Tag Archive for: cards

BE PREPARED – Make Cards Ahead Sentiment Ready

BE PREPARED – Make Cards Ahead Sentiment Ready is what we have for you today. Not only are you going to love this, you are going to use some of your scraps too! Yes, I too have tons of scraps that I keep because I love the pattern of the paper so why not make it into a card read for a sentiment?! What a great idea right? This week I am trying to get you to think outside of the box, use your scraps, think ahead be prepared for when you need a card and don’t have time to make one.

Supplies needed for the BE PREPARED – Make Cards Ahead Sentiment Ready Project

2.5″ squares solid & patterned – 10

3.5″ squares – 5

A2 Cards – 5

Adhesive

Matching Twine or ribbon

The point of these cards are to use up your scraps, build up your cards on hand and make these quickly to not take away from other things you need to do.

The cards are CAS (Clean and Simple) cards so that you Make Cards Ahead Sentiment Ready. You can customize your card with a sentiment and you are ready to send it or give it!

Take out your adhesive and apply the adhesive to only three sides of the square. The reason for this is so you are ready in case you want to give this card with a gift card in it. This allows for a little pocket for a gift card. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

Make sure you apply your paper so that you enable an opening for your gift card if you are going to use it.

For this card, I am not going to use the gift card opening so I am placing a square on top of the opening for a different design.

Remember, we are using up our scraps so here is a perfect piece of paper I could adhere to my card for a sentiment that can be stamped on later.

Here I am making another card with of course only three sides having adhesive.

I am applying a square on the opposite side of the opening so that I can add some color to my card.

Here, I added the square on the top with the pattern by just turning it so it looks like a diamond. Just a little something different. It works, right?

Again, make sure that you are checking the opening for the gift card or else you may put it down upside down and it may not work. Yes, this is a lesson from experience. PERSONALLY LOL

Here, the opening for the gift card is at the top of the red paper. We are just moving the placement of the square to the bottom.

See how different it looks even with just using a small piece of paper to the top of the patterned paper? Perfect for a sentiment or focal point.

Want to dress it up a little? Pull out some coordinating colored twine.

Whether you tie a bow or a knot, it will add a little bit of flair to your creation.

This is what it looks like just with adding a little twine and a bow. Dressed it up a bit, right?

Here are the cards I created. You can use them in basically any direction. Be sure when you are creating them, you try to do that. That way it will work with whatever theme you plan to use it for!

For this weeks giveaway we are giving away a $15 store credit for anything in the store, including sale items! Winners announced next week so be sure to check back!

To qualify to win, you must be BOTH:

A public follower on YouTube, subscribe to our mailing list/blog posts and you may also comment on this blog post for an additional entry to win! Winners will be announced next week on our Mondays with Melissa blog post!

BE SURE TO check to see if you are a winner EVERY WEEK. If you do not contact me within two weeks of the your name being picked, you will forfeit your prize. Thank you for your understanding.

Subscribe to BOTH with MATCHING NAMES to be eligible. If I am unable to match you with your subscription to both the email list and the YouTube Channel, you will miss your chance to win a prize. If I can’t decipher if you are a matching subscriber (if your profile doesn’t show publicly who you subscribe to) and I can’t confirm you have subscribed to both, you will not be eligible.

For this weeks giveaway we are giving away another $15 store credit for anything in the store, including sale items!!!

 The winner is  Cheryl G !

Winner, please send me your contact information via contact page on our website, which post you are a winner from and I will get your prize out to you! Thank you so much for being a YouTube follower and subscribing to our mailing list/blog posts!

Thank you for joining us for the tutorial BE PREPARED – Make Cards Ahead Sentiment Ready Project. CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK TO SEE IF YOU ARE A WINNER!

Have a wonderful week and thank you for going on A Creative Journey with Melissa.

 

 

 

Chameleon Markers – Coloring Gift Tags

Today we are featuring Chameleon Markers – Coloring Gift Tags. I love to color various things and have since I was little everything from using crayons, markers, colored pencils and of course paint. I really think it is therapeutic and I love to get my creative on. Today I am showing you a more in-depth look at coloring with Chameleon Markers and how they work. I do have two cute little tag projects and have instructions below. This time however, instead of showing you the project step by step, I concentrated on the details of using the Chameleon Markers and how you can get a wide array of colors with just the 20 colors they have. First the project directions. Are you ready? Let’s get started!

Project Supplies Needed:

Chameleon Marker Set

All colors I used for all projects: GR3, OR4, RD4, BL3, BR5, CG8, Colorless Blender

You’re Snow Wonderful Stamp Set by A Creative Journey with Melissa

Memento tuxedo black ink

Tim Holtz Stapler

Paper

Tag Punch

Twine

Ribbon

Stamp Block

Supplies

Take out your ribbon or twine. Cut the appropriate length for your creation. Set aside.

Take your ink, stamp block and paper.

Stamp the image and sentiment you wish for your creation using Memento Ink.

Take out your tag punch. Punch out your stamped creation.

Take out your Chameleon Markers.

Choose whichever tip you prefer to work with. Remember-depending on how light or dark you want your colors to be will decide how long you keep the blending solution cartridge on the nip of the ink. The longer you leave it on, the lighter the color will be to start with. A good method that I prefer to use is to count how many seconds you leave the cartridge on and then that way you will have a more uniform look if you need to have the same color further along in your project. You can use the colors and amount of blending solution you think best suit your creation and not what I did. This would be a design choice. Ultimately, you would color your image and background as desired using the following guidelines and techniques.

This is the brush nib side

brush tip

This is the bullet tip nib side

bullet tip*NOTE* A great guide to use to see which side is which nib is the gray ring as shown is where the brush nib is located. gray ringTake off the cap of the marker color that you have selected on the appropriate nib side. Put the cap aside. Place the blending solution chamber on the appropriate nib. Be sure it clicks in place.adding blending solutionKeep marker upright for the blending solution to join the alcohol ink. Count out the amount of time you do this for.
keep upright for blending solution

This is what the nib looked like. Often you will be able to see the color difference in the nib as it will show it very light on the tip of the nib itself. I have noticed however that on the darker colored markers, it is not as obvious. You will see an example of this further in the tutorial.tip w blending solution

Starting with the right Christmas tree, I started coloring where I wanted to have your lightest colored area on my project. Remember your blending solution will be used up and the true color will come as you use it up so it will get darker as you color.

coloring tree 3

As you are coloring, move your marker to where you wish to have your darkest color. This is the result.

colored tag varigation tree

If you need to repeat the colored area in a section which is larger and would need more of the lighter, medium and dark colors, repeat the above steps. This is where it helps to count how long you have placed your blending solution cartridge on your nib to continue to get the uniformed look.

Now, moving onto the trunk of the tree. You will repeat the steps above. In the below picture you can see where I over saturated when coloring. This was because I added too much blending solution at first so much of the color was transparent. This caused me to color over areas I had already colored causing this effect. Next time I will keep the blending solution on less in order to avoid this mistake.

close up tree w trunk

This is how dark the brown marker is normally without the solution.

brown difference color

Here’s a little closer up 🙂

brown-difference-color closeup

Now I am going to show you how coloring with the markers without any blending solution looks. It’s a very clean rich color. The left is without the blending solution, the right is with the blending solution. I really like both looks 🙂

tree tag 1

Now it’s time to color the snowman tag! Take out your snowman tag as well as your Chameleon Markers GR3, R4, RD4, BL3, CG8, and your Colorless Blender pen.

We will start with the snowman and we will be coloring the inside of him. Sometimes you will find you will need to color him in again to enhance his look (we do end up doing this for this project) but this is not always the case. Once again, you will pick the nib of your choice on your CG8 marker, take off that cap, place the blending solution cartridge on that nib ensuring it clicks and holding it upright for the desired amount of time needed for your preferred color.  Once you have done this, you will color inside of the snowman’s body and head just to show dimension.  Set this marker aside.

color snowman

To add a little bit of shadowing, you can color an area below the snowman to give this appearance.

snowman

Take out your BL3 Chameleon Marker out.  Once again, you will pick the nib of your choice, take off that cap, place the blending solution cartridge on that nib ensuring it clicks and holding it upright for the desired amount of time needed for your preferred color.  Once you have done this, you will color in a circular motion on the tag eventually coloring in the entire area surrounding the snowman sometimes repeating your coloring over areas where you have already colored in. This gives the cloudy look as shown below.

CLose up snowman tag

Take out your Colorless Blending Marker/Pen. You will use whichever side you prefer and make a design on your tag creation. I used the brush nib and made a pattern that appeared as if there was snow falling on the tag. This is right after I had done this.

blending solution on gray 2

This is after 20 seconds. As you can see, the dots are more pronounced on the tag.

after a few seconds

Now I am going to take my CG8 and color it in a little bit more to go with the background color to add a little dimension. Now I am going to take my OR4 Chameleon Marker and without using any blending solution, I am going to use the brush nib side and create a small carrot nose. I do have various sized carrots in my stamp set however I thought it would show you how you can also use the markers to create the same look.

carrot nose

Now I take my RD4 Marker and color in the scarf except for the knot.

color scarf red

I take out my BL3 marker and color the knot of the scarf. I used two different colors because I thought it would add a little difference as well as a cute color combo.

color scarf knot blue

Here is the finished colored tag.

close up snowman tag 2

Take out your stapler, twine and ribbon. Using the twine or ribbon, fold it in half and place it on the top part of the tag. Staple your twine or ribbon to the tag.

fold and attach twine

fold ribbon and staple

Your projects are complete!

Screenshot 2015-08-17 17.12.12We hope you will subscribe to our blog, YouTube channel as well as our other social media platforms for tutorials, stories, inspiration and so much more! Thank you for joining us today and we hope you enjoyed going on A Creative Journey with Melissa.

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Four Minute Handmade Cards

Would you like to learn how to make cute and simple four minute handmade cards? Sounds interesting right? What about THREE four minute hand made cards? I can’t tell you how often I wish I had more cards on hand. Wish no more! With this fast and easy design, you will have plenty of time to have a stash of them! You can use this card idea as a base idea for your creation or you can re-create it exactly as it is shown. Let’s get started with the projects!

Here are the supplies you will need:

supply list w text

I like to create my four minute handmade cards in an assembly line so I create all of the card components and then put them all together. I think this makes it more time effective and if you choose to make more than the three shown, you can just add to your supplies and you are set!

Take out your paper to stamp on, stamp block, stamps and ink. Place your sentiment on the block.

place stamp on block

Ink the sentiment.

ink stamp

Stamp the sentiment on your paper. Repeat inking and stamping process for each one of the cards you plan on creating ensuring you have enough sentiments for each one of your cards.

stamp sentiment

Once you are done with your sentiment, wipe off block and stamp. You can use baby wipes, a damp cloth or a stamp cleaning pad.

Clean off stamp and block

Take out your punch. Punch out your sentiments. Repeat this process for each one of your cards.

punch out sentiment

Take out your twine. Wrap the twine around the punched out tag.  Tie in a knot or you can do a bow for your design. Trim excess twine. Repeat this process for each one of your cards.

wrap twine

Take out your foam squares. Place your foam squares on the back of your tags. Repeat this process for each one of your cards. Set aside.

add foam squares

Take out your card bases, adhesive and decorative paper. Add adhesive to the back of the decorative paper. Place the paper on the card base. Repeat this process for each one of your cards.

add adhesive to back

Take your tags and remove the adhesive backing from the foam squares. Repeat this process for each one of your cards.

remove foam square backing

Place your tags onto the cards. Repeat this process for each one of your cards.

put tag on card

Your cards are complete!

Three cards

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you will use this fast and easy four minute handmade cards guide in your future card creating. Please be sure to share and we hope you enjoyed going on A Creative Journey with Melissa.

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Use Your Paper Scraps, Favorite Embossing Folder & Make Quick and Easy Cards

Here is a great tutorial on how to use up your scraps as well as give a little texture to your creation! Use Your Paper Scraps, Favorite Embossing Folder & Make Quick and Easy Cards is a quick video to give those visual learners (I am one too) a short and sweet tutorial that can help you use up your stash. I learned this technique from one of my best friends Sharon. She is amazingly creative and always inspires me! She taught this in a class a number of years ago but I have always loved the result and wanted to share it with you. The video has more detail or you are welcome to check out the instructions below. You are also getting a sneak peek at ONE of the FOUR stamp sets that we will be releasing on Wednesday-Spring and Summer Holiday Celebrations Stamp Set.

Supplies

Coordinating color/designed craps

Your favorite punches

Card Bases

Trimmer

Adhesive

Foam squares

Manual die cut machine and appropriate platforms

Embossing folder

Spring and Summer Holiday Celebrations Stamp Set (Coming out this WEDNESDAY!)

Ink

Directions:

Pick out the card base you would like to use for this creation.

Decide what color mat you would like for your design on your card base.

Cut out a size that will look good on the card base you have chosen. I used an A2 card base and cut my paper mat at 3.5 x 4″ Some were varied a little due to the size of the scrap.

Punch out your favorite shapes.

Arrange and adhere your punched shapes on your selected color base piece of paper.

Place your colored mat piece of paper with the adhered shapes inside your embossing folder. DO NOT EMBOSS THE CARD BASE.

Emboss it with your manual die cut machine.

Take out your creation and adhere it to the card base.

Stamp your sentiment on a piece of scrap paper that will coordinate nicely with your creation.

Cut or punch out your sentiment using a complimentary cut or shape to the creation. I used a dog tag punch and cut out a rectangle with my trimmer for mine.

Use your 3-D foam squares to adhere the sentiment to your card.

Your creation is complete! Now you have created some Quick and Easy Cards using your scraps!

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial featured on Mondays with Melissa. Please be sure to check back for our new releases on Wednesday and for more projects!