World Card Making Day – 4:00 pm – Let’s celebrate a birthday!

With our 10th birthday celebrations happening all year it only seemed fitting to have an hour designed to birthdays! Read on to see what Stacy Cohen, Nancy Damiano and special guest Yana Smakula from Hero Arts has in store for you!

"For World Card Making Day I made a feminine birthday card with lace, bling, a doily, and a vibrant pink fabric flower

I love to use flowers on my crafty projects, but I can’t always find the exact size or color that I want.  So what do I do?  I make my own flowers! These burnt edge fabric ruffled flowers are pretty easy to make.   Here’s how:

1. Get some polyester fabric like satin, chiffon, charmeuse, etc.  It should be 100% polyester since this will melt rather than burn.  I usually buy “lining fabric” at my local fabric/craft store.  It comes in many colors and it’s inexpensive.  You only need ¼ of a yard to make a whole bunch of these flowers.

2. Use a pencil to lightly sketch flowers in varying sizes on your fabric.  These do NOT need to be perfectly shaped flowers since the edges are going to curl up and change shape in the end.  For the pink flower on my finished card, the largest flower layer was about 3½ inches.  Cut 4 to 6 flower layers, depending on how full you want your flower to be.

3. Grab a candle and a pair of tweezers.  Working one piece at a time, carefully hold the flower about 1 or 2 inches above the flame until the edge starts to curl. 

4. Slowly rotate the flower around over the flame as each section starts to melt and curl.  Be careful not to singe the edges too much!

5. Layer the flowers on top of each other with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top. Adhere the layers together with a dot of fabric glue.  You can either make a small fabric flower layer to fill the center, or add a decorative jewel, button, cluster of rhinestones, or other embellishment to the center. 

Enjoy an amazing day!" ~ Stacy Cohen

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Ink Blending + Nuvo Drops!

Hi cardmakers, Nancy here with a National Card Making Day celebration including some fun new products and a technique! Nuvo Drops are a fun way to create your very own enamel dots in a rainbow of colors.

The fine tip applicator makes it easy to get just a drop of embellishment in all of your projects. Here I filled all the tiny circles in this cut with little bursts of color. This frames out the center of the card and adds some texture.

To create a pretty, soft background try ink blending. You will need a foam ink blending tool and some pigment inks. Ink blending is made of many, light layers of color. Use a gentle touch and dab off excess ink on a scrap piece of paper. Continue to blend inks together until you have a nice, smooth gradient.

This birthday card comes together with a fairy stamped image that was watercolored. Use pop dots to attach the stamped image so it can really stand out. 

Combining the new Nuvo drops and some ink blending is a beautiful way to create a pretty greeting. It's easy to create multiple cards for different occasions at the same time. Remember to use a soft touch with the blending and experiment with different color combinations!" ~ Nancy Damiano

4:00 pm special guest – Hero Arts!

Color Layering stamps offer endless possibilities! I used Hero Arts Color Layering Hibiscus stamp set and stamped several large and small flowers using purples and a few leaves using greens. Images were cut out using coordinating dies and arranged onto an A2 panel framing a Birthday sentiment.

To create this sentiment I used "Birthday" from the Happy Birthday Script woodblock stamp, masked off the "Happy" and stamped it in black ink. I also added a layer of clear embossing powder for a shiny and raised look.

Several of the die cut images were foam mounted for a pop of dimension. 

Lastly, I added a white heat embossed "Happy" from the You Are My Happy stamp set and embellished this card with a few metallic dots!" ~ Yana Smakula for Hero Arts 

Thank you Yana for creating this gorgeous card! And guess what? Our friends at Hero Arts would love to offer the stamp and die set that Yana used to create this card. The winner of this hour's prize package will win the CL868 Color Layering Hibiscus stamp set and DI136 Color Layering Hibiscus Frame Cuts! 

For an opportunity to win, please leave a comment below by October 8th! A winner will be randomly selected and announced on October 10th! Good luck!

Please join our friends at Hero Arts on their Facebook page and share a little "thank you" with them for another amazing prize!

Next at 6:00 pm – It's all about the holidays!