Spinner Card with Camper Crazy and Lollydoodle

Spinner cards are a lot of fun. I have seen several variations of these on Pinterest and just had to give it a try. I didn't have any pennies handy, so I used some flat buttons. Not sure if they worked quite as well since this is my first try with this technique. Any opinions from the voice of experience out there in the internet land of crafting?

Anyway I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I can't seem to get enough of the Camper Crazy stamp set and Lollydoodle paper. The base is a sheet from our Paper Fundamentals Basics Assortment. One side has tone on tone glossy embossed images and the opposite side is matte with a contrasting pattern. Very versatile.

I covered the chipboard banner (from one of our Cricut Collections) with a scrap piece of Lollydoodle, then trimmed close (but not too close) to the edge of the shape then filed with my paper file. This give a much more finished look than cutting the shape the exact size before you glue your patterned paper to your chipboard.

This series of three photos should give you some sense of the motion of the campers as they chase each other in a circle.

Hope you are having a grand summer!
Melissa

Artbooking Made Easy: Togetherness

This video features some great ideas on using the Togetherness key on the Artbooking cartridge. There are also some great tips on making rolled flowers.

Close to My Heart Balloon Ride Cards - Technique Paper Piecing

I love all the new paper packs in the new catalog, but this one I think is unique and one of my favorites - although I can't say that next week I won't have a new favorite and so on until all the paper packs have been covered for this book.

Paper piecing is a technique I saw around the internet last fall and have been wanting to try. I decided the stamp set that coordinates with the Balloon Ride paper (D1581 Give a Lift) would work perfectly for this technique.

To start you stamp your image on cardstock and then multiple times on several different patterned papers (you chose depending on your image). You could either pick a portion of the image to highlight or pick patterns to cover the entire image.

You will then trim out the pieces of your image that you want to use from the patterned paper. You may also want to trim out your image from the cardstock depending on your project. Since my paper was two sided I stamped each image twice on the patterned paper and then mixed and matched until I was happy with my combinations. One tip for "fussy cutting" as some people call cutting images by hand, move the paper as you cut around the image not your scissors. You will have more precise cuts this way.

Then just grab a little glue and start attaching your pieces. I found that a liquid glue like our Bonding Memories adhesive was nice because it gave me a little wiggle room as far as moving a piece before it dries if I don't get the placement just right.

I tried taking a wide shot of all the cards, but my "assistant" was determined to stay in the shot. He seems to have a sixth sense on when his assistance will be needed. ;-)

I did the coloring on the basket and flowers with watercolor pencils and a blending pen.

I forgot to take a picture of the inside of this card, but it uses the phrase "Friend you lift me up" from the stamp set. 

For the base of this card I used one of our white daisy die cut cards. There is a card on one of our Cricut cartridges (Artiste I think) that mimics this pretty closely, but rather than figure the cut out in Cricut Craft room, I just traced around the edge and cut it out by hand. As much as I love my Cricut, I will have to say that cutting something by hand can sometimes be easier if it is something small and you are only doing one or two.

One thing with this technique you need to watch is the placement of your stamping on the patterned paper. On one of the balloons I ended up re-stamping one of the center medallions on the opposite less "busy" part of the paper as I could not differentiate between the pattern of the paper and the pattern of the stamped design on the "busier" side of the paper. Just something to keep in mind.

Hope you enjoyed the cards as well as the new technique. If you give it a try, email me a picture and I'll post it on the blog.

Happy "krafting"!

Melissa