Gum Wrapper and More A Muse Studio Sneak Peeks

I have to say right off the bat that I love this project. We made these at my friend Jen Pitta's stamp club on Thursday. I decided to borrow the template and A Muse-ify it! :) "Gum wrapper" seems like I dumb name for them, but I couldn't come up with anything better. lol.

 This is the one I made in my video tutorial, which you can watch further down in this post. I sort of had Valentine's Day in the back of my mind when I designed it, but it could definitely be used for other occasions. I used a new stamp set called Keep Calm, which you may have already seen if you read my blog. I'm kind of in love with this set. I also used Grapefruit, which is one of the new colors in the redesigned Winter Signature Palette, as well as the Venetian patterned cardstock in Titian.

I had birthday party favor in mind when I designed this one. It uses another new stamp set called Big Celebrations, which has these awesome big block numbers. And I used two more new colors: Lido from the Venetian collection, and Seattle, which is a new mid-tone gray that fits between Pebble and Slate in the Basic Signature Palette.

And, if you like what you see, here's the video tutorial for the project.


Don't forget, the new 2012 A Muse Studio Catalog and Inspiration Guide will be active as of midnight on February 1st! You'll be able to see all the new goodies in my webstore. And you will be seeing a lot of the new products featured here in the coming weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!

Inspiration is a funny thing...

This card might not exist if I had a dryer.

Now hold on, let me fill you in. You know those small, thinly woven gloves you can get at the dollar store? My husband and I have a few pairs of those that we wear when we hang laundry on the clothesline in the winter. My mom gave us a couple new pairs for Christmas, and I pulled one of them out for the first time yesterday. As I was hanging the wash, I started looking at my hands and thinking about the colors on the gloves. It wasn't a color combination I'd ever have chosen on my own, but I decided I really liked it. So I finished hanging the laundry, came inside, and made a card. :)

I used a bunch of new A Muse Studio products on this card that will be available to order on February 1st. Two new colors: Grapefruit and Seattle. New stamp set: Big Celebrations. Trust me, friends, there's some seriously awesome stuff coming!

Oh, and I used a tutorial from Jennifer McGuire to make the chevron pattern. Good stuff.

Hope you had a great weekend! Who's excited for Downton Abbey tonight? :-D

Papertrey Projects

Super quick post today - Just wanted to share a few cards I made with some new-ish Papertrey Ink stamps! :)

Have a beautiful day!

Clean and Simple Cardmaking Day 3

On Day 3 of class, Jennifer showed us a fun way to do tone-on-tone cards with die cuts. She layered several sheets of cardstock die cuts together to create dimension. Then I saw another card that a classmate, Tomoe Inoue, created with colored cardstock layered under white. I love the look of white-on-white layering, but frankly it scares me. But I thought this might make the technique a little more accessible.

You can see the dimension and a hint of the color from the front. But check it out from the side!

This is such a fun technique! A lot of work (especially with this intricate doily die cut!), but it's a great result!

Oh yeah, and this card was also inspired by a Papertrey Ink release project by Jessica Witty. :)

A Valentine's Sketch

I recently came across a super cute and super super simple card by Heather Campbell on the Paper Smooches blog. I immediately pinned it, thinking it would be perfect to use as a sketch. Well, lo and behold, it did not just go to Pinterest Purgatory like so many other "brilliant ideas" - I actually used it as inspiration for a card within a few days! :)

I have to say, I am in love with the new Gnome Sweet Gnome set from Stampin' Up! :) I also used new Basic Grey Kissing Booth collection paper that I got from Simon Says Stamp's cardmaking kit. Have you seen it? The February kit sold out, but you can get a subscription that will start with next month's kit. I got Studio Calico's kits for about a year and I LOVED them, but often had trouble using them as a cardmaker. The Simon Says kits are designed for cardmaking, and they're designed by Kristina Werner! Hello! Total cardmaking perfection! :) Go check 'em out if you haven't already.

See you again soon!

Clean & Simple Cardmaking Day 10 + More A Muse Studio Peeks

Day 10 of the Clean and Simple Cardmaking class was all about card sets. Clean and Simple lends itself to card sets for obvious reasons... Since they're not technique-heavy and usually don't have much in the way of fancy embellishments, they're quick and easy to create multiples of. And it just so happens that one of the brand new A Muse Studio stamp sets was practically made for a CAS notecard set! :)

I love this stamp set! There's also a 2-step Union Jack stamp that I think will be super fun to do some Andy Warhol style effects with :) I also wanted to feature some of the new colors in this card set... Grape, Grapefruit, Pistachio, and Lido, Bellini, and Burano from the Venetian Collection. The Venetian Collection colors are a little more neon-looking in real life than they look online, but they're still super fun, bright colors.

One of the tips from the class was to try a smaller size card - like a 4-bar, which is 3.5x5 inches. I decided to try that for these cards, since a lot of the everyday stationery notecards you can purchase are about that size. It's perfect to jot off a quick note. And then there's another tip from the class that I didn't follow... How important it is to make sure that your technique and construction are as perfect as possible because it's so much more obvious on a CAS card. If you look closely, you can see that I should have used an anti-static treatment before I white embossed the stamp! Oh well! :)

One more quick announcement before I let you go: The A Muse Studio National Convention was this weekend and the gals that went were the first to get the new catalog as well as more new products. Check out my facebook page for some of the photos they've been posting from Convention!

Thanks for stopping by!

A New Distress Ink Technique

During a recent Clean and Simple Cardmaking class, Jennifer shared a Distress Ink technique where you get the blending foam wet and, essentially, create watercolor on your ink blending tool. I absolutely had go give it a try! It's a very easy and very impactful technique for CAS cards. Totally messy, but tons of fun :)

See you next time!

Valentine Card Drive for St. Jude

I just discovered this amazing card drive, organized by Winter Sims. She's collecting Valentines to send to children at St. Jude Hospital, as well as three other hospitals (and counting!). This is a wonderful cause and I urge you to check out the details on Winter's blog and send a little extra love to some heroic kiddos this Valentine's Day. Be aware, there are some specific details the hospital has set forth that you need to follow, so read the blog post carefully.

Here are the cards I'm sending :)

So now you're heading over to Winter's blog to check out the details, and then you're off to make some cards, right? ;)

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great week!

A Muse Studio Sneak Peek!

Just got my hands on some of the brand new A Muse Studio 2012 goodies! There are 9 new colors - 4 new Signature colors and 5 in the Venetian collection. There's a new pattern of cardstock that coordinates with the Venetian collection, and awesome new stamp sets! The catalog will debut to the public on February 1st, and believe me, you will not be disappointed!

Check out the first card I made with the new items :)

I wanted to try something new to me - emboss resist with pigment ink. I have to be honest, my least favorite thing about A Muse Studio is the inks. Don't get me wrong, they're great quality inks in awesome colors. I just wish they hadn't chosen to carry exclusively pigment inks. When you're just stamping, they have a great look - kind of like chalk inks - but you just can't do a lot of the inking techniques unless you're using a dye ink. So I decided I needed to figure out the techniques that can be done with pigment inks! Emboss resist is definitely one of them, but the embossed areas won't wipe completely clean. In this case, it worked well with the soft, smudgy look I was going for.

Supplies:
- A Muse Studio solid cardstock in Lido (available 2/1) and Sugar (available now)
- A Muse Studio Venetian patterned cardstock in Lido (available 2/1)
- A Muse Studio ink in Lido and Burano (available 2/1) and Fern (available now)
- A Muse Studio Charming Gardeners stamp set (available 2/1)
- Other supplies: Nestabilities Labels 8 dies, various gems and pearls, mini sponge daubers, white embossing powder, heat tool

Stay tuned for more! :)

Clean and Simple Cardmaking

 
Today is day 2 of Kristina, Jennifer, and Julie's Clean and Simple Cardmaking online class and I am already loving it! They started out on day 1 with three sketches - what a perfect way to start for those of us who really struggle with CAS cards! And I actually sat down and made a card with one of the sketches! :)

I really struggle with white space, so instead of leaving it actually white, I used some large stamps to create a background.

In her post and video, Kristina talked a lot about using masking to create interest, and also ways to use die cuts creatively. So I decided to use both these techniques on my card.

It may be only day two, but so far I'm really loving this class and I've got high hopes for a lot of learning and improving on my part! :)