Cards!

Hi all! As promised, I have several cards to share! These weren't done for any particular challenge, I was just playing around with what I have. 

First up, I made this card with the June card kit from Simon Says Stamp. I saw this example from Nina Trapani and wanted to try to emualate it:

As you can see, I made a narrower card with the same patterned paper. I used the stencil and orange and yellow Distress Oxide inks to make the sun. Then I went over that with the yellow Stickles gel that was included in the kit. For the sentiment, I wanted wood grain paper to match the tree. I didn't have any in the right color, so I made my own! I used brown paper and I used the Tim Holz wood grain stencil with a few colors of brown ink. I made a few layers of ink. Then I stamped the sentiment with yellow Distress Oxide ink and embossed it with clear powder. The sentiment blended in a little too well with the brown, so I took some more brown ink and blended it over the sentiment to make the background darker. Finally, I took a towel and rubbed off any excess ink on the heat embossing.

Next is a graduation card. I wanted to use my Cricut for this one, so I found the hat and "Congratulation cuts. For the background, I used a star stencil and modeling paste mixed with silver gelato. I usually keep my graduation cards pretty simple and try to use the graduate's school colors. I really like how this one turned out!

Finally, I have an anniversary card. When I made the second card in this post, I didn't want to throw away the insides of the flower die cut, so I decided to use them for a die cut inlay technique. I cut the flower from red cardstock and layered that over the black shadow cut. I then took each piece from the gold cut and glued them into place in the red flower. It was a bit of a slow process, but it turned out so pretty and I got more use out of my sheet of specialty paper! For the background of this card, I used a herringbone background stamp and stamped it with Versamark on black cardstock. I then heat embossed it with gold powder. I used some foam to attach the flower for dimension. I stamped the sentiment in white ink and heat embossed it with red powder and then cut the banner shape. I used a black gem for the center of the flower (not pictured here because it had fallen off, it has since been reattached).

 That's all for now, thanks for checking out my cards!