Little Agenda Valentines

February fourteenth is fast approaching, and Mama Elephant’s January card challenge has a Valentine’s Day/love theme — so why not kill two birds with one stone and get my valentines made before the last minute?

I wanted to make these quickly, so I kept my supplies minimal and the designs simple. This is my favorite of the valentines I’ve made so far; I adore the clean, graphic look and the red, black, and white color scheme.

For a hint of dimension (that the photo entirely fails to represent), I popped each die-cut circle up on two smaller cardstock circles. The card is flat enough to go through the mail safely, but it has more visual interest than if I had merely glued the die-cuts to the card base on their own.

Since I’m sending this card to a stamping friend who likes kitties, I sneaked a little crafty cat inside and another cat onto the envelope.

For the past several years, I’ve been using a wood-mounted rubber Hero Arts “created by” stamp on the backs of my cards, but when I placed a My Favorite Things order around Christmas, they enclosed a mini set of sentiments for envelopes and the backs of cards. I was hyped to find the gift in my package (it still excites me every time I pull it out of my stash), and I love how well this stamp coordinates with the card design.

For my next two valentines, I went tiny. Mini cards are my go-to for speedy designs, since I can use cute little stamps without having to figure out what to do with overwhelming white space. (Sneaky bonus: mini cards don’t have a lot of space on the inside, so there’s no pressure to fill them up with a long message — just a quick note and I’m good to go.) To add some interest to the background and keep the cards from looking too simple, I used watercolor patterned paper and built my color scheme around that.

I love the versatile designs of Mama Elephant’s Little Agenda series and how there’s almost always a stamp that will coordinate for the back of the envelope.

Again, a new stamp for the back of the card! I’ll fill it in with my name and the date when I prep the cards to mail.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Little Panda Agenda,” “Little Cat Agenda,” “Little Bunny Agenda”;  The Ton “Country Rose Cluster” (“sending”);  The Stamp Market “Double Take” (“hugs”);  Lawn Fawn “Winter Alpaca” (outline mini heart), order freebie (“I Like You”);  My Favorite Things “Hand Stamped” freebie (“handmade by”; “from my ♥ to yours”)
Dies:  Hero Arts “Nesting Circles” (1 ¼” for top, ¾” for dimensional layers);  Mama Elephant “Little Panda Agenda” (coordinating)
Ink:  My Favorite Things Black Licorice dye, Hero Arts Bubble Gum, Memento Love Letter + My Favorite Things Chili Powder (layered)
Copics:  R27, R000, C00, N1, E43;  Stampin’ Up Blendabilities Melon Mambo medium
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White;  My Favorite Things Watercolor Wash 6x6 Paper Pack (light pink)
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape

Dimensions
Red card: 4.25” x 5.5”
Pink cards: 3” x 4.25”

Sledding Penguins Tag

Sandy’s Day 9 tag for Ellen Hutson’s 12 Tags of Christmas 2019 Challenge made me think of some iconic panels of Calvin and Hobbes in their wagon and the many variations of them sledding. My brother loves Calvin and Hobbes (he even has his own Hobbes stuffed animal), so I had to make a similar tag for him.

I turned a sentiment strip die into a sled, added some falling snow to the sky with a white paint pen, and emphasized the motion of the scene with snow on the sled and little dashes behind the penguins’ heads. On the back of the tag where the penguin and sled overhang the circle, I colored in the penguin with a black fineliner so he looks finished.


Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Arctic Penguins”
Dies:  Hero Arts “Nesting Circle Dies” (3 ¼”, ⅛”);  My Favorite Things “Essential Slanted Sentiment Strips” (sled);  Lawn Fawn “Stitched Hillside Borders”;  Mama Elephant “Arctic Penguins”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Summer Sky
Copics:  R22, R05, R27, YR02
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, ice blue lightweight cardstock from stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Gina K. Designs Connect liquid glue, Posca pen 0.7 mm white, Sakura Pigma Micron 0.45 mm black, craft knife

MFT Sketch Challenge #428

I needed an encouragement card to stick in a care package to a friend, so over the weekend I whipped up this cheery number following the sketch challenge from My Favorite Things.

For a few weeks now, I had been wanting to do a little something with this umbrella cat, and I realized that the tiny umbrella stamp from my new Hello Bluebird set coordinated perfectly. Although I don’t have any particular predilection for umbrellas, this one is the cutest little thing, and it just begs to be paired with the various adorable critters in my collection. I have a feeling it’ll be showing up a lot in my designs this spring and summer.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Little Cat Agenda” (cat);  Hello Bluebird “Puddle Play” (umbrellas);  Simon Says Stamp “Tiny Words” (sentiment)
Dies:  Mama Elephant “Little Cat Agenda”;  Hello Bluebird “Puddle Play”;  My Favorite Things “Inside and Out Stitched Square STAX”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  MFT Persimmon
Copics:  C00, N1, R05;  Bic Marking Hot Aqua, Moonstone Yellow
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, dark aqua lightweight cardstock from stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Gina K. Designs Connect Glue

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

National Pig Day & MFT Sketch Challenge #426

Obscure holidays are the perfect excuse for surprising people with cards, and March 1 was National Pig Day. My little sister has been a pig fanatic since she was eighteen months old and met a pot-bellied pig in person, so I whipped up a clean-and-simple card for her.

While brainstorming the card design, I checked this week’s MFT’s sketch challenge to see if I could incorporate it. I adored Anna’s card—everything about the placement of her elements delights me—so I kept it up for inspiration, pulled out the cutest new pig stamps, and set to work.

I didn’t want to take the time to blend or stamp a background, so I grabbed my brand new Watercolor Wash paper pad and chose a blue that coordinated with the cobalt color scheme. This is my first MFT 6x6” paper pack, and the paper surprised me by how thick and sturdy it is. It feels at least twice the weight of the various 12x12” patterned papers I have, and it’s wondrously smooth. It made creating a background a snap, too, so now I’ll be torn between conserving the good paper and wanting to use it every chance I get. It’d be great if MFT came out with a watercolor pad solely in blues and greens; I foresee using this primarily for sky, grass, and backgrounds, and there are only two sheets per color, so a pack with a dozen sheets of blue would be fantastic.

Since the alphabet set I used to create the interior sentiment doesn’t have an apostrophe and I couldn’t bear to let the card leave my hands with an improperly punctuated contraction, I added in the apostrophe with a gel pen in a blue that almost exactly matched The Ton’s Azurite ink. I have this line of Japanese pens in a variety of colors, and I love using them to write notes inside cards and to address envelopes. Although they’re hard to find and not cheap, their line weight is half the size of that of the typical American gel pen (0.38 mm instead of 0.7 or 1.0 mm), and their ink flow is incredibly smooth. I’m a wholehearted stationery geek, and the Signo DX is my all-time favorite gel pen.

Supplies
Stamps:  Hello Bluebird “Farmyard Little Bits”;  Hero Arts “Many Everyday Messages” (sentiment);  Mama Elephant “Bella Letters” (interior sentiment)
Dies:  My Favorite Things “Essential Slanted Sentiment Strips,” “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX 1”;  Hello Bluebird “Farmyard Little Bits”
Ink:  The Ton Azurite;   Memento Espresso Truffle
Copics:  R000, R20, B26
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, My Favorite Things Watercolor Wash 6x6” Paper Pack (light blue)
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Gina K. Designs Connect Glue, Uni Posca paint marker (0.7 mm white), Uni-ball Signo UM-151 (aka Signo DX) (0.38 mm blue)

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Sketch Challenge #401

A couple of weeks ago, I spotted this card by Larissa Heskett and fell in love with the color scheme. My sister’s birthday is approaching, and she loves pandas, so making her a card provided the perfect excuse for CASEing Larissa’s. This week’s sketch challenge from My Favorite Things suited the layout I had in mind, and I’m also submitting the card to MFT’s Birthday Project.

I stamped the flowers multiple times, two layers for the orange, three or four for the yellow, because I wanted deep colors as well as a solid impression to capture the details of the flowers. I drew in the stems and am not happy with them—it’ll be a while before I can freehand anything satisfactorily. Whatever I draw never quite conforms to the law of gravity, and the lack of realism bugs me, but the only way to improve is to practice, so I’m continuing my attempts and trying to convince myself that the wonky results are just going to look whimsical to anyone else.

I edged the matte in the same orange ink, just smooshing the cube onto the paper. The cheaper cardstock rippled a little as it dried, but my dictionary helped mitigate that somewhat, and the focal panel disguises the remaining undulations.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Incoming Mail” (panda);  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals”;  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple Birthday III” (sentiment)
Dies:  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 1”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  My Favorite Things Dye Persimmon;  Hero Arts Butter Bar
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, cheap lightweight white cardstock from my stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Sakura Pigma Micron 01 (0.25 mm)

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Color Challenge #99 & The Birthday Project

The former youth pastor at my church and I happen to have the same birthday, and he was so ecstatic when he found out that he shared a birthday with someone that ever since I’ve made a point of giving him a card every year. He’s something of a comic, so this sentiment from My Favorite Things seemed quite suitable.

I’m playing along with the MFT Color Challenge #99—I jumped at the chance to use persimmon again—and I’m also entering MFT’s Birthday Project. This month’s theme is Clean and Simple, which perfectly suits my style.

Supplies
Stamps:  My Favorite Things “Hog Heaven” (sentiment);  Mama Elephant “Little Cat Agenda”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Copics:  W00, W1, W3, E43, E34, R27;  Bic Marking Sunset Orange, Moonstone Yellow
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape; Mama Elephant “Little Cat Agenda” dies

Dimensions
3.5” x 4.75”

PTI’s “Create Along With Us” Challenge, May 2018

A bunch of cards in Papertrey Ink’s release blog posts this month caught my eye, and when the May Create Along With Us challenge started, I thought, “Why not?” I only managed to make translations of four of the seven cards that I’d saved as inspiration images: limited supplies and lack of time intervened. In the future, I’d like to attempt several iterations of Lizzie’s rainbow stripe star card; its clean, graphic look appealed to me the most out of the cards from this release, and I have several ideas for how to translate it into my own supplies.


I also loved the look of Lizzie’s red and yellow strawberry card, but I didn’t have any patterned paper or stamps that remotely resembled her supplies, so I condensed the elements of her card to their essence: red and white accented by yellow and green, several layers of frames, and a focal image framed in black. The framed image in PTI’s “Spring Hills” set perfectly fit the parameters, and I built the card around it. Since my Copic collection is limited, I didn’t have a suitable yellow-green, and the one lime marker available entirely washed out my yellow Copic, so I went with a more true green for contrast. Putting the focal image on a solid red base looked too flat, so I masked off a piece of cardstock in a plaid pattern and went over it with the same red Copic I had used for the roof of the house.

Stephanie’s simple, graphic strawberries card was my most direct translation, since I could very nearly match the colors and main font she used. I love the look of strawberries but don’t have any strawberry stamps yet, so I went with a flower silhouette and leaves and followed the layout of Stephanie’s card. Since I didn’t use the watercolor technique, the result isn’t as loose and organic as hers, but the graphic layout pleases me.

Stephanie’s fun mint and sprinkles card provided the perfect excuse for me to use my new sprinkle washi tape. This card was the quickest and easiest to make, though the result is much simpler than Stephanie’s since I don’t have coverplate dies or any large image that would coordinate with the theme. Instead, I focused on the color scheme and the theme.

Keeway’s cute little animal card I used primarily as a sketch, since I haven’t any elephant or cloud stamps, but I do have a bunch of adorable little animals. I cut a peach panel to A1 size and layered on a hillside border, the cutest and chubbiest critter I could find, and a sentiment from PTI. The result feels a tad too simple, and it’d look better with some clouds, but one must work with what one has. Cloud dies have jumped much higher on my wish list, though!

Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple: Thank You I” (bold script), “Spring Hills” (framed hillside), “Just Desserts Sentiments” (“everything’s better...”), “Winter Woods” (“hello”);  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals” (flower and leaves);  Hero Arts “Stamp and Cut: Thanks” (“for your kindness”);  Mama Elephant “Lunar Animals” (cow)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Espresso Truffle;  VersaFine Vintage Sepia;  Hero Arts Pale Tomato, Green Hills, Bubble Gum;  VersaColor Cyan
Copics:  R27, Y00, G14, BG000, W00, and E43 (framed hillside); E34, E30, E0000 (cow);  Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Blendabilities: Crumb Cake Light, Crumb Cake Medium (cow)
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White; cheap layering-weight yellow, mint, and peach from stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Pebbles Happy Hooray Birthday Wishes washi tape, Lawn Fawn “Stitched Hillside Borders” dies


Dimensions
All cards:  4.25” x 5.5”

Kaboom! World Penguin Day

Meet Pingy, a pyromaniac penguin.

He loves anything to do with explosions — firecrackers, fireworks, dynamite — but he can be lured away from such hazardous materials with goldfish or animal crackers.

Little rogue that he is, he’s taking a few sticks of dynamite to my friend’s house to celebrate World Penguin Day, which is April 25.

This card was super easy to pull together and a blast to design. It’s all a single layer, too, embellishments notwithstanding. The penguins in the set all wear ice skates, but a stamping platform and selective inking did away with that. I debated using tiny googly eyes but decided against it: he looks cuter without them.

Supplies
Stamps:  Mama Elephant “Arctic Penguins”
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black;  Hero Arts Butter Bar
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, white glue, two red bugle beads, DCWV red foiled cardstock, an orange gel pen of cheap and indeterminate make, a mechanical pencil, Spectrum Noir Sparkle clear

Dimensions
Card:  3.5” x 3.5”