Welcome Home

Hey everyone. Hope you're all well. For all my card crafty followers I hope that you are taking some time to craft and be creative. If not, that's okay. Do what you need to for yourself. For me, I need to be creative to be sane. It lets me pour it all out into something. But then, I too have days where I have zero inspiration and want to do nothing. It's all about balance and every day is a new normal we all have to find for ourselves. It's sure not easy, but I really do hope you all manage.

Speaking of normal, people still are out doing things- even differently. I have a friend who's parents are moving so she commissioned me to make a housewarming card. I saw a few different ones on Pinterest that followed this layout.

I loved how the die cut houses peeked over the window. I used the retired Hearts Come Home dies from Stampin' Up and cut the few houses I wanted. I created a window from a label die I had and sandwiched a couple of acetate sheets between the top layer and base layer to create a shaker for the window. I trimmed the hearts come home stamp from the set and took off the 'Christmas' at the end of the sentiment- and it worked! I added some die cut hearts and the Hello sentiment from the Hello You set from Stampin' Up!

Here you can see the fun sequins I added in red and black and then some gold stars from a glitter combo pack I got from Michaels. Finish it off with some paper elements and some twine and voila- done!
To create the window I had my card base and layer lightly adhered and put them through my die machine at the same time. I then added the acetate to the back of the front, and the front of the card base- cutting the acetate about a quarter of an inch smaller. Then I put some Stampin' Up! 3D adhesive strips around the the window on the card base so I could line up the top layer and the bottom layer after I put the filler in.

That's it for me tonight, I hope you're all inspired!

~Brandie~

Video Game Brothers

Hey all! Happy Spring :)
It has been beautiful weather the past couple of days and the snow is FINALLY melting. The bad news is flooding though, all my walk paths are huge puddles. But spring is finally here and I am so happy. Despite the pandemic still in the world, I am able to go for walks and enjoy the weather. It isn't easy to look on the bright side or to see blessings when there is so much negativity, but for myself, those small things can help me look to a brighter future.
These cards are a couple months old. I whipped them up for my son's Valentine's day cards (which was the last week he had of school).
They came together pretty quickly once I had an idea. I love making my own invites/Valentine's/any holiday cards and favors for the kids at school. Matt was my 'surprise' baby so he came after the older 3 by a few years. My 'stay at home mommy' phase was focused on the older three when they were  younger and I would do every holiday all out. Poor Matt got the short of the stick there. Store bought (GASP!) cards weren't unheard of while I balanced work and mom life. As I mentioned before, I am now working at an amazing place that not only feeds me mentally and doesn't wear me down like previous jobs, but I can afford to be part time which gives me more time to focus on my crafting.
But still, need to find something that is quick and simple when I need to bust out 16 or more for a class room ;)
These are all single layer cards matted on a scalloped base. I didn't add any embellishments or do any fussy cutting or die cutting so the most time consuming thing was doing the image coloring, and then doing the masking so I could create the video games scenes. These are "Video Game Brothers" from the amazing Kindred Stamps. I adore their pop culture stamps that everyone just knows to see and the fans just go nuts over. The inking was done with Tim Holtz distress inks and My Favorite Things background stencils. And the thing is, these would work for any sort of occasion to let someone know you love them and are thinking about them. Which, in this day and age, would be greatly appreciated.

Hope you all are inspired!

~Brandie~

Pretty Puppies

Hey all!
Like I was saying yesterday, I am in love with Spring colors and florals. I do like winter, but only around Christmas. I deal with it in January and then we get, what we Northerners affectionately call 'false spring' in Feburary followed by 'second' (and sometimes third or fourth) winter. This happens in March and April. It's not uncommon to have snow on May Long. Definitely not uncommon to have snow during Easter.
I am officially over it. Though I am born and bred here in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and I don't see myself ever leaving (home IS home after all), I am still over it.
So I boycott our prolonged winter with bright colors, fun stamp sets, 'summer' food (cooked indoors lol), and wearing capris and letting my legs get a bit chilly.
So when I pulled out my bunny stamps from Whimsy, I found my Naughty Puppies set from them as well and couldn't resist creating some fun, spring time cards.
I decided I would start doing a Sketch Challenge and color combo challenge to keep my designs fresh and help when I am a bit stumped on a design. I love doing different fun fold and interactive cards, they are big hits with my customers, but when you have a beautiful image as a focal point, sometimes it's nice for it to be just that; the focal point.
Here's the sketch that I found on Pinterest:

I used Bermuda Bay, Mango Melody and Smokey Slate as my palette. The designer series paper were from some stacks I had gifted to me so I am unsure of the names of them. I found as close as I could to the Stampin' Up! ink colors. The Sentiments are from Gina K Designs For the Grad wreath builder stamp set. And I was a bit addicted to creating my own mini blooms with some various flower builder dies from Spellbinders. I inked the flowers with Distress Oxide Ink from Tim Holtz-  Ripe Persimmon and Broken China. Love the bold color combo and how they light up the card. I had a lot of fun using a sketch challenge and it made creating this card a lot easier. Look for more sketch and color challenges in the future.

Please feel free to follow me at crafterseden on Instagram to see what I am working on next!

~Brandie~

Easter Blessings

Hey everyone.
With Covid going on it was easy for me to have time fly by and not realize what day it is. I have been working, so I am aware of dates but Easter crawled up on me. I had plans to really expand my business this year and to do spring shows with Easter items, Mother's and Father's Day and weddings and grad. It seems with the way the world is right now, everything has been cancelled. It hasn't really, but sometimes it was easy for me to get in a funk and think 'Why Bother?'
But I should bother. We should all bother. In a safe way we should be bothering. So I got out of my funk and am working on the rest of the upcoming spring holidays and going digital. I will miss doing the outdoor markets at my local Farmers Market this spring and I'll miss the face to face with people, but I can still make beautiful things and inspire and make people's day.
I still did some Easter items - we are FINALLY melting the winter snow up here in Northern Alberta so I really wanted to do some fun, spring floral patterns and colors.
These images are from Whimsy Stamps. They are absolutely adorable. I really like how detailed they are and own quite the collection. These bunnies are perfect for Easter!
After coloring in the images, I really wanted to use that bold teal and fuchsia so I used Stampin' Up!'s Bermuda Bay and Berry Burst to stamp some florals from their Sale a Bration Thoughtful Blooms stamp set. I matched that with more bold colors- Highland Heather and Mango Melody on a Crumb Cake stamped Woodgrain background. I love how the colors pop and just scream Spring.

The next little bunny was completed yesterday, so after Easter came and went. I just did it as a simple thinking of you card. I framed the image on a glittery piece of cardstock cut in a cut out scalloped circle. I based it on a die cut piece of Whisper White that I cut out using Floral Phrases thinlits from Stampin' Up! I layered it on a piece of vellum and finished it off with some sheer ribbon. Very simple, and yet very pretty.

Carrying on with the Easter theme, I brought back the idea of lollipop cards. I like calling them ''picks" or "piqs" because they would be perfect as a little 'pick' in a bouquet or peeking out from a gift bag. I used the same images from Whimy Stamps: The Bunny in a basket is: Bonnie and the Bunny on a branch is: Springtime. I used Stampin' Up!'s retired Floral Frames framelit dies for the base. I mounted the images on slightly larger circles cut out from glitter cardstock and finished them off with some sentiments printed off my computer on Whisper White Cardstock. Add some wonderful sheer and thin ribbon from Michaels, handmade flowers from Spellbinders floral dies and attach on paper straws and you're done!
I don't know about you, but the bursts of colors and florals is enough to bring me out of the dumps and hope for a future soon where we could all get back to normal.

Until then, stay safe and healthy and inspired.

~Brandie~