Die cut inlay cards

I could not wait to share these!
Every crafter starts getting ready for Christmas early, and I’ve started gathering my materials and tools back in August. And as soon as I was ready I started making cards and trying new techniques.

I love this inlay technique I found on Jennifer Maguire YouTube channel. Jennifer is my card making guru, I just love her work and the way she presents it. You can learn huge variety of techniques using different crafty things and she always has loads of ideas how to use a technique even if you don’t have the specific supplies shown in the video. You can check the video out here (warning, it’s addictive!).

I didn’t use inking for this, I just die cut my designes out of different kinds of cardstock. I found this glittery paper in silver and gold in a random shop and I just love the shimmer on it. It’s not just glitter cardstock, it has this amazing shimmer and it reflects the light beautifully. I hope the photos show it. Unfortunately it is not easy to work with, as it does not die cut very well. I guess the shimmery side is covered with some sort of plastic or foil which stretches in the die cutting machine and does not cut, no matter what kind of shim I use. So I had to run my craft knife after I die cut it to separate the pieces. It was very tedious and it took hours! But I can be very stubborn when I want to and I got through it. It was worth it. I can only hope  it looks as nice on the photos as it does in real life.

I’m now really into making Christmas cards and there’s loads more to come, including shaker cards, so stay tuned!

Autumnal Birthday

For some reason it’s not easy for me to come up with card ideas for men. Maybe it’s because I’m quite a girly girl. But this time the season came in handy and I’ve decided to create this autumn inspired card for a special Birthday.

I embossed the craft cardstock with a tree pattern adding some ink (Distress inks in this case - Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmalade) to add a bit of colour and to highlight the pattern on the embossing. I just smeared a bit of ink on my embossing folder in a few places before adding the cardstock and running it through my Big Shot. I created a tag for the sentiment by cutting a small rectangle out of green cardstock and cutting the corners off with a very small circle die.

I did something special with the die cut sentiment - I used gold embossing powder and heat embossed it 3 times to make it look like it’s made out of metal. As the powder builds up and melts it adds some dimension and also covers the edges giving the die cut that metal look. Then I decided to make my faux metal sentiment look a bit tarnished. I took a random stamp with a lot of detail and no.t a lot of background covered, added embossing ink and stamped random areas. Then I added copper coloured embossing powder and heat set it to melt into the gold. I could have used a small brush to apply the ink as well but I found the stamp worked perfectly. I’m quite pedantic so if I had to apply the ink with a brush I’d probably make it look too perfect and symmetrical, which would ruin the look.

I also used the same embossing powder on the background cardstock - I only covered the edges as this is the only visible part of the backround. I repeated the embossing twice just to match that faux metal effect on the sentiment a bit.

Autumn leaves are the final touch on this simple card - I just die cut them out of yellow card stock and added some ink shading (I used Spiced Marmalade again). I used very nice die cuts from Die Cutting Essentials magazine (issue 14 featuring beautiful leafy embossing folder and a set of leaf dies with stitching details).

Overall it's a really simple card, but a couple of the techniques I used here really add to the look and the faux metal sentiment creates a focal point. And most importantly- the Birthday Guy loved it.