Mr Cardmaker is Triptychal

I have been remiss in posting lately, mostly due to the fact that I can much more easily head over to Instagram and toss up a photo of what I've been doing, rather than compose all the words and stuff I do for the ol' blog. Plus, I post pics of Max the Beagle and Charlie the Husband there, as well.
Check me out- HERE.

HOWEVER, I have not forgotten YOU, faithful blog reader, and so today I want to share Charlie's birthday card, which is NOT on Instagram yet, so you haven't missed anything!

So I made him this--

Which opens up to look like this--

I know I call this a triptych in the title, but I think it's actually just a trifold card, since it's really just one long picture, and not three scenes that go together, which I believe it the better definition of a triptych. (Who says you don't learn little tidbits here and there when you visit my blog?)
I just think that punny title is better...

The base is just a regular piece of 8 1/2"x11" piece of cardstock trimmed at an angle (which made it just about 7 1/2" inches tall at one end, and 4 3/4" tall at the other) which I scored on my Scor-Pal at the handy little arrow marks which are there to allow this kind of card fold. I'm not sure what the exact measurements are...The overall width is just under 3 3/4", so it easily fits into a regular business size envelope with some wiggle room, which allowed me to overlap that cloud on the first panel just a bit.

So, most of this is done with Lawn Fawn's Hello Sunshine stamps and dies, but is did sneak in an old Stampin' Up or two to do the underbrush-y stuff, and a SU set called Happy Happenings for the sentiment(s).

I colored the chicks and bees with Copics, using just a couple of yellows. I love how simple these images are, and they kind of remind me of those Minion things as well as marshmallow peeps.

To make the card look right when it's closed, I had to also do some stamping on the BACK side of the middle panel.
That looks like this--

Not terribly eventful on that side, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

So closed, it looks like this--

Sorry about my fingers in there, but that's 110# cardstock, so it doesn't lay flat when folded so well.
You can find the little vellum clouds in there a little better in this shot, too.

The balloons are all coated with Glossy Accents to shine them up, because, shiny!

So, Charlie loved it, and I was really pretty happy with the results. Yay!

Thanks so much for stopping by!
All Best--
Richard

MrCardmaker is Hostful

A couple of weeks ago, I had my friend Stephanie over for a day of card making. I would have loved to have made it a BIG event, with ALL my local crafty friends, but it was sort of last minute-ish, and it was mid-week, when lots of people are working, so...

Anyway, Stephanie is the gal who introduced me to card making about, wow, is it SEVEN years ago now? Well, all that time, and all that $$$ later, I was able to actually teach her a couple of new techniques, and we just had the very best time of it. 

We made these!

We started here--

 This one was SO fun and easy! I love, love, love ink blending, and rainbows, especially when it goes along with emboss/resist. Can't ever say no to a great big sentiment, either!

I made samples and kits for the two of us to grab and go with, and so I got to have two of everything when all was said and done! Lucky me! I am entering this card into Virginia's View color challenge, at the urging of the lovely Donna Mikasa!

The next one was really fast and easy, and made the most of a tiny scribble with a white gel pen--

This is a single panel, partially dry embossed, with a wet embossed sentiment. The birdy-butts are the white gel pen part...But you may have read about this one on THIS earlier post. I used white pencil on that one, but I like the pen better...

Now, I thought this one would be super simple as we did it, but explaining the smooshing technique is not as simple as I hoped--

I CASE-d this idea from Dawn McVey at Papertrey Ink, using this panel die as a background. (I went looking for the link for her doing this, and cannot find it, so if it was somebody else, please forgive me. Senior moments happen more often, these years...)There has to be a better way to move all the pieces back and forth than the way I did it, but the Press'n'Seal and I became close friends doing it all, so...
VERY different results every time you try this technique, so you CAN'T get bored.

These babies were awesome--

I had stamped and colored sheets and sheets of these birds a while back, so it was great to have them on hand to just grab. I love how a change of color story makes all the difference here...

THESE, however, were the BIG deal of the day--

I watched Kristina Werner do a watercolor version of a galaxy sky on her BLOG, and I just loved it.
I wanted to try it with Distress Inks and NOT as watercolor, but as ink blending instead, and I LOVE how these turned out. You will definitely wear out your arm doing  the black layer, but it's SO worth it!

There was a LOT of drying time involved, so we started early and worked the steps in between other cards. WELL worth the effort involved, I think. It's hard to see here, but the "blessed" die cut is done from white glitter paper, so there's tons of shine. The white spattered stars are KEY to making this technique work, as are the water splatters, so don't skip these steps.

I'm entering this card into Virginia's View as well, because COLOR!

And that was our day!
There's very little better than a day spent with friends, creating and laughing!
I need to set up a weekend day of this for more friends, SOON!

Thanks so much for stopping by!
All Best--
Richard

Mr Cardmaker is the Berries

Well, this week I am entering the Tag! You're It #50 challenge over at their blog, and I actually spent quite a few hours fretting over this one.

I made this--

I loved the inspiration piece, which is this--

And I decided that some juicy red strawberries were in my future!

I love strawberries, both to eat and look at. They're like these amazing jewels, and they're sweet and tart and just wonderful. Did you know they were actually very low in sugar, for a fruit? Good to know!

Well, I started with a manila tag and a stamp from GinaK Designs That I have owned for years. It's my only strawberry stamp that I own, I think, and was just perfect for what I wanted to do.

I made a couple of masks, because nothing but a big bunch of berries would do, and I stamped all over the tag with Versafine Black onyx ink, which I then embossed in clear.

The next part was water coloring everything with Distress Inks, allowing (in  most cases) different colors to dry before layering more and more ink for depth.

The last steps on the tag involved drawing in white dots with a gel pen, and then coating just the red parts of the berries with lots of Glossy Accents. Sadly, the glossy accents mostly wiped out my white dots, but there's just enough to show, so I'm living with it.

I coated a houndstooth embossing folder with versamark and ran my black backer tag through my Cuttlebug, and then clear embossed it for some shine. Such a great effect, and I really liked the fact that the powder wasn't exactly perfect.

For the card base, I first used more distress ink to deepen the card stock color, then stamped a leaf pattern all over. I added a panel of black and white striped paper to one side, and then mounted my tags.

(HEY! I am having a serious problem getting fun foam to stick to things-my ATG gun doesn't work, Tombo Mono multi glue didn't do it, even Glossy Accents needed some nudging, even though once I weighted it down it did finally work. Anybody else having this issue? I love using fun foam, but COME ON...)

Anyway--

Notice there's a diagonal thing going on here--diagonal paper stripes, diagonal lines make up the leaf pattern, and the tags are placed on diagonals. AND, the twist of the twine is basically a diagonal, too!

To soften things up a bit, I added a VERY round banner to the tag, which I made by die cutting a round frame and trimming it. I added a sentiment and some yellow ink, to punch up the folds, and after adhering it and some additional leaves, I thought I was done.

As I looked at it, though, I decided that I couldn't just leave that one little bit of yellow hanging there by itself, and I punched and inked some tiny flowers to look like strawberry blossoms. It carries the strawberry idea further, and gives my an opportunity to get THREE areas of yellow onto my card, which it really needed. Plus, I was able to really get a nice little primary color scheme out of the whole thing, too! Hey, green is a neutral here!

I created a panel to use on the inside of my card, doing each step as I did my tag, and just as I was getting ready to adhere it to the inside of my card, I got a huge black smudge on the top corner. ARGH!

Well, I wasn't about to throw the whole thing away, so I got my trimmer involved and got this--

It really leaves me with a pretty small writing area, but you know what, just look at the pretty stuff. I can always write on the back, too...

So that's my card!

You can also see my things (and lots of them well before they hit the blog) at my Instagram @rlbreaks.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

All Best--

Richard