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Let's Make It Over: A Little Kindness Card featuring Stampin' Up! products - photo 1

You’re standing in your crafting space surrounded by your glorious stash of Stampin’ Up! products just begging to be used.

You know you want to make card – you even know the theme of the card you want to make, but beyond that you’re drawing a blank. It’s been a few days since you’ve sat down to create so you’re not feeling the mojo.

No sweat! You hop onto your smartphone, your tablet or maybe your computer looking for a little creative inspiration. Maybe Pinterest is your first stop.  Or perhaps you prefer to check out your favourite blogs first.  

You scroll through card after card…until….there!  That’s the one. You find a card that you totally love. 

Suddenly feeling inspired you rush over to your stash and start checking out your products…..only to realize that not only do you not have the exact supplies used to create that card (but then that’s not a really a surprise), but you don’t seem to have anything even remotely similar.

Feeling suddenly deflated, you decide you’re not in the mood to go looking for another idea.  You slowly walk away from your craft table telling yourself that you’ll come back when you’re feeling inspired. After all, you still have a few more days before you need that card.

Sound familiar?

That’s where the Sunny Stampin’ Let’s Make It Over feature comes in.

This is a regular blog feature showing you innovative ways to use your Stampin’ Up! products to re-create trendy cards created by talented designers in the blogosphere.  As part of this feature I show you the thought process behind breaking down the elements of a card you see and then adapting your supplies to re-create a similar look and feel.

So let’s take a look at this week’s inspiration and how I made it over. Today’s inspiration piece is shown on the left – it is a Hello card created by Danielle Flanders.

Let's Make it Over: A Little Kindness Card featuring Stampin' Up! products

Here’s the process I followed in making over this card:

  1. I’ve been loving the look of white cards as it fits with my Clean, Simple and Vibrant style, so, I kept the white card base (A2 card). However, I love the look of subtle layers so I decided to create a white on white panel with a 4″ x 5 1/4″ piece of Whisper White card stock.
  2. Looking at Danielle’s card front you can see that she used a Stitched Die from Papertrey Ink to give her card visual texture.  Now stitched dies are very trendy right now but unfortunately I don’t own any (nor does Stampin’ Up! make any).  So I had one of two options here.  The first was to emulate the look using one of Stampin’ Up! Paper Piercing templates, a Paper Piercing tool and Stampin’ Pierce Mat. I decided against that because that’s just way to fiddly for me. The second option – which is the one I went with – was to create visual texture through dry embossing.  I chose my Woodgrain Textured Impressions Embossing Folder which I used with my Big Shot. I chose Woodgrain because I think it goes nicely with flowers (I was picturing a wreath on a wooden front door).  If you wanted something more whimsical you could have chosen something like the Decorative Dots embossing folder. For a more modern look something like the Tiny Triangle embossing folder would be nice.
  3. Now for the flower.  Danielle used Papertrey’s Circle Scribbles Die and die cut it out patterned paper. I had nothing even remotely similar.  Once again a few options crossed my mind. The first was to create a flower by first die cutting a circular frame (nest two Circles Framelits one inside the other and then die cut it). You can then spread Crystal Effects all over the frame and place your Calypso Coral Coral Thick Baker’s Twine into the Crystal Effects, following the line of the frame around several times to create a similar scribbly effect.  Too messy for me.  Instead I decided to create a floral frame by nesting a Circle Framelit inside the largest of the Flower Fair Framelits. Because I didn’t have a patterned paper I liked, I used my Classic inks and watercolor paper to create a watercolored background on my flower. To give it additional “zing” I heat embossed the flower with three layers of clear embossing powder.
  4. For the leaves, Danielle used the Doodlie Do dies from Papertrey Ink and die cut them out of a green polka dot patterned paper.  I didn’t have any similar patterned paper, but I really loved the look of the polka dots. So, I used a leaf die from the Flower Fair Framelits – die cut the leaves out of Old Olive card stock and then embossed them with the Decorative Dots embossing folder.
  5. As you can see – I kept the banner element pretty much the same.  I loved the pairing of the script font with the flowers in the original card. Because I didn’t have a single sentiment in a script font that was a large enough, I chose a sentiment that included a scrip font. Another idea for you would be to use either the Greetings Thinlits or Hello You Thinlits die cut out of black card stock, mounted onto a banner.
  6.  A little touch I loved is how Danielle used some white thread on her card. I happen to love the look of a cluster of white thread – so I did the same behind my flower using regular sewing thread.
  7. Finally – Danielle used an enamel dot in the centre of her second flower. I decided instead to thread some Basic Black Baker’s Twine through a Pumpkin Pie button from the Brights Designer Buttons collection and used it as an accent piece on the right of the flower. Although I could have just used a plain button – I loved the extra pop that the Basic Black Baker’s Twine gave it.

Here’s a close up of my card:

Let's Make It Over: A Little Kindness Card featuring Stampin' Up! products - photo 1

Here’s another view of the card

Let's Make It Over: A Little Kindness Card featuring Stampin' Up! products - photo 2

So that’s how I “made over” today’s card.  Hopefully in walking you through my thought process it gives you ideas on new ways to look at the products in your stash.

Please leave me a comment in the comments section below letting me know what resonated with you in today’s post. I’d also love to hear if there are specific SU products you’d love more ideas for.

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