April Spellbinders Club Kits: 3D Embossing Folder, Stitching, and BetterPress

 The April Club Kits from Spellbinders are here!  The overall theme this month is Stay in Touch.

I'll start you out with the unique 3D folder called Postage Mosaic.  It's filled with little postage stamps, 17 different designs. You can emboss the whole thing and use it for a background, or you can cut out the individual pieces and put them back together to your liking.  My little sentiment banners came from this month's Stitching Kit, Stitched Taking Notes.

supplies: white and dark aqua cardstock, Postage Mosaic 3D embossing folder, markers to color, sentiment from Stitched Taking Notes, Postage Edge Rectangles dies

There are lots of designs to mix and match; today I chose some nature-related ones, colored them, cut them out, and then rearranged them for a little gallery!

Next up is the Stitching Kit, Stitched Taking Notes, a set of 8 dies.

supplies: white, teal, and 2 pink cardstock, Stitched Taking Notes dies, (includes sentiment tabs), pink and mint embroidery floss, 3 strands, rose spray from Lock and Key Mailbox die set

This is simply stitched, but a fun idea for this month!  There are 5 different sentiment tabs that you can use alone or mix them up.  I added the flowers in the bottom corner to make this look a bit more feminine. They're from the Large Dies of the Month, called Lock & Key Mailbox.  

Finally, here is my card using the BetterPress kit, Post Edge Expression.

supplies: peach, green, yellow, and kraft cardstock, a tone-on-tone dp, Post Edge Expression Betterpress plates/die (background and sentiment), Gorgeous You flowers and leaves, Postage Edge Rectangles, enamel dots, adhesive foam strip

I wanted to give this one a little bit of a vintage feel, so I pressed the script plate onto a tone-on-tone botanical swirl paper from my stash, then cut it out with a Postage Edge Rectangle die.  The set includes 3 sentiments and matching dies; this is the largest.  Then I just added some flowers for more color.

Here are the sets I used for my cards today. 

You can look HERE for information on Spellbinders Clubs.  Each is available for new subscribers only from the 6th until the 27th of each month.  If you click on my links under each card, you can see the specifics of each product.  You can subscribe to each of our 10 kits separately, (and you can "unjoin" a subscription at any time without any penalty), or you can get them all, plus a free bonus item each month, and save 60% by choosing the Deluxe Caboodle!

Birthday Card for a Friend

 I recently tried out some Brass & Bliss goodies for the first time, taking advantage of their sale on older products.  I'm very pleased with their quality!  Here's what I made for a friend's birthday.

supplies: white cardstock, Brass & Bliss Someone Like You rose, matching stencils, and die, Simon Trio 12 pinks, Dublin green inks, Honey Bee Stamps Daisy Layers stamp sentiment, Spellbinders Floral Expressions 3D folder

I knew I wanted to keep the design fairly simple, so I went looking for an embossing folder for the background; isn't this one perfect with it's large florals?  I used a Jen McGuire trick and cut out 2 more plain die-cuts to layer behind the colored one to save on using adhesive foam, which I go through like there's no tomorrow!  

I'll enter this into this week's Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Birthdays.

How is your day going?  Hope it's a good one.  Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Spring Plaids

I was in the mood to make some plaid backgrounds, so I went looking through my own cards for some inspiration.  

One nice thing about Blogger blogs is that you can label each post with as many descriptions as you like.  Then when you're looking for something, you just type in a label you know you've used before, and  - voila!  -  all those posts pop up for you!  (this is only if the blog owner has added a gadget for such a search; mine is over there on the right sidebar: Search this blog.) So I did a search for "plaid" and found a couple examples that I made using an Impression Obsession cling called Painted Stripes.  When I used them before, I used just 2 colors, so this time I tried lots of spring colors, and here's my result.

supplies: white cardstock, Impression Obsession Painted Stripes cling stamp, Spellbinders Glimmer Bouquet plate/die, rose gold glimmer foil, sentiment from Betterpress Nature's Botanical Garden Sentiments, adhesive foam squares

The cling stamp was first stamped horizontally, one stripe at a time, then vertically the same way, using 5 different springy colors of mini ink cubes in my Misti.  Then I went looking in my scrap basket and found this already foiled but uncolored floral bouquet, and also this sentiment - don't you just love that?!  I colored my flowers to match the stripes as best I could, then mounted the bouquet above my card front with adhesive foam squares.

Impression Obsession has closed for business, but I found this painted stripes cling still available in a few places, The Frantic Stamper and Amazon.  If you're interested, HERE and HERE (second card) are older cards where I used it to make plaids. AND it makes a great stripe, too - love the brushstroke effect!

For my next card, I used The Greetery's Tartan Builder Diagonal Stencils, and more finds from my scrap basket, and followed the same sketch as above.

supplies: white cardstock, The Greetery Diagonal Tartan Plaid stencils, various ink colors, Spellbinders (retired) Hexi-Gem Bloom Glimmer Plate/die, Curved Everyday Sentiments foiling plate/die, Matte Gold glimmer foil, adhesive foam squares

Once again, my blooms were pre-colored and worked beautifully with my newly-created plaid!  And I loved mixing all these colors together; like flowers, I guess everything works together!  This one used 6 different colors: Wplus9 Bloomsbury, Altenew Sweet Leaf, Volcano Lake, Warm Sunshine, Frosty Pink, Dusty Pink.

"Sweet Day" would work for a birthday, so I'm entering this into this week's Simon Wednesday challenge: Birthdays.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Birthday Jubilee

 I've been needing to replenish my birthday cards, and the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge pushed me over the edge!  It's their 16th birthday, so the challenge is to make some birthday cards.  Here's one:

supplies: white and Cotton Candy card, Simon's Jubilee embossing folder/die set, white pigment ink, markers, sentiment from Waffle Flower Sweet Lattice Sentiments, adhesive foam squares

This is such a pretty embossing folder, and it also includes a die to cut out the square motif, which is exactly what I did, coloring it in more pinks, and then popping it back in place.  I've used this die back when it first was released HERE, and still think that a whole set of these in different colors with different sentiments would make a lovely gift for someone!

Thanks for stopping by!

Some Postage Collage Cards

 Playing with Waffle Flower Postage Collage goodies today, using the main die as a novel background and foregoing the postal details just this once.  I have 2 cards.

My first card is inspired by a childhood memory of watching a momma wren teach her babies to fly.  It uses a potpourri of supplies from lots of companies; unfortunately, many of them are discontinued.  The good news is that you can almost certainly substitute something that is current with a little searching.  I really love these birds with the heart wings from an old Wplus9 set.

supplies: white and colored cardstock, Waffle Flower Postage Collage die, Postage Collage Coloring Stencil, tumbled glass distress ink, Spellbinders (retired) Sweet Birds on a Branch (branches and leaves), Paper Smooches (retired) Birdhouse die, Wplus9 (retired) Folk Art Florals birds, a tiny flower die, sentiment from Simon Says Stamp Beautiful Butterflies, natural twine, Doodlebug tiny heart sprinkles, tiny pearls for bird eyes

My second card uses my new Wildflower Silhouettes stamps that I finally got.  I love the idea of making various colored backgrounds for them!  

supplies: white, black, and gold cardstock, Postage Collage die, Postage Collage Coloring stencil, scattered straw, carved pumpkin, and seedless preserves distress inks, blending brushes, Wild Flower Silhouettes, sentiment from (retired) Impression Obsession In a Garden

Do you have any of these postage collage goodies?  They certainly bring a breath of fresh air to our designs!

I'll enter these cards into this week's Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.

Thanks for stopping by!