Baby Elephants (again)

Good afternoon!
For my past couple of career paths (currently, and for the foreseeable future it's my local library), I've been the card making lady. Not only do my co-workers come to me for commissioned orders (thanks guys!) but I am the go-to for birthdays, births, and congrats cards. So when our last office manager had a baby, I whipped up this gorgeous card using Adorable Elephants by My Favorite Thing Stamps. Unfortunately, I was a bit late, so it stayed in a drawer until our regular office manager had HER baby.
I used the neutral color combo that I usually use for babies, shades of yellow, grey and white. I love it! And again, it works well with this stamp set. I also love creating background scenes for these types of characters. I feel that it gives it a very story-book look. The inks are all Tim Holtz distress and distress oxide inks. That with my background stencils by My Favorite Things make creating those backgrounds really easy to throw together.
To carry on with the story-book/scene building look, I used a 5.5x11 sheet of paper and scored it as close to thirds as I could (I believe it's 4 and 8) so there is a smaller 3 inch panel in front. What I also love about this is you can create a new layout with every open and close of each panel, plus lots of room for writing, which is great for a lot of co-workers.
Then when it's fully opened, it has a fun and playful look.
I am definitely going to have to do this again. It's just colorful and pretty and I am sure will be well loved by the new momma.

I hope you all are inspired! Thanks for stopping by.

~Brandie~

Eclipse Cards

Hey all!

I have seen a few Eclipse cards (even though I didn't know what they were called for the longest time.) But I finally found them and tried my own spin on them and really need to make more. Which means I maaaay need to purchase more alpha and word dies. These can be done in a variety of ways and are such a versatile design that I could make a ton of them. I wonder how many cards would be a ton......
I had a request for a couple of cards from a friend of mine. A retirement card for an old boss of ours and a thank you card.
With the retirement card I didn't have any retirement stamps so I used my alpha dies to spell out the word. I used the Totally Tropical stamp set from Altenew to create a spray on each corner.
I find the appeal in this card to be the hint of a sentiment. You can sort of see it face on and then as you move the card around it becomes more apparent. Plus using floral images to camouflage and adding some additional die cut flowers just added even more dimension.
Being as the word Retirement was pretty long so the card wound up being 9x4.  It did take a little while because I spent a lot of time masking the flowers, which is something I hadn't done in this great of detail before. I am really happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to try new ideas on this type of card.
Well, I hope you enjoyed!

~Brandie~

Life is Awesome

Hey there, welcome back to my blog. The cold snap has FINALLY released it's grip this week and the sun in shining and I could even enjoy a short walk. How cold is a cold snap? -46 with a wind chill that brought us to -56 at one point. That is in Celsius for any of my American fans who may be reading this.
That translates to : "Holy Damn it's cold!" So with the weather moderately warming up, I don't need to be huddled for warmth with blankets and sweaters watching Netflix on my couch. I am back to my desk and creating. Despite the cold snap breaking, it's still winter. In Northern Alberta it'll be winter for another few months (you read that right). A few ways I like to boycott winter is to make spring and supper type foods (think grilled meat and salads) and creating with a LOT of bright colors and flowers. Makes my desk look all spring and summery.
Keeping with the mini card theme, I created this small set with the stamp and die set "Life is Awesome" and "Geo Frames" by Altenew. I silver embossed the frame and accented the flowers with pearls and Wink of Stella. I opted out of any sentiments as the recipient wanted something more all purpose. So these 3x3 cards can be used as gift tags or small note cards and she is free to use them for whatever the need is.
I matted these on some white woodgrain patterned paper with a hint of glitter paper behind. I also popped the largest flower on a dimensional so it created depth on such a small card.

I hope you enjoyed!

~Brandie~

Little Elephant Cards

Hey there! Welcome back to my blog! Today I am featuring an oldie-but-a-goodie stamp set: Adorable Elephants by My Favorite Things. And adorable they are. These are one of my go-to sets for anything new baby related. I know it's not really 'baby related' in the sense that most baby things I see are either kitties, puppies or teddy bears, but I love the look of these guys. Not only are they cute, but because they are in tones of grey I love using these for gender-neutral cards. Most of my customers request those for baby cards and I found some pretty yellow and grey plaid paper from Recollections by Michael's that work perfectly for these. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough of that paper to make these mini note cards, but I found some scraps from an old paper pad and that worked just as well- and I kept with that whole yellow and grey theme.
These cards measure 3x3 and using the mini pizza boxes and 3x3 envelopes by Stampin' Up! they can be boxed up in a cute gift for a mom to be. These mini sets come 5 in a set and one of my biggest sellers. I used a retired set from Stampin' Up! called "Welcome Baby" for all the sentiments, and the cards are blank on the inside.
I have a lot more of these types of cards to show you, condensing a larger card layout into an adorable mini-version that, once packaged up, are a perfect gift idea. So make sure to come back and thanks for stopping by.

~Brandie~

Classic Pinups

Welcome back! What a chaotic year 2019 was. It seems that everyone else was lamenting it and happy to see it go, whereas I had a bountiful year full of change.
I created a lot more. Did more craft shows and made my side hustle more of a priority. You can follow me on instagram @crafterseden to see current and in process projects.
I started fiction writing again. I wanted to be an author when I was younger. Unfortunately life gets in the way and sometimes your inner voice has this horrible way of squashing dreams. So 20 years after high school I wrote my first short story since and entered into our local contest. Though I didn't win, I did place and that was all I really wanted. So here I am, published. Another goal reached.
And I turned 40. The big Four-Oh. It didn't really bother me to be honest. I have been 'turning forty' for the past year and a half. And now it's here. I am anticipating good things for my fortieth year on the planet. Extending my goals. Writing more. Creating more. Growing more.

I hope that 2020 goes well for all of you as well. Big goals, big dreams- and just crush them all to pieces.

One of my goals this year is to try to use all my stamp sets - especially the batches of new sets I accumulated this past year. One of those sets were the Cheeky Girly Girls set by The Greeting Farm. They are a set of 8 individual pin-up style girls and a few cheeky sentiments. I stamped these before Christmas and then got around to coloring them this past week. It was fun to come up with color combos and make simple thinking of you cards to finish them off. The sentiments are from My Favorite Things.
 Here are four of them for you to check out. Because I enjoy making things match, I kept the same basic layout for each card, but adding different elements to mix it up. Plus using some Recollections Woodgrain paper brought the card set together in a cohesive manner without overpowering the cards. I love the woodgrain paper and I do use it often. It's very versatile in how you can stamp on it and use it as either a background or a focal point.
So I hope you enjoyed this four out of eight in the set. I'll catch you next time!

~Brandie~

Childhood Friends

Hello there!
As I have stated a few weeks back, I have come across Kindred Stamps and they have some great sets based in pop culture. I've already shown you Galactic Adventures (and more to come on those!) but today's set features Childhood Friends. I love the storybook feel of these characters and they would be perfect for any type of project. As I've shown before as well, I created these cute and simple card sets for a silent auction. 5 Simple cards, blank on the inside, with characters that people know and love (yet can't name- copyrite and all ;) )
They are, as I've mentioned, very simple to put together. I just stamped the characters on a simple 3x4 Whisper White cardstock, inking the edges with Tim Holtz Distressed inks. The plaid paper is from My Favorite Things. I did not add any dimmensionals as I wanted these to lay as flat as possible to fit in the Stampin' Up! 5x7 acetate boxes. I then layered them on self created blended backgrounds (again, with Distress Ink).
The tag for the package was a lot of fun to make as well, I used My Favorite Things circle blueprint tag builder and created it as a shaker (not a great photo though) and was able to use each character from the set. I finished off the set with cute epoxy hearts that I found at Michaels, the colors accenting the paper and coloring nicely.

I hope this inspired you all and that you have a great day!

~Brandie~

Pretty Little Fairies

It's no secret that I love any and all things fantasy and fae. And though I am no follower in it, I do enjoy the imagery and stories and art of it all. So when I found Whimsy Stamp Company and saw they had artwork from Sylvia Zee under Wee Stamps, I immediately fell in love. There are a few angels and fairies, and then just cute little characters, and I had to get as many as I could get my hands on. They don't have any dies and with the way the backgrounds are incorporated into the stamp, it would be very hard for me to try and fussy cut, so when I do use these sets, I tend to use a crisp piece of Whisper White cardstock cut into quarters and then I can stamp in the center and either cut it down to the size I need to mat and create a card front with, or die cut with some layering shaped dies.
Coloring these images are a lot of fun as well, but can be tiring. Hunched over with either my copics or my crayola pencils as there are so many delicate areas on these images. But trust me when I saw it's worth it. And, of course, to finish off these beautiful images, you don't need to over do it with embellishments, but you can without taking away from the beauty of the image. I like creating flowers using dies, either Spellbinders or Tim Holtz. Cutting then using my stylus to mold the floral shapes and then layering with Zots or liquid adhesive. Then, if you're like me, you add a bit of stickles bling and you're good to go!
Here are some examples to hopefully inspire you.

Hope you're inspired! Thanks for stopping by.

~Brandie~