I went to the StampScrap Expo in Chantilly, Virginia this past weekend, hoping to find my mojo. I have been pretty tired of stamping lately. I took a few classes, but even the one that was put on by a stamp company had prestamped images, so the only time I touched a rubber stamp was during a make-n-take at one of the booths (
Local King - which has some of the best solid image stamps and dies I've seen, but I already have some of their stamps, so I didn't buy any more). In fact, I was hugely unimpressed by what the vendors were offering - I felt I had seen it all before.
I was thinking about just going home when I came by a booth with a sign that said "Shuffled Cards". I'm a sucker for a good pun, so I looked closer. It was a subscription service - ingredients and instructions for 9 different cards for $22.99 a month, all shipping, handling, and taxes included (they primarily do scrapbook layout kits - the cards are a relatively new thing). That seemed like a pretty good deal, so I talked to the guy. All the fancy shapes in the kit are diecut. The customer only has to cut straight lines. Everything else is pen work, distressing, or some other fancy tool work - no stamping. No stamping? Cards with no stamping and no fussy cutting and no coloring? This sounded like just what I needed. The vendor (
Treasure Box) sent me away with my choice of 2 kits from previous months for the price of one, and told me I could expect the first kit in the mail by mid-July.
That meant I needed to get busy! Today I opened the first kit I selected - the May 2016 offering. I'm not of a mind to do all nine at once, but I will show you the ones I do as I do them, and the changes I feel the need to make (you know me, I always feel the need to change things up).
The 9 cards you get in a Shuffled Cards kit come in 3 different sizes. The largest is 6 x 5 1/2, the middle size is a normal quarter-fold size, and the smallest is 3 1/2 x 3 1/4. Right off the top, I need to change these nearly-square cards into shapes I can mail.
This is the first sample in the instructions. It is a small card:
I liked it but the hearts didn't fill a larger card. As a result, I stamped and embossed an
Amuse Studio stamp. I guess I'm out of practice, because I got overstamping on my background, which I tried to cover with doodles. Here is my result:
The next card I tried was this fun kite:
I loved this fun design when I saw it at the expo, but at the moment that I wanted to make the card, this thought leapt into my brain and wouldn't leave - "Kites don't lace up, shoes do."
Because I wasn't folding the cards like the kit instructed and was using my own card bases, I had plenty of background to make two cards - one with a kite and one with a shoe.
The kite might need a little more doodling, I haven't decided yet. I wrote the sentiment - it really tickled me, because I hate it when people write "high there". However, kites are supposed to be high...
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| Glad to see you're still kicking! |
It was fun setting eyelets and building the shoe and the kite. No stamping was needed at all.
So what did I need that wasn't in the kit? I used fine line marker for the doodling (which is surprisingly a lot easier and faster than it looks), a Crop-a-dile for the eyelets, adhesives/pop dots, and distress inks (well, I'm on the fence about whether inking the edges actually improves the card). All the ribbons and eyelets for the samples were included, and I feel the need to mention that the cardstock provided for the bases/backgrounds is double-sided Bassil Basics printed cardstock, at least as heavy as the card bases I was using.
For my personal variations, I used card bases, scraps of cardstock, a stamp and embossing powder, a word window punch, and snippets of my own ribbon. I feel pretty good about getting 3 cards out of the designs for 2, and I felt my mojo starting to come back! Woohoo!
I can't resist entering my Love card in the
Amusing Challenges Anything Goes challenge. That's just how I roll.
