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. :)

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!

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! :)