Make It Monday #215 -- Bringing the Inside Out

Whenever I can't think of what to make, I like to work on a challenge. I've been a customer of PaperTreyInk for a couple of years now, but I've only recently started to play along with their challenges. This week's Make It Monday Challenge was to create a card so that the embellishments inside the card show on the outside.

I've had this Sizzix label die for some time and used it very little until I saw PTI's Vintage Label set that adds a dotted or double line frame around them, I was lucky to snag this older set before it went into the vault, and now I get a lot more use out of my dies.

The cute little dotted flowers are Polka Dot Parade. I just took a deep breath and cut apart my stems since I only needed two. I'm pretty sure they will fit back together perfectly. Anyway, here's what I made. Pardon the fingers -- there was no other way to close it the right amount.

Favorite Technique/Product

The fun challenge today at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is to create something showing your favorite product or technique.

My favorite technique is whatever I just learned! This past year I've taken some wonderful OnlineCardClasses in stenciling and watercolor and die cutting and...and...and...I just can't get enough of those awesome classes. I am no longer afraid of watercolor and I'm getting better at it as I use it more. I love stenciling. And embossing, both heat and dry and also with paste. Die cutting, oh yes please! I think I use my Cuttlebug every day, both to dry emboss and to die cut. Masking. And of course stamping.

Probably at the moment, my favorite technique is die cutting.

As for favorite product, I love, love, love the Stitched Rectangles dies from Simon Says Stamp and I use them on nearly every project. If nothing else I cut out the largest rectangle for my background. Then, rather than waste the edges, I use the waste piece as a frame on a different card. Here's the first entry, using two sizes of that wonderful Stitched Rectangles set. The outer portion is dry embossed (another favorite technique), and the inner one is stamped and adorned with Simon's Leaf Column Outline and a sentiment.

And for the second one, here's a card I made using the frame remaining after using the largest Stitched Rectangle. The frame started out as a stamped gingham background I used on another card, and this one sports another dry embossed background. The sentiment is from Simon's Square Sayings -- I reach for them pretty often as their small blocky size is often just what I need.

Papertrey June Blog Hop Challenge

The Papertreyink June blog hop was announced today, with this photo of an adorable pair of baby shoes to be the inspiration:

I want a pair of grown up shoes just like these!

I've never participated in the PTI Blog Hop before, but I was so inspired by these cute shoes that I ran right to the craft room and made this card:

The hop doesn't go live until the 25th, so I hope I can remember to link up then. Meanwhile, I am entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge, with a "friends" theme. The card uses not only flowers from the new PTI Garden Gild set, but also a sentiment from Simon Says Stamp and their awesome stitched rectangles, which I use on almost every card lately!

Mask-erade Day 5

These OnlineCardClasses.com (OCC) go so fast and I learn so much! Saturday was the final class day and the topic was heat embossing as a way to mask images. I finished two class projects today.

I remembered I had this fun "Watts Up" set with a solid light bulb, so I stamped it in light yellow and then heat embossed it in clear before adding distress inks through a stencil. Unfortunately, the bulb is about the same color as the background and you can't really tell that the heat embossing did anything other than make the bulb shiny, which is a good thing I guess! Then I wasn't happy with it as a card front, so I cut it down and added it to a patterned paper background. Better.

The last project embossed the negative space of a die cut. Leaves and a flower had a defined edge and worked pretty well before watercoloring a background. The color is a bit more vibrant than the photo shows.

There's a few more projects I may get time to try this week, but at least I got a chance to try every day's featured method. Love these classes and can't wait to see what's up next!