the last image using the up-do hair stamp and adding the lips stamp to his sly smile. The blush and eye shadow gets a little more color, and I dressed him up in a nice sparkly gown using the tiny teal sequins from the sequin mix. I added more of the same sequins around the base of the bun on the hair, and dug up the smallest clear gems I had in my stash to give him some matching earrings and necklace. I die cut three frames from my Kraft card stock to go around my three images (kind of looks like a big bathroom mirror) and added a 1″ strip of the blue plaid gingham pattern paper to the first image, the lilac gingham pattern paper to the second image and two 1/2″ strips of the pink gingham pattern paper to the sides of the final image. This card makes me laugh out loud every time I open it up. What FUN I had working with this stamp set to create something completely unexpected! And this “Perfect, just as you are” sentiment is particularly meaningful taken in the context of Gay Pride Month! I hope you enjoy this card as much as I do! I had a bit of a debate about whether to include this card with my 10 card video or not… I truly hope I don’t offend anyone… (and I hope Lizi doesn’t mind that I turned her into a drag queen! LOL!) but, as you know, I try to always think outside the box and aim to create as many designs as possible that push the envelope and shows you options for using your card kit supplies in new and unintended ways. LOL!!

So that’s my 10 cards featuring the Love From Lizi June 2018 “Makers Gonna Make” card kit! I actually ended up having much more fun with this card kit that I originally thought I would! I think this is a very eclectic group of cards that highlights how many different directions you can go with this kit! Of course I have lots of leftovers but I did manage to use a little bit of most everything in the kit. As of the original date of this post, this kit is still available, so if you’s like to play along, please use my link to shop at lovefromlizi.com: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. ALSO, Lizi has re-released the Oh, Baby special edition decoupage kit in a new mini-pack. I did do a 10 card video and posting for the original release – you can link to that video here: OH BABY! and to the original web posting here. Remember if you are a subscriber you get free shipping on any product you add to your monthly kit, and the Oh Baby mini-pack is quite affordable! Please use my link to pick one up for yourself!: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. Thank you SO MUCH for joining me here and for sharing your valuable time with me. Let me know what you think of this batch of cards and remember – your support means everything! Spread the Cheer!

Hello folks! Scott here with my unboxing of the Love From Lizi June 2018 Card Kit – I believe Lizi calls this her ‘Makers Gonna Make’ Card kit featuring an original stamp set created by Lizi herself!  I know as of this posting that there are still a few kits available, so if you want to join in on the fun, please use my link to shop at lovefromlizi.com: http://bit.ly/LFLlink.This kit is loaded with lots of soft summer colors to get us ready for the hot weather! Sticking with the 8.5″ x 11″ standard letter size card stock this month, we get 5 card stocks in Sunshine Yellow, White (copic friendly), Medium Grey, Cerise Pink, Sky Blue, and two full sheets of specialty card stock in Silver Mirror and Dark Blue Pearlescent.Our pattern paper this month is a selection from the Lawn Fawn “Gotta Have Gingham” collection. 12 sheets of 6″ x 6″ single-sided card stocks in soft tones of green, blue, lilac, red, yellow and grey gingham patterns in both straight and diagonal directions!Usually reserved for available add-ons, this month we get a 6″ x 12″ sheet of chipboard stickers with all sorts of crafting and sewing images and sentiments, and two sheets of 4″ x 6″ regular stickers. These stickers are selected from a pack of 8 sheets, so the particular selection you receive may vary from mine. The whole pack of 8 sticker sheets is available with the add-ons this month if you’re interested! And we can’t forget the Love From Lizi peel-off stickers too!  This month in a shiny soft lilac… lots of lilac this month!We get three 12″ x 12″ sheets of cut apart card stock this month. This one features nine 4″ x 4″ cut apart images matching all the images and sentiments from elsewhere in this kit – there’s that ‘makers gonna make’ panel here!The back of that sheet features a light blue background with scattered button images.This sheet features bunches of crafty sentiments on a dark background – appropriate for using as pattern paper or for cutting individual sentiments out to use on your projects.The reverse of that sheet is a nice summery collection of rainbow stripes – not too bright!Our third cut apart card stock has six 4″ x 6″ panels just waiting to become card fronts!The back side of that last sheet features these color-coordinated ‘watercolor’ swatches.That bring us to the exclusive stamp set for the month – Lizi’s own ‘Makers Gonna Make’ stamp set featuring a ‘build-a-bust’ collection of images and three sentiments. This stamp set reminds me of that old ‘Beauty Shop Barbie’ toy that was all the rage when I was a kid. It had a bust of Barbie with hair that you could style and make-up that you could apply! LOL!  We are also treated to another stencil with this kit! The ‘Pretty Plaid’ stencil with a variety of stripes and a dotted line for creating your own plaid patterns! Like last month’s stencil, Lizi has included the negative parts of the stencil for our use as well!That brings us to the embellishments for this month! We get a meter’s length of five ribbons – 1/8″ grosgrain in a Lilac gingham, 1/4″ organza trimmed with satin and silver sparkle in Navy and White, 1/4″ grosgrain ‘measuring tape’ ribbon, and a 1/2″ organza ribbon with satin hearts on the edges in a soft lilac…  VERY cute ribbon! Our sequin mix this month is the ‘Midnight Lagoon’ mix with multiple blues, whites, silvers and blacks. We get three small “Made with Love” silver charms, five faceted silver heart gems, three lilac gingham bows, three ivory crocheted mini-doilies, and our Nuvo Crystal Drops in Liquid Mercury. Last but not least, we get six button dies in a variety of shapes and sizes. This kit may prove to be a challenge for a gentleman crafter such as myself, but I will strive to create some imaginative way to use these products as I work on my 10 cards using this kit. I know as of this posting that there are still a few kits available, so if you want to join in on the fun, please use my link to shop at lovefromlizi.com: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. Thanks for joining me here today, keep an eye out for my 10 Cards 1 Kit video and posting, please share this with your friends and fellow ‘makers’, and Happy Crafting!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my first ever My Monthly Hero Kit! YES! I have chosen Hero Arts for the next chapter in my ever expanding sampling of card and craft kits. I have already done ‘A Year with Paper Pumpkin’ and ‘A Year with Simon Says Stamp’ and this month marks the beginning of my next kit series: ‘A Year with My Monthly Hero’! Why did I choose Hero Arts? Well… I was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed with pattern papers included in my kits (and my possibly unnecessary obligation to use them on my 10 cards) and was interested in taking some time to work on creating my own backgrounds for my cards. My Monthly Hero kits seem to be more focused on stamps, dies and ink pads instead of card stocks and pattern papers. So this should prove to be a fun year of trying new techniques and sharing some new creations with you!The May, 2018 My Monthly Hero kit (already sold out!) included this 6″ x 8″ Clear Stamp set featuring a bit of a ‘storybook’ theme with a large ‘build-able’ tree stamp and a great assortment of active kid silhouettes on swings and bikes and flying kites… this is a BIG stamp set with lots and lots of images and 6 sentiments. We also got 13 coordinating frame cut dies, 2 leaf dies and a ‘Window Fancy Die with Frame”. That’s a LOT of dies… and my very first ‘window fancy die’ that I think is pretty spectacular! We also received a roll of leaf patterned washi tape, 5 Ivory Skeleton Leaves, a 5.25″ x 6.5″ Tree Swirl Stencil and four 5″ x 7″ sheets of 100% Recycled Handmade Hot Press 140# Watercolor Paper. This is some really sexy, incredibly classy watercolor paper! The mounting card that the stamps and dies came on has some brief instructions for the ‘tree builder’ stamps and, of course, everything was tied together with this nice green satin ribbon. All of the card stocks I used for these cards was from my own stash and is most likely Recollections card stock from Michael’s (so I won’t be identifying every piece of paper here!) LET’S PLAY!

I do have a decent amount of shaped dies in my stash, but this is my first ‘fancy window’ die, so I die cut a white card front first thing – WOW! – truly a very stunning die!I reached for my Simon Says Stamp Hybrid Inks for blending my background here with Watermelon, Orange Slush and Lemon Zest. I have seen a number of cards from this kit very similar to this one, with the exception of the sentiment. I loved the look of the empty swing but didn’t think any of the sentiments included with the stamp set went particularly well with this image, so I reached for my Hero Arts ‘Many Everyday Messages’ stamp set for this simple ‘miss you’ sentiment embossed in white next to the empty swing. WOW! Now that works perfectly!! Love this die and adore this card!

That’s the die cut from white card stock, let’s see what it looks like cut out of black! Excellent! I brought in the oval frame for this die cut, and trimmed away the swing for this card. This is 3 layers of black card stock glued together for a little chunky dimension on a watercolor background. I used my Zigg Clean Color Real Brush Markers to color directly on the watercolor paper and then misted the whole piece with water to soften… I did move a little of the color around with a brush (the horizontal streaks) but this is mostly natural blending. I LOVE the bright vibrant colors that the Zigg markers bring to this card – perfect compliment to the black die cut!! The sentiment (from the stamp set) is stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I found some purple card stock in my stash that matched the very top of the watercolor background and glued all the layers straight down to the card base. I really like the ‘cameo’ feel of these dies together! A beautiful card with a ‘beautiful’ sentiment.

Now lets see what we can do with some of the fun kid stamps in this kit. I stamped this little scene using Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink on my standard Staples Ivory card stock. I did do a little practice stamping on some scratch paper before committing to my card stock. I die cut the ivory card stock with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die, mounted that to a dark green mat, added a strip of the washi tape on the left and glued the card front down to a Kraft card base. I thought this sentiment from the stamp set went perfectly with the girl and kite stamp combo – and I even got the little butterfly stamp to join in on the fun. This feels very ‘retro’ – almost a sepia feel if you like! Very much in line with the whole ‘storybook’ atmosphere of this stamp set!

With so many ‘swing’ stamps in the set, I thought I would pair a couple of them up for a bit of an ‘invitation’ card. I used a MFT Mini Cloud Edges Stencil, some Broken China Distress Oxide ink, and my ink brushes to make the cloud background and then die cut that with my LF Stitched Rectangle die. I stamped the branches and kids with Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink and turned to my Silhouette software to create this fun sentiment. The sentiment is printed directly on the card front using the Smoothie Shoppe Font. Two thin matching mats behind the card front frames this up nicely on a plain white card base. I like the fantastical nature of the kids swinging way up in the clouds with no ground in sight, and these two tree branch stamps go perfectly together!

Now, someone had made a comment on one of my recent 10 card videos asking me if I would do a ‘pet sympathy’ card. I cut a plain white card stock oval with the frame die and ink blended the background with Distress Oxide inks in Broken China, Faded Jeans, and Iced Spruce. I added a couple of clouds using the MFT stencil to finish out this kind of ‘stormy’ background. I curved the border stamp from the stamp set into a gentle ‘hill’ echoing the shape of the oval and stamped that with my SSS Intense Black ink, and filled in underneath the stamp with some black card stock. I stamped the dog silhouette in Versafine Onyx Black ink for a subtle difference between him and the ground, and used the same ink to stamp the sentiment (from the kit) and highlighted that with some clear embossing powder. I did use my Sheer Shimmer Spritz to give some sparkle to the black card base and used some foam squares to mount the oval to the card base. (This is the only foam tape I used on this whole kit! Lots of envelope-ready flat cards!) I thought this card was pretty self-explanatory, but I did reach for my Hero Arts Sentiment stamp set to add a simple ‘with sympathy’ on the inside of the card. I love the image of this solitary dog standing on a hill – very evocative, and surprisingly sweet.

I wanted to see if I could achieve a little more detail with these tree branch stamps so I practiced coloring my stamps with my Corla Art Dual Tip Marker Pens (poor man’s Tombow Markers!) and found that I could easily separate the branches from the leaves!  I did use my Mini MISTI stamp platform to stamp all these branches. I stamped the background branches in SSS Barely Beige ink and a light and dark brown marker for the foreground branch and a light and dark green marker for the leaves. The pink and red marker worked well for the single apple stamp and I (naturally) die cut the card front with a stitched rectangle die. I stamped the sentiment from the kit in Distress Oxide Walnut stain and clear embossed that for a little shine. Thin mats in dark brown and red, and a thicker mat in Kraft provided a frame for the card front and all is glued down to a white card base. I did go back to my Hero Arts Many Everyday Messages stamp set for a simple ‘thanks!’ on the inside of the card which completes this sentiment very nicely. A touch of my Spectrum Noir sparkle pen adds a little shimmer to the apple, and we have a simple, whimsical thank you card.I think my little dog card made me a little melancholy,  so I thought a regular sympathy card would be appropriate (and a little out of the box for this set!) I wanted to play a little bit with the Tree Swirl Stencil, and, ignoring the tree trunk, embossed the left and right branches on the right and left sides of my black card stock with just a little overlap in the center. I used VersaMark ink and the Love From Lizi Golden Crown embossing powder for a nice deep shiny gold. I did cut the black card front with my stitched rectangle die, and mounted that on a thin white mat before gluing all down to a black card base. I did reach for the skeleton leaves from the kit (maybe those are what pushed me to the maudlin side of things!!) and glued three of them to the top of the card front. I returned to the ‘with sympathy’ stamp and double embossed that on the card front – first with white embossing powder and then, after shifting the stamp a tiny touch to the right, the Golden Crown embossing powder. The white ‘shadow’ make the sentiment pop off the card. And those skeleton leaves are very interesting… so fine and delicate… if you turn the card a certain way, they almost disappear, and if you turn the card the other way they are very prominent. I don’t think many people will look at this stamp set and think “sentiment card” but I’m here to push boundaries and stretch the usefulness of all the kits I work on!

There are two little leaf stamps in this stamp set and two matching dies that are very small – only 3/8″ long. Hmmmmm… we could actually use those dies to put some leaves on these tree stamps! For some reason I thought of this colored glassine paper I had on hand – it’s actually a kind of food grade wax paper that is oil and water resistant, very shiny and is often used for sandwich bags or as homemade treat bags in crafting parlance. I had purchased a few rolls of assorted colors of glassine oh, so many years ago, when making some ‘Window Stars’ for Christmas one year. The glassine paper is very thin and makes a very strong crease when folded. Well… I think they make very fine leaves to add on to these build-a-tree stamps! I stamped this tree in my light and dark brown markers using the trunk stamp and some of the branch stamps and avoided stamping the leaves at all. The glassine paper is so thin I was able to die-cut 6 layers at a time from dark green, light green and yellow, and with two leaf dies that makes a dozen leaves with each pass. I did use my Silhouette software again for this sentiment using the Typewriter Hand font and printed that directly on the card front, and I did die cut my white card front with my stitched rectangle die – of course! Small dots of Ranger Multi Medium Matte and my sticky tool is all I used to glue down (over 100) glassine leaves to the tree branches. Okay, so maybe I’m a little obsessed, but it really didn’t take that much time to glue down all the leaves. A simple mat of my old core’dinations Auburn Pearl card stock and a Kraft card base complete this extremely colorful spring card. No kids – just a tree! And I love that glassine shine!

I do have one more ‘fancy window die’ card for you. I wanted to try coloring the trees and foliage on the window die. I did find that you could do a fancy colored background and a plain colored die, or a fancy colored die cut with a plain background, but I had a hard time making a fancy colored die go with a fancy colored background. This die cut sat around waiting to be used for quite a little while!First I embossed the die into the watercolor paper – no cutting, just embossed using my silicone embossing mat. I then used a couple green and a couple brown Zigg markers to color in the trees and foliage. Then, with a medium misting of water over the paper, the colors start to move and soften into a lovely water colored rendering. I let that dry and then completely cut out the die with the oval frame. I thought the water colored die cut was really lovely but it took me a while to figure out what kind of background would work with it. I returned to my Distress Oxide inks in Broken China and Faded Jeans for this blended background. Once again using the Silhouette software, I created this sentiment with Mona Lisa Solid font for the ‘grow’ and the Lucida Handwriting font for the ‘with me’ and printed that directly on the ink blended background. Then I stamped a bunch of branches with the SSS Barely Beige ink to frame in my sentiment. The die cut is glued to the background and the background is glued to a Kraft card base. A few extra glassine leaf die cuts adds some color and shine to the corners of the card base and here we have another card with some groovy water coloring on the fancy window die. The die appears to have two trees, so I thought the ‘grow with me’ sentiment was appropriate and could be used for many occasions! An anniversary card comes to mind…!

Now if you have been following me at all over the last year or so, I think you realize that I can’t look at all these swinging kid stamps and NOT want to make an interactive card! So here’s my interactive, simple pull-tab card that really brings this stamp set to life!Oh, my heavens, this card makes me very, very happy!!! LOL!  Everything is stamped in Versafine Onyx Black ink on my Kraft card stock (cut with a stitched rectangle die!) and I die cut the swinging girl without die cutting the top of her ropes. I extended her swing ropes through a slit at the edge of the branch and attached the swing to the pull tab.! VIOLA! NOW WE’RE REALLY SWINGING!! Another Auburn Pearl mat and an Ivory card base is all that’s needed (with a little help from the recipient!) to literally bring this card to life! Click on the short clip below to see this card in action! This card gives me great joy!! LOL!

 

That’s my first ever 10 cards with the May 2018 My Monthly Hero Kit. But Wait! There’s more! BONUS! DING! DING! I couldn’t stop there! Recently, there has been a lot of hoopla on the web around the new Lawn Fawn release that includes the ‘Reveal Wheel’ die set and add-ons, and while they are very cute, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that I did my first spinning wheel card with the Simon Says Stamp May 2017 Card Kit and, most recently, did an actual ‘reveal wheel’ card with my Love From Lizi April 2018 Card Kit. So… I thought the little boy on a bike stamp was the perfect image to do another spinning wheel card.This time it’s all about the journey!! I did go to my Silhouette Portrait for this card. I created the spinner last May with my ‘Groovy Birthday’ card and created this oval window card front just for this card. I thought moving the image to the bottom part of the spinner wheel (instead of the top) would be interesting and would also keep the control side of the wheel on the right side of the card and give us a chance to have a bigger ‘reveal’ window for the passing scenery. I used a variety of my Distress inks to blend the colors on the wheel and used the grassy border stamp for the ground and branches for trees and the cat stamp and the squirrel stamp…!! LOL! I actually had room to stamp a couple of houses and small pines from the November 2016 Paper Pumpkin Kit. I told you I keep all that stuff!! I tried to stamp the cat and squirrel and some of the branches that were ‘closer’ with SSS Intense Black Ink and stamped the houses and trees that are ‘farther away’ with Pumice Stone Distress ink.  The sentiment is actually a Susan Sontag quote printed in the Typewriter Hand font, and the black and white strip on the left is from a SSS border stamp and the dashed lines on the right are just little card stock trimmings. The arrow stamp is from the MFT Interactive Labels stamp set, stamped with VersaFine Onyx Black ink as is the bicycling boy. A thin black frame cut on my Silhouette for the opening and everything is assembled on a black card base. I do believe this little fellow is ready to roll…!!! And I just laugh and laugh…!  I think this card is immense fun!

WOO-HOO! That was SO MUCH FUN! Now THAT’S my 10 Cards plus BONUS with the May 2018 My Monthly Hero Kit.!!  I really enjoyed my first kit from Hero Arts and was particularly pleased at the wide variety of cards I was able to come up with. I also got the chance to work on some groovy backgrounds for a nice change of pace! I still have some of that sexy watercolor paper from the kit left over, and the washi tape and a couple of leaves and, naturally, this stamp and die set will find a loving and useful home in my stash! I hope you enjoyed these cards as much as I did, and will let me know which are your favorite. Thanks for sharing your time with me here – I’m sorry for being so long winded! I hope I was able to give you a giggle or two and maybe provide you with a touch of inspiration…! Please remember to like me, list me, pin me, post me, share this post will all your friends… don’t run with scissors..! and … HAPPY CRAFTING!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 Cards from the Love From Lizi  May 2018 “Totally Tropical” Card Kit. This is a very interesting kit full of masculine pattern papers, colorful card stocks, surprising embellishments, an exclusive stamp and stencil set and a great toucan die! Lizi always packs her card kits with tons of supplies and she doesn’t skimp this month! This will be a challenge to use as many items as possible on these 10 cards! You can check my previous post for a complete breakdown of all the supplies included. I do tend to start on a new card kit by stamping and coloring all of the images in the stamp set. I stamped the flowers and leaves with my Simon Says Stamp Intense Black ink on the thin ‘copic-friendly’ card stock included in the kit and colored everything with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I love the large hibiscus stamp and the Monstera deliciosa leaf stamp. Those two are my favorites in this stamp set! The images on the border stamp are almost too small to color accurately with alcohol markers, and I got a little bit of bleeding at the center of the hibiscus bloom (lots of ink used in the center!) but that big hibiscus stamp and the Monstera leaf stamp are large enough to fussy-cut without much fuss…!! As usual, I did make my 10 card bases from the colored card stocks included in the kit, and I dove into this kit with gusto!For my first card, I cut out the hibiscus and monstera leaf images and grabbed one of the Bright Red card bases. I matched up the hibiscus and white flower pattern paper (cut at a slight angle) with some of the dark green and gold shimmer specialty paper and, after attaching a length of the green and white striped ribbon behind the angled edge, used my LF Stitched Rectangle die to cut them into my card front. I mounted those to my card base with foam tape and added a gold peel-off sticker between the pattern paper and the ribbon. I used foam tape to mount the hibiscus and leaf to the top right of the card, and stamped the ‘For you…’ sentiment from the stamp set on a piece of scrap white card stock (using SSS Intense Black ink), and mounted that with foam squares to the card front. I tried to concoct a small stitched rectangle around the sentiment, but didn’t like how my stitched corners overlapped so I just cut the edges away – that’s why the sentiment has a touch of a ‘scalloped’ edge that I thought was very interesting! I added some green, red and white sequins from the sequin mix for a little extra bling, and actually glued a few tufts of the marabou boa to the center of the hibiscus – nice and fuzzy!! This card finally got me rolling with this kit and highlights those two terrific stamps. I’m sure I will get lots of use from those stamps in the years to come!

I was so enamored with the toucan die that even before I started making cards, I spent some time die-cutting and paper-piecing to see what I could come up with.I die-cut the toucan from some black and white card stock, and wanted to see if I could get a little bit of a color blend without using my alcohol markers. I reached for a tool that I have had for a while but have never used – the Tim Holtz Distress Marker Spritzer Tool. I do not have any Distress Markers, but Sharpie markers fit this tool nicely and I have lots of sharpies…! I colored the white cut-out pieces with the spritzer tool in red, orange, yellow, and teal Sharpie markers. This technique came out terrific!! To assemble the whole toucan, I cut a plain piece of paper a little smaller than the die cut and covered that with dry adhesive before attaching it to the back of the black die cut (be sure to remove the black cut-outs first!) then I could easily add the colored pieces into the spaces in the black die-cut. I will use this tool more often as I was very pleased with the results, and decided to use this piece on my next card.  On the Warm Yellow card base, I cut the ‘spatter’ pattern paper with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die and mounted that to my card base with foam tape. I took the dark green with gold shimmer specialty card stock and die-cut one of my Darice Border dies from that, and attached the toucan to the leafy border. I added some gold mirror peel-off stickers as a frame on the pattern paper (no mitering here – just let them go off the edge of the pattern paper), and used foam squares to mount the toucan and branch to the card front. I created this sentiment in my Silhouette software using the Noteworthy font and sized it to match one of my Stitched Circle dies on a piece of jewel yellow card stock from my stash. I did get this sentiment from fellow Design Team member Alicia (Crazy Paper Chick) who had this sentiment in a Stampin’ Up stamp set. I did a little distressing on the edges of the sentiment die-cut with my Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide ink and mounted that to the card front with more foam squares. I was very pleased with the bright colors that the toucan brought to this card since many of the pattern papers included with this kit tended towards darker colors.One of my goals with these card kits is to try and use every stamp in the stamp set on my 10 cards, and Lizi included a couple of pun-ny leaf sentiments in the stamp set this month, so I gathered up all the foliage pattern paper included in the kit and one of the Forest Green card bases to see if I could bring these leaf puns to life. Of the three pattern papers that featured only foliage, I noticed that they went from darker colors to lighter – with the lightest being the spot gloss leaves on white… let’s frame in this sentiment with ALL of the leafy pattern papers. I broke out all but the largest of my LF Stitched Rectangle dies and cut three frames in descending sizes from the pattern papers. The sentiment fit perfectly within the smallest rectangle die so I stamped that with VersaMark ink and embossed it with the Love From Lizi Emerald City embossing powder (from the LFL September 2017 card kit). Green seemed appropriate! The frames and the sentiment didn’t pop enough on that forest green card base, so I grabbed the gold mirror peel-off stickers and created more frames between the paper frames using the wide peel-offs on the biggest frame and the thinnest peel-offs on the smallest frame. This was fairly easy using the grid on my Tim Holtz Glass Media Mat and some careful measurements. I did miter the corners of the peel-off frames and then added the pattern paper frames using some foam tape to give them dimension. I added few leaves from the shaped leaf trim for a little texture on the card, and that wraps up this first pun from the stamp set!I was very drawn to the diamond pattern paper that featured gold foil on a dark grey background, and noticed that the edges of the diamonds’ lines were continuous – so that’s where I cut a big ‘v’ in the pattern paper. I spread the cut apart about 5/8″ and trimmed the pattern paper to fit on the top of the Pale Grey card base. That gap was too big to use one of the stamp set sentiments, so I grabbed my Lawn Fawn Thank You Border die and cut that out of the gold mirror specialty paper and glued that down to the right side of the gap. Here was a good excuse to use the wood veneer die cuts from the embellishment bag! I colored the flowers with my Delicata Golden Glitz ink pad, and added a center of the Nuvo Crystal Drops from the kit to all three. I added the Liquid Gold ribbon across the top with a nice bow over the arrangement of the veneer flowers and three of the gold leaf sequins. Three more plain sequins on the left side of the gap balances out this card nicely – a very sharp, extremely reflective and classy thank you card!Now I had the centers of all the frames I cut for card #3 staring me in the face, so I decided I needed to use all of them on the other leaf pun sentiment in the stamp set. Since these were full rectangles, I decided to cut mats from the gold mirror specialty paper – still using my LF Stitched Rectangle dies. I LOVE that stitched detail on the mirror card stock! Now I gotta have some dimension on this card so all three pattern papers are mounted on fun foam and the sentiment is up on some foam squares. As before, I stamped the Sentiment with VersaMark ink and embossed it with Lizi’s Emerald City embossing powder. I did outline the sentiment with some thin gold peel-off stickers for one more golden frame around our pun. A couple of the gold leaf sequins paired up with a regular gold sequin add a touch of texture and a little more bling! Considering that this card is very similar to the “leafing” card, I think both cards looks extremely different! And the dimension on this card is very cool – kind of comparable to a mini pyramid!The floral pattern papers in this kit got me thinking about doing an ‘Eclipse Card’ using the word ‘ALOHA’. Now I’ve never done one of these cards before, and this pattern paper might not have been the best choice to do this technique with, but I think I got very interesting results for my first time! I don’t have any alpha dies this size so I turned to my Silhouette Portrait to cut these letters out of the pattern paper – this is the Gill Sans Ultra Bold font. I also cut four more ‘aloha’s out of some of my grey card stock and glued them all together to make nice chunky letters. I trimmed the pattern paper down with a stitched rectangle die and cut a thin mat from the brushed gold specialty paper and glued them both down to the second Pale Grey card base. After nestling the layered letters back in their negative spaces, I realized that I needed a little more height to help read the sentiment, so I mounted all the letters up on some thin foam dots – that did the trick! I used a short piece of the string of green sequins to underline and highlight the sentiment, and finished off the edges of that with a couple of the big green sequins from the sequin mix. Now I realize that a lighter, more random pattern paper and a darker background would probably work better with this technique – I will try this some more!That’s right, I couldn’t resist! LOL!  I adore this card! First, I was able to use that Gold Punchinella piece included with the kit and one of the green pipe cleaners for the background! I simply wove the pipe cleaner through the holes on the top and bottom of the gold and attached them down to that pattern paper that had the hibiscus silhouettes and was cut to the same width as the Punchinella. All three pieces are then glued directly to a white card base. Second, I love this sentiment!! – I hope I don’t offend anyone! LOL!! I used my Silhouette software for this sentiment – in my favorite Brady Bunch Remastered font – and sized to fit a couple of my stitched oval dies. I printed the sentiment on some white card stock and cut it’s mat from the green/gold specialty card stock. Lastly, it’s the pink hibiscus that I colored up just for Lizi since she didn’t include any pink in this kit! LOL!  I stamped the flowers with VersaMark ink on a piece of the thin ‘copic friendly’ card stock and embossed them with the LFL Golden Crown embossing powder included in the kit. I then used the matching stencil and colored the flowers with a sponge dauber using the Worn Lipstick and Wilted Violet Distress Oxide inks. I like giving my stencils a little ‘stick’ so I took my Zigg two-way glue pen and covered the back of the stencil with the glue and let it dry thoroughly. That makes the back of the stencil tacky and it holds itself in place very nicely! Still, I dabbed more than I rubbed since some pieces of the stencil are very thin and fragile. Once dry, I buffed up the embossing and fussy cut the flowers out. Two of the flowers are glued directly to the background and the other three (as well as the sentiment) are mounted up with foam tape. That Punchinella and gold embossing have plenty of shine, so I used the Nuvo Drops for some colorful highlights on the sentiment. My warped sense of humor really enjoys the fancy look of this card coupled with the (somewhat) off-color sentiment! For that Special Someone!!  LOL!Now I haven’t used that sample of the Nuvo Glimmer Paste that came in the kit so I used the fern stencil to add that paste to some black card stock from my stash. I trimmed that piece down to 1 and 3/8″ and matted that on a piece of the fern pattern paper trimmed to 2″ and then matted to the green foil polka-dot specialty paper trimmed to 2 and 3/8″ – just enough for two rows of polka-dots to show! I trimmed down the border stamp I colored and figured out the space between the two pieces so I could use my Silhouette Software to print this fun pun for a sentiment. This is printed in the Rockwell Extra Bold font directly on the Bright Red card base. I printed the card and then glued the two pieces directly to the card base. I used some gold peel-offs on the edges of the black card stock and on the outermost edges of the border stamp and the polka-dot paper. I had a little bit of a bigger gap between the center two glitter ferns so I fussy cut the fern stamp I colored in the beginning, and using some tiny foam dots, mounted that in the middle of the glitter ferns. I covered the colored fern with my Spectrum Noir Glitter Pen and added a few green sequins from the sequin mix for the final touch of bling. That glitter paste is something truly special and I really like this terrific little pun! I couldn’t finish out these 10 cards without visiting that terrific toucan die once more. For this card, I did some simple paper piecing with the toucan die. I cut two from black card stock and one each from some plain red, yellow, orange and blue card stock from my stash. I flipped one toucan to the back side and pieced all the cut-outs together on some plain backing paper. When I saw that the toucans formed a heart shape when facing each other I knew exactly what to do to complete this card. I used my largest Heart Nesting die to cut the heart from the back of one of the shimmer pattern papers – yes the back of those two shimmer pattern papers is shimmer too!. I traced the edge of the die to cut the mat from the gold shimmer specialty paper and glued those two hearts together and down to the Warm Yellow card base. I cut another leaf border with my Darice Border dies from the green/gold specialty paper and glued the toucans’ feet to the branch. I did glue the branch and feet directly to the card front, but I used some foam tape to add some dimension to the bodies of the toucans. I then took my last colored stamp of the smaller hibiscus and fussy cut the extra petals away – I think this looks more like a hibiscus without those extra petals – and it’s a little bit smaller too! I mounted that flower on the center of the branch with foam tape and turned my attention to the sentiment. I created this curved folding banner on my Silhouette a couple of years ago, and brought it into service for this card. I printed this sentiment directly on the shimmer side of the shimmer pattern paper (using Typewriter Hand font) and cut the banner with my Silhouette. The center of the banner is mounted with foam tape and the ends are glued directly to the card front. Obviously there is more to this sentiment than what you see here, so I finished this little poem pun on the inside of the card using the same font on a piece of white card cut to size with my stitched rectangle dies. This turned out to be the brightest and most colorful card from this kit and I can only praise this toucan die and the myriad possibilities and endless options that it presents as well as bringing some terrific pops of color to my cards!   I LOVE IT! I still have one more sentiment (‘Wild about you!’) to use from this stamp set and this is what my late-night addled mind came up with! This card went through many permutations before I arrived at this fun little interactive card. While perusing the pattern papers in this kit, I noticed that this piece of chevron paper had ‘fuzzy’ edges on the pattern instead of straight lines… well, that made me think of the pipe cleaners, so I bent the pipe cleaners into their own chevron shape to match the pattern paper, and glued them down. Originally, I was only going to use one of these pieces as a border for my card front, but when I cut it along the middle of the black chevron, I realized that this was starting to look like a mouth… SO I decided I COULD make a little interactive card this month! I added strips of the brown satin ribbon for a little contrast and added a couple strips of the gold shimmer specialty paper to the top and bottom. I dug out these two large googly eyes from the LFL October 2017 Card Kit to add a little personality to this creature (you never know when you’re going to need some of those extra embellishments included with these kits so I tend to hang on to all my leftovers!) I did use my smallest stitched circle die to cut the green/gold specialty paper for behind the googly eyes, and stamped that final sentiment (and a few hearts from my stash – along with the pull stamp on the tab) with Peeled Paint Distress Oxide ink and used some clear embossing powder to give it a little shine. This is a very silly card and I had a great time putting this together! I was particularly thrilled with the use of the pipe cleaners on this pattern paper, and, though I thought that I would never come up with an interactive card using this kit, I was tickled at my odd little puppet creature (who, you may surmise, obviously lives in the tropics..!!!)  LOLOL!That completes my 10 cards for the Love From Lizi May 2018 ‘Totally Tropical’ card kit. At posting, Lizi still had a few of these kits available – if you want to join up, please use my link to shop at LFL.com:  http://bit.ly/LFLlink .  I had a good time figuring out creative ways to use some of the wacky supplies included with this kit and am pleased with the nice variety of cards I was able to come up with! I actually DID use every stamp from this stamp set here, and, naturally, I have a bunch of supplies left over that will go directly into my stash! I completely adore that Toucan die and the large hibiscus stamp and the monstera leaf stamp. There were actually a lot of things I didn’t get to do with this kit – like using the Punchinella as a stencil with the glimmer paste, or seeing what I could do with stamping these images on dark card stock, but those are all experiments for another day!  Lizi has her first Blog Challenge running until May 26th, so if you’d like to enter for a chance to win a LFL gift certificate just click on this link:   https://www.lovefromlizi.com/blog/post/love-from-lizi-may-2018-challenge/

On a more personal note, and to keep everyone up to date, I wanted to mention that I will be receiving the My Monthly Hero May Kit – I’m looking forward to start working with a new kit! Thank you so much for joining me here today, I hope I was able to tickle your funny-bone and provide you with a little inspiration. Please remember to share this post and all my links with your best-est buddies, don’t run with scissors, and HAPPY CRAFTING!!!

Hello folks! Scott here with the un-boxing of my May 2018 Love From Lizi ‘Totally Tropical’ card kit. This is a completely unique kit with a couple surprises and some new products as well as the usual plethora of supplies included in Lizi’s kits. As of the date of this posting, this kit is still available at lovefromlizi.com – please use my link to shop at Lizi’s store: http://bit.ly/LFLlink Let’s see what Lizi has in store for us!To begin with, we have a little more card stock this month than usual! Six sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stock in Bright Red, Warm Yellow, Forest Green, Pale Grey and Copic-friendly White. Lizi also included a thinner piece of copic-friendly White card stock – maybe 80# or 65# weight to use for layering and die-cutting and coloring. We also get an A4 sheet (8.3″ x 11.7″) of green foiled polka-dots on white – bright and LOVELY green foil on that!We get 16 sheets of pattern paper in the kit this month – these eight are all single sided but feature some specialty elements too. The top two on the left are shimmer paper, the top two on the right have spot gloss accents, and the bottom left pattern paper is gold foiling on a dark green background. The other three are lovely single-sided card stocks.The next eight pattern papers are all double-sided and continue the tropical theme with hibiscus flowers, butterflies and toucans and some unique patterns as well!The backs of those eight pages are a little more subtle with some stripes and Moroccan patterns as well as some animal prints and texture patterns. Not only are we Totally Tropical but it seems like we’re skirting the edge of rain forest tropical! LOL! A very interesting group of fairly dark colored pattern papers in this kit.We get 3 half-sheets (8.5″ x 5.5″) of specialty card stock in this kit – a sheet of glimmer gold, mirror gold, and that dark green with a gold shimmer on top – I think we got a quarter sheet of this same specialty paper in the March 2018 kit – but a bigger piece this time! Our Love From Lizi peel off stickers are in Gold Mirror this month – that’s a new color for Lizi’s shop and they are gorgeous! We also get a strip of Gold Punchinella – basically the left-overs from punching out sequins. This is pretty standard shiny material used in costumes frequently, and I’m already racking my brain to come up with some interesting ways to use this on my cards this month.Now we get to the ‘Totally Tropical’ stamp set and… NEW THIS MONTH… Stencils! The stamp set features a couple of hibiscus flowers and a couple of leaf images and a border stamp with both flowers and leaves, and a few sentiments as well: ‘For you…’, ‘Sorry you’re leafing’, ‘Wild about you!’, and ‘I’ll always beleaf in you’. LOL! Always nice to see a couple of puns included in the sentiments!! New for Lizi this month is a stencil that matches the stamp set perfectly – the two hibiscus flowers and the two leaves – perfectly sized to match the stamps. AND Lizi also included the cut-outs from the stencils! These are great for masking or sponging… lots of options when you have both sides of a stencil!That brings us to the embellishments bag! As usual, this bag is over-stuffed with unique bits and pieces to challenge our creativity! Lots of ribbon and trim pieces – (from the bottom) a string of green sequins (can be removed from the string and used as single sequins too), 1/8″ brown and white satin ribbon, 1/2″ green and white stripe and ‘Liquid Gold” ribbons. The gold ribbon is very cool because both sides of the ribbon are exactly the same! A 3/4″ palm tree printed ribbon and a shaped leaf ribbon trim with embossed veins on the leaves! Continuing up from the bottom, left to right, we get 3 green pipe cleaners (I have no ideas for those..!!), a sample pot of Nuvo Glimmer Paste in Emerald Green (great to use with the stencils!), a full pot of NEW Love From Lizi embossing powder in ‘Golden Crown’, a regular sized bottle of Nuvo Jewel Drops in Strawberry Coulis, 2 wood-veneer banners with silver eyelets, 4 (double thick) wood veneer flowers (with etching), and 5 (or six) gold leaf sequins. We also get two white tags (2.5″ x 4.5″) with twine attached and on top of the tags is a piece of green metallic thread (I just know I’m going to lose that on my desk somewhere!!  LOL!) On the top left we get a piece of Marabou feather boa (there’s a tricky piece!) and our die this month is a Toucan! A nice large die that might be my favorite piece of this whole kit! Can’t wait to play with that!! Last, but not least we get a sample bag of the ‘Totally Tropical’ sequin mix with dark greens, golds, whites and deep reds. This is going to be a very interesting kit to work on! So many new products to experiment with! As of posting, this kit is still available at lovefromlizi.com – if you want to join in on the fun, please use my link to shop at Lizi’s store: http://bit.ly/LFLlink. Stay tuned for my 10 Cards 1 Kit video coming as soon as I can manage it, and thanks for joining me here today! Please share me with all your friends, don’t run with scissors, and HAPPY CRAFTING!

My better half, though not a crafter, is a huge Star Trek fan from way back, and created this card with minimal help from me. The final result is really excellent and actually has a couple of interactive elements included. I believe the Halloween Extract Bottle cards I did with the Love From Lizi October 2017 card kit was the initial inspiration for this fun card simply because they flipped open from the top.  I promised I’d do a post and show everyone what a special card he created!The Communicator itself is made from two layers of black chipboard so there’s room for the ‘bells and whistles’ under the flip top cover. The size is pretty accurate according to web research. The cover is cut from my old core-dinations Auburn Pearl cardstock, and the perforations are hand-punched! And you thought I was obsessive!! LOL! Since this was going on a black ‘star-field’ card base, a brushed silver mat was cut to go between the communicator and the card base. And a simple hand-flip opens the cover.The recessed area was cut through both layers of the chipboard and filled with fairly accurate ‘inner workings’ of the original Star Trek Communicator! Some brushed silver card stock (the little speaker grid is hand-etched!) and two silver brads are attached to the bottom of the recess and three dots of Ranger Enamel Accents become the ‘lights’. The moire circle on the top was actually hand-drawn on card stock and acetate and mounted with a thick silver frame so it’s easy to grab and turn to get the (again accurate) spinning moire pattern. I do believe it’s pretty amazing how accurate this paper recreation is! Of course this is a card… so the sentiment is on the inside.YUP! A little bit of a pun for you! LOL!! Kind of the perfect sentiment for a “Communicator’ Card! This was created on the computer using the Herculanum font and a copy of the Star Fleet Insignia for the ‘A’ and printed on my standard Staples grey card stock and then die-cut with the largest Spellbinders Deckled Rectangle Die. This is a terrifically fun card, and whether the giver or the recipient is a ‘Trekkie’ is all the justification needed – of course, all the better if BOTH are bitten by the Trek bug! If you have any Original Star Trek fans in your orbit (LOL!) I’m sure they would get a big kick receiving a card like this! Thanks for taking some time with me today, and giving a look at this very unique card! Happy Crafting AND…  Live Long and Prosper!!