November 8, 2018

25 Days of Christmas Video Series: Week 1 Recap

My 25 Days of Christmas video series is well underway! The first week has been published and I thought I’d share a quick recap and links here on the blog! The series is hosted on my youtube channel, but each week I will recap the previous week’s videos until the series is over here on the blog! If you aren’t a subscriber of my youtube channel, please click HERE!

Here is a direct link to the playlist, where I will add each video as it publishes. Click HERE for the playlist.

And a breakdown of each daily video:

Day 1: Backgrounds for Christmas Cards

Day 2: Double Die Cutting DIY Stained Glass

Day 3: Quick and Easy Tags

Day 4: Die Cut Background Techniques

Day 5: Pop Up Cards (Poinsettia)

Day 6: Silhouette Die Cut Scenes

Day 7: 7 Different Cards with 1 Stamp

June 10, 2018

Masked Coffee Card

Masking can really create some unique backgrounds. I used some purple tape to mask off areas of a card base, blended on some distress oxides, stamped some various images from the latest Ellen Hutson release, heat embossed them and then removed the purple tape to see the results.

I used distress oxides because I wanted a chalky like finish. I removed some of the color simply by adding a wet paintbrush to the images and then dabbed the water away with a paper towel. It gives it the look of watercoloring with bleach, but no no… I won’t ever do that. TOO smelly, lol. Of course I had to include a fun coffee sentiment and coffee cups because hello, COFFEE!!!!!! And my favorite black embossing powder really helped those images pop against the colored background. And of course, some black and white striped washi! Because, it’s black and white stripes, lololol. 🙂

That’s a wrap for today. I’ve included in the supply list all of the new products from the release as well as the goodies I used for today’s card!!!!

Goodies used:

April 20, 2018

Altenew Celebrating Parents Card Drive Blog Hop + Giveaway: Father’s Day Cards

I have three Father’s Day cards to share with you today! You should have arrived by Isha Gupta’s blog! I am part of a super fun blog hop and card drive! The goal of the card drive is to send cards for the elderly that lives in nursing homes or shelters to let them know they’re not forgotten. Please check out the Celebrating Parents Card Drive and join this great cause by sending in cards. For the complete line up of the blog hop today, head over to the Altenew Blog Hop Post.

Also, 20% of the profits earned from the following sets (Best Dad, Painted Rose, Penned Rose, Extra Special, and Best Mom) by 6/17/2018 will be donated to Food Bank of Central New York to support seniors in need.

On to my cards! I used Dad’s Day stamp set and the coordinating die. Let’s take a look at my first card! I stamped one of the images from the Watercolor Frames stamp set onto a white card base.

Then I adhered the tools and keys and toolbox right onto that stamped frame! The images were watercolored because, quite frankly, I stink at Copic Coloring, lol!

My next card uses that fabulous wide washi tape! Oh how I love them and have them in all the prints! This one is the Peach Gold Washi tape. I adhered the wide washi to a white card base and then arranged some of the images from the Dad’s Day stamp set right on top.

All the images were heat embossed before I watercolored them.

And my final card used the negative space from the die cutting. What I mean is once I die cut all the images, I had the negative space left. So I used that as a stencil. I randomly laid the “stencil” over my card base and colored in each image with ink. Once I had that all finished, I went back in and stamped the image over the blended image.

If you look close, you see that the ink blending goes outside the lines just a bit. That’s because I ink blending thru the “stencil” and then stamped. I popped up the Dad’s Life image (I had that one image left over from all my die cutting and watercoloring) and ink blended just a little bit around all the images to make the paper look aged…. I thought this was a good masculine color scheme.

So there you have it! Three Father’s Day cards from one sitting. I used every image I watercolored and die cut! 🙂

SPECIAL OFFER:

Save 35% Off on the Best Dad Stamp & Die Bundle from 4/20/2018 until 4/23/2018 at 11:59 pm EDT. No coupon code needed to enjoy this deal.

PRIZES:

Altenew is giving away $50 gift certificates to THREE lucky winners. Be sure to leave comments by May 6th at 11:59 PM EDT for a chance to win! Winners will be chosen at random from the comments left on any of the blogs listed below and will be announced on the Altenew blog on Mother’s Day, May 13th, 2018.

GIVEAWAY:

I am also giving away a $20 gift certificate to the Altenew store. The winner will be chosen on May 10th and will be notified via email by me!

Next up is Mayline Jung’s blog!

Goodies used:

March 3, 2018

Ellen Hutson Design Team Blog Hop: Same layout with different coloring medium

Even as a seasoned card maker, I enjoy learning tips & tricks from other crafters. My favorite tips & tricks lately are creating the same card layout, but using some sort of different color variation or medium. In my three cards today, I used an image from a holiday stamp set and paired it with a bold sentiment! As you can see, the layouts are the same but each card is slightly different. All the supplies used are linked at the end of this post as always! 🙂

I am hopping along with all the 2018 Ellen Hutson Design Team! WOOT WOOT! We all have projects to share and silly questions to answer. The entire blog hop list is listed towards the end of this post.

Let’s take a look at the first card with the rainbow background… A rainbow. Surprise, surprise, lol. To create the background, I stamped the house images from Light Parade and masked them off by stamping the same images onto a post-it note and covering the stamped image with the mask. Then I blended some distress oxides onto a piece of watercolored card and added a few water flicks. Peel the mask off and you are left with perfect unmarked houses! I added a sentiment and voila.

My second card has the same layout, just a different sentiment, and medium. I chose soft watercolors here. Very simple.

And my last card features some basic Copic Coloring. Lots of white space…

See? You can keep the same layout but make each card unique in its own way!

We are all answering some silly questions. I’ve done so below but also answered them in a little video clip and also elaborated a bit on some of my crazy ways, lol. You can watch that here on the blog or over on my youtube channel by clicking HERE. And if you aren’t a subscriber, you can easily subscribe by clicking HERE.

Silly questions and answers!

Coffee or tea? – BOTH! I love coffee. I have a Nespresso machine and I push a button and poof, a beautiful cup of coffee in 60 seconds. It even has the froth on top! And Tea. I am a huge fan of bubblegum tea. It’s the only tea I will drink. I took my daughter (4 at the time) to a tea house and we selected bubblegum tea. Well, I fell in love, she didn’t. I found an online source and order 32 ounces monthly. I drink it all day long, after my two cups of coffee in the morning!
How did you come up with your blog name? My original blog name was Paper Crafts by Laurel. Within the last two years, I decided to give myself a little tagline, Simply Cardmaking. Why? Because I specialize in the simple techniques so anyone can do them! I love the simplicity of crafting! You shouldn’t have to have a Ph.D. to figure out certain techniques and styles, lol!!!!!!! And that’s how my new blog title was born. Julie Mogford designed my logos and blog (she rocks).
Tell us one silly/random/interesting tidbit about yourself! Well, there are so many weird things about me, how can I pick just one? I’m gonna be a rule breaker here. I am a huge Harry Potter fan, like a dork like fan. I am afraid of heights. I can only snap with my left hand, not my right. I am right handed and my husband and both kids are left handed. I don’t like feet. It’s very hard for me to sit thru a pedicure.

HA! How fun! I am absolutely honored to be a part of the Ellen Hutson design team! Look at all of my lovely teamies. What talent I serve alongside. And Ellen… I can’t say enough about her. She is a class act down the core… I don’t think you will meet a more honest, reputable businesswoman and friend. I adore her.

BLOG HOP ORDER:

Laurel Beard – YOU ARE HERE

Goodies used:

February 8, 2018

Video: Distress Glaze and Distress Oxides

The 12 NEW distress Oxides colors are in the house over at Ellen Hutson. Grab them before they sell out! I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share with you a video I created after seeing Tim Holtz demo using Distress Glaze with the Oxides. It was almost as if I had to try it to believe it! Full credit of technique goes to Tim.

You can watch the video here on the blog or over on my youtube channel in HD, where you can subscribe to my channel and get notified of all my new videos and have access to all my previous ones! All supplies used listed below.