Hello Everyone!

Today's card was my experiment with Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors. Gansai Tambi is traditional Japanese watercolor. They are more opaque and sometimes use different binders than western watercolors, so I wanted to get some practice in and see if I like this type of watercolor. 

I started by painting the owl. 

It was quite relaxing to work with these paints. I'm excited to continue practicing with them. 

Once I finished with the owl, I set it aside to dry and painted some watercolor paper in oranges and browns. I then die cut the gears out of the watercolor paper.

I decided to add some black watercolor and splatter it with gold to give more of a rusty gear effect. I've also read that adding a bit of cinnamon can help with a rust effect, though I did not use that method this time. 

I splattered the background and added my owl, gears and sentiments! I used an acrylic block to make sure the word awesome stuck down properly. The gold behind the word awesome was painted with watercolor. It shows up a bit brighter in pictures than it is in real life. I definitely have a few changes I would have made on this card, but it helped me to practice with my watercolor and play a bit! 

 

Greetings crafty folks,

Halloween is quickly approaching, and I'm not the least bit ready. What about you? In this house, we haven't even decided on costumes. I made this glow in the dark Halloween card to help us get in the spirit. My kids loved seeing this shaker glow in the dark! Here's how I put this card together:

I started out by making the shaker. I die cut 7 pumpkins out of white cardstock and 1 pumpkin in purple. I glued all of the white pumpkins together and let them dry. I also cut down a piece of acetate and glued it to the purple pumpkin piece. This is the top of the shaker. 

While I let the shaker pieces dry, I glued orange and green strips to my card base. I die cut these with a Lawn Fawn Simple Stripes background die. The pumpkin is also from Lawn Fawn. 

Once everything was dry I put the shaker together. I initially glued some green paper to the back, but decided, it looked batter in all purple and glue the inner parts of the purple pumpkin to the inside of the shaker. Then I added some glow in the dark crystals and black sequins. 

I love how the shaker turned out all on its own. This could be used as a tag or interactive Halloween decoration. I made my shaker separately, but you can always just glue the stacked pumpkins directly to the card base and add your sequins before putting the top pumpkin layer on.

After finishing the shaker, all I had to do was glue it to the card base, stamp the card, and add a few more black sequins. I used my Hero Arts Celebrate everyday set to stamp Happy Halloween.

I had so much fun making this card, and it was really cool to see it glow in the dark. This card was definitely a family favorite! Check out that glow! I hope you all have a wonderful week and have time to get crafty. 

Easy Peasy

 

Hello fellow crafters,

Today's card is a quick and easy card! I ordered a few things from My Favorite Things and felt compelled to create a Christmas card. I thought it would be fun to change up this tropical leaf cover plate and create something for Christmas instead of a tropical scene. 

All I had to do to create this card was die cut some red paper with the cover plate and remove all of the small paper pieces. I glued the die cut background onto a 4.25x5.5 green panel. It took a bit of time to dot the glue all over the back. I may try an adhesive sheet or tape gun next time.

I then cut out a 2 inch piece of vellum and heat embossed Merry Christmas in gold. I wrapped the vellum around the panel so I could glue it to the back so no adhesive would show through the vellum.

Then all I had to do was glue it to a card base! Easy peasy. I think these would be a great card for mass producing to send out at Christmas. I got a few more goodies from MFT, and I'm excited to share what I'll be creating with these! 

World Cardmaking Day

 

Hello fellow crafters and paper enthusiasts,

Today’s card was my world cardmaking day creation. Were you all able to get some crafting done on WCD? I created this card to welcome the beginning of October. I love the eerie, spooky fun of October. I’m definitely partial to corn mazes and a walk on a foggy October night vs going to a haunted house. I enjoyed creating this card and was excited to try making a card with no stamps.  

I started by die cutting a pumpkin frame. I cut this out 3 times and glued them together to get a bit of dimension. I then added a some detail to the leaf and the stem for the pumpkin. 

I stamped the inner pieces of the pumpkin, added a bit of brown ink around the edges, and glued it all together. I think that little bit of brown ink helped to give the pumpkin a more grungy look. I cut up some craft moss to help with the eerie look as well. Moss always makes me think of grave stones for some reason.

I die cut the letters, and then tried to decide on the look. I was initially going to add the letters to the moss, but I thought it might be a bit too wobbly, so I added them to the pumpkin instead. I had trouble deciding between purple and gold for the embossing on the word fun. Which color would you have chosen? I thought the gold looked best with the browns and greens in the card. I would have chosen purple if I'd gone for a more traditional black and orange for Halloween. I thought this card would land somewhere between fall and Halloween.

Once I had everything adhered, I felt like the card didn't look dirty enough so I added some splatter. I still feel like I could have done more to achieve a creepier look, but I love how this turned out! What do you think? 

Hi, Hey, Hello

 

   Welcome, fellow crafters! This blog is my space dedicated to sharing my handmade cards and paper crafting projects. Whenever I'm reading someone's blog, I always want to know a bit more about the creator. So here's your chance to learn a bit more about me. 

I'm Lawanda, a 34 year old mom to a 4 year old boy and a 10 month old girl. I've been married to my non-crafty husband for almost 11 years! He's more into creative writing than crafting. I've always enjoyed crafting, but I never really stuck with anything until I found papercrafting. Papercrafting led me to making cards. I love the entire process of designing a card and bringing someone joy when they receive it. I enjoy crafting, baking, drinking tea, playing D&D, and the occasional video game.

I never have much to say about myself, but feel free to ask me anything you'd like to know! I'll post a few photos of some of my previous papercrafting projects as well a some watercolor. I hope you enjoy them!

Beep! Beep! Beep!

     Hello fellow crafters! Today's card was inspired by one of my son's favorite books, Little Blue Truck. I immediately thought of this book when I saw the Farmhouse Friends stamp set from Brutus Monroe. Do you ever find crafty inspiration in surprising places? Let me know about your most unexpected inspiration in the comments. I never imagined I'd create a card based on a children's book! Let me walk you through how I created this card!

    I started out with a 5x7 piece of watercolor paper and painted the background. I used a simple watercolor travel kit from Winsor & Newton. I'm enjoying their student grade cotman watercolors so far. I'm hoping to try out a few different brands in the future. When the paint was dry, I cut the panel down to 4x5.25.

    I stamped the images of the truck, gate and pig on another sheet of watercolor paper and fussy cut them out after painting. There is no coordinating die set for these stamps, but It wasn't too difficult to cut these out. I then used my tape runner to stick them onto my painted background.

    Then it was time to decide where I wanted the sentiments. Of course I had to put the classic "Beep" greeting that the Blue gives to all of the farm animals in the book. I used Oliver's stitched letters from LawnFawn and cut them out of watercolor paper. I painted them to mimic the mud and sky in the background, and then I let them dry. I also cut them out 3 additional times in plain white cardstock to get some dimension. 

    I glued all of them together and chose a sentiment. I decided to use the "missing you pig time" sentiment to go with the pig on the card. I stamped it in embossing ink and used white heat embossing powder. Then, all I needed to do was assemble!

    I hope you all enjoy this card! I truly enjoyed making it and my son loved it! It's currently sitting on his little craft table. My goal was to make this a card that could work for kids or adults. My son informed me that I needed to add googly eyes to make it look like Blue in the book. It's a great suggestion! Let me know if you make this card and if you are team googly eyes or not. Have a great day!