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!!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my 10 Cards from the Love From Lizi  April 2018 Card Kit. This kit is full of colorful card stocks, pattern papers, ephemera, embellishments and an exclusive sentiment builder stamp set. There’s always a plethora of supplies in Lizi’s kits!As usual, I did take the 5 sheets of colored card stock and made 10 card bases to begin. I do have a bit of an obsession with trying to use all the stamps in a stamp set for my 10 Card videos, and, sentiments or not, this kit was no exception, so I started experimenting with all the stamps and came upon this interesting ‘word cloud’ concept for my first card.I managed to get 18 stamps on this one card! LOL!  I stamped the ‘You are’ in the center with Simon Says Stamp Intense Black Ink, and used my Stampin’ Up Early Espresso ink to stamp all the adjectives in a big ‘cloud’ around the center subject. I did use a scrap of my go-to Staples Ivory card stock to stamp on, and I trimmed that down to leave a little bit of the Rose Pink card base showing on the edges. I cut a couple strips of the small flower pattern paper to extend the top and bottom of my ‘word cloud’ and used a combination of Lizi’s Chocolate Brown peel-offs (from the August 2017 Kit) and the Clear Glitter peel-offs from this kit. I highlighted the edges of the pattern paper and the sides of the card base, and used three strips of the glitter peel-offs on either side of the ‘You are’ to help draw your eye to the subject matter. I did add little drops of this month’s Nuvo Jewel Drops to the centers of all the flowers for a little extra touch of shine. If you know somebody who embodies all of these descriptive terms, or just can’t decide between them, then go ahead and use all of them!! LOL!! I like this card a lot, and felt like this was a nice way of easing into a sentiment heavy kit like this.There were three large wood veneer die-cut sentiments included with this kit, and I couldn’t resist pairing up the ‘Smile’ sentiment with some of the camera images. I colored the sentiment with Broken China Distress Oxide ink, and covered that with the Sea Breeze Nuvo Jewel Drops from the kit, and was thrilled with the intense color and shine that gave me! On the Sky Blue card base, I cut a mat from the Black Pearl specialty card stock and cut out the camera pattern paper with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die and attached those both directly to the card base. I took the camera from the sticker sheet, and fussy cut the white border away and removed the sticky on the back with my EK Success Powder Tool – the glue on these stickers is extremely sticky, and took a lot of powder to neutralize! I cut a strip of the flower pattern paper that matched the pattern on the camera and covered one row of the cameras with that strip, and trimmed those edges with the glitter peel-offs. I glued the ‘Smile’ directly to the card base and mounted the camera up with two layers of foam tape. Since the camera sticker was a little larger than the pattern paper cameras, the extra height helps justify the size increase. I did cover the lens of the camera with Glossy Accents for some matching shine. I love the color that the ink and jewel drops gave to the wood-veneer piece – it feels very ’50’s retro.I was drawn to the cut-apart sheet that had the 3″ x 4″ images and wanted to pair this yellow cake cut apart with the ‘We are’ from the stamp set to make this lovely Anniversary card. On the Sunshine Yellow card base, I cut a mat from the Oyster White Pearl specialty card stock and die cut that beautiful flower pattern paper on the dark background with the same LFL Stitched Rectangle die, and glued those both directly to the card base. I stamped the ‘We are’ from the stamp set (SSS Intense Black ink) on either side of the cake stand to add to the printed sentiment, attached that cut-apart to a white mat cut from my stash, and foam taped that up on the card base. I covered the bottom black stripe on the cake with some of the black satin ribbon from the kit and added a small bow to the left side. The added dimension of that bow, made me want to add more dimension to the top of the cake, but none of the stickers or ephemera flowers matched the size of the flowers that were printed on the cake. I ultimately fussy cut the flowers from the middle of the notebook paper sticker (now that’s some REAL fussy cutting!) and foam taped those over the flowers on the top of the cake. That sticker piece is not the exact same flower grouping that was printed on the cut apart piece, but was close enough in size to work perfectly here. Any flowers poking out around it just add another layer to the bouquet! I did use my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Brush Pen to add some glitter to the flowers and the two other black layers of the cake, and finished out this card with ‘happy anniversary’ (Shoreline Script Bold font) printed on the writing surface inside. I liked being able to pair up some of the stamps in this kit with an already printed sentiment!

I am NOT a big fan of butterflies  – I think they are hugely overused on handmade cards – but we did have a lot of very nice butterfly images in this kit – pattern paper butterflies, sticker butterflies, cut-apart butterflies and ephemera butterflies. One of the 4″ x 6″ cut apart images featured 3 butterflies in a line and that prompted me to make this fun card.

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Jennifer McGuire inspired me as well with her ‘Fun Fold Card Design’ video featuring butterflies from the last Monday in March. She shows just how to make this Fun Fold Card Design (hint: it takes two card bases!). SO… using the black card bases, I made the double gate fold base, and attached two strips of that small flower pattern paper – the scallop edge is cut with my American Crafts Knock Outs Border Punch – on the sides of the front flaps. I used three of the ephemera butterflies on the front and foam taped opposite halves of them to the fold on the front. I did add a tiny magnet to the left wing of the center butterfly (and it’s mate attached behind the left side of the black card stock) to help hold this card closed. I realized that once you opened this card there were big black empty spaces on either side so I grabbed three of the butterflies from the sticker sheet and added them to the inner panels – three butterflies become six – and, in keeping with the stamped sentiment (SSS Intense Black ink) on the writing surface, all the butterflies are unique! I really like this card (especially the panorama of the unfolded card!) and thought it was an excellent use of all the butterfly images that came in the kit!Suddenly, I realized that some of the sentiment stamps in the kit could be reversed – effectively ignoring the ‘are’ and the ‘am’ stamps for a short declarative sentiment – this would work with many of the adjective stamps in this set. This yellow piece with the oval and flowers was another of the 3″ x 4″ cut apart images. I used my craft knife to cut the left side of the oval and threaded a piece of the black organza ribbon behind the oval and around the side of the cut apart. I stamped the sentiment in the oval with my Stampin’ Up Mint Macaron ink pad (discontinued) and then stamped the sentiment in VersaMark ink and used some Ranger clear embossing powder to shine it up a bit.  On the Apple Green card base, I added a mat of that cool watercolor pattern paper (cut out with my LF Stitched Rectangle die) making sure that some of the green watercolor was visible. I added a length of the burlap ribbon from the kit to the left side of the pattern paper and dug out some green Glitter Silk card stock from my stash to add some sparkle (and a little more green!) to this card – I glued the yellow cut apart to the glitter mat and foam taped them both to my card front. For a little more dimension, I foam taped two of the ephemera flower pieces along the oval and glittered all the flowers with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Brush Pen. The ‘one-in-a-million’ piece came from the sticker sheet and went perfectly on this card. I think this demonstrates that there are more sentiments I can build from this stamp set than I originally thought. I do like this sentiment!Once again, there was plenty of pink in this card kit, so I throw caution to the wind and had to go all out with the pink for this card! On the Rose Pink card base, I paired up the flower pattern paper with the pink candy stripe pattern paper (on an angle), cut them both with my stitched rectangle die, and glued them directly to the card base. I did take the thin white organza ribbon from the kit and highlighted the off-white stripes on the ‘road’ – that gave us some nice sparkle and a little texture! The bicycle and sentiment are ephemera pieces foam taped up on the card front. I did add a frame of the glitter peel-offs around the card base and added a touch of Spectrum Noir sparkle to the flowers. I thought the ‘on the right path’ sentiment was complete and didn’t need any modifiers! Considering the fact that this is VERY pink, I do like it quite a bit! Simple and sweet!

I had a hard time finding any real worthy puns or humor in this card kit… it is SO heavily oriented towards ‘personal affirmation’ (how many times does “I AM” appear??) that I was especially pleased when I came up with this next card featuring a tiny bit of a pun…This is the large typewriter from one of the pattern papers – I fussy cut that out and glued it to a  black fussy cut mat from my stash. On the Apple Green card base, I added a strip of the pink ledger pattern paper and added thin strips of the Dusty Rose Pearl specialty paper to the top and bottom. I added the glitter peel offs to the edges of the ledger paper and also used them to highlight the typewriter keys and space bar! This is the first time I’ve actually used one of the edges of the peel off sheet but it fit perfectly on the space bar! I mounted the typewriter to the card front with foam tape, and I added Glossy Accents to the heart on the typing paper. That’s all the shine we need! I printed this sentiment in the Typewriter Hand font on the writing surface, and yes, there are no words..!! Okay, this is a slight pun at best,  but I do think it is a great lead-in to an assortment of card occasions… be it sympathetic, encouraging, loving, congratulatory, or what have you! I do like that retro typewriter!Though I am always jazzed to get new and useful products in my kits, this sparrow embossing folder and die didn’t really seem to go with anything else in this kit, so I decided to pair them up for a simple monochromatic card. On a black card base from my stash (I used both of the black card bases from the kit on the butterfly card) I added a white mat from my stash and embossed the Gunmetal Grey Pearl specialty paper with the embossing folder, and die-cut six sparrows from some scrap white card stock and one from the Oyster White Pearl specialty paper. I glued the embossed paper directly to the mat and glued all the sparrow die cuts together before adding them to the card front as well. The ‘dreaming big’ sticker from the sticker sheet went well with this simple design and I used some foam tape to attach it to the card front. I did use my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen to add a bit of glitter on the card base around the bird. This card makes me think of Richard Bach’s Johnathon Livingston Seagull! Yes, I know, this isn’t a seagull, but it still evokes the spirit of that story! Am I dating myself here?? LOL!As I kept perusing all the images in this kit, I began to notice that there were a large number of hearts in assorted sizes on both the sticker sheet and with the ephemera. We also have those cute mini-envelopes in the kit, and there’s a smaller typewriter on one of the 3″ x 4″ cut apart images as well. Here’s the result! On the Sky Blue card base, I took some Broken China Distress Oxide ink and used my Ink Duster Blending Brush to add a bit of an ombre to the card base… darker at the bottom and lighter at the top – that seems to mitigate having to use any pattern paper! I fussy cut the typewriter out and used my craft knife to open a slit in front of the rollers so I could insert my own paper and message. I printed ‘sending you lots of LOVE’ (Typewriter Hand font again) on plain typing paper and slipped that into the typewriter carriage with a spot of foam tape to add some dimension. I trimmed the bottom bit of notebook paper from the sticker I had cut the flowers out of, and tucked that into the mini-envelope with a spot of foam tape  inside to keep the envelope ‘open’. I glued the envelope to the card front and foam taped the typewriter on top of that. All that was left was attaching the hearts with foam tape in a pleasing swoop (the heart on the notebook paper has no foam tape) (also, the smaller flower pattern heart was fussy cut from the paper in the typewriter image – I knew I was going to cover that up anyway!). I actually used all of the hearts on this card except for the largest ephemera heart! Some dots of the Sea Breeze Jewel Drops adds some beautiful shine, and for the final finishing touch, I added the smallest typewriter (from the sticker sheet) to the writing surface inside the card. I thought the typewriter and envelope were a natural match, and I LOVE this card!

When I was playing with using all the stamps on my first card, I came up with an idea that offered a little bit more of a refined solution to try using multiple stamps on one card. I like this idea a lot and thought it was a unique way to get more from these stamps.

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Yes! We have a little spinning wheel behind the card front that offers up six different adjectives for a special someone! We are on to the last Sunshine Yellow card base now, and I chose the yellow and white pattern paper for my card front. I cut a 1.5″ x 5/8″ opening in the right side of the card front, and, with much trimming and layering, I was able to frame the opening with 2 of the frame die-cuts from the kit. Somehow I was lucky enough that piecing this frame together gave me three dots on the top and bottom of the frame, and you can hardly tell that it has been pieced together! I had created the rotating wheel for my “GROOVY” Birthday Card back in May of 2017, so I was able to re-size it for this card. I discovered that the Staples 9″ x 12″ clasp envelopes (they say they are ‘sturdy brown kraft’) matched this pattern paper perfectly, so I laminated a piece of that envelope to some scrap card stock and cut the wheel with my Silhouette Portrait. Then it was simply a matter of rotating the wheel and marking where the stamps should go. In addition to ‘amazing’, ‘loved’ and ‘beautiful’, you can also dial up ‘fearless’, ‘kind’ and ‘brave’. Much more elegant (and FUN!) than my first ‘word cloud’ card! I added a strip of the Graphite Black specialty paper punched with my American Crafts border punch to the left side of the pattern paper (with a strip of the glitter peel offs of course) and stamped and embossed all of the sentiments for some classy shine. I also added the banner sticker from the sticker sheet which, if you notice, had some tassels hanging from it. I trimmed the paper tassels away and added some real tassels from the trim (matching the colors of the printed tassels) to the banner sticker and foam taped the whole banner to the card front. Of course the extra sticker sentiment ‘the possibilities are endless’ is perfect for a card like this, so I foam taped that to the bottom part of the card front. I ADORE this interactive card, and I think this is about as encouraging as any card can get!That’s my 10 Cards from the Love From Lizi April 2018 card kit. This kit did sell out rather quickly, so if you want to become a subscriber and join in with the fun, please use my link to shop at lovefromlizi.com. Of course, I have tons of supplies left over – I didn’t get to the canvas tags and burlap flowers, and I didn’t use any sequins either – I think the glitter peel offs and the Nuvo Drops satisfied all my sparkle desires! I didn’t use any of the 1/8″ white and pale blue satin ribbon, nor any of the images from the 12″ x 12″ cut apart page that had the 4″ x 6″ images, but it felt like I used a little bit of everything! Though there were tons of supplies and terrific images in this kit, I did find it a little bit of a challenge to come up with a variety of cards that didn’t all feel the same. This is certainly a colorful batch of cards and a couple of unique mechanical surprises that I hope you like. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here – your support and encouragement mean the world to me! Please share this post with anyone who might enjoy it, Spread the Cheer, don’t run with scissors, and HAPPY CRAFTING!

 

Hello folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the Love from Lizi Special Edition Oh Baby Kit. This kit features a huge amount of card stock, and eight decoupage pages.The British version of decoupage is more about layering and less about gluing, and I was interested in seeing what these decoupage kits are all about and if I would enjoy them!The kit came with 5 sheets of A4 (European) card stock in a Silver Mirror, Silver Pearl, White Pearl, Soft Pink Pearl, and Mint Pearl and two half sheets of A4 card stock in Soft Orange and Magnolia (a very soft mellow yellow).We get 32 sheets of pattern paper card stock in this kit! 8 single sided papers in 8″ x 8″ AND 6′ x 6″ (some sheets have spot gloss and some have glitter!), and 8 double sided papers in the same two sizes. A ton of pattern papers included in this kit and not all of them are strictly “baby” oriented. There is also a set of stickers in this kit – four pages of glitter stickers (one a full page of alphabet sticker ‘blocks’) that perfectly match all of the images and sentiments in the kit.

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Then we get these 8 terrific decoupage sheets. These are all die-cut and sport tons of glitter! The layers are numbered so you start with #1 and use foam tape to add layer #2 to #1 and then add layer #3 to layer #2 and so on. These are really cute and I can’t wait to try my hand at them. There’s eight cards right there! Lastly, we get a great set of dies in this kit. A complete alphabet with ampersand and a scallop triangle banner! This is a great die set – the alphas are just 1/2″ tall and they are ‘stencil’ die cuts – meaning the inside cut-away parts of the A, B, D, O, P, etc. stay with the cut-outs! Terrific dies. And, of course, the alphas fit inside the little banner die too! I really like all of the colors in this kit and am thrilled that it’s not all “pink and blue”. The purples, yellows, oranges and greens are all a welcome addition and are nicely bright without being garish! Looks like there should be some options for us to make some cards that are not necessarily about babies..! I did go ahead and make card bases from all the colored card stock (the pearl card too) included in this kit.    I did use EK Tools 3D-Dots for all my foam tape in layering up these cards. These are very thin foam dots – only 1/16″ thick – and they come in two sizes with some extra thin strips around the edges. Very handy for putting these layered cards together!For my first card I dove into the rocking horse decoupage card. This is SO CUTE! You can see all the dimension on the frame and on the rocking horse itself! The decoupage aspect is very straight forward, and with such thin foam dots, it was easy to line up the layers. I used some of the rocking horse pattern paper (perfect match!) on one of the Mint Pearl card bases, and I added a thin black mat behind the decoupage piece to make it really pop. I always keep some really inexpensive black card stock on hand for mats – I figure there’s no need in spending a lot of money for fancy black card stock if you’re just using it for a mat! That added a nice touch of contrast to these great colors. I used the BABY banner sticker from the sticker sheets on the outside of the card (mounted up with foam dots!) and then I used the sentiment banner from the decoupage sheet on the inside writing surface.  This is just an adorable card, and I think it would look terrific framed in a nursery!I liked the stacked elephant decoupage sheet and paired that up with one of the Soft Pink Pearl card bases. I did have to trim the sides of the decoupage base sheet down to fit on the card base, but I used the trimmed polka-dot pieces to line the writing surface on the inside. The ‘sentiments’ on this decoupage sheet were “to: from:” labels, so I went to the alphabet block stickers and stacked up this nice ‘Happy Birthday’ sentiment. I did mat the blocks with a thin black mat (look at that sentiment pop!) and I love the dimension that the decoupage layers give to the stacked elephants… and that little floating heart! SWEET!The hot air balloon caught my eye next – there’s more of those floating hearts! I paired up the decoupage base with the hot air balloon pattern paper, and mounted those directly to the Soft Orange card base. Once again, I created a thin black mat behind the 2nd decoupage layer to help highlight the focal image. All the rest of the decoupage is completed normally and I even used the sentiment included as it was intended! On the inside writing surface, I added a ‘Congratulations’ sticker (matches that card base perfectly) and one of the ‘Bundle of Joy’ tags from the bunch of balloons decoupage sheet highlighted with a colorful brad from my stash. I am really getting a kick out of these terrific dimensional decoupage cards!I’m feeling a little more comfortable with these decoupage sheets now, so I throw caution to the wind and cut the “BABY” decoupage base into its individual blocks. I line the letters up in a row, and (yet again) put small black mats behind all the blocks. I think I did this radical rearrangement because I wanted to use the matching pattern paper on this card! Here I’m using the White Pearl card base with the pull-toy pattern paper and a couple of the LFL pink peel offs (from the LFL July 2017 Card Kit) along the edges for the background. There were not a lot of layers to this decoupage sheet, so I did mount the matted blocks up on some foam dots as well. I chose the “Hello Little One” sentiment from the sheet for the inside of the card and mounted that with some foam dots as well. Get a load of all that glitter on those decoupage layers. Certainly don’t need any sequins or other sparkly embellishments! I love this card so much – I think the matching pattern paper is perfect!With the flower decoupage sheet I wanted to make another ‘non-baby’ card, so I trimmed the flower base down quite a bit to fit sideways on the Mint Pearl card base and grabbed the alpha dies and the Silver Mirror card stock. After die cutting the “Thank You” I cut  a couple of 1/8″ strips of the mirror card to add to the sides of the decoupage flower base. I did use my Ranger Multi Medium Matte to glue the letters and strips to the card base. These flowers have so many layers! They almost pop right off the page! That orange butterfly on the bottom right is four layers all stacked up together! I added some of the glitter stickers in the matching flowers and butterfly to the writing surface inside the card, and here we have sweet Thank You card that has nothing to do with babies. I think this is very sharp!Obviously I think the bunch of balloons decoupage sheet would make a perfect Birthday card, so, on the Magnolia card base, I attached the first decoupage layer (no trimming needed) and layered up those terrific glittery balloons. I grabbed my Lawn Fawn Happy Birthday Border die and cut that out of the purple dotted pattern paper. I trimmed off the ‘to you’ part of the die and added some of my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen to give the sentiment a little matching sparkle. The dimension on those balloons is particularly stunning! The closest thing I’ve ever seen to an actual 3-D card! Five layers on this decoupage card! I added glittery balloon stickers (and a heart) to finish out the inside of the card. No writing surface needed since the Magnolia card base was fairly pale, and did not have any shimmer or pearlescent to hinder a pen. I think anyone, no matter what age, would love this Birthday Card!This teddy bear decoupage sheet had SIX layers, so I decided to split them up into two cards! On this Soft Pink Pearl card base, I used some of the orange text pattern paper for the background, and used only the decoupage layers 1, 3, and 5 for the teddy bear. Still, plenty of dimension to make that teddy bear stand out! I did use the sentiment included with this decoupage sheet on the front of this card and mounted that with some foam dots as well. Inside, I added two stickers – the “Hello Little One” sticker at the top and a matching teddy bear sticker to the bottom right corner. There were so many options with icons and sentiments and stickers that I ultimately added a little decoration on the inside of all 10 of my cards from this kit.Here is the second teddy bear card on the Silver Pearl card base that uses the decoupage  layers 2, 4, and 6. Again, plenty of dimension on the teddy bear. I did help the depth perception on both of these cards by using foam dots to mount the bottom decoupage layers to the card bases – here on to that terrific glitter heart pattern paper. I grabbed the second ‘Bundle of Joy’ tag  from the bunch of balloons decoupage sheet for the sentiment on the front of this card (with another colorful mini brad from my stash for more shine!) and added the balloons and ‘Hey Baby’ sentiment from the sticker sheet on the inside of the card. That’s two cards from one decoupage sheet. Thinking back, you could split the rocking horse, the hot air balloon, the flowers, and the bunch of balloons into two cards easily! That would give you 13 cards just using the decoupage sheets! I think there would still be plenty of dimension to these divided cards and only you and I would know your secret! For the last decoupage sheet, I decided to echo the star shape with a star shaped card! I did cut another thin black mat to back layer 1 of the star decoupage, and cut the card base from the banner pattern paper and some white card stock from my stash. The pattern paper, black mat, and first layer of the star decoupage are all glued together to make a nice sturdy card front, and I completed the decoupage layers as indicated on the sheet. This is some very intricate layering going on here, and I love the final result. On the inside, I used the ‘Congratulations’ sentiment from the flower decoupage sheet and added the large banner from the sticker sheet. Of course, this card does stand up on its own, and I truly adore this uniquely shaped card. “Hey Baby!”I’m all out of the decoupage sheets now, so, for my tenth card with this kit, I decided to play with the scallop banner die and the alpha dies. On the last Silver Pearl card base, I used the footprint pattern paper (spot gloss!) for the background, and mounted that to the card base with some foam tape (I’m addicted to dimension now!). I cut the banner die  seven times out of the glittery polka-dot pattern paper, and I used some more of my colorful mini brads to connect the banners together. Four of those banners stretch across the whole card, but I did add some purple and white bakers twine on the top three banners to ‘tie’ them off to the sides of the card. That Silver Mirror card stock from the kit die-cuts beautifully and those alpha dies fit perfectly within those banners! I love that purple pattern paper and with the addition of the glitter banners and mirror letters and those metallic brads, there is a ton of sparkle on this ‘New Baby’ card. True to character, I decided I couldn’t finish up this kit without a pun – I don’t want to disappoint anyone! So, on the writing surface on the inside of this card we get one of my favorite puns so far..‘Spit Happens’!! I LOVE that pun! It can be taken in SO MANY ways!! LOL!! This is, of course, printed on the writing surface with my favorite Brady Bunch Remastered font and the addition of a little purple glitter heart sticker adds a touch of sparkle inside.  There’s my 10 cards from the Love From Lizi Special Edition Oh Baby Kit released in March of 2018. We have 7 Baby Cards, two Birthday Cards, and a Thank You Card! I think this is a very colorful, fun set of attractive dimensional cards! I think the most amazing thing about these decoupage kits is the simple fact that you can make wonderful cards using only some scissors (maybe a paper trimmer), some glue and foam dots. No stamps or ink pads or markers or pencils needed! I had so much fun playing with this kit and I think anyone can make stunning cards using this method. This kit is still available at lovefromlizi.com – if you go shopping with Lizi, please use the links on this page! Thank you SO MUCH for spending your time with me here… Please pass this post along to anyone who you think might enjoy, and HAPPY CRAFTING!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my UnBoxing of the Love From Lizi April 2018 Card Kit. At posting, there are still a few kits available, so if you want to get one for yourself, please use my link: lovefromlizi.com.This card kit is jam packed with Spring-y colors and images and a few surprises as well!As usual, we get five sheets of standard American/Canadian card stock at 8.5″ x 11″ in Black, Apple Green, Sky Blue, Rose Pink, and Sunshine Yellow – Great Colors! I don’t even mind that pink..!!!  (shocking!!)  LOL!We are treated this month to 12 double sided pattern papers that are larger than normal at  6″ x 8″! I love these larger pattern papers – there’s always a little extra left over! The front side of these pattern papers features large images, icons and sentiments.The back side features smaller, all-over patterns – LOVE that flower and leaf pattern on the black background (second from left on the bottom row) and LOVE the size of these!We do get two 12″ x 12″ cut apart sheets with the kit this month – the first one features 12 panels – 3″ x 4″ – with some rose gold foil embossed highlights and lots of images and sentiments. You could make 12 cards with these panels alone! The cut apart pages are double sided and this is the back of our first sheet with pale pink polka dots on a dusty teal background – a little bit larger than the same pattern on the back of one of the pattern papers.Our second sheet of 12′ x 12″ cut-aparts has 4″ x 6″ panels with larger images and sentiments but no foil embossing.The back features the lovely red, pink, blue and yellow flowers on a black (or at least VERY dark brown) background. Again, just slightly larger than the same pattern on the back of the pattern papers. We also get one more 12″ x 12″ piece in this kit…!A sticker sheet! I always like the stickers Lizi (usually) includes in her kits, and this sheet is terrific!  Tons of stickers from sentiments to icons to banners and borders and trinkets and tabs. A little bit of everything in perfectly matching colors!Of course we do get some specialty papers with this kit – four 8.5″ x 5.5″ shimmer card stocks in Gunmetal Gray, Dusty Rose, Oyster White and Graphite Black. You can cut these in half to make card fronts or fold them in half to make card bases. The pin stripe peel off stickers this month are SO COOL! You can’t really tell in this picture, but they are actually clear glitter peel offs. No color to them just glitter! Should be very interesting to see how these look on our projects! And here’s the first big surprise this month – an Embossing Folder – a LARGE (6″ x 8″) embossing folder covered with birds… they appear to be swallows (the split tail?) in assorted flying poses. This is a great addition for those of you into scrap-booking or Art Journals as well as for adding great texture to cards!The Exclusive Love From Lizi stamp set this month is a sentiment builder set, with ‘You’, ‘We’, ‘are’, and ‘I am’ in block letters ready to pair up with all these phrases and adjectives. A good sentiment builder stamp set is always nice to have in your stash, and this set has a couple of very unique sentiments like ‘slaying it’ and ‘making it happen!’.Which brings us to the embellishment bag – WOO-HOO!! From bottom to top, left to right, we get six (1 meter) ribbons this month – a 1″ burlap ribbon (with sewn edges so no fraying!) a 3/4″ black organza ribbon, a 1/8″ white organza ribbon, and three 1/8″ satin ribbons in black, white, and pale blue. That’s more than 19.5 feet of ribbon!! There are two sizes of canvas tags with grommets, and five burlap flowers (three white and two natural) with a little bit of dimension on the petals and little wooden seed beads in their centers. Another surprise this month is this bit of tassel trim – about 10″ of this ADORABLE tassel trim that matches the colors of the kit perfectly! Can’t wait to figure out how to use this on a card! Of course, we get a sample bag of the sequin mix for the month along with three mini white envelopes, and our monthly bottle of Nuvo Drops is another Jewel Drop (lightly tinted translucent) in Sea Breeze. The dies included this month are a small decorative frame and a swallow die – obviously matching the embossing folder. I did die-cut both of those in black to show you how they looked. And take a look at those large wood-veneer die cuts at the top! ‘Hello’, ‘Smile’, and ‘Happy’ in a large, clean script. These would make great cards virtually all by themselves! Now, if that wasn’t enough (I don’t think Lizi knows the meaning of that word!) we have one more surprise waiting for us in the embellishment bag.Ephemera!!! More than 50 pieces of die cut sentiments, images, icons, banners, badges, tags, and words – many with that rose gold foiling on them. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a bag like this in our LFL kits before, and these are amazing! I almost like them more than the cut apart sheets – as these are already cut apart!! A lovely surprise treat to finish out the Love From Lizi April 2018 Card Kit. As of this posting there are still a few kits available, so if you’d like to grab one for yourself just click here: Love From Lizi. Thank you so much for joining me here today – I hope you like this kit as much as I do and will want to join me in playing around and seeing what we can come up with this month! Please share this post with all your friends and Happy Crafting!!

Hello folks! Scott here with my 10 cards from the March ’18 Love From Lizi Card Kit. I am so sorry to be so late with this posting but I got hit by a nasty bug that laid me out for a couple of weeks. OUCH! Feeling better and better every day now..!  I am so late that this kit has already sold out, so this is for all the folks out there who got their hands on this kit and are looking for a little inspiration and maybe a new idea or two!   Let’s get rolling!Now I don’t usually get any of the matching ‘add-ons’ that Lizi offers along with her card

kits, but the chipboard stickers caught my eye this month, so I did get the chipboard stickers and I the layered chipboard stickers as well! Not that there aren’t enough supplies in these kits as it is, but I know lots of folks who do like the chipboard add-ons and I wanted to see how they might inspire me. Uniquely, a lot of the images and icons in this kit were quite large, both on the cut-apart sheets and you can see that some of the chipboard stickers are over sized as well. The large jar with candy and the white top in the center of the chipboard sticker sheet is actually 5 and 5/8″ tall. And those lovely filigree labels / tags with the treats and cakes from one of the cut-apart sheets are 6″ long. Hmmmmmmm… I may have to work on making some 5″ x 7″ cards this month!As usual, I did stamp all the images from the stamp set (with SSS Intense Black Ink) on the smooth white card-stock included in the kit. Lizi said this card stock was ‘Copic friendly’, so I colored this batch of stamps with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. True to her word, this is excellent card stock for coloring with alcohol markers. Of course I do try to stay within the pink/green/brown color pallet that is featured in this kit. You can also see some of the kit’s Nuvo Jewel Drops in Limoncello to the right – I’ll often dab out some drops on my craft mat to dry and be ready for use on cards. I also took the other four pieces of colored card stock from the kit and made eight 4.25″ x 5.5″ card bases.

Right out of the gate I decide to go ahead and do a 5×7 card – at least I do have some envelops that will fit! I really liked the filigree labels and the candy jar chipboard piece.I made a 5′ x 7″ white card base using some 120# card stock from my stash, and created this sentiment with my Silhouette Portrait – I felt like this large of a card needed a large sentiment – and printed that directly to the card base. The block print is GEORGIA font, and the script words are in SMOOTHIE SHOPPE font (my, how appropriate!). I cut out a 2 and 5/8″ strip (7″ long) from the large striped pattern paper from the back of one of the 12×12 cut-apart sheets and glued that down to the left side of the card base, and ran some of the medium Chocolate Mirror peel off stickers along both sides.  I fussy cut one of the filigree labels from another cut-apart sheet and mounted that up with some foam tape on the stripes. That chipboard candy jar sticker fit perfectly within that frame and I also covered a bunch of the chipboard candies with Glossy Accents to scatter around the bottom. A double-bow from the pale pink ribbon in the kit highlights the jar lid and a few sequins from the ‘Sweet Treats’ sequin mix finishes this card out nicely! This all looks great on a larger card format!  I’ll have to remember that I do have that option! And there’s a sentiment that truly makes me want to sing…! This cut-apart sentiment caught my eye, but it was only 4″ square on the sheet, so I paired it up with the striped pattern paper from the kit and used the chipboard flower stickers to hide the seam. Look closely, and you can see the dots on the pink stripes above the flowers are black, and below the flowers they are white… So, together that piece is 4″ x 5.25″ and mounted directly to the pink card base. I wanted to frame this image so I cut a frame from the soft pink pearl specialty card stock with my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies, but I didn’t want to lose the pink card base completely, so I cut the corners off the frame (about 1.75″ from each corner) and mounted the remaining pieces to the top left and bottom right corners with foam tape. I did cover all the flowers with my Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen, added a double bow from the green and white bakers twine, and added 5 mini copper gems to the center of the white flower, and on top of the pattern paper dots on the bottom left and top right! That balances everything nicely. This is about as pink as I could get with this kit, and I do love the sentiment expressed here. Let me see what I can do with some of those Layered Chipboard Sticker add-ons!On the Chocolate Brown card base,  I mounted the off-white embossed specialty card stock trimmed down to 3.75″ wide and added 3/4″ strips of the pick and green striped pattern paper to the two edges of that, as well as the skinny peel off stickers on the sides. I took one of the vellum pieces, and, after gluing that to some plain white card stock with the Xyron Sticker Maker, I cut away the copper foil frame and attached that directly to the card base. The cake is one of the layered chipboard extras and I just HAD to use the candy sticks from the kit to make candles! I cut the sticks down to various heights and colored them with my alcohol markers, and tucked them behind the top of the cake sticker. To make the candle flames, I used the Nuvo drops to make some flame shapes on my craft mat and let them dry completely, and added the mini copper gems to the card base just above the candle tops. Once the Nuvo flame shapes dried, I used some Ranger Multi Medium Matte to glue the Nuvo flames on top of the mini gems. The gems add just enough color to highlight the translucent Nuvo drop flames. I did get a bit obsessive with the gold tinsel from the embellishments bag, and attached a bunch to the back of the cake sticker and trimmed them down into a bit of a starburst coming out of the sides of the cake. The whole cake piece and the WONDERFUL layered chipboard sticker attach to the card base with a touch of foam tape here and there, and I felt the need to add BIRTHDAY WISHES to complete the sentiment. I did print and cut that with my Silhouette using the LUCIDA GRANDE font and foam taped that to the card base under the WONDERFUL banner. WOW! This card has a little bit of everything! I do like how the candles and tinsel break the boundaries of the copper foil frame, and with all the glitter on the chipboard pieces, and the gems and Nuvo drops, there’s plenty of sparkle here! There are more chipboard pieces I like, so let’s see if I can use any on an A2 card!Back to the second pink card base, I cut a 3.75″ strip of the candy jar pattern paper for my background, and added two 1/8″ strips of the Bronze pearl specialty card stock on the two sides. I layered the two ‘chocolate’ chipboard stickers together and added a double pink bow to the jar. Here’s another sentiment of mine created on my Silhouette in the SIGN PAINTER font and cut out with a Spellbinder Deckle Rectangle die and a little distress oxide Walnut Stain ink on the edges. “All you need is love.” on the front, and “But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” on the inside (cut with a LF stitched rectangle die). Who knew that the creator of PEANUTS was into chocolate!? I did add the layered chipboard sticker of the treat package on the inside of the card, and added some of the mini Copper Gems to highlight the Chocolate sign on the front. I like this card a lot and, though it is on a pick card base, I think it has more of a vintage feel than a pink feel. But that’s four rather pink cards right off the bat, and, though I know I can’t avoid it, let’s call the pink conquered for now and see what we can do with the stamps and other items left to use.I did have to dig around in my ink pads to find colors that matched this dotted pattern paper, and found that my Stampin’ Up Early Espresso and Pear Pizzazz inks matched very well. I stamped the cookie stamp in a straight row across some of the white card stock from the kit alternating between the Espresso and the Pear. I then fussy cut my colored cookie stamp, embossed the whole stamp with clear embossing powder and foam taped that over the center cookie. I trimmed the stamped piece to 2 and 3/8″ (x 5.5″) and I added two 1/8″ strips of the Dark Green / Gold specialty paper to the edges of that and then used my Ellen Hutson Stitching Lines border dies to add the cross stitch detail on the edges. On the Apple Green card stock, I mounted a 3.25″ strip of the dotted pattern paper and added 1/8″ strips of the green pattern paper to the top and bottom. The sentiment is stamped with the Early Espresso ink,  and the stamped piece is attached to the card base with foam tape. Though there is still plenty of pink here, I think the green is a nice counterpoint, and I like highlighting this cute cookie stamp all by itself!And now to the pancakes!! Here’s another card that uses a lot of the goodies from this kit! I fussy cut the Moroccan pattern paper with a decorative edge, and used my scoring board to emboss the tile pattern on the Taupe gloss specialty card stock. The Taupe piece is 2 and 3/8″ x 4″, and the pattern paper is about 1 and 7/8″ x 4″ and they are both mounted to the Black card base with foam tape. I cut a simple trapezoid ‘tabletop’ from a scrap of white card stock and trimmed that with a piece of the thin white satin ribbon from the kit. I took the paper covered wire from the kit and braided it together to make this chunky trim that frames the edge of the table. I did use tiny bits of the Nuvo drops on the ends of the braid to cover the cut wire. Three of the textured copper brads and a  strip of the Chocolate Mirror peel offs between the ‘table’ and the ‘wall’ finishes out this scene very nicely.  I fussy cut the colored pancake stamp, added Glossy Accents to the syrup (yum!), and foam mounted that on the ‘table’. I added my own sentiment (a little more pancake oriented) using my favorite BRADY BUNCH REMASTERED font on my Silhouette – cut four times and layered together for some extra chunky dimension on the front.  A decidedly playful card that works beautifully with a pancake stamp! There are SO many ice cream, pancake, and cupcake puns out there that it was a little hard deciding which sentiment would work best on this card. I do like the result!Those lovely cupcake stamps! I cut my colored cupcake stamps with a LF Stitched Rectangle die and outlined the edges with the Chocolate mirror peel offs and mounted that to a mat of the brown embossed specialty paper with foam tape. That assembly is glued directly to a mat of the Bronze Pearl specialty paper and that is foam taped to the background pattern paper (5′ x 4.25″) attached directly to the Apple Green card base. I glued a length of the brown cupcake grograin ribbon (with 2 smooth copper brads) across the bottom portion of the card and stamped the sentiment in SSS Intense Black Ink on more of the white card stock from the kit. I cut the sentiment out with another LF Stitched Rectangle die and outlined the edges of that piece with the Chocolate Mirror peel offs as well. The sentiment is attached with some foam tape for some added dimension, and, though you can’t really tell from the photo, I used my Renger Embossing pen to add some clear embossing powder to the cupcake toppings – nice shine but not quite as shiny as glossy accents. I like this sentiment a great deal and I like how the cupcakes kind of look like a framed art piece, but most of all, this card hardly feels pink to me at all!  LOL! I haven’t done a shaker card in a while, and some of the candy jars on the cut-apart sheets were just begging to be shakers so I came up with this nice Mother’s Day card. On the Chocolate Brown card base, I mounted a 3.5″ x 5.5″ piece of the Pale Pink Marble specialty paper and added two 1/8″ strips of black and white diagonal stripes from my stash and more of the peel offs on the edges. The candy jar is from one of the cut-apart sheets – I simply cut out the inside of the jar to make a window for my shaker bits. I did pack the shaker window quite full with the sequin mix (I avoided the large brown sequins) and added in some Queen & Co. Tiny Bubbles Toppings to the mix, and added a simple pink bow to the top of the lid. The sentiment is mine, created on my Silhouette in MARKETING SCRIPT font and printed directly on the marble card stock. Inside, of course, is the ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ greeting, and with the addition of some mini copper gems at strategic points along the filigree, we have a very nice, very PALE, pink card ready for Mom! OKAY, SO SUE ME! I COULDN’T RESIST!! If three scoops of ice cream is a treat, then wouldn’t four scoops be an even better treat!? Just pull on the tab at the bottom…!Yes… another double slider pull-tab card from me this month! My big accomplishment with this card was being able to hide the slider slit completely behind the sundae! This is a fairly simple card, as I wanted all the focus to be on the ice cream. I used the last of the smooth white card stock from the kit for my slider base, outlined that with the thin Chocolate Mirror peel offs, and added a couple of 1/8″ strips of the Antique Gold Pearl specialty paper to the edges. All is mounted to the last Black card base. I fussy cut the colored sundae stamp and used Glossy Accents on all the toppings (BIG YUM!) and then stamped the sundae again and just cut out the lower right scoop to be my added treat. I used some clear glitter on the topping of the added scoop for a little razzle-dazzle with the surprise, and stamped the sentiment with SSS Intense Black Ink and cut that out with a LF stitched Rectangle die before mounting it to the card base with foam tape. I recently posted a How-To video that shows how to make your own double slider pull-tab cards. But wait, you say, that’s only 9 cards – what could I be saving as card #10 this month? I haven’t used the hexagonal dies or the copper foiled acetate pieces yet… What’s up!?This is what’s up! Now this is much easier that it may seem, and the hexagonal dies included in this kit work perfectly on an A2 card! It will take a little time as you have to run this through your die cutter 18 times, but I simply cut three pieces of 120# white card stock (from my stash) to 4.25″ x 5.5″ and a white card base as well. The large hexagonal die spaces out perfectly – just bisect your card front down the middle in both directions – the center line is where your center hexagons line up. Add a line 1″ away from both short ends of the card. This is the center line for your other hexagons. After cutting all six hexagons, use that top piece as a pattern for the placement of the next smaller hexagon on the next layer of card stock.

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I did use my mini MISTI to keep the layers lined up accurately. Just line up the cutting edge of the smaller die to the previously cut edge and tape it down before removing the top pattern piece and running it through your die cutter. Then after you have the second layer cut, use that piece as a pattern for where to cut the third layer with the smallest hexagonal die – lining up the cut edges through all three layers. Glue all the layers together and add to a card base and TADA! This looks like some of those new layering dies out there that are beautiful, but cost a fortune (so much metal)! You could, of course, use different colors of card stock for the different layers but I thought white would work especially well with the acetate sentiment. I did trim some small slivers of foam tape to mount the sentiment, but, since the acetate is so thick, you don’t need a lot of foam tape to add a little bit more dimension. There we go! 10 cards from the Love From Lizi March 2018 card kit – a nice variety of cards and not too much pink! I managed to use all the image stamps from the stamp set, some of the ‘add-on’ chipboard stickers, but I didn’t get to the “Fueled by Cake, Coffee and Crafting” sentiment as it seems that I don’t have a single coffee themed stamp set. Not even tea! As usual, I have tons of extras from the kit – I used a little bit of everything, but I didn’t use any of the alphabet stickers, the craft labels or the buttons – and I only added a couple sheets of white card stock from my stash. I really like the stamp set in this kit – it will probably come available next month at lovefromlizi.com – the images are nicely shaded so you can color them very simply or as complex as you like and they will always look good! Thank you so much for sharing your time with me here – it is truly and dearly appreciated!  Remember, don’t run with scissors, and, Happy Crafting!

Hello Folks! Scott here with my UnBoxing of the Love From Lizi March 2018 Card Kit!This kit is full of sweet treats, a terrific stamp set created by Laura at Crafty Not Shifty, and as usual, a huge assortment of interesting card stocks, papers and embellishments!We get five sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ card stock in Pink, Black, Apple Green, Chocolate Brown and a smooth White alcohol-marker-friendly card stock.Twelve sheets of 6″ x 6″ pattern papers comes next – some floral patterns, some sweet treats, stripes, polka-dots, and a few lovely monochromatic papers are included.Our Specialty Card Stock for this month is eight sheets of 4.25″ x 5.5″ card stocks in Pearlized Bronze, Dark Green/Gold Pearlized, Embossed pin-stripe Brown, Off-White embossed, Soft Pink Pearl, Taupe Gloss, Antique Gold Pearl and Pale Pink Marble.Chocolate Mirror peel Off stickers for this month are complimented with a large sticker alphabet done in a copper foil and featuring hexagonal shapes – numbers too! I love Lizi’s Peel Offs and truly adore the ‘mirror’ type especially when it comes in a color!

We get three 12″ x 12″ double-sided cut-apart card stock sheets featuring treats galore!The back of the first sheet features the same tea roses as the pattern papers only larger.The second sheet has some terrific sentiments and is backed by this terrific stripe.The last sheet has these gorgeous ‘sweet shoppe labels’ backed with a nice tonal floral.We are also treated to another 12″ x 12″ sheet of vellum pieces foiled with copper – I love the vellum sheets Lizi includes with her kits – and these should spark some fun designs!

And here is that great stamp set created by Laura at Crafty Not Shifty!An ice cream sundae, a stack of pancakes, three cupcakes, little sandwich cookies and some fun sentiments – my favorite is “A party without cake is just a meeting!” Love it!!!

Now we get to the Embellishment Bag – which always contains a surprise or two for us!Starting from the bottom, we get a meter each of four trims – thin Ivory Satin ribbon, thin Pale Pink Satin ribbon, a 5/8″ wide Brown Grosgrain ribbon with cupcakes on it, and a piece of Green and White bakers twine. Above the ribbons, from the left, we get a bag of gold tinsel (not sure what to do with that yet), a sunburst of mini Copper Gems (tons of gems here), five wooden buttons, four kraft sticker labels, three lollipop sticks, six copper brads (fairly large), our monthly Nuvo Drops bottle – Limoncello Jewel Drops this month, three nesting hexagonal dies, a sample bag of Lizi’s Sweet Treats sequin mix, and a meter of brown paper wrapped wire – nice thick wire..! The really interesting item in the embellishments bag this month were these copper foiled sentiments printed on thick acetate – eight different sentiments to wrap our crafty minds around..!

Now, I don’t usually go for any extras with Lizi’s kits since it seems like there are so many supplies included to begin with, but this month I couldn’t resist the chipboard stickers.Some of these are very large, so I will have to brainstorm a bit on how to use them! I alsowent for the layered chip board stickers this month as well – these are REALLY pretty – some of them have at least three layers and they are all well sized for use on A2 cards. That’s everything in the Love From Lizi March 2018 Card Kit (with a couple of extras!) and I can’t wait to dig in and start coloring those stamps and figuring out how to use this plethora of goodies. If you want to join me for the fun, this kit is still available for purchase – please use my link to shop at LoveFromLizi.com. Thank you for sharing your time with me here, don’t forget to Treat Yourself and Spread the Cheer! Happy Crafting!!

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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