January 2014 cards

Can you believe is already 2014 - wow, time sure flies .....

With the New Year, comes the new spring Stampin' Up! catalogue, and Sale a bration starts soon....

In January, these are the cards we did at class :

The first was a bargello Valentines. I have to say that this very well maybe the brightest card I have ever made ! lol This small paper pack from SU was a surprise, the colors are so vivid, there is such a massive range of patterns, and they all work so well together.

Bargello is a quilting technique, that works beautifully with paper. The technique will be explained below. The heart shape was cut on my big shot using a thinlit die, and the 'love' was die cut in the crumb cake to show the negative image through to the real red cardstock. A little white bow to finish off and a little white doodling with a signo gel pen :) Cute eh !

 I cut thin strips of cardstock (.5 and/or .75" width) and adhered them to a 6x5.25" piece of cheap copy paper, as seen in the pic below. It is important to totally cover the copy paper with adhesive, so that every single edge of the patterned paper is securely stuck down.  Then you trim the piece so its all straight edges, turn the paper so the strips run horizontally and cut them in your paper cutter (.5 and/or .75" strips). I then had a piece of whisper white cardstock (4x5.25"), where I layed down the thin strips, staggering them to get the bargello effect, and trimmed the excess.

The second card is a punch art, shaped card. I have seen this card online so many times online, but had never made it... until now. Often this card is yellow, as in beer which is a great mans card, but this is a root beer float - I think.

The actual card base is naturals white card stock, that I cut down to make the card 5.25" x 3.75", this is so that with the bubbles and handle added, the card will still fit into a standard envelope. I used early espresso card stock and ink, sponging the bubbles lightly. They are made from the circle punches 1", .75", .5 inch and .75 scallop circle punches. The handle is cut with the large and medium oval punches. Tip :  cut your smallest oval first, then you can more easily align the larger oval over the top of the shape to make your handle. The sentiment was stamped in versamark and embossed in white embossing powder. Tip : Use the dust buddy on the area you want to emboss, so that the embossing powder doesn't stick where your fingers have touched. The three brown strips are 1" in diameter and the bottom edges are rounded with a corner rounder. I hand cut the bottom of the glass for a slightly more realistic effect. The straw is a striped paper from Christmas paper, but you can easily make it with a marker and .5" strip of card stock.