Make your own glittered shapes

I've been buying lots of glittered paper for a couple of projects.  I have found many different types and each has advantages and disadvantages.   Many people are reluctant to cut glittered paper in their electronic machines but I have had good luck with any type of paper that has the glittered embedded in the manufacturing process.  I don't cut glittered paper in the machine if I can rub the glitter off with my hand.

One alternative to cutting glittered paper in your machine is to simply cut the shape you want from regular cardstock and then turn it into a glittered shape.  I like to do this with Versamark ink and embossing powder.  Different combinations of paper, ink and embossing powder will give different results.  The main thing to be careful about is to avoid overheating the embossed shape. 

You can turn the most basic white cardstock into something special with a little embossing magic.  If you'd like to see the step-by-step photos and directions, please click HERE to visit the post I made last year.

Another way to add glitter to a shape is to run the cut image through a Xyron machine (if it is a word be sure to do it so the adhesive will be on the top) and then add some fine glitter.  If  you burnish it into the adhesive it should be pretty stable.   If you just want to add straight lines of glitter, you can use Scor-Tape and add the glitter.  A very old post that shows this method is HERE (and I still have not gotten around to buying the large sheet of Scor-Tape or red liner adhesive to try glittering a larger and more intricate shape).

Thank you for the prayers and good wishes for my Dad.  MizMaryAnn mentioned sending cards for him - what a nice thought.  If you have the time or have a spare card on hand that would be lovely.  I don't want to post his address here, but if you'd like to send a birthday card (his birthday is on the 17th) or a "feel better - thinking of you" card he'd probably enjoy getting more mail than usual.  You can email me at capadiadesigns@gmail.com for the address.  Cards with tractors, covered bridges or cows would be great or anything with a funny, punny sort of humor (you know - the ones that are "as old as Moses' toes and twice as corny!").  

I hope you have a nice weekend.  I hope to share some of my glittered paper projects tomorrow.  I took a spill down some stairs on Thursday and hit my head, elbow and toe pretty hard.  It started to hurt a lot more on Friday so I had to take things pretty slow.

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Autumn Sunflower Card

There is a lot that I like about this time of year - crisp days, crunchy apples and the colors of the falling leaves (but not raking the leaves!).  I don't tend to choose autumn colors very often, unless I am making something that is specifically for autumn, so I challenged myself to make a "general" card with fall colors.

I used gold metallic embossing powder to make the sentiment stand out on the dark card base.  The magical transformation never fails to amuse me!  After stamping with Versamark and sprinkling on the powder the stamped words looked like this...

Just a few seconds with the heat gun turned them into this shiny gold.  The cardstock I used was textured Bazzill and the embossing takes on this texture.

This is a square card measuring 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches.  I added the strip of striped paper to anchor the sunflower.  The paper has both flocking and glitter stripes.  The photos don't really capture the sparkle of the glitter stripe - it actually balances the shiny embossing very nicely.

The sunflower is an original design I created in the Silhouette Studio software.  This software makes it incredibly easy to create layers and shadows - just a few clicks is all it takes.  I used some American Crafts pearl cardstock for the yellow and orange.

The sunflower is raised with foam dots.  I found the shade of brown I wanted on the opposite side of this double sided paper - it looks odd to see this side with the rest of the card!

I put a large gradient gem brad in the center of the flower, added a medium gem sticker on top and surrounded the brad with small gem stickers in alternating shades of amber.  All of these gems are from Creative Charms and you can find them HERE.

There is still plenty of time to add your link for my Creative Charms Challenge - see the post HERE to find out how you could win some great embellishments for your projects.  The challenge ends next Monday.

For those of you on the email subscription, due to either Blogger (the site) or blogger (me) error my post for yesterday did not publish in the early morning as it usually does.  It should have come to you sometime in the middle of the day yesterday - and with a little luck, this post is reaching you in the morning as usual.  If you missed it all together, just click over the the blog (click on the "Capadia Designs" name at the top of the email to go to the blog) and scroll down to see the Halloween wall frame - an easy and fun project!


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Pink and Blue Snowflake card

This card is in rather untraditional colors for a holiday card.  I actually did not set out to make a card today - I just wanted to test cut a few more snowflake files so I could post them.  But one thing led to another and...

First, I test cut the snowflake design at the original large size.  I used some pale blue cardstock - the inexpensive kind that comes in value packs at the large craft stores.  This type of cardstock generally is on the thin side with a hard finish and it cuts easily in the Cricut.

I decided to adapt the cut and make it smaller so it could be used on a card.  Here are the two test cuts side by side.  This snowflake was designed with elements from the Reminisce Accents cartridge.

Then I started to get some ideas (always dangerous!) and began to make the plain test cut into something a bit fancier.  I got out some Versamark watermark ink in the "Frost" dazzle color and some sparkly embossing powder called "kaleidoscope."

 

I put the snowflake on some scrap paper and used the ink pad to generously cover the cardstock with ink.

Here you can see the inked up snowflake.

Then I put the snowflake in a plastic sandwich container and poured the embossing powder all over it.

I carefully tapped off the excess powder and checked to be sure the snowflake was evenly covered.

I applied heat with my embossing gun and watched the transformation from powdery and dull to smooth and shiny.  Whenever I do heat embossing it seems like magic to me!

The plain blue base color now has a wonderful iridescent and shimmery finish making a magical snowflake.  The heat gun tends to make the cardstock curl up a bit but it will flatten down easily.

I used my Creative Memories Precision Point Adhesive generously on the back to make sure the cut would adhere nicely to the embossed mat.  My original idea was to make an A2 card so I cut a mat layer from white cardstock at 4 x 5 1/4 inches and embossed it with the "Snow Dots" embossing folder.

I decided to make a 5 x 7 card instead and chose a pale pink card base from a pack of premade cards.  I cut a blue mat layer at 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches which left a space to add a sentiment below the matted snowflake.  I used some "Zing" glitter embossing powder in pink on the sentiment I stamped with a Martha Stewart holiday greeting set.

I didn't like the look of the mat layer ending abruptly above the sentiment so I added a thin white ribbon and adhered it to the back of the blue mat before assembling the card.

I tied a tiny piece of ribbon around the base ribbon and added a gem sticker in pink on the knot.

Here is the card flat on the table.  It is very hard to get a good photograph to show the effect of the embossed snowflake and the glittered sentiment but I hope you can imagine the sparkle.

Here is one more close view so you can see the iridescent effect on the snowflake and the embossed background.  This technique allows you to turn a plain piece of inexpensive cardstock into a specialty paper for a beautiful snowflake.

 

I used this same technique a couple of years ago for this card.  It is a great way to have a specialty cardstock effect for a very low cost - a little embossing powder goes a long way! If you'd like to see details about the pine cone card here is a LINK to the post from a couple of years ago.  The file for this card is also available at the post - it uses Joys of the Season and Graphically Speaking (two of my favorite older cartridges).

The file for this snowflake has both large and small versions on two different pages.  The small version is the size I used for this card.  You can adapt the snowflake to fit the size you need for your project.  I'd love to see what you make if you download the file.

Snowflake with points

I have some fun projects coming up using the ProMarkers and I also have been spending some "quality time" with Martha for a new series that I will tell you about next week.  Have a great weekend!

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Butterfly Card from A Child's Year

While I was away last week, I was looking at the butterfly card on the A Child's Year cartridge.  (Here is a LINK to that post).

I thought that it looked too delicate to send as a card and I decided to create a shadow layer and place them both on a standard card for stability.

Here is the butterfly card that I cut with Design Studio.  It is slightly altered from the standard cut that is made when the size is set to 5 1/2"  (of course I also eliminated the tick marks for scoring the fold!).

I cut the card in patterned glitter cardstock from the DCWV Citrus stack.  Even though the paper is only partially glittered, I used multi cut 2 to be sure that the cut would be finished cleanly.

When I looked at the cut in Design Studio I was worried about the delicacy of the "legs" of the butterfly.  The card will stand by itself but I still think the thin places could easily be damaged.

I decided the blackout layer behind the head was not needed with the heavier cardstock.  One option would be to join the butterfly and the base card only at the top so the butterfly could be lifted to reveal an additional message.

For this first card trial, I decided to adhere the butterfly to the card base.  The cardstock for the base is also from the Citrus Stack and is cut to standard A2 size (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 folded to 5 1/5 x 4 1/4 inches).  I outlined the butterfly with a metallic pen after it was adhered to the card.

A plain sentiment stamp would suffer in contrast to the glitter paper, so I decided to stamp and heat emboss the "Thinking of You" in the lower right corner.

I used this metallic green embossing powder called ZING by American Crafts.  It is very easy to work with and coordinates well with the glitter cardstock.

There was no layering option for the card and I chose to keep it very simple.  I might experiment with designing and cutting a body shape to add to the card.  The card has a butterfly on both the front and the back which makes it more interesting.

For just a little added detail, I used two medium pearls from Creative Charms to make the butterfly "eyes."

Soon this card will be on the way to someone who needs a bit of cheering up.  When I have a chance, I will try some more variations.  I think the card options on A Child's Year are yet another reason to have this cartridge on your "Cricut Top Ten" list.

Some new embossing powder...

There are several "deal of the day" scrapbooking supplies websites. Three popular ones I know about are Crop Chocolate, Flowers to Flourishes and Peachy Cheap. I have ordered from Peachy Cheap a couple of times and last week I couldn't resist the offer for some embossing powder by American Crafts called "Zing."



Here is a LINK to a video by American Crafts demonstrating this embossing powder.

The offer was for six jars for $8.99 (plus $3.99 shipping) and the video says the regular retail is $4.99 per jar so I thought this was a good deal. I ordered on Tuesday of last week and the powder arrived today.



I had to laugh - the green color was called "Cricket" (not the same spelling but even so...!)



I had to try it out right away, so I stamped some flowers with the new foam stamps I wrote about yesterday using Versamark ink, then covered the impression with the powder, tapped off the excess and heated the paper from below.



The embossing powder is truly amaZING (I think that's where they got the name!).



Here you can see the small flowers before I heated the embossing powder. It sticks to the Versamark ink very well - the power is a bit more granular than some others I have used but very fine.



The shine after heating is incredible...



The lines are sharp - these stamps have large lines but I plan to try the powder with some more detailed stamps as soon as I can. I really like the look of the embossing on the textured cardstock.



My assortment of test flowers wasn't really planned but I think it makes a pretty card.

This "Deal of the Day" is over but sometimes the same item shows up again - I know I will be looking for more colors of this embossing powder in the local stores

I have been working on a lot of Design Studio projects but most of them have to stay "secret" for a bit longer. There is something new and very exciting coming in September...watch this space!