Hey everyone. It's Jes again. I'm here today with a set of fail cards. Have you ever sat down to craft and ended up messing up every single project? That was me today. I forgot about Mother's Day this weekend, and have spent the day trying to come up with two cards to send to my mother and mother in law. After several failed attempts I realized that it just wasn't going to happen today.
The first several attempts were crumpled up and thrown away. The last few that I'll show here were ones that I thought I might be able to salvage.
This one here isn't terrible, my biggest fail here, was using the wrong paper. I used regular cardstock, which worked well with the embossing, but didn't like my watercolor attempt at all. What you see here is after several minutes of trying to flatten it out after it completely crumpled in on itself. I might cut it down and paste it on another piece of card stock.
Tip #1: Know your materials. In crafting (at least for me) last minute additions don't often work out. If you're using plain cardstock, watercoloring will not work.
This one actually looks fairly pretty. A few things about it bother me though. For one, black background and Mother's Day don't really go together. I thought I'd try something out of the box and ended up really disliking the final effect. This black cardstock was extremely flimsy too, which made the card feel very cheap. The final thing about it that caused it to end up in the fail pile is the fact that it is off centered. The bottom part can be salvaged for a congratulations card down the road.
Tips #2 and 3: Invest in good quality card stock. The cheaper stuff just doesn't hold up well, and flimsy cards feel like the folded printer paper cards we used to make as kids. Using little pencil marks to mark the center of the paper is helpful and you don't end up (usually) with images that are not lined up.
In this last one, the mistakes were just flukes. I'll be redoing this card tomorrow and using more caution. The first mistake was the two different colors for the vine and the leaves. It just throws it off a bit. Second, I smudged it really bad by pulling up my stencil before the leaves were completely dry. The final mistake, was when I pulled up the tape holding it to my table. It ripped the top part of my card. If it had just been any one of the mistakes, I probably would have finished the card and sent it anyway, but all three was just too sloppy for me to use. Bonus win: I finally used the right paper!
Tip #4: Be patient. If you try to pull up your stencils or tape too soon, your watercolors will smudge or run together giving you a muddy look.
My final tip is: Don't get discouraged. Sometimes craft projects just don't work the way you pictured. Take a break and try again later.
Thanks for reading. If I end up with a set of cards that turns out tomorrow, I'll add a new post.
Hello everyone. It's Jes again, here today with a fun wedding card I put together for a friend. I leave early Saturday morning to take my first train trip across country for a wedding. I wanted a fun card that reminded me of my friend, but that was fairly simple, since most of my craft supplies are packed in my bag.
The first thing I did, was stamp out the cake bits from Bake Me A Cake on different patterned papers. I made sure to alternate the sizes on the papers so that my final project would be turquoise/yellow/turquoise/yellow which are the wedding colors. I pulled in a bit of pink paper as an accent color. This will be the stand, and later a little Congrats banner on the cake.
I didn't want to leave my background plain white, so I used my tombows and some watercolor paper to add a fun smooshed background. (Here is the link to my Ink Smooshing tutorial.)
Next up, I had to cut out all my cake layers. I love my little gyro tool for cutting out stamped images. It's the next best thing to having a die cut machine. Kristine has a great little example clip of the gyro in action on her IG, @teachplancraft. Once my paper was dry, I adhered it to my card base, then added my cake pieces.
I thought it looked a little plan still, so I pulled out the mini boy and girl from the Sweet Stamp Shop Pray For Us set and turned them into a bride and groom. Those itty bitty things were HARD to cut out! But definitely worth it in the end. They tied the whole card together.
Thanks for reading! I'll be back on May 2nd with a post about my DIY travel journal, and how I used it to plan my upcoming trip, and document my first train trip. :)
Hey, everyone! It's Kristine with you again today, and I've got a tutorial for you on Brusho watercolor powders. Now, I did a post awhile back on those and how fabulous they are, but today I've got a VIDEO for you so you can actually see them in action. They are amazing!! I made a card for a friend of mine, and start to finish, the whole thing took 20 minutes. Did I say amazing already? Amazing! And it's a totally unique look.
Here's the link to the video. Hope you enjoy it and are inspired to try Brusho for yourself!
Hi everyone, it's Jes here. Have you ever been in a crafting mood, but only had fifteen minutes to spare? Most of the time I just end up waiting till I have time to sit down and work. But sometimes, when I'm stressed, taking that little tiny bit of me time and making something pretty, makes all the difference in my day.
I'm going to show you how I made a fun dashboard for my planner in just a few short minutes. The fun thing about this smaller dashboard is that it can easily become a card when I am ready for a change in my planner.
You'll need: A fun piece of paper cut down to card size. Mine is 4.25 x 5.5. Stamps of your choice, embossing powder, a heat tool, embossing ink, and clips for your planner.
Ink up your stamp and stamp it on your paper. I love my Fiskars Stamp Press for lining things up just right.
Cover the image generously with embossing powder. I find that if I fold a piece of printer paper and give it a good crease, before opening it up to emboss on it, it is much easier to pour the powder back in the jar.
Once you've tapped off the excess powder and put it back in the jar, heat set your project till the embossing powder melts.
I used a tombow marker and a water brush to add a super fast color wash to my piece because I thought it looked boring.
It was still missing a little something, and I decided to add my April motto to the card, "Dare To Dream" using the Mixed Alpha stamp set from Sweet Stamp Shop.
Finally, I added my Spiral Snaps and slipped it into my planner. All total the project took me eighteen minutes, and that includes digging out supplies, and taking photographs.
Hey everyone, it's Jes today, back with a fun watercolored set of cards! Happy first day of spring! Here in Indiana it's a lovely (read: freezing) sunny day, with a high of 43 degrees. A perfect day to stay inside and craft. Today, I'm going to show you a set of cards that I made to keep in my bag. I've often wished I had a pretty, blank card for various occasions, but never seemed to have one on hand. That inspired me to make this set of cards to have on hand.
This is what my final four looked like. There were five, but I really messed up on one, badly! I gave that one to my daughter. For this project you'll need watercolor paper (cut to size), a pretty stamp set, card bases of your choice, embossing powder and ink, a heat tool, and your favorite watercolor medium (I like to use tombow markers and water brushes).
(see below for links to everything I used.)
I chose to use the Flutterby stamp set from Lawn Fawn for my decorations. The cards are from Michaels. When I got this stamp set I knew it would be perfect for embossing and watercoloring. I loved all the detail.
Step one: Emboss a pretty design in the bottom corner of each pre-cut piece of water color paper. I used a silver embossing powder from the Michael's Recollection collection. Stamp the image with the embossing ink of your choice, sprinkle the powder on, and heat set. I love the shimmery look of this powder. I like to work in sections when I'm doing multiple cards. Here are all the cards after embossing. (See the blue one? That's the one that became a major fail. Maybe someday I'll do a #fail blog post just for kicks.)
My next step was to add a water colored background on each card. I found a technique on Youtube (link below) called ink smooshing and I couldn't wait to try it. I used my fiskars stamp press as a base. I scribbled on it with my Tombow markers. Make sure to leave the corner where your design is blank. Then, sprinkle some water on the stamp press just to wet the colors and make it easy to transfer.
Lay your paper over the ink and press down. Leave it a few seconds to really soak up the water. Then, peal it off very carefully. There will be some water pooling on the edges. Just dab it off with a paper towel.
I like to let my cards dry a bit before I tape them down to my work surface. That way, the color on the corners doesn't come up or pool when I take the tape off later. It is much easier to color the designs if your project is taped down.
Next, I used my tombow markers and water brushes to add color to each of the flowers and butterflies on the cards.
This part was kind of time consuming, but it was my favorite part. I got braver and experimented more with color as I moved from card to card. Here is a close up of each of the final four cards.
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you liked this project. If you try it out, leave me a comment and let me see your final designs!
Happy Wednesday, everyone! It's Kristine with you today, and I hope you're making it through the workweek okay. Personally, I can't wait for Friday because it's the start of Spring Break this weekend - woo hoo! To help pass the days, I made myself this super cute Easter card. What, you've never seen an Easter dragon before? When you don't have bunny stamps, you improvise! This super cute set from Sweet Stamp Shop includes a dragon and egg, so I decided to turn Easter on its head this year:
Super cute, right? But that's not even the best part - George has wobble action!
Read on below to see how insanely EASY it is to make your own wobble cards!
So to start, I decided I wanted the background of the card to have some texture. I don't have a die cut machine, so I can't use embossing folders - but I didn't let that stop me! I decided to weave my own paper background. First, I cut the paper into strips 6 inches by one-quarter inch wide. (This paper is the kind you find in the scrapbooking section of the craft store - thicker than regular paper, but not quite as thick as cardstock).
Once the paper was all cut, I lined a bunch of the strips up next to each other and taped them down at the top end on my cutting mat. I used enough strips to go 6 inches, which was the width of my card base.
Next, I took the leftover strips and started weaving! This was a little time consuming, though after the 5th or 6th strip, I got a system that worked well and I was able to move pretty quickly. After each strip was woven in, I used my fingernails to gently but firmly pull it tight against the strip above it.
I continued on this way until I had a woven area that was the same size as my card base, about 6 in. by 4 in. I taped the bottom edges of the woven paper together to make sure they wouldn't come apart in the next step.
Once it was all taped and secure, I removed the woven paper from the mat and turned it upside down on the table (this is because my paper had a matte side and a shiny side, and I wanted the shiny side to show on the front of my card - I made sure the shiny side was face down on the table). I then positioned my card base over it and used hot glue to secure it - not so much that it squooshed through the weaving, but enough (especially around the edges) to keep it all secure.
Once the hot glue had cooled, I used my craft knife and a metal ruler to trim all around the edges. The woven bits at the very edge are not glued down tightly, as you can see, but that's okay - they'll be secured in the next step.
Next, I chose a piece of coordinating scrapbook paper and made a frame for the card front. I used my craft knife to cut out the inside, and used some scalloped scissors to cut the outside (I REALLY need to get a die cut machine, lol!).
Before attaching the frame to the front of the card, I went ahead and attached the grass pieces to the bottom. These are pieces of die cut grass that can be bought premade at the craft store in the scrapbooking section with all the stickers and other embellishments. These do not have sticker backs, so I ran them through my Xyron sticker maker first to attach a layer of adhesive to them. Then I peeled them off and stuck them down.
To attach the frame, I used foam tape around the edges. This gave it a bit of nice dimension.
Now for the good part - George and his eggs! I used Sweet Stamp Shop's Dragon set to stamp on white cardstock. (I made multiple images of each item in case I messed up).
Using a thin-tipped Sharpie, I carefully drew a pair of bunny ears on the dragon. What's an Easter dragon without bunny ears?? I think this was the moment I decided he had to be named George.
Once the dragon had his ears, I colored him, his eggs, and some fire with Prismacolor colored pencils and blended the colors with gamsol for a smooth, even look. Then, using a basket embellishment that I also found in the scrapbooking section of the craft store, I arranged the basket, eggs, and fire on the lower left portion of the card and adhered them down.
Now for George, I knew I wanted to make him wobble. There are ready-made wobble springs that you can buy, but it was cheap and crazy easy to make my own. To make a wobble spring, I cut a couple of small squares or circles of cardstock (small enough to attach to the back of the dragon without being seen) and some thin wire (mine is 26 gauge, and it worked perfectly). Using the handle of mycraft knife (any narrow cylindrical object would work), I wrapped the end of the wire 2 times around and cut.
Using plain old clear tape, I attached one end of the wire coil to one of the small pieces of cardstock, making sure it was as centered on the cardstock as I could make it. If any tape hung over the edge, I just trimmed it with scissors.
Next I attached the other end of the wire to the other piece of cardstock the same way.
Using a few glue dots, I attached one side of the spring to the back of the dragon and the other side to the front of the card. I added a bow to the basket, and voila! George the Easter dragon was born.
And don't forget that awesome wobble action! I've made him wobble dozens of times with no issues, so it's quite sturdy!
Can't you just imagine all kinds of projects that would be cuter with a little wobble action? Try making your own! Tag us on instagram (@teachplancraft, @jes_planning) so we can see your adorable creations. Until next time, have a great afternoon!
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Hey everyone! It's Jes. This has been a crazy week! I tried a couple times to put together a Plan With Me video and it just was not working the way I wanted. So instead, I decided to put together a simple little card using the new Adventure Awaits stamp set from Sweet Stamp Shop. Isn't it just the cutest set?
I wanted something super simple, that I could do in bulk (I ended up making five just like this.) Now that my daughter is in school, she receives invitations to birthday parties fairly often and it's nice to have a few cards on hand to send with the gift she chooses. Start with a simple card base. I used some pre-made cards from Michaels (that I cannot find the link to anywhere :/), and some white card stock for the little Adventure critters. I also used the Happy Birthday set, also from Sweet Stamp Shop, to add the sentiments. I stamped out several sets of Happy Birthday and the critters.
Up next was coloring my little animals. I love Tombow markers. I own all but six from their collection. They are my go to coloring tool. I had so much fun coloring the little animals, too!
I have to admit, my favorite part of this project was using my new Gyro-Cut Tool to kiss cut the animals. It took me about a minute to cut out each little one, and you can see how clean it cuts. I always hated fussy cutting, there were times I didn't want to do a craft because I knew I'd have to cut out the shapes and stamped images. This tool changed my crafting. What would take several minutes to fussy cut takes a minute or less now. I can do twice as many crafts, now. If you don't have it, I highly recommend buying it!
Finally, I glued my critters in place. The card looked just a bit bare, so I added in a couple of the cute sentiments that came with the stamp set. It added the perfect final touch. From start to finish this card took 17 minutes to complete. I love fast craft projects. Don't you?
