Happy Halloween!

Hope you have a wonderfully spooky day my friends!!

YouTube Challenge

The Club Scrap Artist Team was challenge to choose a video from the Club Scrap YouTube Channel as inspiration for our project this month.  I choose the Triple Easel Card Tutorial. I've made easel cards with one and two stand up's but never 3 so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to check out this card style and give it a go!

Tricia used the Adirondacks kit from May 2017 but I decided to incorporate elements from this month's Scandinavia kit on my cards.

These cards are so much fun because you can add so many different elements/images to each panel. I even added a few dimensional items without it being too bulky to close.  I did a bit of math for you since the cuts from the original video/instructions were for a whole set of papers and made 12 cards in 3 different styles.

Here's what you need for each card:

These pieces make up the base -

(1) - 4.25 x 5.5
(2) - 3.75 x 4.25 - position so the 4.25 side is vertical and score each at 1.25  & 2.5
(1) - 4.25 x 5 - position so the 4.25 is vertical and score at 1.25 & 2.5

Glue according to the video.

Panels for each pop-up working from front of the card to the back -

(1) - 2 x 4.25
(1) - 1.75 x 4

(1) 2.5 x 4.25
(1) 2.25 x 4

(1) 3 x 4.25
(1) 2.75 x 4

Layer the mat and insert for each pop-up. Decorate each panel as desired and affix to the card.

The next stop on the hop is:

Tina

The complete list of artists can be found here:

CS Artist Team - YouTube Challenge

YouTube CHALLENGE BONUS....

If you visited my blog last week you'll recall that I made a "book" looking box filled with cards...

That idea was sparked by the Stacked Book Box Project tutorial which was offered for this kit - Stacked Book Box Kit from 2015. I LOVED making that project, it was so much fun so I thought I would adapt it to making stacked card boxes out of cardstock.  A few people asked how I made it so here's what I did to create....

my own stacked book box - card version of the project!!!

Large = A7 cards; Medium = A2 cards; Small = A1 cards

Since the original project was made from book board I had to improvise and come up with my own pattern for making these boxes and I figured out a wicked easy trick to make this box for any size cards you want.  You simply add 4" to the starting card dimensions.  So if you're making a box for 4.25 x 5.5" cards - the cardstock for the box will need to be 8.25 x 9.5"; A7 box - 5x7 cards - cut the cardstock at 9 x 11.  It's that easy!

Once you've cut your cardstock you'll score each side at 3/4" and 1 3/4".  You'll notice the X's in each corner. Trim these from the cardstock.

Cut where the 4 lines are drawn in pencil.

Burnish each fold line; apply glue where indicated.

Fold and glue the two long side panels; you will notice a small tab on each end of the long panels - fold the tabs towards the center of the box; lift one end side wall up, fold over the tabs and adhere it  back on it's self as shown in the photo securing the two tabs.  Repeat on the other end.

You now have a box that is large enough to accommodate the envelopes for your chosen size card with a bit of wiggle room. Each box will be 1" deep which will hold about 4-10 cards and envelopes (which all depends on how thick your cards are).  I fit in all 8 of the cards (and envies) shared on the previous blog hop in the initial box, only 4 of the triple easel cards fit into the same size box but that's because each card was so thick due to the layers and embellishments once finished.

To make the book "cover" you need to cut the cardstock as follows: 

Length (widest part) - add 1/2" 

Width - Double + 1 3/8"

Score the cover so you have 1 1/8" spine in the center.

Adhere the box so the left side of the box is aligned with the spine which should leave 1/4" on the remaining 3 sides of the box.

I did have to add an extra piece of cardstock for the cover of the A7 box, I needed 12 3/8" so I just cut a 3 1/2" spine piece and affixed the front and back portion of the cover to it.  I added the dark grey liner to the insides of the cover to hid that extra bit of seaming.  This lining also adds a bit of structure  and stability to the cover as well.

Hope you give it a try!

Supplies:

Club Scrap - Cardstock, pattern paper, embellishments

Imagine - Memento Dye Ink; VersaMagic Ink

Build a Prickly Pear

Today I wanted to share some cards I made using the Build a Prickly Pear Cactus set from Rubber Stamp Tapestry...

I had fun with this card - stamped the cactus & weeds then watercolored all around. It was fun to work with the layers of color to get this look. 

Just because I could - LOL!!

This is my attempt at CAS cacti - I started off with just the cactus, then I had to add the branches and it still looked too bare so I added the flowers & sentiment....  Still not enough so I flicked on some blue watercolor speckles...  Still didn't look good then I added just a few black pen strokes on the sentiment and I was finally satisfied with it!  What do you think?

Supplies:

Rubber Stamp Tapestry - Build A Prickly Pear

Imagine - Memento Dye Ink; VersaMagic Ink, Kaleidacolor

Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolor Paint

Washi Tape

Foamiran or Silk Foam Rose Shortcuts

So I keep seeing references to foamiran or silk foam flowers everywhere and I had to find out about it so I did some looking around, watched a couple videos and sourced it out.  It's basically a really thin, mold-able sheet foam that folks are using to make all sorts of flowers from. There aren't many tutorials about it and the videos I've seen usually require you to use many, many steps to make a flower I thought of a couple really easy shortcuts that I want to share with you today.

I wanted to make a rose because they are so very pretty when finished.  I do have a few comments at the bottom about other flowers.

CUTTING THE FLOWER PARTS

The first thing I noticed is that most people are using stencils to trace petals then hand cut. Now you can make this process much quicker by doing one of two things - the first you could of course use dies to cut several petals very quickly. I'm a bit cheap (o.k. a lot cheap) and the foam is somewhat expensive so I nixed this idea...I may use it on more complicated flowers that I have dies for but I'm not sure yet.  OR you can wing it and free-hand cut them which is what I did. 

I started out by cutting 2 strips of the foam - I actually fold the foam up so it was about 4" wide and just snipped through it once to make a strip. I cut 2 strips - one 1.5" wide and a strip 2" wide. I then took the folded up strips and cut them into petals which yielded as follows:

1.5" strip - cut into 1.25" rectangles (yield - 16 petals)

2" strip - cut into 1.5" rectangles (yield - 12 petals)

Once all of the petals were cut I simply rounded the edges as shown above.  By doing it this way there is very little waste as you can see from the photo above.

Note: I cut the foam in 4's to make quicker work of this step.

ADDING COLOR

I didn't want to go the red rose route, I wanted something a bit different so I googled roses and saw a pretty rose that was yellow in the center with pink edges. It looked lovely so I went with it.  This foam can be colored with lots of different mediums - oil pastels, pan pastels, ink, etc. I choose to use VersaMagic ink by Imagine. It has a matte finish and the colors are softer and a bit muted which I thought would create a more realistic finished product.

So I used sponge daubers to color the centers of each petal with Thatched Straw (a medium butter yellow), I surrounded the yellow with Pixie Dust (light pink) and edged each petal with Pink Petunia (a darker dusty pink).   You don't have to use so many colors but I figured if I was going to do it I might as well go all out.

SHAPING THE PETALS

I saw lots of people pressing the petals against a hot iron then rolling the petals up into a really tight wad - letting it cool then unrolling then shaping. Don't get me wrong, this is fine but it's VERY time consuming. 

I thought about it and came up with an easier way to get realistic looking petals in a snap....what's the secret...veining molds!!!  What are veining molds?  They are a nifty tool used by bakers to make fondant flowers. Usually a 2 part silicone mold with a positive & negative piece. You place a leaf or petal on one part and the second piece is placed over top and pressed together. The result is a realistic double sided petal or leaf. It gives amazing detail and looks so realistic after it is pressed.

These puppies cut the shaping time down by 75-80%. 

Most veining molds are usually made from heat resistant silicone so it's perfect for this process...  All you do is place a petal in the bottom part of the mold, hit it for a few seconds with a heat tool to soften the foam then cover with the second part of the mold, press and you're done!  The whole shaping process takes just seconds!!!

You'll notice that this mold is much larger than my petals which is perfectly fine. You just place the petal in the area that you want the petal to look like.  I used one of the curved areas for the smaller petals and varied the location with the larger petals to get several different looks.  You can do this with all of the molds/petals/leaves.

It is wicked fast and the petals come out looking amazing!

You could leave the petals as is but since I was making a rose I choose to add one more step where I rolled some edges (the heat from your fingers will help hold it's shape) and stretched other areas to give that wavy look that some rose petals have.

Above show the progress of each petal - bottom cut & inked; top left - pressed in the mold for a couple seconds and top right - edges were rolled &/or stretched.  An amazing transformation don't you think?

Don't worry if some of the petals get folded over a bit in the press. I had one that did so but it looks cool and you know nature isn't perfect - there are bug holes, bends, tears, etc. It's life - this happens.

FLOWER ASSEMBLY

Now that I have all of the petals ready to go (I also made a few leaves) and a stem to build my rose around we're ready to start putting it all together.  You need something to build the rose around - some people just start gluing petals together but I saw a Russian lady (sorry don't have a clue what her name was because it was in Russian) who had a piece of floral wire with tin foil wrapped in a ball. It worked for her so I did something similar but wrapped my foil in a tear drop shape which lends it's self better to the rose (IMO).

So I started off and wrapped my first petal and affixed it to the foil with hot glue. I then turned the stem a bit and wrapped/glued on the 2nd petal. It looks like a great beginning for a rose.

I continued to add petals making sure to over lap the petals just a bit.  This is after 5 petals have been added.

And just continued from there until I was satisfied with the look.  I ended up using 12 of the small petals and 7 of the larger ones.  I think I may have enough petals left over to make a smaller rose bud.

And here is my finished rose.....

it ended up measuring approx.  3" wide and 2" tall (minus the stem).

I added the leaves then wrapped it with bits of floral tape to finish it off.  You don't have to leave the stem on if you want to use it on a collage, barrette, head piece or whatever.  I left mine on because I was just messing around and made it with no particular project in mind.

I just love how it turned out...it looks so real it's amazing!

I can't wait to get a bit of time to make more and different flowers. I will probably use my die-cuts for some of the more complicated or shapely flowers.  

WHERE TO BUY

Please note, I'm not getting anything in return for these links...they are simply where I've found the best deals that I want to pass on to you. I have personally ordered from all 3 of these places and had great luck but as always unforeseen things can happen so please don't complain if you have an issue.

I found a good source for the foamiran on Etsy here - HandmadeMateriCrafts (FL USA) (full size sheets for $2.00 each) and if you want LOTS of colors you can find it here - (Ireland) 14CraftBar - the sheets are smaller in size and you have the exchange rate to figure in as well so please keep that in mind when ordering. 14CraftBar has lots of other flower needs as well.

As far as the veining molds, there are tons on Amazon you can buy individually if you want to try them out.  I found a really great kit that is an amazing deal - AK ART KITCHENWARE - Leaf & Flower Tool Kit.  It has 12 different molds (normally about 7.00 each) plus a whole slue of other goodies in the kit for $50.00 - if you just figure in the molds that's a little over $4.00 each with everything else thrown in for free.  A really great bargain and you know how cheap I am - LOL!!

So there you go...foamiran and my very first flower!

I love it and I think I'll be making many more in the near future.

SUPPLIES:

Foamiran - white

Imagine - VersaMagic - Thatched Straw, Pixie Dust, Pink Petunia, Tea Leaves, Key Lime, Aloe Vera

Veining Mold - Rose Petal, Leaf

Wire, Tinfoil, Hot Glue

Club Scrap Blog Hop - Scandinavia!

Welcome to OCTOBER...yes October's Club Scrap Blog Hop.  This month's kit Scandinavia is a modern take on a lovely traditional idea. You may have arrived here from Julie's amazing blog but if not you might want to check her lovely project out.

Is it a book? Is it an album?  Nope...it could be but it isn't...

When you untie the cover and open it up you'll find it packed with 8 cards and envies!

And here they are....

Just too much stampin' fun to be had with the images in this kit!

The next stop on the hop is:

Tricia - The Efficient Crafter

You can find the complete hop list here:

Club Scrap Scandinavia Blog Hop

Supply List:

Club Scrap - Scandinavia Cardstock, Pattern Paper, Ribbon, Stamps, Embellishments, Cut-Aparts

Imagine - VersaMagic Chalk Inks; VersaFine; Memento Dye Inks