Guest Tutorial - Multi-colored Ribbon Tutorial

Today I have another special guest tutorial to share with you by our own Holly McMillen. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Holly's wonderful work and her previous tutorials from her blog. Personally, I feel blessed to have her as part of my team and have enjoyed getting to know her better since she has joined us!

Multi-colored Ribbon Tutorial
By Holly McMillen

First, pick your colors (two or three) that coordinate with your project/card.



Decide which is going to be your main color (in this case the rust velvet) and which are going to be your loops and tails. Cut your loop piece to approximately 6“. Cut your tail piece to approximately 5” (you’ll trim this later).



Set your main color and your tail piece aside for now. Take your loop piece and apply a small piece of sticky tape to the end and form a loop.



Turn your main color piece to the backside (if it has different sides) and apply a small piece of sticky tape to it. Adhere the loop onto the sticky tape. Next, take the ends of your main piece and tie a KNOT around your loop piece. You will need to twist it a little to get your bow loops to lay correctly.



Next, turn your tail piece into a inverted V. Place a small piece of sticky tape on the top of the inverted V and attach to the back of your previously made bow.



Now you are ready to adhere to your card!



Now finish your card!



Here are my deets:
Stamps: Artful Inkables’ Fairy Whimsy and Basic Sentiments
Colors: Really Rust, Old Olive, Certainly Celery, GP White, Crate Paper Lemongrass Collection Dp
Ink: Brilliance Graphite Black, copics, white gel pen for accents
Accessories: Swiss dots EF, MS Embossing border punch, Label 1 Nesties, Designer Label Punch, Corner Rounder, Buttons, MS Butterfly punch, Rust Velvet Ribbon, Olive and Light Olive grosgrain, Twine, dimensionals
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Thanks to INK Girl, Holly for providing us with that fun Tutorial! What a Gorgeous card!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Since all the Ink Girls are busily showing off some of our oldies but goodies (stamps), this month...I thought I'd share my take on one of the first sets I ever designed. This card uses the bear from the Stay Cool stamp set, which I originally saw as a brown bear. But most who saw it later thought he was a polar bear...so I went with it and added a penquin to the set, lol. However I did make this card to show my original vision.


The bear is colored with prismacolor pencils and gamsol, cut out and placed on the circle of textured paper. The striped paper is by SU! as is the small scallop punch. The large punch is a uchida mega punch and the 1/8" ribbon is from Michaels. I also added a bit of crystal laquer to the eyes and nose for a more 'lifelike' look. Hope you like it and have a GREAT WEEK!

Sparkling Blueberries

I don't know where the week went, but in the few spare minutes I found, I've been working on this card. First I stamped the blueberries ( from our Berry Picking set) on acetate with black stazon, then I added glitter and clear glue to the back of the image. This was done a bit at a time...I added glue where I wanted a certain color, added that color of glitter and then added more glue for another color until all parts of the image were covered. This I let dry...for days actually. I kept coming back to it but couldn't get inspired as to what to do with the piece after I had glittered it.

Having the time to mull it over helped me to come up with something a bit more inspiring than your average layered card. In fact I decided to photograph the steps for all my readers so the can create this look if they'd like to as well.

I started with a piece of 6x6 inch double sided paper (this is from Stampin' Up!) and folded it as shown in the five photos below:









I then added pop dots to 4 corners of the acetate image and then attached it to the inside of the folded frame piece.



Though the picture didn't come out too well, what I did next was to punch a hole in each of the small folded down triangles. Then I added brads through 2 layers of the folded piece but not through the acetate and the bottom of the folded piece under it.




Finally I taped down the frame flaps over the acetate piece using redline tape...though double sided tape would work too. I didn't take it all the way to the edge though because I wanted to keep that 3D look of the inside.

To finished it all off, I put this framed piece on a 5 1/2 inch square navy card so it was positioned as a diamond shape. More of the decorative paper was added to the corners along with smaller triangles of the navy card stock. To embellish, I glittered the small triangles and the brads with some of the same color glitter I used on the acetate.

Also be on the look out for some great new projects from our design team. They have all chosen some of their favorite (previously released) Artful INKables images and are busily coming up with some inspiring new samples for you to drool over!

Guest Tutorial

Today I have a special treat for you! We have a special guest tutorial to share by one of our fabulous INK Girls, Joy Stagg! You may have seen Joy's cards around the during the blog hop and in our gallery. She has a wonderful eye for color and layout! Whenever I see Joy's work I think how pretty and appealing it always is. Be sure to visit her blog to see more of her creations, but for now, on to the tutorial.

Joy's Tutorial- How to Get a Spiral Punched Edge without a Spiral Punch

I love the look of notebook paper on cards, and I especially love the look of Stampin Up's Spiral Punch, but I didn't want to pay for a punch when I can create a similar look myself with some basic tools in just a few short steps.

Here's how:



Materials Needed:

* Stamped Image on cardstock (save room on the side of the cardstock you want to punch) I used the Artful INKables Post It Notes set and masked off some of the mailboxes
* Ruler
* Pen
* Small Hole Punch - I used my Crop-A-Dile

1. Using your pen and ruler, mark on your cardstock where you want to punch

2. Using your Hole Punch, punch on the markings

3. Using your fingers, tear into the holes from the top of the cardstock. I distressed mine a little bit with my fingers to make it look like it was torn out of a notebook.

4. VIOLA, notebook looking cardstock without the punch!

Stamping Friends

Do you ever feel like the only people who 'get' your rubber stamping hobby are the friends you've made online? I certainly do! Unfortunately, I dont have any local friends who stamp. Of course that could have something to do with the fact that Im too busy to do much socializing but it would be nice to meet some IRL stampers.

So with that thought in mind, I joined a card club at my local scrapbook store. Ten ladies get together once a month to swap cards and do a card make and take. I attended my first meeting last night and had a really fun time. We did a make and take that involved acetate and glitter and I met some fun ladies with some beautiful cards.



This is the card I made for the swap. It uses the AI Post a Note set, some of our lovely May Arts ribbon and one of our sunflower charms. I have to say I was proud to make something that actually used 3 items from our store...though I didnt advertise that fact at the card club, lol. I actually designed the card around the colors in the ribbon , pairing some SU DP with some Celery and Not Quite Navy card stock. The image was colored with Copics...I just purchased some new colors I had to use...and finished off with some tiny pearlescent sticky gems. The ladies seemed to like it and I hope you do too.