What a Week

You might be wondering where I've been this week with so few posts. I'm not going to bore you with the dramatic details of what I'm calling Multiple Crisis Week. Suffice to say, it's been a doozy, and I'm ready to sit and breathe, drink a glass of wine, and read a novel with my feet up.

God is good, no one is hurt, and that's enough.

Anyway, today's card is another in my Dies Go CAS series, with an embossing folder thrown in for good measure. The Hero Arts Nesting Hearts Infinity Dies are amazing. I love being able to make hearts in such a vast range of sizes.

Yes, I distressed, which seems appropriate for this week. At first I was irritated that the ink got down below the raised spots, but after googling images of real birch bark, I realized it makes the heart look much more realistic.

Besides, look at all that unsullied white space. *happy sigh*


The cute cardinal comes from Poppy Stamps Cheery Cardinals die.

Design Notes: At first, I wanted this to be a portrait-oriented card, but then I realized the sentiment and cardinal would be closer to the lower right "sweet spot" on the card if I used a landscape-oriented card base. The results speak for themselves.

Cooper Update: Formal diagnosis (second opinion) of severe hip dysplasia on right side, with mild dysplasia on the left. That X-ray almost made me cry. Both elbows have fragmented medial coronoid process, which is also worse on the right. Cooper's right is all wrong!

This is not what you want to have happen to a puppy. He will eventually have surgery on the elbows for sure (that surgery is guaranteed to stop the chipping away of bone in the joint). The hips are on a wait-and-see. I'll be talking to the vet about supplements for joint health in hopes of slowing down the issues. But he is pretty much always going to be in some level of pain.

Not that he seems bothered by it now. He's snoring on the floor behind me, using his doughnut collar as a pillow. When he's awake, he's jumping all over the place (please don't tell the vet...she said to keep him from jumping until the stitches come out, but HOW?) and generally acting like the happy puppy he is.

So yay, Cooper!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: My Favorite Things Label Maker Sentiments
ink: Memento espresso truffle
paper: Papertrey white, StampinUp real red
accessories: Tim Holtz embossing folder, Poppy Stamps Cheery Cardinal die, Hero Arts Nesting Hearts Infinity dies, dimensionals

Sparkle Birthday

Thanks so much for all the input about using old or new stamps. Reading your thoughts has clarified mine, and I am grateful! I'll share more tomorrow of my thoughts, along with a pair of cards using one of the earliest stamps I bought way back in the Jurassic period.

For tonight, here's another use for that wonderful winter tree stamp from Papertrey's old Masculine Motifs set.

Rather than the soft gray I used yesterday, I went for the high drama of black, white, and a tiny splash of red. It seemed a bit plain, so I pulled out a Sakura stardust pen and made the trees sparkle.

The sentiment on the wavy banner mimics the curve of the ground, and adds a touch of whimsy and movement to the card.

Winter birthday cards are so much fun to make!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Masculine Motifs, Through the Trees (bird); Clearly Besotted (sentiment)
ink: Archival black, red geranium
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: banner die (StampinUp), dimensionals

Little Florals and Some Chat about Dies

Yesterday's card featured what I think is the largest die that coordinates with the Hero Arts set Little Florals. I adore this set. Today's card uses three die-cut stems from the set to make a little bouquet.

The flowers were colored with Copics before being cut. Copic coloring for small images like these perfectly suits my lazy efficient style, and is well within the very modest limits of my Copic expertise. In a few days, I'll show you a card that took F-O-R-E-V-E-R to color and made me vow never to color the stamps from that set again.

But these bitty stamps can be colored quickly. So yay!

I wanted to use a soft yellow or pink ribbon for the bow, but it turns out I don't have either color. So white it is. That keeps the attention on the color of the flowers, though, and covers up the ugly overlap of the stems, so it's a win.

Now, this card could be made with stamping and masking. This would eliminate the slight border on the die cuts and would look more natural. But these petite images in their super-simple setting work for me as die cuts.

While my experience with dies is extremely limited, I've found that Hero Arts' dies are consistently easy to use, work well every time, and cut cleanly. They are open dies (just the outline, not a solid piece of metal) which allows you to stamp and color and THEN cut very easily. I use washi tape to hold them in place.

Finally! A use for the thousand or so rolls of washi I own!

I've bought some Papertrey dies and am less pleased with them. They often leave a slight residue around the edges of the die cuts, making them look dirty. I've washed the dies in Dawn and warm water, but they still leave that residue. Apparently, this is a common problem as I found many irate outbursts on threads and blog posts on the subject. Any suggestions?

Also, Papertrey's are mostly closed dies, so it's easier to cut, then stamp and color, which can be awkward.

What is your experience with various manufacturers' dies? I'd love to hear your recommendations to buy and to avoid.

Thanks in advance for your input.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Little Florals, Summer Garden
ink: Memento black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: coordinating dies, Copic markers, glue pen, ribbon

Beautiful Arteza Color and a Die

Last week, I posted this card, which shows what the Arteza real brush pens look like when used to color an image directly without addition of water. Today's card shows how these beautifully rich colors can be used to create a background that can be die cut for truly high-impact clean-and-simple designs.

To make this card, I colored a scrap of watercolor paper with the dark pink and purple Arteza pens, blending the two colors together. Then, I cut the sentiment using the Blessings die from Hero Arts. The rest of the card is self-explanatory.

What I love here is how those rich colors pop right off all that white cardstock. There's so much impact here! And the texture of the watercolor paper adds just a little something as well.

So don't think that backgrounds have to be used in big ways in designs. You can keep things simple by using only a small amount of colorful background...and plenty of white space!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Blessings
ink: Archival black
paper: watercolor paper, Papertrey white card stock
accessories: coordinating die, rhinestones, Copics to color the rhinestones

Dies Go CAS: A Small and Simple Scene

One excellent design option for clean-and-simple cards is to create a small scene in a sea of white space. Incorporating dies into these scenes requires smaller dies, and as I've been shopping around, I've tried to buy a few die sets that fit that requirement.

Like Hero Arts Daisy and Bugs. Dang, this set is adorable, and the coordinating dies are perfect.

The daisy is quite large, but the bugs are small, and so here's my scene.

Note that my scene is very tightly focused: only part of the flower shows (about 2/3 of it...and that's on purpose) and it takes up about 1/3 of the stamped panel. To keep it simple, I left the background white, which has the effect of really forcing the eye onto the the three spots of yellow (the center of the daisy and the two bees) which are arranged in a triangle.

Note, too, that leaving the background white lessens the effect of the white border on the die cuts. If the background were colored, the white border around the bees would really stand out and look sort of jarring.

Scenes, however, need not be this simple to still feel CAS. The key is the white space around them. More detailed scenes can work equally well as long as there's plenty of white around them.

Now, the simplicity of this design required a few additional little touches to make it special. First, the yellow Stickles on the daisy adds some much-needed shimmer and shine to the card, as well as a bit of texture. The bees' wings shimmer with clear Wink of Stella.

After completing the card, it occurred to me that some yellow flock would have added a lot to the design...more texture, stronger yellow on the bees. Missed opportunity. I shan't beat myself up over it. This card is grand without it.

Anyway, if you want to bring dies into your already-CAS style, focus on smaller dies for images that can create scenes. This allows for plenty of white space. If you want to try a CAS card even though you usually make more embellished designs, focus on using your smaller dies.

We're in the home stretch for Christmas. I hope you all are enjoying this week and feeling caught up (or at least not too far behind!) in preparations. Remember to breathe.

And to those of you celebrating Hanukkah, Happy Hanukkah!

Peace, love, hope, and joy,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Daisy and Bugs
ink: Memento black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: yellow Copic marker, yellow Stickles, dimensionals, bee die from Daisy and Bugs, Wink of Stella

Dies Go CAS: Little Florals

Integrating dies into my clean-and-simple (CAS) style is proving harder than I had thought it would be. Oh, how I love a challenge, and thanks to my friend Eva and her gift of a Cuttlebug, it's a challenge I accept!

As I'm feeling my way forward with this, I thought it might be helpful to me--and hopefully to you, too--if we organized a series of posts discussing the issues of CAS design with dies. My plan is to share my successful CAS-die designs and discuss why each works.

If it feels right, I'll also share some not-successful designs and discuss why they don't work. Right now, there are lots of not-successful designs in my trash, and sometimes looking at failures helps me learn...and presumably helps you learn, too.

Of course, many of you are already experts at CAS card design using dies, so feel free to ignore my blatherings and just look at the cards...or chime in with your own tips!

I still very much enjoy making cards without dies, so not every upcoming post will include them. Consequently, I'll try setting up the labels widget on the sidebar so you can quickly find the Dies Go CAS posts. My labels became horribly unwieldy years ago, so I quit using them, but for this, they might be useful if I can just get the Dies Go CAS label to show. We shall see.

Now let's move on to today's card!

When I saw this absolutely adorable Christmas card on Pinterest  by Chris C. (now pinned to my Cards board), I felt a CASE coming on. What I love about the card is how a small bird, expertly colored, is such a strong focal point. I wanted to try my hand at the same with one of my small dies. Here's the result:

Eva and I met for coffee last week, and she gave me a set of stitched rectangle dies I had actually been looking for! Yay! Thank you, Eva! So I used them here.

Elements kept from Chris's card include a colorful die cut, thread (floss instead of twine, but still), a gray text background, and lots of glorious white space.

Note that my card features a sentiment panel that's not present in the inspiration card. The inspiration card has that adorable bird--colored expertly--perched on the twine next to a jingle bell and star die cut (brilliant!). When I added the sentiment panel, I needed to balance the elements differently. Putting the flower over the bow accomplished that.

Three elements are black: the floss, the Stickles in the flower, and the sentiment. That creates a strong visual triangle that anchors my version nicely.

Now, the original card's birdy focal point is colored EXPERTLY with (I'm guessing) Copics. My Copic coloring was somewhat disappointing. This was my second effort on that little flower, and it's "good enough for government work" but not entirely satisfying. Tomorrow's card will show a much more satisfying attempt at coloring another flower from this same Hero Arts set.

And that's all I have to say about that.

For now.

Peace, love, hope, and joy,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Little Florals, Clearly Besotted Tiny Type, Papertrey Text Style
ink: Hero Arts soft granite, Memento black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: Copics, dimensionals, floss, Little Florals die, stitched rectangle dies