Category: Rosemary Dennis

  • Happy Birthday Butterfly | by Rosemary Dennis

    Happy Birthday Butterfly | by Rosemary Dennis

    Hello! Today I have a clean and simple mini slimline birthday card to share. I used the Star Flowers Contour Layers dies along with the Glimmer Butterfly layers dies and sentiments from two different stamp sets.

    For this card I decided to use the Memory Box white woodgrain cardstock. The only thing I didn’t use it for was the card base! I die cut the the A and C layers of the Glimmer Butterfly from the woodgrain cardstock. The middle (or B) layer was die cut from vellum. I then used to shades of coral ink to ink up the centers of the top and bottom layers. Darker coral on the bottom and light coral on the top. When I had the color to my liking I used liquid adhesive to adhere the butterfly only in the center.

    I then created the flowers. All the layers were die cut from the woodgrain cardstock and then I added the darker coral to the second layer. There is a flower center die, but I decided to not use it this time. I layered the flowers and then added a fairy gem to the center of each flower that had a peachy tint to it. To make sure that the gems stayed in place I added a drop of liquid adhesive to the center of each flower.

    A piece of the woodgrain cardstock was trimmed to fit the mini slimline cardbase and then adhered with double sided adhesive tape. The large flower was added to the center of the butterfly with a drop of liquid adhesive. Once everything was dry I adhered the elements to my card front using liquid adhesive. Now it was time to determine where to place the sentiment on the card front.

    The sentiment on the card front comes from the Contempo Greetings stamp set. I decided to keep it soft my stamping it in a light gray. I then die cut it with the label die from the matching die set. I played around a little with where to place the sentiment and finally settled on the top. I added thin foam squares to the back and then nestled it into the wings of the butterfly. I don’t generally create a sentiment for the inside of the card, but for this card I did.

    The reverse side of the woodgrain cardstock is smooth and perfect for stamping on. I trimmed down a piece to fit the inside of the card and then stamped the sentiment from the Kind Hearts stamp set using the light gray ink. This piece was then added with double sided adhesive.

    I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Have a wonderful day!

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  • Thank You | by Rosemary Dennis

    Thank You | by Rosemary Dennis

    Happy Memorial Day to everyone here is the US! I hope you are having a relaxing day with your loved ones and remembering all those who gave their lives for our amazing country! Appropriately I am sharing a thank you card today. This one features the Sprouting Crocus Contour Layers dies, as well as the Thank You Noted Script hot foil plate and die set.

    I started out my card by deciding that I wanted to do a little simple watercoloring. I have several different watercolor mediums, but recently rediscovered some color burst powders that I had bought years ago. I decided to use them for the watercoloring. It is a simple process to create the panels that I used. Simply wet watercolor cardstock, tape on a small amount of the powder and then spread the color around with a wet paintbrush. Once you have the color depth you want, dry the cardstock and die cut.

    This photo shows the colors I used along with the panels after I had die cut all the part of the flowers. I assembled all the flowers using liquid adhesive and then moved onto foiling the sentiment. For this I used matte gold foil and white cardstock. I foiled several sentiments so I will have some for later use.

    Since I love using the layering dies for embossing my backgrounds I used the Cora Layer A die to emboss some watercolor cardstock. I just love the letterpress look you get from using the thicker watercolor cardstock for embossing. (Again, my sandwich is the die cutting platform, one cutting plat, the embossing mat, cardstock, the die cutting side down and a few shims.) After embossing the background I die cut the panel with a rectangle die. This will flatten the embossing a bit, but it still looks nice.

    Now it is time to arrange all my flowers. I used liquid adhesive to adhere the flowers first and then added the sentiment using a combination of thin foam squares and liquid adhesive where needed. I then added my panel to a white cardstock base using strong double sided adhesive strips.

    Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely, lovely day!

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  • Remember to Treasure | by Rosemary Dennis

    Remember to Treasure | by Rosemary Dennis

    Hello everyone! I have a soft pastel card to share today that I created with glitter papers from the Memory Box Delicate Pastel Glitter pad and many different Birch Press Design dies. Let’s get started!

    Birch Press Designs has so many wonderful layering dies and I just love going through them and finding ones that can also be used for embossing. As I was working on my idea for the card I flipped through my dies and came across the Arista layering set. I took one look at Layer B and knew immediately that I wanted to use it to emboss the background. I just love all the detail that is embossed into the background. (The embossing sandwich that works for me is my the diecutting platform, one cutting plate, a tan embossing mat, cardstock and die with the cutting side placed against the mat and a few cardstock shims.) I also knew that I wanted to use the Mixed Berry Contour Layers dies and the Simple Dragonfly Contour Layers. The Phlox Blooms and Leaves Contour Layers are so pretty and work wonderfully with the other dies.

    I die cut the flowers and leaves using white cardstock for the bases and then a sugary pink from the Delicate Pastel Glitter pad to the top layer. A pretty yellow from the pad was used for the flower centers. The glitter portion of the leaves were die cut from a light yellowy-green and layered on. I used yellow for the berry stems and a lighter pink for the berries. The above photo shows the general idea of the layout.

    The base of the dragonflies were die cut from white and the layers from glitter papers. Going to be honest and tell you that when I started to put the dragonflies I got confused as to what layers went where. I got a bit frustrated with myself, but eventually I got them put together correctly. I used pink glitter paper for the small dragonflies and the larger one is a pretty light peach color. I used a sentiment from the beautiful Kind Hearts stamp set. It was heat embossed on vellum using silver embossing powder so it was stand out against all that white.

    I cut the vellum into a strip and then wrapped part of it behind my panel and secured it with liquid adhesive. After that side had dried I secured the other side with liquid adhesive, as well. Then I started adding all the flowers, leaves and berry stems. The large flowers were popped up with thin foam squares. Everything else was adhered with liquid adhesive making it easy to tuck them into place. I finished with the dragonflies.

    If you have yet, I hope you will look through your Birch Press Design layering dies and find ones that can be used to emboss the background of your projects. I think you will just love the look! Thanks for stopping by!

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  • Jovial Birthday Wishes | by Rosemary Dennis

    Jovial Birthday Wishes | by Rosemary Dennis

    Wow, can you believe it is already the end of April? Where is the time going?! Today I’m sharing a card that was inspired by my other favorite crafting pursuit: cross-stitching. Before I started paper crafting I was an avid cross-stitcher, but I injured my shoulder and stitching became hard to do so I gave it up. Last summer I was inspired to start stitching, again, and discovered that it didn’t bother me as much as it had… yay! And that leads me to the card I’m sharing today. I had started stitching a chart using a warm orange floss and that got me to thinking about the colors I wanted to use for a card I would be making using the new Jovial Blooms and Leaves Contour Layers dies. I know it is spring, but I just love warm autumnal colors and that is where we are going, lol

    I started by die cutting all the flowers that I thought I would need for the card. Once I had everything die cut I put washi tape on the back of the panels to keep the pieces in place and did some simple ink blending using distress inks in Spiced Marmalade, Wild Honey and Ripe Persimmon. The flowers with three layers I used all three colors and for the flowers with only two layers I used Ripe Persimmon and Spiced Marmalade. I also splattered on some water to give the pieces a bit of a distressed look. Then I adhered all the layers together. I was so intent on getting my flowers put together that I completely forgot to add the stamens! Oops!

    Once I had the flowers assembled I did a little bit more splattering using some black paint. At this point I pulled out the Birthday Wishes Sugar Script die set and die cut the top layer from Memory Box Open Studio glossy black cardstock. That cardstock is amazing! I love how thick and substantial it is. I die cut the shadow layers, inked them up with Wild Honey distress ink, and then splattered on water and black paint. I cut additional words out of scrap cardstock and adhered them to the glossy black words for additional dimension.

    Once I had all my elements assembled and ready to go I die cut a piece of Memory Box Open Studio cream woodgrain for the background. I played around with the layout for quite sometime before finally settling on the layout you see.

    I finished off the card with lots of little warm yellow and orange Open Studio fairy jewels. I did something I don’t normally do and created the card base from woodgrain cardstock. This time I used Memory Box Open Studio kraft woodgrain cardstock and I really like how it looks.

    I hope you are inspired by my little trip to autumn. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your day!

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  • Bold Butterfly | by Rosemary Dennis

    Bold Butterfly | by Rosemary Dennis

    Happy Friday everyone! I have a bold jewel toned card to share with you today. Let’s take a look.

    I love the new Gilded Petalpoint stencil set. You can use it in combination with the Gilded Petalpoint hot foil plate or by itself like I did on my card. I decided to go with a bolder color palette for this card and chose shades of purple with a pop of blue.

    I don’t often make the decision to use the color purple, but it is so pretty in combination with the blue. I inked up the first stencil with a medium shade of purple and then started to blend on a slightly darker shade, but it wasn’t showing up so I switched to the darkest shade of purple I had. With the third stencil I used a bold blue embossing paste. It has a little bit of shine to it in real life.

    Once the stenciling was done I set the piece aside to dry. Thankfully even with the addition of the embossing paste there wasn’t much warping of my cardstock. After the piece dried I trimmed it down to fit my card front. I then moved on to doing a little bit of hot foiling. I used the medallion from the Gilded Pinpoint hot foil plate set and the sending hugs sentiment from the Sugar Script Sentiments 1 hot foil plate for these elements. The medallion was foiled using purple foil and the sentiment using dark blue. I used the darkest purple ink and blended it on the medallion after I die cut it with the matching die.

    Now it was time to create my butterfly using the Eloquent Butterfly layering die set. I die cut the top butterfly from a dark blue glitter paper from the Memory Box Glitz Glitter pad. To make sure that everything matched I used the inks that I used for the stencil to ink up some white cardstock. I used the direct to paper method in order to get good saturation of the cardstock. I let the cardstock dry and then die cut the second and third layers. I adhered the layers together with a dot of glue in the center of the butterfly. I then layered the medallion on to the main panel, added the butterfly and the sentiment. I finished off the card with a purple-blue Fairy Jewel to the center of the butterfly.

    I hope you enjoyed my project today. Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day!

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  • Spring Green | by Rosemary Dennis

    Spring Green | by Rosemary Dennis

    Happy Spring everyone! Today I’m sharing a sweet card showcasing the new Slyvan Berries and Leaves Contour Layers dies and the Thank You Noted Script hot foil plate and die set.

    Over my years of crafting I have learned a couple of things that help me when it comes to ink blending on small die cuts. One of those things is that when I die cut the pieces I do not remove them, but flip my cardstock over and add some kind of low tack tape to the back to keep them in place.

    As you can see from the above photo it isn’t very pretty looking, but it is so very helpful in allowing you to ink up those small pieces. The next photo shows some of the inking and masking that i did on the die cut cardstock.

    Using this method also allows you to be able to add more ink in some areas and less in others. I wanted the very top leave on the sprig to not have alot of ink and I was able to do that by keeping the die cut in place. I used two shades of light green ink for the leaves and two shades of yellow for the berries. For a bit of contrast I used a brighter green for the stems of the berry sprigs. After I inked up all the pieces to my liking I removed them from the cardstock and got to working out the placement of all of the elements. As I was working this out I decided that I wanted to add some interest to the background. I pulled out the Viola Plate die set and die cut the top layer from white cardstock to use for the background, but didn’t like it. Then I looked at the bottom layer of the die set. Inspiration hit… emboss it! The bottom layer has piercing on it and once embossed created a lovely background. Don’t forget that when you are embossing with dies you need to use a flexible embossing mat and the embossing sandwich that works for your machine.

    Once the background was set I worked on determining the placement of all the elements. As you can see from the photo above I didn’t have the berries and leaves completed and the sprig arrangement is slightly different from the finished card. Doing the initial arrangement is just a good way to make sure that you are happy with your idea and you can take a photo of it for reference when you complete your card. I assembled the berries and leaves using liquid adhesive.

    I adhered all the stems and berries using liquid adhesive. I used the die that comes with the Thank you foil set to die cut two additional layers that I adhered to the foiled one. Liquid adhesive was also used to adhere the sentiment and the little bow tied with some spring green baker’s twine. I finished off the card with some tiny yellow-green Memory Box Fairy Jewels. I must say that I took my inspiration for this card from the cheerful yellow daffodils that are blooming everywhere here in western Washington. I hope I was able to inspire you today!

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