I want my Santa to sit at the bottom of an A2 card with the sentiment above him. It’s a pretty big sentiment, so it’s important to plan out my card.

The theme of this month’s YouTube hop was Out of My Comfort Zone. So I tried alcohol inks.

Today’s card is a watercolored Halloween card with a witchy little quokka. I’m starting by mixing the paint I need. Today I’m going to use my artist-grade watercolors. I’ve written down the paints I’m going to mix on this little palette and I mostly followed my plans. 

These two little critters are the Kat Scrappiness Dress-Up Quokkas. The markers I’m using for them are Ohuhu BR3, BR2 and BR1. Check out the marker codes I used for each item in the table below.

These are the Kat Scrappiness products I bought to serve as a foundation for my fall and winter crafting as an official influencer of the brand.

Embellishments, Stencils, Fall & Halloween, Holidays, Other Dies

The skates are really easy to put together, with no fiddly bits. There’s a base layer, that shows up as the tongue of the boot and part of the heel. On top of that comes the pretty top layer, and the sole of the boot. The blade has tabs that you glue to the back of the base.

About a month ago I applied to join the Kat Scrappiness Influencer Team. I’m super happy to report that I was accepted! I’ve even submitted my first order with my influencer discount. I’m looking forward to receiving it and getting stuck in!

Blog posts for Influencer Team projects will be clearly labeled as such. In those, only Kat Scrappiness products will be named and linked. Normally I link all products, including those that I don’t have affiliate links for.

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.

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!

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.

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.

When you’re using washi, you need smooth white cardstock that’s big enough for one repeat of the pattern. Most of Pinkfresh’s washi tape patterns are about the size of a slimline card, so cutting a letter size piece of cardstock lengthwise works great.

The Satin Gold Glimmer Foil is from the Satin Metallics Variety Pack. Then we have Polished Brass (Essential Metallics) and just plain Gold (Holiday). The plain gold came with my Glimmer machine.

The main feature of this card is created with the Honey Bee Lovely Layers Amaryllis Die Set. It creates a lush amaryllis plant with a choice of two planters.

Once I had laid out the scene on the Glimmer surface, it was easy to foil more, so I created one card with rainbow foil, and one with gold foil.

The best cardstock for hot foiling is the smoothest. But you can make your own smooth cardstock in a few simple steps.

I made a little more than $1,000 from selling my cards last year. That’s actually more than I thought. It’s still not enough to pay even one monthly mortgage. 😭

For this card I used the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil Kit of the Month for December 2023. Getting a new toy to play with every month is just so much fun!