Happy Place Cards
A couple of months ago, I found this Catherine Pooler stamp set at a local craft store, the first thing that came to my mind was - what a perfect stamp for a housewarming card. Coincidentally, a friend of mine who’s a realtor, asked me to make her a few cards to give to her clients so I used this set to make 4 similar but not identical cards.
I originally intended to make scenes using at least 3 of the buildings, so I stamped them in Bristol Smooth surface cardstock and coloured them using my Zig Clean markers and fussy cut them. I also stamped and cut a tree and a mailbox. But when I was putting the pieces together in the card, I personally felt it looked crowded, so I decided to make 2 different cards with the images. Since I always like layering, instead of just cutting a simple shape piece of cardstock, I used a tag die cut from Poppy Stamps to create a background, for one of them I used Tim Holtz’ distress inks in Salty Ocean and Tumble Glass (sky) and Altenew Crisp Dye Ink in Sweet Leaf (grass), then carefully splattered a mix of water and blue distress ink. Then I placed the images on the tag, in this case a small house and a tree, stamped a sentiment from the same set in thick vellum and heat embossed in Ranger’s Liquid Platinum. I cut a 5 ½ x 4 ¼ piece of Bazzil textured white cardstock and taped it on a A2 card. Finally, I placed the tag and added just a few embellishments for a bit of sparkle.
In a similar way I proceeded with the second card but in this case, I embossed the tag with my favourite brick embossing folder from Taylored Expressions and gently distressed in Tim Holtz’ Candied Apple to give a more realistic look. I heat embossed another sentiment from the set with the same embossing powder and used a striped cardstock from Sunny Studio as a background, then added a few sparkles from Studio Katia.
The next two cards were done basically in the same way but using different tones of distress inks, for the yellow one I used Squeeze Lemonade and Mustard Seed; Milled Lavander, Wilted Violet and Dusty Concord for the purple one. I think the following part of the card can be done in either order, depending on what you feel more comfortable doing, you could start with the stamping and then distressing or vice versa. I first did the colour background, let it dry completely, then used a generous amount of anti static powder before stamping my images using a Misti stamping tool and heat embossed in white.
Then, using a water brush, I started to “bleach” parts of the images where I wanted more highlights and with the Zig markers, I added more colour in some other areas to create a shading effect, to add more interest to the background, I freely splattered white gouache with a tooth brush to the entire card, very simple. Since the sentiments of this set are quite large, I decided to use quotes from other sets, I stamped them both on a skinny banner die cut from Elizabet Craft Design (this die set comes with 5 banner sizes, very useful) and placed them aligned to the left edge of the card and adhered it all on a A2 card base. As usual, a bit of sparkle in the form of sequence and crystal drops all from Studio Katia, to finish them off.
I am not a big online shopper, at least not for my crafting material, as much as I can, I always try to stop by my local crafts stores and browse what’s new, honestly, I easily lose track of time when I’m in them. Here are the local stores where I got most of the supplies for these four cards, if you live here in Calgary or happen to be visiting, I invite you to stop by and take a look, you will not be dissapointed.
