My haul from Trinity Stamp’s Birthday Sale. I went mostly for Baby and Halloween products this time.

I’m stamping a pattern on vellum with the hexagonal stamps in the set. Stamping with white pigment ink and heat embossing in white gives a wonderfully crisp and fresh result.

Download the free PDF for Pinkfresh Ink Swatches.

The shark and friends are from a Lawn Fawn Stamp and Die Set called Shark Duh-Nuh Flip Flop. I colored them with my Distress Watercolor Pencils.

The starting point for today’s card was a fall-themed cupcake die set from Spellbinders. It was the Large Die of the Month for September last year. I didn’t get around to playing with it then, so it’s just the right thing for a new cardmaking hop that I’m participating in.

It’s called the Procraftinators Club and the idea is to help us finish cardmaking kits, monthly subscriptions and other unfinished projects. This cupcake die set is perfect for it!

I wanted to create a quick summer card with some of the supplies I got from Kat Scrappiness. The lantern shaker die is intended for Christmas cards. But with some ink blending I thought I could make it work for a summer night too.

To go with my wobbling reindeer card, I’m making an envelope. The envelope dies I use are by Trinity Stamps. It’s a big die set, but you only need three of the dies to create a regular A2 envelope.

When Spellbinders announced their new, small-format die cutting machine, I immediately pre-ordered it. They released a special edition in Lilac Shimmer. It was just a few dollars more than the plain white version, so I splurged. It arrived on Friday! 💜

This is the card I’m creating in today’s video. It has this fun, wobbling effect, created with an action wobbler. I’ll give you tips for helping your mug wobble better in this video. I’m also using Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Pencils to achieve a loose watercolor effect when coloring.

When I got the new Distress Watercolor Pencils, I took them all out of their boxes and rearranged them according to the order on the Ranger web site. In this video I’m swatching the first box, from Spun Sugar to Fired Brick.

For the sentiment I used the Waffle Flower Oversized Happy Combo. It includes a very large “happy” with a shadow layer. I repeatedly dipped the sentiment in Versamark and heat embossed it with the same silver as I used on the ornaments. I felt that the sentiment could stand on its own, so I didn’t end up using the shadow layer this time.

Kat Scrappiness had a Memorial Day Sale and I stocked up on her own brand of shaker card dies and sentiments.

Turn the project over and test the Slider by gently tugging on the Tab. The Slider should glide up and down along the slit in the Slitted Panel. If it does, you can remove the backing paper from the foam tape and adhere the mechanism to your card front.

‘Things With Wings’ is the theme for my June 2024 YouTube cardmaking video hop. For this hop, my starting point was the recent Spellbinders die set Tropical Friends. It creates a parrot and a toucan.

This giveaway celebrates that I’ve reached 500 followers on Instagram. Super happy about that!

I was going for a cyanotype effect and used Ranger Archival Ink in the color Cobalt. Archival ink on a firm linen ink pad is pretty easy to work with.

I stamped YULE and the Norse greeting with Versamark and used Lumberjack Plaid Embossing Powder to heat emboss them. Then I cut out the license plate with the die. I used a heat embossing pen around the edges of the license plate and heat embossed them with Ranger Verdigris Embossing Powder.

This blog post is based on the weeklong class called Extraordinary Embossing Folders at OnlineCardClasses.com.

This was my first tax season as a small business owner. Unfortunately I came to the conclusion that I need to get a paying job. So I’ve spent a lot of time updating my resume and portfolio site. My timing isn’t great, so it may be a while before I find something. The San Jose Mercury seems to have articles about more Silicon Valley layoffs a couple of times per week.