Flying high – Cards Using New and Stash Products

Today’s cards showcase two of my favorite crafty things – Spellbinders club dies and shopping your stash. )

I’ll be honest (shouldn’t I always be?) I recently suspended my Spellbinders card kit club. I LOVE their kits and currently subscribe to four I think. But I make a lot of cards using their card kits each month and have been since December of 2018. And frankly, I’ve amassed a great many cards that I don’t know what to do with. Part of this is my fault in that I wasn’t as intentional as I should have been while making them and I have a lot of “just because” cards instead of more usable ones for birthday etc. (Maybe I can convert some of them….hmmmm. A blog post for another day.) I think that of all card kits, theirs is by far the most value for the money.

But I bit the bullet and canceled my card kit and just kept the Large and Small die of the month. (Then I added the glimmer kit because I have self control issues.)

ANYway, I managed to skip one whole month before they released the hot air balloon die in this months kit.

I LOVE them. I don’t know why. There’s no good reason behind the love but I love hot air balloons! And it was so pretty! So I had to resubscribe! (Don’t laugh.)

Now lets talk about the cards…

Card 1

On the first card I’ve used the Spellbinders die with an ombre piece of paper from my scrap bin. I have also used a cloud stencil from Simon Says Stamp and two oxide inks – Tumbled Glass and Spun Sugar.

1. I cut a slimline panel from Neenah cardstock and used the stencil, a blending brush and tumbled glass oxide ink to add clouds the length of the card. Then I added the barest touch of pink with Spun Sugar.
2. I cut the hot air balloon die from white cardstock and again from the scrap of colored scrapbook paper, making sure to place the die on the paper so that a variety of colors are showing within the die. (TIP: Using Stick It double sided adhesive or something similar makes using the delicate die easier.)
3. I cut a piece of scrap cardstock into the shape(ish) of the balloon, just a bit smaller, and attached it behind the openings in the die. I then inlaid the inside pieces from the ombre scrapbook paper.
4. I cut the basket, weights and banner flags from the white cardstock and then colored them with copic markers and glued them into place.
5. I decided to use the “Go where your dreams take you” sentiment from the stamp set that came in the card kit as well as a couple of the small heart stamps also included.
6. I attached the balloon to the panel with foam tape for dimension, added the sentiment using my MISTI and we’re done.
7. WAIT, we’re not done. I added my favorite card bling of all time, Honey Bee Stamps Gem Stickers on the balloon.
8. I colored in the hearts I’d stamped with coordinating copic markers and added a bird from the Hero Art’s “Sky’s the Limit ” (from Joann) stamp set. And I think that card #1 is complete.

Card 2

For card #2 I decided to do a “same but different” version of the card in A2 size using many of the same elements.

1. I cut the balloon out once again in white and used a different scrap of ombre scrapbook paper, following the same procedure to inlay the pink paper inside the die.
2. This time, however, I decided to use the Silver Lining cloud die from The Greetery.
3. I cut the cloud border three times and used tumbled glass to color the background card panel and the bottoms of each of the three cloud die cuts, fading up from the bottom, so that where they overlapped, there would be differentiation from the layer below.
4. I adhered the cloud layers one over the other up the length of the card, popping them up on foam tape.
5. I added the balloon, needing to double up on my foam tape on the top only to give the balloon the correct dimension. Technically it only needed one layer of foam tape but I thought it looked better with two.
6. This time I chose the “Rise to new heights” sentiment rom the Hero Arts “Sky’s the Limit” stamp set and also used the two small bird silhouettes on this card as well.
7. I added pink gem stickers, stickles an extra three iridescent gem stickers to the card base.

Here’s where the second part of this project comes in and where I conflict with my shopping issues. Sometimes you have to give in and buy the dies or stamps. They’re just that special to you. Like the hot air balloon die was to me. But let’s face it… I’ve probably got another hot air balloon die. I have cloud dies, die cuts and stencils. Do I really need to buy every new die that comes out to make a project that inspires me? Possibly the answer is no.

(…wanders off to search her stash…)

Can we make a card we like as much or nearly so using what we have on hand, get more use our of our products and use up some of our stash? Let’s see, shall we? (Every time I say the words “shall we” I hear Rachel say, “It’s so late for ‘shall we'” from “The One With the Fake Monica”.)

Card 3

1. I used a background die with stitched clouds to cut my card panel.
2. I inked the panel with tumbled glass, adding a touch of broken china to the top to add a bit of a darker shade.
3. I cut three clouds using dies from my stash twice for 6 clouds total and added them to the card, gluing some flat to the card panel and popping two up on foam tape. I made some to let some hang off the edge as this is more pleasing to my eye and then used the bits I cut off to fill in more edge spaces on the card panel.
4. I chose one of my balloon die cuts to use. This one came in a card kit I received in January of 2019 I believe. I popped the balloon up on foam tape and added it to the card.
5. Then I chose two sentiments from the current card kits stamp set. I went with Sending you hugs & kisses because the balloon has hearts on it and I felt the sentiment went well.
6. I added five iridescent gem stickers to the card and added stickles to the already glittery parts of the balloon. I also added stickles to the bottoms of a few of the clouds.

Card 4

One last card. I remembered that when I’d been digging through the die cuts that came with this month’s kit, that there had been several small hot air balloons and wanted to make a card similar to the first with the layered clouds on a slimline panel.

1. Using 4 different cloud dies (just standard cloud dies that mostly everyone has at least one set of) I cut out 5 cloud panels. Inspired by that touch of pink on card one and the colors of these balloons, I used Spun Sugar Oxide Ink as the main sky color, only topping off the rounded tops of the cloud layers with a touch of the Tumble Glass Oxide Ink just to differentiate between each layer. I also made sure to use the same stitched rectangle slimline die to trim down the panels to the correct width so that the stitched lines would match the background panel.
2. Before attaching the cloud panels I laid out the clouds and balloons to help choose where I wanted my sentiment to go. I chose “The Sky’s the Limit” from the Hero Arts stamp set with the same name. I stamped it using my MISTI and then used thin foam tape to attached and stack these cloud layers to the background panel.
3. I wanted to clouds to look further away as they traveled up the card so I added the balloons with the largest at the bottom and the smallest at the top.
4. I added five purple Honey Bee Gem Stickers and a few iridescent – one on each balloon.
5. And that’s it. It’s a simple card but I think it’s delicate and pretty.

Don’t forget to search your stash!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. I’m exciting to be getting fun things up on the blog!!

Okay, by for now.

Shellie