Peridot Cards

Instead of pulling out several sheets of paper I decided to use just 2 sheets.  I wanted to work on something that I could finish in a single crafting afternoon.

After rummaging through the miscellaneous paper draw, I settled on a doughnut print paper that I had picked up on clearance at Michael’s.  I’m not a huge doughnut fan but I really liked all the bright colors and figured I would have no problem finding something to pair with it.  I decided on a green, yellow and blue “stripe”.  To keep the cards light and bright I used light green and bright blue cardstock for all of the matting and green and blue ink for the stamped sentiments.

I decided to make 2 cards using as many different layouts as the paper allowed.  To get started I cut background panels from the striped paper.  I added a 1 1/2 inch wide strip of light green cardstock and a 2 3/8 x 4 1/4 inch panel of the doughnut paper.   The sentiment is stamped in Memento Bahama Blue ink.  Everything is matted on the bright blue cardstock.

The next set of cards used the striped paper and the light green cardstock as the background.  I usually like to put something (matting, Love from Lizi peel-off, ribbon…) over the seam of 2 papers but since very little of the seam would show once the other panels were added I decided to skip it.  The doughnut panel is 2 1/2 by 5 1/4 inches and the sentiment circle is about 2 inches in diameter.  The sentiment is stamped in Memento Pear Tart ink.

For the next 2 cards I looked for a sketch that would use up some of the smaller pieces of the striped paper.  I wanted to keep the focus on the striped paper and the sentiment so I matted those with the bright blue cardstock.  The sentiment is from the Ranger Letter It Encouragement stamp set and is stamped in Memento Bahama Blue ink.

For the last 2 cards I used up the rest of the striped paper for the background.  I didn’t have enough of the bright blue cardstock left so matted everything in the light green.  I like the “softer” look of the light green matting but was surprised how much color just that little bit of blue matting had added to the other cards.  The sentiment is from another Ranger Letter It stamp set, Occasions, and is stamped in Memento Pear Tart ink.

I ended up making 8 cards and using up all but small scraps of the striped paper.  There was still a bit of the doughnut paper left but I’ll just put it with the other sheets of doughnut paper and save it for later.

On to the second mini-collection…

This time I used the light blue, red, tan, black and white papers.  The collection includes stripes, florals and geometric prints.  Again, as this is 12 x 12 paper I was able to make several of each card.  I decided to focus mainly on birthday sentiments as I think the colors and prints work for both masculine and feminine cards.

The first few cards used the small stripe and geometric circle print.  As both prints are quite busy I left a wide white border around the sentiment to break up some of the print.  I thought about adding some embellishments but nothing seemed to fit with the design.

For the next set of cards I used the wider stripe and a floral print.  Because the floral print was so large I gave up trying to figure out how to keep the print recognizable and instead treated it as just coordinating colors.  The wider stripe matched the scale of the floral print and adding the larger “Hang in There” sentiment panel kept the prints from being too busy.  As a final touch I added a small black bow for some dimension.

I liked the combination of the stripes and circle print and decided to try the circles as the background.  The small stripe was too busy when used as the focal panel, but the wide stripe worked well.  Keeping with the clean lines of the card, I used a bold font “Happy Birthday” sentiment and added a few Mustard Gold Nuvo drops for some dimension.  This was my favorite card from the mini-collection.

I still had a bit of the wide stripe paper left and decided to pair it with the small floral print.  I thought about using the same layout as on the “Hang in There” cards but decided the smaller scale of the floral print would work for a full background.  For the solid strip across the center of the card I used some blue satin mirror specialty cardstock.  It added a bit of shine without being too much.

I hadn’t used the tick mark print yet.  It’s still a busy print but with the smaller scale worked well as a background.  I used some more of the small floral paper as the focal panel.  The sentiment and focal panels are both matted in black cardstock.  I thought about matting the light blue strip in black cardstock as well but thought it might be too much so instead edged the strip with matte gold peel-offs from Love From Lizi.

The third floral print in the mini-collection had a bold print which didn’t pair well with the geometric circles or the tick mark prints.  The small stripe paper seemed to work best.  To make ensure enough of the floral print was visible I used a thinner piece of the stripe paper and placed the sentiment panel on the stripe paper.

The last few cards has a simple layout that works great for using up scraps.  The printed paper panels are placed on a solid color cardstock background and separated with some more Love From Lizi peel-offs.  For a finishing touch I added a few Nuvo drops.

There is one more mini-collection which includes pinks, oranges and browns.  Unfortunately I don’t have any brown cardstock that matches and since we’re required to stay at home I’m going to save that collection for later.

For something completely different than tropical cards…  I used a few sheets of paper from the American Crafts Metropolitan Collection.  The paper all has a similar feel but based on color seemed like 3 mini-collections.  I decided to start with the turquoise, green, taupe, black and white papers.  Since this is 12×12 in size the prints tended to be a little larger but pairing them with the 2 different stripe patterns worked well.

To make the most of the paper, I cut the striped 12×12 sheet into 4 x 5 1/4 inch pieces which I then used as the background for 6 cards.  The die cut floral circle is roughly 3 1/2 inches in diameter.  I wanted the floral circle to be as large as possible but still leave a bit of the striped paper showing on each side.  I cut the matting for the floral circle out of the matting for the striped paper.  This doesn’t impact the matting for the striped paper and helps save on cardstock.  Adding a simple sentiment panel across the card kept the look neat and clean.

I really liked the floral branches paper but the image was quite large.  To ensure as much of the background as possible was still visible, I kept the striped and sentiment panels small.  The striped panel is about 5/8 inch wide and the sentiment panel is 2 x 3 1/2.  As a final touch I added a few black pearls from Queen and Company to the sentiment panel.  I was able to make 6 cards by again cutting the floral branches paper into 4 x 5 1/4 inch pieces.

For the next card I used the thinner striped paper as the background and some more of the floral print for the focal panel.  Only a small piece of paper was needed for the solid color panel and by looking through my scrap cardstock I was able to find just enough of the turquoise paper.  Using a sentiment with a bold font kept the sentiment panel from getting lost on the busier prints.

For the last few cards I ended up using the floral print for the background.  Adding panels of the striped paper helped to tone down the floral print and placing the sentiment panel on the background paper helped to break up the larger area.

I really liked the look of these cards.  And having some of my favorite colors (blues and greens) didn’t hurt.

For some more bright and colorful cards, I pulled out DCWV’s Bahama Mama paper pad.  I decided to challenge myself to use 1/2 of the 48 sheet 12×12 pad.  When flipping through the paper I realized that a few of the designs did not lend themselves to card making.  I ended up pulling out 21 sheets of paper, not quite half but definitely a good start.

As several of the papers have large scale prints, I kept the layouts simple using many of the papers for backgrounds.  Papers with cut-aparts and smaller prints were used as the focal points.  As the paper was 12×12 in size, I was able to make several of each card.

To get started I used the banana print and some cute monkey stickers I had picked up at the local dollar store.

I really liked the pineapple prints but couldn’t figure out a way to cut them to make a focal panel.  Instead I used them as part of the background, pairing them with a smaller print.  For some more color I used pink and teal specialty paper for the circles behind the sentiments.

For these cards I used a pink flamingo print as the background, but the other pieces were all from a single sheet of paper.  The paper had several different prints running horizontally across the paper.  Cutting the prints into strips I used the pineapples for the bottom panel and different flamingo prints for the upper panel.

I hadn’t used any of the cut-aparts so I looked for a card sketch that would work.  To keep the background from being too flat I used a couple different embossing folders.  As a final touch I added a specialty paper flag for some added interest.

I still had a couple of cut-aparts which I didn’t think worked with the previous design.  I remembered I had some tropical print washi tape and decided to try it.  Using the washi tape as stripes across the card added some color and matched the cut-apart.  To finish the card I stamped a small Hello sentiment and added a couple of black Nuvo drops.

With 21 sheets of paper, I was able to make a ton of cards.  I even pulled out the 2nd sheet of some designs, like the leaf background on the monkey cards, so that I could use up all of the banana print paper.  I think this will make a nice batch of bright cheerful cards to donate.