Snowman Christmas Greetings

Hi, just popping in to share a card I made with this month's Spellbinders small die kit of the month: Frankie Goes to the North Pole.  

I'm so impressed with myself that I played with this set before the month was over!  I'm usually about a month or two behind - but I think this set will still be cute anytime in the winter.

 

I did a bit of sponging in the sky and added a darker green with a Copic to the start of the pine branches.  The Christmas Greetings is from a Verve Christmas set.

Challenges I am playing in:

Simon Says Stamps Christmas

 

Scripture cards for the fall

I hope you're not tired of seeing fall cards from me!  I've been on a roll with them and added to my stash of Scripture cards.  I was running low on them again.  

All these leave dies are from Spellbinders but I think the one below is a very very old one.  I don't even own that die - it was an extra from a crafting session with a friend a couple of years ago.  I hope Covid is over soon so we can resume our craft play dates.

The last one I added silver mirror card stock and on all of these, some leaves were covered with Crystal Effect.  It's hard to see on the pics but it's a nice extra oomph in real life.  

 

Using limited supplies

I had to pack up half of my craft room so the husband could cut into the drywall to fix some stuff.  Poor timing, I say, since I've been spending a good amount of happy time in there due to social distancing.  But I'm learning to craft on limited supplies.  These cards were made using calendar pages from a local nursery, 2 dies (My Favorite Things rectangle dies and Elizabeth Craft Designs Birds) and one stamp (Verve).

I make a lot of cards to welcome visitors in our church using Psalms 118:24 but I wanted to change it to something more fitting with the times.  Obviously we do not have visitors coming to church right now but I still want to be send cards to brighten our members, especially the older ones.

Those calendar pages were stunning and I could cut 6 card backgrounds out of one page.  One A2 sheet of white card stock yielded 10 rectangles and with my Misti, mass producing was a cinch.  I think I rather enjoyed crafting with minimal supplies - clean up was a super easy too!

A whole lot of flower cards

If you follow me on instagram (@yourstrulybydiana) you may remembered that I shared a row of Tim Holtz's Wildflower series cut and colored and sitting in the Oui yogurt jars of which I have way too many.  I've "picked" the flowers from my paper garden and have given them a place on cards.

This was the perfect time for me to play with different backgrounds.  I wanted them pretty subtle to highlight the flowers and Bible verses or lyrics.  I just made each card with one color of flowers.  For several of these, I used Tim Holtz's 3D woodgrain embossing folder and then sponged them to bring out the detailed grains.

I also used a leaf stencil for two of the cards.

This yellow one with a plain gray background - I found the background I had intended a couple of days later because my craft desk was such a mess.  I wanted to finish this set of wildflower cards so I just used a gray one and doodled an imperfect frame around it.

I love this tone-on-tone stenciling.  It was so soft and peaceful looking.

I made so many of these because I want to mail them (and other cards) out to encourage and brighten my followers and friends' day since we're all cooped inside the house.  So if you haven't, please follow me on Instagram or facebook to enter in my Happy Snail Mail event that will happen later today.  

Spellbinders February small die set

I seem to be running a month late with posting my cards of the Spellbinders small club set.  I anxiously await for them to arrive in the mail and then life happens or I get stumped in my craft room.  Did find time to play some though!

Stamps by Our Daily Bread Design

Stamp by Verve and Butterflies Spray by Quietfire Design

Challenges I am playing in:

Simon Says Use Some Green

Scripture and Coloring Summer Blossoms

Thanks to the Daily Marker 30 challenge, I've got quite a stash of colored backgrounds that are perfect for my Scripture card stash.  These cards are great just for sending out to friends to let them know I am thinking of them and I believe in the promise of Isaiah 55:11.  

Today I'm sharing several I made out of the same stamp by Honey Doo crafts called Summer Blossom.  Below each I will list the medium I used and where the Scripture stamp came from.  Where the flower goes over the stamped panel, I used an Xacto knife to cut around the flowers to pop them up in front.

Stamped in black ink, colored with Prismacolor color pencils with a Verve stamp.

Embossed in white, colored with Zig clean color real brush with a Verve stamp.

Embossed in white, colored with Zig clean color real brush with a Divinity Designs stamp.

Stamped in black ink, colored with Prismacolor color pencils with a Divinity Designs stamp.

Stamped in black ink, colored with Prismacolor color pencils, white accents Signo white pen with a Divinity Designs stamp.

Challenges I am playing in:

Simon Says Thinking of You

Word Art Wednesday

Replenishing my Scripture card stash and the Daily Marker Challenge

There's an a daily coloring challenge on hosted by Kathy of the www.dailymarker.com.  Full disclosure - I'm great at starting these instagram challenges but life happens and things fall to the wayside.  But so far it's been really fun and pushed me to try different things.  

A favorite to color are always line drawings of botanicals.  This is a set called "What's up Buttercup?" by Honey-doo and I've had so much fun trying different colors and mediums.  And it was perfect for adding Bible verses from Verve on them.  

The above is Prisma colored pencils and then gold embossed.

This blue and grey card was white embossed first which looked beautiful as it was.  But I wanted to add some color so I went back and used Koi Clean Color Brush on it.  I could not used Copics because that would damage the white embossing and probably the Copics.

These last two were both Prismacolor color pencils and then gold and silver embossing respectively.

Challenges I am playing in:

Simon Says Anything Goes

Word Art Wednesday Anything Goes

Be still

Here's another card I made yesterday during World Cardmaking Day.  I used Copic markers to make a blended background from which I die cut the Memory Box Fresh Foliage.  After that, I stamped an old Verve stamp that is a favorite of mine.  Using a gray card base is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. 

Other Challenges I am playing in:

Casual Friday World Cardmaking Day

Simon Says Stamp World Cardmaking Day

Memory Box Leaves

Scrapy-land Anything Goes

Word Art Wednesday Anything Goes

Flowers and Scripture

I've had the Altenew Beautiful Day stamp set for a while now but I recently just bought the matching dies - wow, it has really made it so much easier to play with.  Since I'm not stamping directly on the card base, I can mess up coloring/stamping and it's not so "ah, noooo!!!!" type of mistake.  It was also a lot easier to place the smaller leaves and buds as well as play with the color combinations.  I highly recommend buying the dies to go with the stamp set!

Challenges I am playing in:

Word Art Wednesday

Simon Says Anthing Goes

Blessed is She who loves flower dies

Today I'm sharing a set of card I made after I sat down and colored a bunch of Tim Holtz's wildflower dies.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them but it was fun just to try out different color combos.  I created a simple layout with them, found a stamp to match the layout (it's usually the other way around) and made several cards.  As you can see, I could not decide on a base color but I think all the neutral toned card stock worked just fine.  :)

Here's a couple of quick videos of me coloring the flowers with Zig and Tombow markers.

This last one is a little different but just as quick and easy!

Stamping over watercolor background

My friend brought over this beautiful landscape silhouette stamp set by Sweet and Sassy Stamps and we found a card we wanted to case.  The original card looked like it might have been brayered or sponged but I tend to have a very heavy hand when I use inks.  So I used watercolors instead.  My friend Kelly and I also have learned that we should make more than one card of the same design (especially if we mess up on any one of the steps!) so on this we made two.  

The first one inked up much crisper on the mirror stamping (I used the Stamp of Life one) but for I could not get it to do it again for the second card.  So the water was not as calm on the second card. Lol!

The Bible verses are by Verve and Our Daily Bread Designs.

Cards for encouragment

I'm running short on cards with Scripture on them so I made a few after die cutting and coloring all the different leaf dies I have in my stash.  They include Impression Obsession, Verve, Spellbinders, Darice and Memory Box... cause you never know what size you need!  

Back to playing in challenges:

Word Art Wednesday - Anything Goes