Even a Small Star

I'd like to welcome Nancy Nickel to the Quietfire Design Team!  Here is a little bit about Nancy in her own words:

Hello, from the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada! I live here with my sweet and tolerant husband. Our two girls are all grown up, and we have a lot of fun in our empty nest. It's a good thing we have snow half the year (or more), as I really like to hibernate. What a great excuse to stay at home and craft! To keep myself from becoming totally anti-social during my hibernation, I enjoy meeting and making new crafty friends online, from all over the world! The rest of the year I try to balance crafting with taking long walks along the river with my husband, popping in at the farmers' market, and having picnics in our favorite parks. 

Hello, everyone!

It's Nancy here with you today. I'm so excited to be sharing my very first official Design Team Post with you! I'm thrilled to be here! I find all the Quietfire products so creatively inspiring. My goal is to share some fun projects with you, in hopes of inspiring you to try these great products for yourself!

Today I have combined a Quietfire stamp with a Quietfire Digital Cut File  to create a fun card.

Here it is:

I don't usually begin with an angle photo but I wanted you to see the see-through nature of the card.

I have lots of photos to share in hopes you can really see how this card comes together.

It's so easy to make but it looks like it took some effort, doesn't it?

I began by cutting the Nesting Stars Folded Card out of a night sky coloured cardstock.

You can see that I already have my sentiment stamped and sparkle embossed.

I wanted to make sure it fit before I went any further.

Then I cut a second card out of a pretty gold shimmer cardstock.

I'll use this card base for another card. All I really needed was the smallest star cutout.

I really wanted it in the pretty gold shimmer, and using the same cut ensured the perfect fit.

I decided to make my card a tent-fold card.

I began with a side-fold card, so the cut does work either way.

This is what the inside of the card looks like.

I forgot to take one before the card was finished 

but it's important to see that little star cutout on the inside of the card.

I wanted the little gold shimmer star to be floating in the card.

To do this I actually laminated it, and then cut out a 4 3/4" square.

Since I recently bought a laminator, I am always looking for more ways to use it.

However, if you don't have one, you could easily adhere your star onto a piece of acetate,

sandwich it in two pieces of transparency, or adhere a star on each side of a piece of clear packaging.

The nice thing about the shimmer cardstock is that the sparkle shows through.

If you don't have the shimmer cardstock, just add some glitter or some other form of sparkle.

We want this little star to be special and have some twinkle! 

Next comes the only tricky part about putting this card together. 

The floating star piece is inserted under the front of the card, as shown in the photo below.

However, it must be lined up with the little star cutout that is in the inside of the car, shown in the photo above. 

It's really not all that tricky to do in person,

it's just tricky to explain with photos! lol 

I had a small piece of double sided tape ready.

Once I had my star piece just where I wanted it, I lifted up the corner edge of the card

and slipped the piece of tape in to secure the laminted piece securely to the card base.

Then I could open the card up and adhere the rest of it in place all the way around.

 It's also hard to get a good photo showing it because of the glare. 

If you look closely at the photo below, 

you can see how the gold star aligns perfectly with the cutout star behind it, 

when the card is closed flat.

Even when the card is standing open you can see how the stars all nest beautifully into each other.

Here's a closer look at the stamped sentiment:

"Even a small star SHINES in the DARKNESS."

It was stamped with embossing ink, and then covered with a pretty gold sparkle embossing powder

before being heat embossed.

Isn't that a lovely sentiment?

It works so beautifully with the card.

To finish it off, I simply added a few sequins.

Quietfire Design Products Used:

Even a Small Star Stamp

Nesting Stars Folded Card Cut File

Other Materials Used:

Recollections - Cardstock, Holiday Shimmer Cardstock;

Stampendous Embossing Ink;

Ranger Embossing Powder - Enchanted Gold;

Unknown Sequins;

Hilroy Laminator.

* * * * *

Thanks so much for stopping in today!

I hope you liked looking at my card! I sure enjoyed making it! 

See you again soon! 

Nancy :o)

Butterfly Spray, Good Luck, Flourished Oval Frame, Thinking of You

Hello There!!!  It's Wanda here today.  We have been having a lot of "winter" this winter.  It seems to be making up for all the mild winters we had.  I am so ready for brighter colors and butterflies!!!!  I love how the colors came out on this card!!!

On a piece of Mixed Media Card I blended Distress Ink just using three colors but overlapping so it looks like five colors.  Water was sprayed over the blended ink and blotted with another piece of cardstock.  I was left with a wonderful mottled look.  The butterfly spray was die cut from this piece and look at all those gorgeous butterfly fallouts.  

A scrap piece of cardstock large enough to back the butterfly area was embossed with Gold Tinsel embossing powder and attached behind the butterflies.  The Flourished Oval Frame was die cut from heavy card and embossed with the same powder.  Thinking of You was stamped in black.  After attaching the Flourished Oval frame, a white gel pen was used to go around the oval, to outline the butterflies and to add doodles to the edges of the panel.  Everything was attached to a folded white card.

And I have another card for you today.  You can see how I used those gorgeous butterfly fallout pieces.  

For the background, Distress Ink was put on the craft sheet, water added, and then the color picked up with Mixed Media Cardstock.  A lot of water was used giving a light, very blended look.  This was dried.  I then used a piece of textured wallpaper to "stamp" the same colors over the panel.  I love how effective that stamping was giving the look of lots of texture.  Good Luck was die cut from the panel.  The die cut panel was attached to a dark green panel.  I set the die cut words back into where it was cut out to use a guide.  I then glued back in all the little fallout pieces being sure not to get glue on the words.  After all the pieces were glued in, I removed the words, sponged on some additional ink and attached them with clear foam tape.

The butterflies were attached as shown only gluing the bodies and folding up the wings.  Stamping was added to the open corners as shown.

The panel was attached to a folded white card.  

In this last picture you can see bits of the clear foam tape but in person they really aren't noticeable.

I hope you've enjoyed these cards today.  This is my last post on the Quietfire Creations Blog.  I will be taking a break from Design Team work.  I've loved working with Suzanne and her team!!!!  

Hugs, Wanda

Supplies:

Butterflies & Stars Sprays Cutting Dies

Good Luck Cutting Die

Flourished Oval Frame Cutting Die

Merry Christmas Collection Clear Stamps

Where Flowers Bloom Collection Clear Stamps

Baby Love

Hello!!!  We have lots of baby love going on in our family as two grandbabies were born in the last 8 days.  One each to both of our sons - one was a girl and one was a boy.  The first for both of our sons.  Exciting times!!!!

My main panel is watercolor paper and the color is embossing powder.  Using an embossing ink dauber  I made streaks of ink leaving space between the streaks.  I added once color of embossing powder to the ink and heated to melt.  After allowing a minute to cool I repeated with the dauber, added my second color of embossing powder and heated.  This was repeated for the third color.  I allowed the bands of color to overlap slightly and, as you can tell, I only worked in the center area (from top to bottom) of the card.  Once I was done with the embossing and it was cool I added white paint through a stencil for the hearts.  Gold paint was added around the edges.  Thinned gold paint was splattered over the panel.

All the die cut elements were cut from both purple and white card.  The words were layered together offsetting the pieces.  The feet were inked around the edge with purple ink.  I added the white heart dropout to the purple feet using tape behind the feet to keep the heart in place.  Using punches from my stash I added smaller white hearts on top putting foam between them for dimension.  All die cut pieces were attached as shown.  I punched two small purple hearts and added them as shown.  The panel was attached to a folded white card.

When I made the card, looking at it in person, everything looked good.  It has since been used for a baby shower but looking at these pictures, 'love' looks crooked to me and it's driving me crazy, LOL.  But overall I hope you like the card.  It was fun to make!!!

Hugs, Wanda

Quietfire Supplies --

Baby Love

Little Ones Set

Brayered Embossing Just For You

Happy Tuesday!!  I hope your week is going well so far!!  I have a fun card for you today that would work well for Valentine's Day or anytime.

I've used Quietfire's Tulips rubber stamp and the cutting die set, Just for You.

For the background I've used a brayer, paint, and embossing powder.  I started with brayering a little bit of Fresco Finish Chalk Paint (Guacamoli).  This paint dries very quickly.  I had thought that maybe if I worked quickly some embossing powder would stick, but no.  It worked out well in the end.

Next I brayered some Distress Paint (Picked Raspberry).  This stays wet longer.

I then added Mixed Media Embossing Powder (Punch).  You can see it stuck well to the Distress Paint.

And here it is melted.

I stamped the Tulips with Archival Ink Jet Black onto watercolor paper.  I used the Stamping Platform so I could get a good image on the textured paper.  Color was added with Distress Inks and a water brush.

I die cut them into a deckled rectangle.

Just For You was cut from dark green cardstock and from gold Kraft Metallic.

I also cut a rectangle of the gold Kraft Metallic and ran it through an embossing folder.  The folded base is a gold metallic cardstock.

And there you have it.  A fun, easy card that could have many looks just by changing your paint and embossing powder colors.

Hugs, Wanda  (Art By Wanda)

Baked Texture Embossing Powders and A Way With Words

Have you seen the new Baked Texture Embossing Powders from Seth Apter and Emerald Creek?  I shared a Facebook Live video from Creativation about them and now I'm sharing a new Facebook Live video of my first time playing with them!  I had so much fun!

These embossing powders are mixtures of "things" - blended powders and chunks that create wonderful surfaces! I wanted to try each of the seven powders to see which would work best on this project.

I've also added the Facebook Live recording to YouTube where you can find it easily.  If you are receiving this blog update by email, click on the photo to view the video on YouTube.

Here are some closeups of the experiments.  Some things don't show their full beauty because the A Way With Words diecuts are quite fine, but the darker blends would make a fabulously rich backgrounds (more play required!).

Here are some of my experiments.  Hopefully you can see some of the texture in the photos!  There is lots of fun to be had with these.  They're available from Emerald Creek and Seth Apter and probably lots of other places soon!  Have fun!
Suzanne

Deep Sea

Ancient Amber

Patina Oxide

Rocky Road

Dirty Sand

Vintage Beeswax

Chunky Rust on black cardstock

Burnt Copper Leaves - not a Baked Texture, but is totally awesome!