You Make Me Feel Existentially Dizzy Card

So, I'm pretty excited about this card! I came up with this (minorly sentimental, majorly off-kilter) sentiment when I was walking in the rain a few weeks ago, actually. I love thunderstorms, and I was trying to come up with something that described my exhilaration. And then a few days ago, an idea for a card popped into my head! Ta-Da! Low on products, high on impact, what is up?! 

 I used a stipple brush, something like this to put the paint on, and now looking back at the picture, I see you can really tell near the bottom of the circle where the paint pattern gets a little repetitive, as if I had used the clone tool in photoshop really poorly.  Gah, note to self: turn the stipple brush, Antonia, turn it!

Anyway, I started out with a basic card base, and just started stippling blue and black acrylic paint onto the card directly. It bowed out a little so I heated it with my heat gun.

You can really see the effect the stippling motion has on the paint here: it brings a sort of rough texture to the card, which I really liked the look of.

I just put some paint on a post-it (for easy clean up) and mixed light blue and black together to create a deep blue and put that on the card in a rough circle. After I filled the circling in with a straight up and down stippling motion, I added some black paint without mixing to give the paint a varied sort of sky-gradient. I just love how it turned out!

Then I hand-lettered the sentiment, taking care to keep everything centered, while embracing a sort of free-er look by not drawing any guidelines ahead of time! I also made a mistake, which you can see in the picture above a little. I accidentally wrote "YOU" instead of "MAKE," but I wiped it off with a baby wipe before it got too dry.

Then, once the letters were dried, I added in stars and dots. Done.

SUPPLIES
Stipple Brush
Black Acrylic Paint
Light Blue Folk Art Acrylic Paint
Gold Sakura Gelly Roll Pen
White Sakura Gelly Roll Pen
Recollections Value Pack Cardstock Paper in Kraft 

Heat Gun

Bone folder

Provocraft Paper Trimmer

Mistletoe Card

Hey everyone! Today I’m sharing a non-seasonal card. I thought about saving it until a more appropriate time, like July or something ,(what, you don’t celebrate Christmas in July?) but then I thought , hey, I’ve got it, I might as well show you!

This card started out because I was inspired by the tiny branch stamp in the Hero Arts Sentiment stampset. It’s tiny and funky, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, so I did some practices stamping to create twiggy wreaths and bushes. Then I realized I could pretend that the little sprig of branches was mistletoe!

So I quickly stamped out the tiny bush, colored the berries red with a Martha Stewart Art and Craft Marker, and clear embossed the berries by using my Zip embossing pen to go over the red berries.

I thought it needed a bow, so I stamped one from the Martha Stewart Peg Stamping starter kit on red paper. I gave it some dimension by inking it in Versamark, and then inking the edges only with Versafine Onynx Black. I cut everything out, and adhered the two pieces together with Scotch foam poster tape (same as stuff like pop-dots, but cheaper!) I then set it aside for a  few days—I wasn’t really planning on doing much with it.

 But then a few days later, I came up with the most hilarious line to go with it, so of course, I had  to make this!

Supplies

Recollections Value Pack Cardstock in Kraft

Colorbök Textured Cardstock in Cool Earthtones

Colorbök Textured Cardstock in Cool Earthtones

Martha Stewart Peg Stamping Starter Kit (bow stamp)

Hero Arts Sentiment Stamps

Versafine Ink in Onynx Black

Versamark Stamp Pad

Black Pen

T-Square Ruler

Poster Tape

Cutter Bee Scissors

Clear Embossing Powder

Heat Gun

Bone Folder

Martha Stewart Art and Craft Markers

ZIG Embossing Pen

Tombow Mono Adhesive

Triangle "Thanks" Card

Hey, everyone! 

Today I'm bringing you the triangles en masse!

Sometimes, fads come and go fairly quickly, but they’re really fun to play with. If you want to keep your budget low, and your stash small, duplicate these patterns by using what you do have a lot of: paper. And your favorite stamps can even create patterns for you.

So this week, I'm doing triangles, a trend I'm seeing quite often!

I’ve been living with less and less pattern paper, the more years I live at college, and that’s never stopped awesome cards. But I still want to play with today’s trends. This card was inspired partially by bold prints in clothes like this, but also there's a triangle die-cut that was released  recently by Simon Says Stamp that I saw all over Wednesday's blog hop that I have been dying to copy. Hence this card!

I originally had glued all of these triangles to my card base and stamped a tiny "thank you" next to it, but then the stamp didn't transfer, I tried to stamp twice, and was off, and was forced to rethink the whole thing. But I like the circles, I think it made the whole thing a little cooler, a little more off-kilter. In my next post, I'll share a card that was inspired by the salvaged remains of the card, even though I ended up actually not using any of the rest of the card!

Supplies:
Recollections Value Pack Cardstock Neutrals (Cream and Gray)
Colorbök Cool Earth Toness & Warm EarthTones (Orange and Green Shapes)
Cutter Bee Scissors
Black Pen
Martha Stewart Simple Circle Cutter
American Crafts Thanks 
Colorbox Fluid Chalk Ink in Charcoal
Tombow Mono Adhesive Dispenser
Bone folder

I'm like a Zombie Card

So I made this card a little while ago, mostly because I thought it was hilarious! I love the idea of zombies being romantic. Plus, when I made it, I had just seen that new Zombie/RomCom movie, Warm Bodies. Granted, it's not the greatest movie ever, or greatest Zombie Rom/Com even (my vote goes to Zombieland). Anyway, I spent a few days on this card: All images started out as sketches in pencil on notebook paper, and got transferred to cardstock, inked and colored by hand.

So no stamps--it's all me, today!

I did all the inking with a ink pen from my Grandpa's Realty business, and all coloring with my Inkssentials Ink Blending Tool. The Zombie hand uses purple (Colorbox Chalk Ink in Wisteria), Green (Martha Stewart Crafts Ink in Palm--it's from an ink pad set of 6 that isn't made anymore) and brown (Distress Ink in Tea Dye).


Then I cut everything out by hand.

I also did the lettering myself, by hand. Nice, huh?

The brain uses red ink (some cheapo inkpad I got forever ago that has no brand name on it) and purple ink (Colorbox Chalk Ink in Wisteria) in addition to the generic black pen.

Here you can see the whole layout of the card: it's a double fold, tri-panel card, and I think it's totally worth the effort!

A close-up of my hand-lettering.

I'm obviously still massively obsessed with handwriting, since I saw Kristina Werner post about it  for Valentine's Day.

Here's the sketch for this card:

I spent quite a bit of time trying to sketch a few different versions of my hand!

Supply List

Colorbox Chalk Ink in Wisteria
Mysterious Generic Red Pigment Ink Pad
Martha Stewart Pigment Ink in Palm (no longer made)
Distress Ink in Tea Dye
black ink pen
8.5"x11" Recollections Value Pack Cardstock Paper in Kraft (basically this)
8.5"x11" Recollections Value Pack Cardstock Paper in Neutral

What Makes a Good Crafting Blog?

I've been thinking a lot about this question recently, mostly because on Emily Branch's website, she talks a lot about her goals.

I just started following her, and from what I gather, her blog just got a huge overhaul. In fact, as she says in this post, about her previous blog:

I wasn't designing for my brand. I wasn't making a name for me. Heck, I had been blogging for two years, with no changes in readership or influence. These questions and this top ten number one point also motivated me to re-brand Emily Branch Designs, offering new content designed to help you, the reader understand your brand, expand your readership and enjoy the being the divine crafter that you are.

My Response

I totally get what she's saying about her previous content not being inspiring. Now she's got all of these tutorials, top 10 lists, and how to blog better posts. And that's got me thinking, should I be trying to create all of these different types of posts? 

But today, I struck a pact with myself: I'm cool with doing a lot of simple project posts, where I share what I've been working on, for one big reason: that what I crave on other blogs: I get inspired by looking at a lot of other cool projects. So turns out, I'm cool with being uncomfortable with focusing on this targeted type of content aimed at improving crafters. I'm here to inspire and share.

 I mean, don't get me wrong, she's got some cool things to say. This post, about blog design, has me rethinking my backdrop and header. So, no fear, I'm trying to listen to what she's saying!

What I'm Planning

What I am thinking now, though, is that I do notice top trends and new techniques and stuff like that. And I enjoy sharing when I do unusual stuff myself. So in my longer posts, I'll probably alternate a bit between projects, and how-tos/fyi posts/ruminations about crafting. And in between, when the though strikes me, there'll be stuff like this, where I'm telling you my thoughts on crafty-things.

I'm also looking forward to some of my how-tos to be abou how to simulate new trends with older materials. As a college student, I'm crafting on a budget, with a limited supply. I don't like to order a lot of stuff online, and the nearest craft store that isn't Walmart is probably an hour away. But I like it that way. Keeping my materials basic and simple puts limits on me and forces creativity. So I have a lot to say about how to repurpose basic supplies for new trends, like that geometrical pattern stuff that's been so popular in fashion and in stamping right now. (Lawn Fawn is driving me crazy with envy about those arrow stamps: I think I'm going to have to do something with arrows and triangles very soon! And even fashion week is down on geometrical patterns. I mean, look at all of those flower fabrics complimented by bold, graphic shapes. And that's followed by the models in bold, graphic stripes. Super exciting, as far as I'm concerned!)