Shout Out to SheetLoad

It's been a while since I have stamped and made any cards. Not sure what is up with me but I just got out of the groove and have been dealing with too many other things. BUT I missed my creativity and stamping mojo. How to get it back was the question I faced!

I have several sites that I visit when I need an inspiration boost. One of my favorite is SheetLoad of Cards. They put out a wonderful E-Zine monthly. Not only is it full of inspiration but the really break down how to make their featured card layout giving you measurements and supply lists and everything! Can it get any better when you are in a stamping slump????? I don't think so.

So SheetLoad is where I headed. Each month's E-Zine has a sponsor and it certainly helped inspire me even more when I found that the August SheetLoad E-Zine was sponsored by Sweet & Sassy another of my favorite companies. So it was a twofer inspiration hit!

Now I know that August is almost over, but all monthly E-Zines are archived and they are timeless. So you can refer to them throughout the year. And since it's almost September that means in a few days I'll get even more inspiration!

So what did I do with the inspiration I received from SheetLoad today. Why I made a card of course! I even went out on my own and made a few adjustments to there design which is just fine and in fact is encouraged! The card layout they did was for a square card and I just don't do square cards because I don't have square envelopes. So I played around a bit....see my mojo was returning...and came up with a rectangular card that is the same as their square one.

My other little added touches were using my Cuttlebug embossing folder tho emboss the background and layering my designer paper rectangles. Here's my card. (The Scalloped oval color did not scan well IRL it is much redder rather than the purple it shows up here And the oval is Shara Sand which is much browner than the blue it looks here.) I finally used some of my new Stampin' Up In Color card stock and I love it. I used Crushed Curry and Soft Suede. The third card stock color I used is Purely Pomegranate, a retired In Color. The Designer Papers are also from SU and are scraps I had left over from other projects. The ribbon is Purely Pomegranate double stitch ribbon and I used various SU and Marvey punches as well as my rectangle Nestabilities to punch out my shapes.

A wonderful side benefit of going to SheetLoad for my inspiration is I now have the pieces for 7 more cards cut and ready to assemble. I will do so using different sentiments so I have a selection of cards to use for almost any occasion. So if you have never been to the SheetLoad site why not do so now. You to may find wonderful inspiration there whether you want to make one card or multiples. They have the ideas.

August E-zine
SheetLoad main site.

I hope that now I have broken the ice and gotten back into my stamp room that I will be present here in the future more than I have been recently. See you soon!

A SHEET LOAD OF CARDS!

Today was a day full of card designing and then cutting and preparations for a big card making workshop at my church tomorrow morning. We will be making cards that will be sent to Cards For Heros. At this time I am expecting 10 women and we will be working for two hours making cards. Most of these women have little if any experience making cards so I decided the best bet was to design a batch of cards and then do all the gathering of materials for them and do the cutting of the elements. So today I came up with 5 designs for the Heros and 2 card designs for Valentine cards. (Since tomorrow is Valentine's Day I said that anyone coming to help could make a Valentine Card to take home and give to a special person in their life!)

Very early on in my planning I decided that I would use some card sketches I have been collecting. The first place to go to find a design was my stand-by favorite site for making multiple cards of the same design: SHEET LOAD OF CARDS! They make it so easy because not only do they give you the sketch, but a materials needed list and a cutting chart. So the first card I am showcasing here used the sketch from the February 2009 Sheetload E-Zine. I doubled their "recipe" and now have 15 cards ready to be made plus the sample I put together. Here is the card........

It's on a white card base and all the card stock and papers are retired SU products. I know the card stock colors are True Thyme and Cinnamon Crisp, both 2006-07 In Colors. The designer papers I think were from a Simply Scrapping kit but I'm not sure. The stamps are from SU and Inkadoo. (The Inkadoo stamp is the scroll image in the corners.) I'm pretty sure both of the SU stamps are retired ones. I colored the flowers with BIC markers. I let people use a lot of my stuff, but my COPICS and SU markers are not included in my generosity; so they get to use my Sharpies and BIC markers tomorrow.

They also will be able to use my plain old colored pencils tomorrow and those are what I used on the second card.
This card is all Stampin' Up products. It is a mix of current and retired. Though the only things current are the Summer Sun and Garden Green card stocks and the brads. Both stamps I used are retired. The main image is from Nice and Easy Notes and the background is Print Pattern. I know both those names because they are both among my all time favorites.

Tomorrow I will show you the two Valentine's Cards I designed for them. They are both quite simple, but each use the wonderful handmade papers I have. So please come on back........thanks for visiting now!

A SHOUT OUT TO SHEETLOAD!

Two posts in one night...well really two posts in one hour. It takes something special for me to do that and this is pretty special. I want to tell you about SheetLoad of Cards. It's a great site with great helps and layouts for when you need to make a set of cards of the same design. I love it. Their designs are fantastic and I don't have to do any guessing of the measurements of the pieces. They do all that. Also they give you lots and lots of samples of how other designers used that same layout. All of this comes in a wonderful monthly E-zine.

I've also used there layouts to make just one card. And I go back and use layouts from past issues of the E-zine in a new way. The most recent layout I used was from their July issue Christmas in July. But I used it to make a Christmas card in December. You can see it in my BLOG entry here. It is the second card shown in this entry. For other things I done look for SheetLoad in my labels. There are probably others from before I started labeling items as well, but those will be harder to find.

You can see and download a copy of their January E-zine here. Check them out. Also anytime you are visiting me and would like to get to SheetLoad of Cards site just click on there "blinkie" on my right hand side bar. It will magically take you there.

Oh and to be totally upfront and honest, though I honestly do love there site and E-zine, by giving them a shout out and sharing them with you I can be entered into a drawing for some wonderful JustRite products. Another company I love!!!!!

WINTER KIT

I have a number birthday cards that need to be mailed out this month. So I thought I would make them with a winter theme.

The Stampin' FLYBaby Winter Craft Kit supplied me with the perfect papers and embellishments for this project. I was also able to put to use my Cuttlebug.

The first card I made features snowflakes and snowmen. (Not that we see much of either here in Maryland lately.) I combined embellishments from the kit on a background embossed using my snowflake embossing folder . Of course with that much snow you have to have snowmen!

The snowflakes were covered in glitter and I ran them through my smaller Xyron to put adhesive on the back of them. The cute little snow men are made of felt and I cut the three off a 12 inch boarder strip. I adheared them with mini glue dots. To give the embossed cardstock background a softer look I rubbed Blue Bayou ink carefully over the embossing using a sponge.

For the second card I pulled out my brand new circle nesties....thank you Nate!...I used them to create a background for the snowflake. The layout for this card came from the SheetLoad of Cards Christmas in July e-Zine. You can find it by clicking on the SheetLoad Archives and downloading July 08.

On both of these cards the only stamping is the sentiment. The interest comes from the papers and the embelishments rather than an image. I'm happy with both cards. Especially since they will each be going to a mail I don't think they will be considered to "girlie".

Well that's it for today. Not sure yet what tomorrow will bring........

STAMPIN' SUNDAY

Last Sunday I went to the home of a fellow SU demo along with several others. We are part of the same downline group but haven't been together in quite some time since our "fearless" leader has moved to Florida. As part of the gathering we had a shoebox swap.

These are two of the projects we did. The pink is the one I designed. It is actually a design based on the July Sheet Load of Cards design. I love Sheet Load of Cards and for putting together a shoebox swap it's perfect. They've provided all the measurements for you. Just need to gather the supplies and cut........

I did a lot of embossing on this card. I just love to emboss.....The medallion in the circle is embossed with silver powder on silver ink. The sentiment is embossed with clear powder over Tempting Turquoise craft ink. The most fun though was the scalloped strip was stamped with Versamark ink and then embossed with clear powder. I did it on the newBaja Breeze paper and then sponged over the whole strip with Pacific Point ink. Then I took a tissue and buffed off the ink that was on top of the embossed part of the image. The ink will not stick to the embossing it just rubs right off.

I used the new scalloped boarder punch on the two sides of the strip. This is so much easier and nicer than using the corner rounder punch without the guide. I absolutely love it!
These are the projects that one of the other gals designed for us to make. They are a card on the left and a post it note holder on the right. All new In Cololrs here--Pacific Point and Kiwi Kiss. I'm loving these colors. I am amazed when the first pictures of them came out that I didn't like them. They are all awesome!The fun thing about the card project here is we got to play with the Big Shot which is a new SU product that will be available I think September 2. IT is a die cutting machine. I doubt I will get one becasue I already have a Cuttlebug. I will be getting some of the dies though to use with my bug! I love them...sign what don't I love. We also used the new stamp set, Pocket Silhouettes. It's a really neat set and you know what from now through September 30 you can get it and other great new sets for 15% off. Isn't that awesome! Interested??? Ask your Stampin' Up Demonstrator. If you don't have a SU demonstrator ask me! Feel free to also ask about the Big Shot and cutting dies.

Tomorrow I'll shar with you a few more of the projects we made last Sunday.

SPRING & SHEETLOAD

A card celebrating spring.

This is another card made using a template for cutting found on SheetLoad of Cards. Is was the January issue of the e-zine.

I had to make cards for a Spring Floral swap in SCS with my FLYBaby stamping friends. I really had fun making these. Since the basic layout and sizes to cut were all planned out for me it left me free to use my time coming up with techniques and other design elements to use. I came up with a lot to use.

I embossed the purple card stock using my cuttlebug. I rolled the green cardstock with my rough edges jumbo wheel, dug out my retired Botanicals set for the flower stamp that I then colored using my watercolor pencils and embossed around the colored image. and I used ribbon with the wonderful little ribbon slides.

I had planned to place the set of five layers (first layer being the purple floral DP) on a ivory 6x5 inch card base. When I laid it out I didn't really like the starkness of the ivory background so I sponged it with Perfect Plum classic ink. That was better, but know I felt that there was not enough definition between the DP layer and the sponged card. With 5 layers on the card already I really didn't want to add another so I tried outlining the glued down layer using the perfect plum marker. I simply ran the brush end of the marker right along the edge of the DP. I thought it worked pretty well.

The finishing touch on the card was stamping "happy birthday" on the DP in Elegant Eggplant craft ink and then embossing with clear embossing powder. I used the birthay sentiment from Brithday Whimsy. This was the final technique and element on the card. Now I need to get them to the PO tomorrow.

Card Recipe:
Stamp Sets--Botanicals, Birthday Whimsy (both SU retired)
Papers--Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, and Ivory CS, Retired SU DSDP Carte Postale coordinate?
Inks--Perfect Plum and Certainly Celery Classic, Elegant Eggplant Craft, Black Stazon
Accessories--Mellow Moss Gingham Checked Ribbon, Silver Ribbon Slide, Cuttlebug and embossing Folders, Perfect Plum Marker, Sponge, Ivory card and Envelope, Clear Detail Embossing Powder

CARDS FOR OUR HEROES/SHEET LOAD OF CARDS

Here are two of the cards that we made last Saturday for the Cards for Heroes. They are the ones that I used the Sheet Loads of Cards templates for. The Love You card is from the April issue of their ezine.

I am working on using up some old patterned papers that have been hanging around way to long so I have no idea whose they are ore where or when I obtained them. I do know they are not Stampin' Up as they do predate my SU days.....
The card stock is SU's Elegant Eggplant and Lovely Lilac. And the Sentiment is from the retired set A Light Heart. This is the set SU had for the American Heart Association a while back. The rhinestone brads are from Oriental Trading Co which for bulk card production are much more affordable than SU's. I do love Stampin' Up but sometimes their embellishments can be a bit pricey....After layering all the various pieces I then mounted them on some large card blanks I had that also have been hanging around too long. These are the value packs of cards and envelopes that you can get from craft stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby.

The second card is from the November issue of the ezine. It's a bit harder to find on the BLOG to download as they started a new BLOG in December of last year. You can go here and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the post. Or you can go to their front page of the BLOG and on the left there is a link to their archives of past magazines. Look for November and down load.

Once again I am using up old patterned paper....got to make room for new you know....The stamp I used is one I picked up at the going out of business sale of our local Stamp store...so sad...I don't know what company it is from as it was a demo stamp of the stores and has been used so much the marking on the wood are worn off. But I love the scrolls on it. The ribbon is a $1 roll from Michaels. Once a gain I love SU's ribbon, but some times you just find a nice one else where. This has a wonderful gold edge to it.

Sorry the scan here is a bit crocked. The card itself is straight. The card stock I used is SU and it is Certainly Celery and Lavender Lace with the sentiment stamped with Lavender Lace on Whisper White. Everything is places on a Whisper White 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 top fold card.

So there you have it. We also made two other card designs which were my own designs. For some reason I don't think I scanned them. I guess I was so excited about showing how I used Sheet Loads of Cards and also in a hurry to get them mailed out in time for them to make it overseas to be used for Mother's Day. Trust me though these were the better of the four......