Creative Expression

Brick Easel House

| ullycatdesigns

“From our home to yours” is a sentiment that is often seen during the winter holidays. House cards are one of my favorite types of cards to make.  The cards shown in today’s blog were made using new Creative Expressions Craft Dies by Sue Wilson.

To die cut a large solid die like the house front, it is best to angle it so that it goes through the die cutting machine at a diagonal rather than straight across. (See picture below.)

For the red brick house, I used leftover stenciled cardstock that was stenciled with Distress Ink in Fired Red Brick, a brick stencil and a small make-up brush (I find these inexpensive contour make-up brushes from Dollar Tree work as well as the expensive ink brushes.)

For the brown brick house, I used a digital image of a brick wall to create a tiled pattern to print on an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of white cardstock using a computer and ink jet printer.

The windows, door and roofs were all cut from lightweight white cardstock and then fussy cut. The roof and door were colored with watercolor pencils and a water brush and allowed to dry under the dies’ plastic packaging so they would be flat. Once the door was dry, I added a drop of a gold Nuvo drop for the door knob and set it aside to dry overnight.

Solid colored scraps of red and green papers were used for the bows and wreath. The topiary trees were cut from white cardstock and colored with watercolor pencils. Their pots are cut from scrap patterned paper.

To glaze the windows, I used shiny organza ribbon glued to the back of the house die-cut. (I had ¼ inch wide ribbon so had to use two stripes for each window. You could use wider ribbon.) After the ribbon has set, the decorated house front was glued to a solid house frame cut with the largest die in the set. The top of the this die has a non-cutting edge which has to be hand-cut.

The tiny decorations can be attached at this stage in the assembly.

While the die set is designed to cut a tent fold card, I decided to make it an easel card using a 5 ¼ inch by 11-inch sheet of heavy white cardstock to score and fold along the long edge at 3 inches and at 3/8 inches. I then die-cut the base, folded at the 3 inches scoring with the non-cutting top of the house die at the fold. (See photo below for how the easel base looks opened up after being cut.)

Next, I used a stamping platform, clear VersaMark watermark ink to stamp the inside greeting after rubbing clean the cardbase with an anti-static powder pad. (I like to use the round stamping tool Stampendable with my stamping platform for uniform pressure on my stamps. I also use scrap copier paper under my items being stamped to add more pressure and to keep the platform clean.) The greeting from Lou Collins’ Text{ures} Seasonal Sentiments set was heat embossed with my favorite gold detail embossing powder from Cosmic Shimmer.

To adhere the house to the easel base, fold the short roof piece closed and add glue to the 3/8 inch tab. Position the house front to match-up with folded base and press at the tab area to adhere to glued tab. Open card up to see if positioned correctly, before attaching welcome mat (stamped and heat embossed from a retired Stampin’ Up front door stamp set) with foam tape.

I used two more stamps from the Text{ures} Seasonal Sentiments set on the envelope flap with Stampin’ Up’s Crumb Cake ink, which looks very much like gold embossing on the cream-colored envelope.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this blog post, please like it and follow the blog. 😊

See the more of Houses of Christmas

From Our House to Your House

Santa is Coming

A Baby is Coming

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Red Four-Square

Santa Delivers to the Tropics

Supplies

Dies

Stamps

  • Text{ures} by Lou Collins – Seasonal Sentiments from Creative Stamping, issue 101, November 2021
  • Stampin’ Up – At Home with You – stamps & die set 143681 (Retired)

Ink & Embossing Powder

  • Stampin’ Up – Classic Stampin’ Pad – Crumb Cake
  • VersaMark – Watermark Stamp Pad
  • Cosmic Shimmer – Detail Embossing Powder – Bright Gold
  • Ranger -Embossing Powder – Black Sparkle
  • Ranger – Distress Ink – Antique Linen
  • Ranger – Distress Ink – Fired Brick
  • Brown Fine-Tipped Pen
  • Nuvo Watercolour Pencils

Paper

Miscellaneous

HELLO Sunshine Flip

| ullycatdesigns

Everyone needs sunshine and the feeling that someone is thinking of them. This flippy flappy card uses dies by Lawn Fawn for the pop-up mechanism as well as the sunshine motifs.

When I began this card, I made a prototype card first to figure out how the mechanism worked.  I watched an assembly video and still got it wrong by putting assembling from the front instead of the back. (See photo below.) The pop-up ended up working, but the flap was too long. (I recommend watching the assembly video several times or assemble the mechanism going step by step with video.)

For my actual card I changed up some of the design to make the sunshine really pop. Adding some ink to the background die cut helps emphasize the sun rays . The sun frame is cut from yellow, and the back sun outline is cut from orange with its center circle taped into the hole in the inked background.

The “Hello Sunshine” sentiment is cut twice from a darker orange cardstock to add some dimension. A fine tipped glue bottle makes gluing the fine lines of the letters easy.

The pop-up sun face is adhered to a strip cut from some clear plastic packaging.

To give the card recipient a hint at what is inside the envelope, I stamped the back of the envelope with a background sun burst pattern stamp from Hero Arts using a brown ink onto an orange envelope.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this blog post, please like it and follow the blog. 😊

Dies:

Stamps

Inks

  • Ranger – Distress Ink – Fossilized Amber
  • Memento – Fade-resistant Dye Ink – Rich Cocoa

Papers

  • Cardstock in various shades of yellow and orange
  • Heavy weight white cardstock
  • Orange A2 invitation envelope – Staples -Brights

Additional Supplies:

Small Things

| ullycatdesigns

Being grateful for the small things of everyday life is sometimes all we can be. This card is for those times when we need to take in the beauty of a sunrise, a field of wheat, or a stary night sky.

The striped background is made from washi tape Van Gough painting extracts while the sentiment is die-cut using a Creative Expressions Craft Dies by Sue Wilson from her Circle Sayings collection called Grateful from yellow cardstock painted with Nuvo Shimmer Powders.

Using card stock in two shades of yellow for the card base and backing mat, the sentiment (cut twice and glued together) is glued onto the washi tape background while the background and bright yellow mat are adhered with thin foam squares.

A hint of what is to be found inside the envelope – “Find beauty in the small things” from the Alte New Whimsical Flowers & Quotes set – is stamped on the back flap in brown ink.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like, leave comments and follow Ully Cat’s World blog. 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Stamps

Pigments/Inks

Papers/Washi Tape

Miscellaneous

Snowy Forest Day

| ullycatdesigns

It’s a snowy day as you walk through the woods of white birch trees and here the red cardinals singing their sweet song, and then he appears. The majestic stag, who quietly walks to the ridge and surveys his kingdom. Finally, you come to a small fir tree that has been decorated for Christmas. You know this is your destination and the faint tune of “We wish you a Merry Christmas” hums through your head.

This is the story I hope the recipients of this card have when they open the card.

Stag XMAS-front

I fell in love with the Creative Expressions Paper Panda Forest Stag die the first time I saw it and designed my card around this large die creating a 5 ½ x 8 ½ inches card using two pieces of heavy white cardstock. I went through my dies to find a large enough opening to go behind the stag that still left a sufficient border to keep the card sturdy. I used one from the Crafters Essentials I by Kat Scrappiness.

Having scored and folded both pieces of 8 ½ x 11 inch white cardstock in half, knew I had to cut the rectangular aperture in three of the four panels. Laying out how I wanted the front of the card to look with my dies, I cut two of the panels at the same time by putting the sheet folded in-half through the die cutting machine.  Once the front and middle were cut, I laid-out how the second folded sheet of cardstock would overlap on the middle panel and traced the aperture opening onto the overlap panel. I cut this aperture with the cardstock fully open so a wide format die cutting machine was needed.

Stag XMAS-Extended wide

I didn’t have any birch trees long enough to fill the apertures so I scoured my favorite on-line crafting stores and found on my favorite discount die store Dies R Us the Impression Obsession birch trees with the tiny cardinal dies. I cut two sets of trees out from the same white cardstock as the card base. I cut two sets of cardinals (front and back) from red scrap cardstock.

To make the stag, I cut the shape three times from brown cardstock. The last of the three stags was cut from brown cardstock covered on one side with double-sided adhesive and then when the backing paper on the adhesive was pulled off I laid the piece on scrap paper and shook ultra-fine glitter over the adhesive to ‘frost” the stag much the same way you would cover an inked image to be heat embossed. The excess glitter should stay on the scrap paper so it can be put back into its storage container. Once glittered, I glued the three stag shapes together off setting, the glittered one on top to create a slight shadow.

Stag XMAS-front-CU

Being new to heat foiling, I practiced some on scrapes before using the Christmas tree foiling plate on my good paper. The Glimmer Foiling System by Spellbinders is easy to use if you watch a lot of videos on how to use the system and follow the instructions faithful. I do not recommend doing heat foiling when you are tired or in a hurry, that’s when mistakes happen.  Because the card is a large size, I had to foil the tree through the cut aperture to fit it through my die cutting machine. The season’s greetings sentiment is foiled in silver and die cut out using a dotted sentiment banner die that comes in the same Spellbinders Holiday Sentiments set. I placed scrap red cardstock behind the dots before gluing the banner in place.

Stag XMAS-inside back

Once all the elements had been cut and foiled, the assembly began with laying out how the layers would look when the card was closed. Four birch trees were glued behind the stag then the four birch trees were glued to backside of the middle panel. Then the two middle panels were glued together sandwiching the trees between them. Then the stag was glued to the front with the antlers glued to the trees.  A cardinal was laid-out on each of the tree panels and each glued down with its matching back piece glued on the back side of the trees. The “Season’s Greeting” banner was glued on the front to anchor the stag.

Stag XMAS-inside middle

Supplies

Dies & Glimmer Foil Plates

Paper

Foil

Miscellaneous

Sue Small-Kreider ©2020

See the video at https://spark.adobe.com/video/oYtdMGCXyVNe9