Gearing Up for Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is right around the corner!

In preparation, I've pulled out my Love Blooms and Love Bites stamps to help create this Valentine Luminary. By the way, if you don't already have these stamps, you'll LOVE the price they are right now!

Love Blooms

Love Bites

Valentine Luminary:

Decorating the luminary was really the final touch. Here's what happened before the rubber stamping began . . .

1. Cut cardstock to 6x12" and score at 2-3/4, 5-1/2, 8-1/4, 11".

2. Add stencil shapes to the scored paper so they overlap the first and third score lines.

3. Use a craft knife to cut along the edge of the stenciled shape that extends past the score line.

3. Stamp and mist to decorate. Fold on score lines and round corners, if desired. Use adhesive or glue to attach the 1" tab, creating an open rectangle. Place luminary over battery-operated votive. Hit the lights. Instant romance. :)

The luminary will fold flat for easy storage after Valentine's Day. Make one for the next season!

While in the Valentine decorating spirit, I gave these Clock Tower projects a little extra "love" to use as a love shack Valentine gift. I'll let the pictures do the talkin'!

Make garland with waxed linen thread and tiny punched hearts.

Small and Large Clock Tower Project

Little touches of red hearts go a long way

Retreat 2013 Time Of Your Life Unmounted Rubber Stamp Quote

Clock Mechanism hidden in the back

Have fun with your Valentine crafts! No matter how you express it, it's always fun to share the love!

Thank you for stopping by,
Kay at Club Scrap

Graffiti Drip Stamp Card - Digi Style

Happy Thursday!

It's time for another paper project gone digital. Today's inspiration is from my friend Julie Heyer. Julie created a number of cards in her Monday blog post and one of them just called out to me to be done digitally using the Graffiti Digital Kit.

Here's my inspiration:

Cool, huh?

Let's get started on the digital version...

1. Create a brush with the Graffiti Spritz Drip Image: Using the marquee tool, select that image and drag it onto a new blank file. With the image selected, choose Edit -> Define Brush Preset and click 'Okay.' Close the file without saving it.

2. Create a new document that measures 5 inches wide and 7 inches high, 300ppi resolution.

3. Fill the new document with white.

4. Create a new layer.

5. Select the Brush tool and select the Spritz Drip brush. Set the size to approximately 1000 - 12000 pixels.

6. Pick a bright (think 'neon') foreground color. Start with Hot Pink and move your way through the rainbow.

7. Click to stamp the image in the upper section of the card.

8. Repeat steps 4-7, changing colors and moving down each time. Don't worry too much about exact placement. Because each color is in a separate layer, you can adjust the actual position once all the colors are done.

9. Move things around until you're pleased with the look.

For added variety, I 'flipped' the image on a couple of the colors.

10. Select a sentiment stamp and add it as a new layer on top of the rainbow drips. I used a quote from the Graffiti kit, but you could easily follow Julie's lead and pick something from another kit as well. Really, the sky's the limit with this one!

11. Add a black background matte to really make the card pop.

Adding the quote 'off center' adds a bit more interest.

12. Email to a friend (or several friends) or post it on Facebook.

Wasn't that easy?

Hybrid Variation 1: After step 10, print the card out on white card stock, trim and mount onto a black card (or black panels on white or multi-colored cards).

Hybrid Variation 2: After Step 9, print out several on white card stock and trim to size. Stamp with various sentiments using Club Scrap's India Ink and mount onto a black card (or black panels on white or multi-colored cards) for a collection of hybrid cards!

I hope you enjoyed today's inspiration. Thanks, Julie!

Until next time,

-Ron

It's Graffiti Blog Hop Time

Welcome to the Graffiti Blog Hop!

I've been having a great time playing with Graffiti . . . did you know this collection goes with almost everything? To prove my point, check out the cards I whipped up this week:

With Valentine's Day around the corner, I thought I'd see how well the Graffiti Stencil and the Love Bites stamps would play together. I think it's a match made in heaven!

I thought this card would be fun for my niece who turns 17 on Saturday. You might not notice it right away, but the background stamp on this card is a border stamp from the Hopes FontArt UM. It reminded me of chain link fencing. Cool eh?

I just love that Graffiti Art stamp, and it was perfect for this resist technique with the Green and Blue Neon Ink Pads. I paired it with a sentiment stamp from the Fire & Ice FontArt UM.

Can you guess what vintage kit elements I used for this card? You might not recognize them right away. I started with a Graffiti Print panel, overstamped with a huge text stamp from Up, Up & Away. Then I used white acrylic paint with the circle pattern on Fizz Stencil. I traced the arrow image from the Mirror, Mirror Stencil onto Graffiti pink, and cut it out with a craft knife. Finally Fizz pink brads added just the right finishing touch.

I encourage you to see what mixin' and matchin' you can do with your Graffiti kit and collections from the past. It's great fun!

Ready to hop? Here are the amazing bloggers sharing their artwork with us this month:

Julie at Cape Cod Scrapper

Inkstains with Roni

Deb at Liftbridge Cards and Crafts

DebDuz Scrappin' 

Jill's Place 

Tricia at The Efficient Crafter

Hetty at Craft Chaos

Kay's Keepsakes 

Cathy at The Artful Gamut 

Anne at Crzymom's Tidbits

Shona's Scraps 

Debby at Masculine Inspirations

Dishing with Janet 

Tiare at iClassyGirl

Lisa at Carpe Memoria

Marya at A Notebook Novel

Annette's Digital Musings 

Creatively yours,

Karen

It's a Big Deal Spoiler!

One of the things you'll love most about this collection is the texture of the paper. We were able to land some unusually unique sheets that not only look fantastic, but they feel great, too!

The Red and Red Pearl papers are one and the same. Just flip for the deeper tone. Talk about a full house!

I smelled the papers, too. I admit it. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. That's what paper lovers do.

The ALSB pages are well-adorned with letter tiles featured on the printed cutaparts and die cut game pieces. You'll have a blast with those. Even the miniature gold heart and diamond-shaped brads are the sweetest little things.

The stamps are tons of fun, too. I can't wait to show you all of the Greetings to Go cards from the collection! Some of the images/sentiment combinations are sure to tickle your funny bone.

We've wrapped everything up with a project that's been on our radar for a while now. Your kit will arrive with its very own deck of 54 totally plain matte finish playing cards, binding rings, covers and cover wraps. The deck is ATC-sized (2.5x3.5") and filled with endless creative possibilities. We also thought to included nifty numbering stickers to help you get the project going.

Oh, no! I'm afraid we've reached . . .

Join today to ensure prompt delivery of your Big Deal! I'm not joking.

Play on.
Tricia

Neon Card Mash Ups

Good Monday Morning Everyone!

I missed you all last week. While I was away from the blog, I was busy creating this colorful array of cards using a "Mash Up" of kits. I created backgrounds using an art orphan and print outs from this month's Graffiti digital kit. I used papers from the Science kit (the orange/yellow, blue, and purple) that worked so well with the prints from this month's kit and an assortment of past kit stamps.

So sit back and relax while I take you on a little tour of how I created some of my cards.

1. Print out the black and white digital print from the Graffiti Digital kit.

before

2. Grab your Neon Dabbers and color to your hearts content! I had so much fun with this. I added a bit of white paint dauber swipes to areas that were too dull gray for my liking. It lightened the piece up a bit.

3. Let your paper dry and then add interest to your colored piece using a white Uni-ball Signo Broad pigment ink pen.

After

4. Print out some of the other colorful prints to use for backgrounds for your cards on matte photo paper.

5. Marya and Anne Marie host a card sketch challenge on the Club Scrap Community Forum and I created these cards using tissue tape colored with Neon Dabbers. I also used the fun mini chalkboard as my template for the hole to be cut out of the front of the card.

6. Stamp the "you are 2 COOL" images in white dauber paint (make sure you clean off your stamps so the paint doesn't dry on them) and add a bit of Neon Pink Dabber ink to the outside edge of the chalkboard. Trace the chalkboard with white pen and cut with a craft knife.

7. Save the cut out to be used on a second card. Check out this LINK to learn how to create a dimensional star. Do you recognize this art orphan I used for the background paper? It was created using the plastic wrap technique I shared on a previous blog post which you can find HERE. Stamp the Take Wing greeting directly onto the background paper.

8. Stamp the Graffiti spritz drip image in all the Neon Dabber colors to create this rainbow effect.  Stamp directly over the image when dry using black ink using the Take Wing stamps.

9. Now it is time to create your A2 cards. Cut black and white 8.5x11" cardstock horizontally at 5.5 and score each 5.5x8.5" piece horizontally at 4.25".  This will result in two A2 size greeting card bases from each sheet of cardstock.

Here are all the cards I created using the above techniques.

Digital Black and White print colored w/ Neon Dabbers, Science Purple and Orange mats, Neon Doodles sentiment, and Graffiti fiber.

Digital Black and White print colored w/ Neon Dabbers, Black card base and panel edged with white paint, Neon Doodles sentiment, and Graffiti fiber. 

Digital Black and White print colored w/ Neon Dabbers,  Science Blue and Orange mats, Take Wing sentiment, and Graffiti fiber. 

Digital Color print, Science Blue mat, Memoirs splat stamp, Graffiti sentiments and fiber

Digital Color print, Science Blue mat with white paint edges,  Graffiti sentiment and fiber

Digital Color print, Science Purple mat with white paint edges, Take Wing sentiment, and Graffiti fiber

Card Sketch Challenge card #1 Graffiti sentiments stamped on mini chalkboard.

Card Sketch Challenge card #2 Take Wing sentiment and images on white star.

Graffiti Spritz Drip rainbow, Science Purple mat, Take Wing sentiment and feather. 

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to join me and my Club Scrap enthusiasts this Wednesday January 29th for our Graffiti Blog Hop!

SPOILER!

I will be sharing a fun project with you at my CapeCodScrapper Blog.  Be sure to check out what I created to store all of my colorful cards!

Julie