Simple Joys from a Club Stamp Kit

Club Stamp is a delightful club. It ships in that sweet flat rate envelope provided by the US Postal Service and contains the perfect parcel of goods. (Stamps, papers, embellies!)

I spent a little time with the Trees kit and created fourteen greeting cards with some extra details. You'll begin by preparing the 12-pack of 8.5x11 papers with only four different formulas.

1. Score the 8.5x11 Dark Green, Light Green, Beige and White Prints vertically at 4.25". Cut horizontally at 5.5". Fold each 5.5x8.5 horizontally at 4.25".

2. Trim the 8.5x11 Gold Foil Handmade, Dark Green, Light Green, Beige and White Prints horizontally at 5.5". Cut one 5.5x8.5 horizontally at 7.5 and 4". Trim the 4x5.5 horizontally at 5.25". Cut the 3.5x5.5 horizontally at 4.75". Score and fold the remaining 5.5x8.5 horizontally at 4.25".

3. Tear away the four outside edges of each 8.5x11 White Text Prints. Using the artwork as your guide, tear along the remaining inside edges to create four art panels with torn edges.

4. Trim one 8.5x11 Gold Foil Handmade vertically at 8 and 4". Cut each 4x11 horizontally at 10.5 and 5.25". Trim the .5x11 horizontally at 10.5 and 5.25".

The whole process will leave you with a bunch of card bases, panels, and narrow strips ranging from 1/2 to 1". Nest the panels onto the card bases, interchanging colors as you go. Incorporate the remaining narrow strips with stamped sentiments, or simply use as anchoring elements on the finished cards.

Check out how the cards turned out!

Four simple double-panel notecards.

The narrow handmade paper strips and leaf-shaped brads finish things off.

Use just one or three equally spaced brads as an accent.

The narrow strips are all usable elements!

You're going to have some fun with these supplies! Join Club Stamp today for your monthly dose of card making inspiration!

Efficiently Yours,
Tricia

Faux Landscape Technique

I was inspired to create a layered landscape for my super-cool Trees stamp, but I didn't want my card base to get super-heavy with lots of paper layers.

Instead, I devised a pretty easy way to create a highly dimensional look that utilizes the texture of the Light Green paper in our Trees collection.

You'll need the following supplies:

• 4x5.25" Light Green Panel
• 4x5.25" Dark Green Panel
• Scrap Paper
• Cutting Mat and Craft Knife
• CS Ink Applicator
• CS Earth, India Black and Ash Inks
• Black Oil Pastel
• Cloth or Paper Towel

Next, take less than two minutes to watch this video:



And there ya have it! I hope you enjoyed today's video tutorial.

Happy Landscaping!
Tricia

Digital Framed Art

When I saw the collage stamp in March's Trees Digital Kit, I knew that I wanted to create some art suitable for framing. You can do something similar with the actual rubber stamp and gelatos, ink, or watercolor pencils, but creating this digitally lets you make it in different sizes. I'm making mine roughly 8 x 10 - a nice size for a home decor project, but it can also be resized to fit on the front of a card!

1. Create a new document; give it a white background.

2. Drag the collage stamp image onto it and resize as needed.

the collage stamp

3. Command+Click (Mac OS) or CTRL+Click (Windows) on the thumbnail in the Layers Palette. You'll see 'marching ants' around the stamp image.

4. Click the eye icon in the Layers Palette to hide the stamp image.

'marching ants'

5. Create a new layer.

6. Select a round fuzzy-edged brush and a color of your choice and start coloring the image - only the areas within the 'marching ants' will change color.

start coloring

7. Switch colors as needed to complete the image.

add more colors

Tip: Create a new layer for each color - this allows you to delete a layer that you don't like and also lets you play with opacity for each layer to help refine your finished art.

8. Once finished, Command+D (Mac OS) or CTRL+D (Windows) will stop the 'marching ants.'

9. Add additional elements for added interest: a background layer, a stamp image or two, a matted sentiment and fiber, for example.

finish with a background, sentiment, stamps & fiber

Print out your creation and frame it. Hang it on a wall or give it as a gift. Resize it to fit on the front of a card, print it out, matte it and adhere it to a card base.

Bonus idea
After Step 3 above, Shift+Command+I (Mac OS) or Shift+CTRL+I (Windows) will inverse your selection, so that when you color the image, you'll be coloring the background and the image will remain clear. This results in a 'stencil-like' effect.

stencil technique

I hope you'll try these ideas and make your own framed art or cards.

Until next time, thanks for stopping by,

- Ron

Trees Greetings To Go Guest Artist

Hi, my name is Ink Stained Roni and I am the guest artist for the March Greetings to Go kit - Trees. You might recognize my name (or my blog Ink Stains) from the monthly Club Scrap blog hops I love to participate in.

I'm a stamper at heart, so I was very excited when I saw the fun images offered on this month's stamps, not to mention the great sentiments! The rest of the kit is just as exciting: the colors, designs and embellishments are a paper-crafter's dream. When I first saw the kit in person, "watercolor" instantly came to mind, so I went with it.

I mainly use Ranger inks. Tricia's blog post suggested Adirondack's Espresso, Pesto and Mushroom as good matches, so I dug them out of my stash. I also wanted to incorporate watercolor techniques, so I did a bit of color-matching of my own with the Distress product line. I discovered Forest Moss, Walnut Stain, Iced Spruce and Bundled Sage complimented the Trees collection nicely. I used a waterproof black ink and a combination of Distress Ink Pads, Markers and Stains for my cards. I also used a rotary cutter, double stick foam tape, scissors and a Niji Waterbrush.

Beige Cards 4.5" x 6.25"

Stamp the faded blocks (Collection UM) and dot background (Borders & Backgrounds) stamps with Iced Spruce to create the background for this card.

Distress markers direct-to-stamp.

Color directly on the tree image stamp using Walnut Stain and Forest Moss Distress Markers. Create the watercolor shadow below the tree by picking up a bit of Iced Spruce Distress Stain (directly from the dabber top) with the Niji Waterbrush. 

Coloring with Distress Stains and Waterbrush.

Stamp the collage image and emboss with Hematite embossing powder from the Tribal kit. Use the waterbrush to watercolor the image using Distress Stains: Iced Spruce for the moon, diluted Forest Moss for the script & left side of the tree, diluted Walnut Stain for the text area. Add very diluted Bundled Sage to the remaining uncolored areas.

Detail of stain-colored image.

The Cutaparts, ribbons and fibers can be combined with stamping for more beautiful cards.

Light Green A2 Cards - 4.25" x 5.5"

The card above is a great demonstration of what the Niji Waterbrush combined with Distress Inks can do! Notice how the tendrils of the tree look wispy and floating on the breeze while the upper portion of the tree has the illusion of a dense mass of leaves? Use Distress Markers to color image, then apply the waterbrush to the stamped inks, allowing them to pool and blend until it looks like the light and dark areas of a real tree. Note: This was done only on the upper portion of the tree image. I never touched the tree trunk or tendrils, leaving them exactly as stamped.

Close-up of waterbrush technique.

The card below shows the contrast between the waterbrushed leaves (using technique described above) on the front of the card vs. the untouched trees stamped on the inside flap.

I really like how the staggered flaps on the A2 cards offer the opportunity for tantalizing glimpses of more fun to come on the inside of each card.

More staggered flap goodness:

Dark Green Cards - 3.5" x 8.5" 

More fun watercolor with the Niji Waterbrush and Distress Inks:

Not only does the Trees collection offer beautiful stamps and papers, but the embellishments and fibers are stunning as well.

It's fun to use the small tree line from the Greetings Unmounted stamps as a border. Tear the bottom edge of the card and matte so the tree border is visible whether the card is open or closed!

I hope you enjoyed my cards, and that I've inspired you as well.

Ink on my friends...Ink on!

********************

Greetings to Go Guest Artists are given the current month's Club Scrap materials to work with:

• Greetings to Go Pack
• Embellishment Pack
• Collection Unmounted Rubber Stamp sheet
• Greeting Unmounted Rubber Stamp sheet
• Art Nouveau Unmounted Rubber Stamp sheet
• Extra 8.5 x 11" plain papers from the monthly kit

The artist may also choose to incorporate items from their own craft stash, as well as different inks and art mediums. We do our best to make note these additions in the card descriptions whenever possible.

Trees Bottle Cap Bonanza

Now that the Trees Lite kit is on its way to you, it's time to explore the Burlap Bottle Caps and Epoxy Dots goodie!

Bottle Cap Accordion

Take Wing Art Nouveau Stamp with Bottle Cap Goodie

Bottle Cap Page Embellishment

1. Use a 1" punch to create artwork for the center of the bottle cap. It can be filled with stamped art, pre-printed cutaparts, photos, ticket stubs or anything your heart desires. Attach the artwork to the cap with double-sided adhesive.

2. Place the self adhesive sticker on top of the artwork.

3. Attach the cap to your project with a Glue Line.

4. Anchor the bottle caps with a few green hand cut leaves and layer onto a page with the 12" Beige cutaparts.

Trees Lite White Print 12x12 Scrapbook Layout

Bottle Cap Accordion

1. Cut the "magnificent" 1.25" strip from Trees Beige Cutapart (or if you'll use it in the ALSB, select other paper).

2. Trim the strip to 7-1/2".

3. Score every 1.25" and fold along the score lines to create an accordion.

4. Use the 1/2" setting on a Corner Chomper to round all corners of the little accordion. Open the folds if you are unable to punch through all of the layers at once.

5. Decorate the mini accordion with rubber stamped images and photos.

6. Prepare two decorated bottle caps to be used as covers for the mini book.

7. Apply adhesive to back of each cover and attach to the accordion.

8. Fold to press together. How cute is that?

Thank you for exploring the Trees Bottle Cap goodie with me. 

Enjoy!

Kay at Club Scrap