AECP - Easy Die Cutting Techniques

I created three cards for the Easy Die Cutting Techniques class by Yana Smakula.  I love die cutting, so this class was perfect for me.  Despite my experience, I found it very helpful to see so many techniques all brought together in one class.  The lessons were inspiring and I could have easily created many more cards. However, for the purposes of this class and the certification, I focused on three techniques that I don't usually use:  Shaker Elements, Embossing with Die Cuts, and Embossing with Dies.  

      

Making the Shaker Element

I will be talking in more detail about the shaker card.  Shaker cards are generally not my favorite for two reasons.  One reason is that most of my cards are send overseas, so I try to avoid the extra bulk.  The second reason is that I don't like messy look from of foam tape strips as you look at the side edge of the card. Maybe it's nitpicky, but it is what it is.  Despite all that, I do like shaker cards, so I thought this would be the perfect time to give it another try.

From a 5x7 piece of cardstock, I cut out the heart shape for my shaker element using the Mini-Delight Birthday Love Stamp and Die set.  I cut out another heart shape in the same position from a 5x7 piece of craft foam using the cardstock piece as a guide and put it aside for later. 

Back to the cardstock, I scored two horizontal lines (to frame the panel I plan to glue on later) and covered the opening on the back with a piece of acetate using double sided sticky tape.  I then used thin strips of double sided adhesive foam strips to outline the heart and added some shaker elements. 

Now, if you are familiar with making shaker cards, you'll note that I forgot to do something here, but I'll get back to that.

I roughly cut out some patterned paper to easily fit over the hole and then glued some of the shaker elements to the paper so they would always be visible.  Then I stuck the patterned paper face down to adhesive foam strip and cut the to fit a little closer to the  foam strip. 

So at this point, I'm thinking that it was all going pretty smoothly. Then I tested out my shaker and found that many of the shaker elements got stuck on the edge of  foam strips. I carefully pulled off the patterned paper and used some anti-static powder to reduce the stickiness of the edges and then reassembled my shaker.  This time, only a couple of elements got stuck, but now I had anti-static powder visible on my shaker window.  So I disassembled it again, removed all the shaker bits and cleaned off the window and shaker bits and reassembled again.  After a few iterations of this, I was finally satisfied.  Phew!

Now it's time for the 5x7 foam piece.  I used a larger heart die from a nesting set to enlarge the heart that I die cut right at the beginning so it would fit around the foam strips from the shaker element.  It still didn't quite fit, so I used scissors to get the opening to fit right around my shaker element.  I then glued the foam to my card front with the shaker element.

The Card Front

With my shaker element finished, it was time to work on the rest of the card front.  I cut out one heart  from patterned paper and two more of plain cardstock. I glued the three hearts together with the patterned paper on top and glued the stacked heart on my card. 

I cut a small panel from cardstock, embossed it and glued it between my two score lines.  I also stamped and cut out my sentiment from Altenew's Hello and Hugs  stamp and die set

Like the hearts, I also cut two each of the letters "l", "o", "v", and "e" from cardstock and one from patterned paper.  The letters are from Altenew's Tall Alpha Lower case stamp and die set but this time I glued them together with the white cardstock on top and the patterned paper on the bottom, slightly offset so the red would peek out a little.

I glued all the pieces on my embossed panel, tucking the sentiment strip under the "l".  I also glued silver strings from the heart balloons down the side of the card.  As a final touch, I cut about a quarter inch off the left side.  I glued a half inch of silver cardstock on the left side of the card base and then glued my shaker card on top, lining it up with the right side of my card base, allowing a quarter inch of silver cardstock to peek through on the left.

Here is the finished card.

Final Thoughts

At this point, I am a little more comfortable with shaker cards, although can definitely use more practice.  I also had a lot of fun with my other two cards.  For my second card, I use the garden picks 3D die cuts to get a 3D embossing folder effect.  It worked, but I made a mess trying to bring out the 3D effect with my color cube, so I decided to go all in and make it a mixed media style card (even though I only used one medium).  

The third card, I used the dies to emboss the outline of the butterflies.  I also used partial stamping to get the different colors on the solid stamp.  This is my favorite card of the three, mostly because I love the colors.

In all, I really enjoyed this class and all the different lessons.

AECP - Seasonal Scene Building

After a long (almost 2 years to the day) break, I am happy to continue with my AECP Certification.  The next class on my list is Seasonal Scene Building by Nichol Magouirk.  I actually watched all the lessons years ago, and have found them to be very useful.  For my cards for this class, I focused on 3 lessons: Masking a Scene, Oversized Scenes, and Framed Scene.  Here are my 3 cards, respectively.  I am only going to go into detail on my first card.

  

Making a Plan

Generally, I prefer to place a die cut or fussy cut image on top of my scene rather than masking, but for this balloon bouquet, I had four overlapping layers in multiple places so masking became a much better option.  I used the Mini Delight: Birthday Love stamp set, which has one outline and one solid stamp, so I started by stamping 3 outlined hearts on masking paper and fussy cutting them.  Then I  made a sketch of my bouquet.  This was also a perfect way to get some practice with masking.  I then used my matching Altenew Markers to decide on my colors.  I took a few tries, but this is the sketch I used for my card.  (Initially, I had planned to tie the balloons in a bow, but decided I liked the vase better). I used Grapevine, Ruby Red, Velvet, Crimson, Pinkalicious, Coral Berry, and Frosty Pink Alcohol Markers and Crisp Dye Inks. 

Masking and Stamping the Balloon Bouquet

I stamped my vase from the Altenew Versatile Vases stamp set and then it was time to create my bouquet. I started by laying my sketch over my card front to place the outline stamp on the topmost heart.  Then I closed my stamping platform to pick up the stamp, removed the sketch, inked up stamp in Altenew Obsidian Black Ink and stamped it on the card.  Next I lined up the the solid stamp with the outline, and inked it up with the Altenew Crisp Dye Ink corresponding to my marker color. Then I stamped that a couple of times, until I was happy that I had good coverage.

Next I put a mask on top of the heart I just stamped and did the same thing for hearts to the bottom right and left of the first heart, making adjustments in placement where I wanted it.  I had to put some extra pressure near the masks, because the mask raises the stamp, and makes it difficult to get right up to the edge.  I wasn't too worried about it, because I had a plan for that as I will show later.

  

I had decided on 7 hearts, so it took 14 steps to create this, not counting the double and triple stamping I did to get a solid image.  I was very thankful for my stamping platform.  This is what it looks like after all the stamping was complete

Finishing Touches

If you look closely at the last picture, you can see white near the masks, where the stamp could not reach.  These areas should all be cast in shadow, so I used my Altenew Alcohol Markers in the corresponding colors and drew a shadow there.  I first drew some strings in pencil and then went over it with a think black micron pen. I also used a very light gray alcohol marker to add some dimension to the vase.  For the sentiment, I die cut a HUGS sentiment in black and it's shadow in white from Altenew's Hello and Hugs Stamp and Die Bundle and glued them in the center of the vase.  Last but not least, I cut 3/16th inch of each side of my card front and glued it to my card base with two 4.5 x 6.5 inch panels of thick cardstock in between to add some dimension.  Here is the finished card.

AECP - Celebration Stencil Techniques

When I started the Celebration: Stencil Techniques class by Lauren Beard, I thought this would be the time to actually try out my layered stencils. It turns out that this was not one of the techniques covered in the class.  In retrospect, I realized that this class probably was created before layered stencils became popular.  That having been said, there were some interesting lessons in this class.  I focused mainly on two techniques.

Creating Your Own Stencils With Dies

The first lesson in the class, this was probably my favorite technique.  I looked through my stash of dies and settled on using Altenew's Delicate Mandala Die.  I love this die, and thought it would be great to use it in a different way.  

I made an ink spray by adding Lindy's Gang Magical Stormy Silver powder to a spray bottle filled with water. I  placed the Mandala Die cut over a sheet of watercolor paper and sprayed all around it.  Once it was dry, I cut out a 5x7 panel. 

Since we were approaching the holiday season, I decided to use the Poinsettia and Pine stamp and die set from Altenew.  I used dark red, brown and green crisp die inks to to stamp the outlines of each stamp in the set. Then I stamped them again with Versamark ink and embossed them with clear pearlescent embossing powder for a little extra sparkle. Finally I die cut the images and colored them with Altenew Alcohol Markers.  Then it was time to play with all the pieces to create a layout. 

I created the sentiment by cutting each letter twice from the tall alphabet die set and gluing them on top of each other. I matted the ensemble with a thin sparkly gray cardstock mat and a larger gray card stock mat embossed with a snowflakes embossing folder. This was the final result.

I still had the leftover piece of the stenciled mandala so I decided to make another card with it.  The placement of the mandala was a little awkward and called for a different layout.  I left out the poinsettia in this card and added some red gems to balance out the red berries. 

I also changed the sentiment to Merry and Bright. Despite the awkward placement of the stencil, I actually like this card better than the first.

Stencil and Embossing Paste

A couple of the lessons in this class involved embossing paste, and this is where my struggles started. I wanted to use the alcohol inked rose that I had left over from a card I made for the ink blending class.  Inspired by the layout of the cards in this class, I had this idea in mind of using a green background topped with a white square weave using embossing paste.  

Upon learning that my embossing paste had gone dry, I first had to order some more and wait for it to arrive.  Still playing with the sprays, I started with a green background that was pretty, but a little busy.  I had hoped that the embossing paste would tone down the color, but the opposite turned out to be true.  The opaque embossing paste still let plenty of the color underneath shine through.  

I tried adding white pigment ink on top to make it more opaque, I tried going over the panel with a blending brush to even out the color. I tried the whole thing again with a green blended background and again with a white background with an embossing paste that was tinted green.  I don't have any pictures because I threw out all my failed attempts in a moment of frustration.  

The last panel I attempted was a little closer to something I actually liked, so I tried it one more time with a  more neutral color.  I tinted the embossing paste with Paper Bag crisp die ink.  I had to do it in two parts, since the Square Weave Stencil was a little too small for my 5x7 card.  I also decided to leave part of the panel white, to keep it from being so busy.  I was much happier with this result.

I liked the layout of the cards Laurel made in her lessons, but mounting my panel on white was too much contrast for my taste.  I decided to drag my paper bag ink cube across the paper to make it look like wood and I finally was happy with the results.

All that was left to do was to stamp out my sentiment.  I was running low on thank you cards so I choose these sentiments from the Leaf Canopy stamp set in Deep Iris crisp die ink and embossed them with clear embossing powder.  Here is the final result.

AECP - For The Guys

It has been 3 month's since my last AECP Post, so clearly, I lost a lot of momentum.  I'm still very committed to this endeavor, but between work, family and the holidays, there has just been very little down time.  Thankfully, I did manage to get some crafting time in.  Now that things have calmed down a bit, I finally have the time to post about my progress.

The next academy class in the AECP Level 1 series For The Guys by Jennifer Rzasa, The lessons were very inspiring. It gave many ideas to try. In relative quick succession, I made two cards.  

Galaxy Card

The first card I made was a galaxy card.  I have wanting to try this for a while, so this was a perfect opportunity.  I started by masking a circle for the moon and then  used Volcano Lake, Ocean Waves, Puffy Heart and Deep Iris crisp dye inks for the galaxy colors. Then I used Persian Blue, Sapphire and Jet Black to crisp die inks to fill in the night sky. 

Once I was happy with the background, I added metallic silver paint splatters for smaller stars and made dots with a silver sharpie pen to add some brighter ones.  I took off the mask, and layered the moon with Tsukineko's Platinum Planet and Starlike Silver for a little extra sparkle. The moon is from the To The Moon stamp set.

For the focal point, I used one of the cats from Cat Life stamp set by Altenew. I stamped the spots in both caramel toffee and paper bag to get the shade of light brown I was looking for.  Last but not least, I created the roof by using a nesting stitched rectangle set, cut at various angles and then pieced together. The sentiment is white heat embossed and comes from Birthday Greetings stamp set.

This is the final card once it was all put together.

 

Pop Art

The second card was a pop-art card.  I stamped the Alpaca from Altenew's Alpaca Stamp Set in a grid pattern and colored each grid a different color using the Artist Markers.  I know that for pop-art, the colors usually aren't realistic, but since Alpaca's come in a great variety of colors, I thought I could get away with a more realistic coloring scheme while still getting the necessary variety.  I dotted the eyes and nose with a black gel pen to make them stand out a little more.

I propped the grid pattern up with a few layers of scrap paper and stamped the sentiment a couple of times to fill the open letters for a bold look.  This sentiment is also from the Birthday Greeting stamp set. The final card is below.

Interactive Card

So far, it was smooth sailing, but I really ran into trouble when I attempted the next one, which was an interactive card.  This would be my first interactive card ever, and I should have kept it simple, but I had this image in my head of a cat swatting a swarm of dragonflies and then scattering them.  

The first problem was that the dragonflies were very small.  Too small for many of the usual interactive components.  The holes for "paths" created by interactive dies were too big and the dragonflies would get stuck or fall through to the back of the card. So I decided to make them oscillating instead. I tried plastic spacers, foam dots, gluing tiny die cuts of dots together, but the center pieces were either too big, or they got stuck in the small hole..  I also tried gluing the dragonflies on small circles, so I could make the holes bigger, but I didn't like the look of that.  Finally I decided to glue the dragonfly to small beads.  They were small enough and smooth enough to wiggle freely.

My next challenge was to create the pendulum that would make each piece move.  After trying a few option, I decided on buttons, because I have those in many sizes. I propped up the card by gluing together many layers of paper, allowing the mechanisms to swing freely.  This was not my final version.  For the smaller pendulums (where the dragonflies were closer together), I ended up gluing the beads directly to the acetate and that helped the swinging motion.

The actual card front was the easiest part of the process.  I cut out a blob from acetate and used the negative space as a mask. I then ink blended the background to look like a sky and grass.  I stamped the cat, dragonflies and sentiment in black obsidian pigment ink and clear heat embossed over them.  I don't have the die set for the Cat Life stamp set so I fussy cut the cat and dragonflies. Then I glued them to the beads that were attached to the pendulums on the back of the card.  (I would share what colors I used, but I forgot to write them down)

In summary, visually, I love the card. As an interactive card, it is not as smooth as I would have liked.  In the future, I would avoid placing interactive design elements so close together and leave plenty of  space for the pendulum.  I should also have put the pivot point for the cat closer to the center, because the bottom sometimes just gets stuck for a little while.  That having been said, I learned a lot about what I can and cannot (yet) do with interactive cards, and that, in and of itself has made it a worthwhile effort. 

AECP - Let It Shine

The next class on the road to certification is "For the Guys".  I've been busy working on a bunch of cards for that class, but I had to pivot away as I found out a (female) colleague is retiring this week.  Since she strikes me as the perfect recipient of a "Let it Shine" card, I decided to take a break from the masculine cards and created my card for this class first.

Let it Shine is taught by Clarissa Wiley and I was happy to see that she was restrained in her application of shine.  I'm not much of a glitter person and I find too much of it overwhelming, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  But I found her projects to be very inspiring and I do love to add some shine and sparkle to my cards.  

The Leaf

We are currently at peak fall colors in the Northeast US and, in addition to the class, I was also inspired by the colorful leaves outside my window.  I started by blending a lot (and I mean a lot - more than I could fit in the picture) of yellow, orange, red, purple and brown ink colors together to create my fall leaf.  Occasionally I would hold the leaf die over the blended panel to see where I should add more color.

Once I was happy with my blend, I cut used the inner die cut of the largest leaf in the Grape Leaf stamp and die set.  Oops!  I realized too late that I should have used the outline die cut on the blended panel.    Fortunately, I managed to keep all the pieces together.  I then used the same inner die cut on gold cardstock and glued the gold veins on top of the blended veins.

Adding Some Extra Shine

Even if it hadn't been the theme of the class, I would have added some extra shine to this card.  I matted a white square with the same gold cardstock used for the leaf veins and glued the finished leaf on top along with some sequins.  Last but not least I added the sentiment using gold embossing powder. The sentiment is from the Gradient Sunset stamp and die set.

The Final Card

This was one of those cards that came together very quickly, and I love the result!  I think this could be a design that could work for pretty much any occasion. 

AECP - Easy Blending Techniques

I love the look of blending on cards, so the Easy Blending Techniques class was right up my alley.  This class was taught by Amy Lee and she demonstrated some wonderful techniques.  I made the following three cards based on her lessons.

Swatching 

I have swatches for my all ink colors, but until I took this course, it never occurred to me to make an additional swatch for  blending. Since blended ink is invariably lighter than stamped ink, I thought this was a brilliant idea.  I didn’t want to take the time to swatch all my ink colors, so I decided to make the swatch whenever I use a new color.

Monochromatic Blending

In my stash, I had an outline of the Fine Bouquet Die that I had cut from an alcohol inked panel. This determined my colors for this card.  I blended the three lightest colors of the Red Sunset Crisp Dye Ink Family. Starting with Crimson at the bottom of the panel, I worked my way up through Rouge and finally Blush.

Next I decided to try my hand at splatters.  I have always loved the look, but the lack of control has kept me from using it.  What if I ruined my beautifully blended panel? Reminding myself that it’s all about the journey, I went for it.  I covered up the bouquet area with a roughly cut mask and splattered with the same colors I used for the blend as well as white gouache.  Halfway through, I was convinced I had ruined it.   At that point I had nothing left to lose though, and a bunch of splatters later I loved the results!

And then I really did ruin it by putting the finished panel on a big drop of water.  Now the panel had a big watermark in the middle and was warped to boot!  After leaving the panel to dry overnight between the pages of a book, both the watermark and the warping had improved significantly.  If I strategically placed the die cut, the watermark wasn’t too noticeable. (Hint: It’s right in the center of the die cut 😉) 

At this point I decided not too push my luck any further. I added some embellishments and considered it done.  The main thing I learned from this experience is that I should not to give up too quickly.  This was the final result.

Emboss-Resist Ink Blending With A Twist

For my second card, I wanted to try the emboss-resist technique.  I started by stamping a 5x7 panel full of flowers from the Starry Flowers Stamp set using Versamark ink.  Then I embossed the panel with white embossing powder. Next I blended the panel with Picked Raspberry, Wild Honey and Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide Inks.  

Now it was time to decide on the next step.  On two scrap panels, I tried two different techniques.  On one, I lightened the color of the flowers by painting over them with water. On the other panel, I added color by water coloring with the Distress Oxide ink colors.  I decided to use the second option. 

To finish the card, I trimmed the blended panel to 6x4 and rounded the corners.  Then I glued together two Mega Happy die cuts in white.  When I put it altogether, there was not enough contrast for my taste, so I added a thin charcoal gray frame behind my main panel. I also die cut another Mega Happy die cut from the same charcoal gray cardstock and glued it with a slight offset underneath the white die cuts.  The sentiment panel was blended with Picked Raspberry distress ink and stamped with Charcoal crisp dye ink.  The sentiment is from the Birthday Greetings stamp set.  Finally, I added some pearl embellishments to the larger flower centers. 

Bonus Card

I was able to create a bonus card from the sample scrap I made for the previous card. I cut the scrap into 1/2 inch strips and also blended 1/2 inch solid strips of each color.  I alternated the scraps with solid strips and glued them on a piece of printer paper. If you look closely, you can see that the flowers are lighter than the background on these strips.

I also created a 5x7 panel and used the Circled Greetings Hugs Die on it.  Putting it all together, I then glued the strips to the 5x7 card base, making sure the strips would be visible behind the circle panel. Then I glued on the circle panel, propped up by two layers of cardstock.  For the finishing touch, I colored some die cut flowers from the Tropical Greeting die set and added pearl embellishments as centers. 

 At this point, I still had lots of scraps to play with, but decided to leave those for a later date.  As it was, I could not decide on a favorite of these three cards and  I didn’t need more choices.  So far my journey in this program has been very inspiring.  Up next: For The Guys.