Two Challenge Cards

I'm happy to announce that I am part of the Splitcoaststampers Sketch Challenge team for the next six months.  Today's sketch was kind of fun and lends itself to Valentine's Day.

My card is not necessarily a Valentine card, but you could certainly give it to your Honey!  I used a new stamp/die set from CottageCutz called Sweet Valentines.

My second card is for the February Scor-Pal "More Than One Score" Anything Goes challenge.  There was a tutorial for a Z Box Fold Card recently on Splitcoaststampers.  As I'm sure you know by now, I love doing fun fold cards.  I used several new CottageCutz dies on this card --  Spring Bunny w/Flowers, Spring Foliage Border, Wildflowers 1, and Campsite.

CottageCutz Flip Calendar - Part 2

I'm continuing the directions for my flip calendar.  Today’s post covers the months from January through August.

Supplies used for today’s post:

CottageCutz stamps/dies – Spring Grass, Garden Gnomes 1, GardenGnomes 2, Sweet Valentines, Woodlands, Daffodil Flower – March, Daisies Flower– April, Rose Flower – June, Larkspur Flower – July

Copic markers

Ink – Distress Bundled Sage

Sponge dauber

Foam pop dots

 I loved the Birthday Month flower stamp/die sets, but I didn’t necessarily want to have just flowers on my calendar pages.  There are several other stamp/die sets available as well – In the Kitchen, Garden Gnomes, Bee Sweet, Woodlands, as well as others.  I interspersed some of them throughout my calendar.

The January, February, May and August pages were made with the non-flower sets, while the March, April, June and July pages used the appropriate flower for the month.  I stamped, colored, and die-cut the images for each month.

 

After I put the die-cut images onto the white panels, I realized that they needed to be “anchored” by something.  So I die-cut a strip of grass, using the Spring Grass die.  I cut 12 of these strips of grass, one for each page.  This also added continuity throughout the calendar.  This photo was taken before I sponged a bit of darker green around the edges.

I glued the grass strips along the bottom of the white panels and then built my scenes.  I chose which of the icons I wanted for each month and applied them on the appropriate dates.

My next post will show the remaining four calendar pages as well as directions for the calendar base.

CottageCutz dies and stamps used on today's post are:

CottageCutz Flip Calendar - Part 1

I was really excited when I saw that CottageCutz was now making dies with coordinating stamps.  I've created a project that will cover three blog posts.  As you may or may not know, I love making 3-D projects as well as cards.  When I saw two of the dies from the CottageCutz Valentines 2017 release (Calendar Months and Calendar Icons), I immediately knew that I wanted to make a calendar of some sort.  My idea solidified itself after I saw the new stamp/die sets being released.  Here is a photo of the finished project.  My follow-up posts will explain how I made it.

Supplies for today’s post:

Cardstock – white, various colors based on choice of patterned paper

Patterned Paper – DCWV All Seasons 12” x 12” pack

Small monthly calendars or Excel spreadsheet software

CottageCutz dies – Calendar Months, Calendar Icons, Double StitchedRectangles

To start my calendar, I die-cut the months of the year and the icons.  I cut the icons from white cardstock and colored them appropriately with markers.  In addition, I cut a white panel using the largest Stitched Rectangles die.

I created a calendar for each month using Excel, cut it out as well as the background cardstock and appropriate patterned paper for each month.  The color scheme of the patterned paper determined the color of the base cardstock.  The photo here is for the month of January.  Each page of the calendar was created in a similar manner.

After adhering the panels onto the blue background panel, I adhered it to a 5 ½” x 7 ¼” white panel.  Each calendar page is two-sided so that the final calendar has six panels (January/December, February/November, March/October, April/September, May/August, June/July).

In my next post, I'll show how I made the scenes on the individual months.

CottageCutz dies used on today's post are:

CCEE1704 Let It Snow

Vicky winds up the month as hostess for the CCEE Stampers with a challenge to make an all occasion card  -- any card you could send on a normal day, no birthdays or holidays.  BUT . . . it should have snow on it in one way or another.  This was an opportunity for me to use some masking fluid, which I don't think I've used all season.   I added some Stickles for sparkle on the snow banks.

Check out the CCEE Stampers blog for some more snow.

Hi, Chick!

Today I'm using one of the new stamp/die sets from CottageCutz, Farm Animals.  I think the red gingham patterned paper gives a warm, country feel to my card.

Supplies used on my card:

Card base - 8 1/2" x 5 1/2", folded in half

Cream layers - 4" x 5 1/4", 3 1/4" x 4 1/2"

DP layer 3 7/8" x 5 1/8"

Ink - black, red

Stamp/Die set - CottageCutz Farm Animals, CottageCutz Double Stitched Ovals

Other - Copic markers, Foam pop dots

I stamped, colored, and cut out my three Farm Animals images.

Then, using two pale shades of blue and tan, I "painted" the background to my focal panel.

I stamped my sentiment on a scrap of cream cardstock and then cut out two ovals using the Double Stitched Ovals. 

When I layered the two ovals, I thought the difference in size was too wide; so I trimmed the gold oval at the inner stitch line, sanded it smooth, and then mounted the cream oval onto the gold one.  I liked the size contrast much better.   Then I constructed my card.  All the die-cut elements are popped up on foam pop dots.

Dies used on this set are:

STAMPlorations CAS Challenge

This is a reminder that you still have time to enter the STAMPlorations CAS Challenge for January.  It's an Anything Goes challenge with a color option of Silver or Gray.

I made a second sample card for the challenge, this time using STAMPlorations The Birds and The Blooms set.

You can enter up to three CAS cards for the challenge over on the STAMPlorations blog.

CCEE1703 Black and Cream

Once again Vicky is our hostess for the CCEE Stampers this week and asked us to use just black and cream (ivory) on our cards.  It didn't matter if we used die cuts, punches or stamps -- I used die cuts:  a Spellbinders set for the background and two CottageCutz dies for the package and sentiment.

Check out the CCEE Stampers blog to see some more black and ivory.