CASE Me a Christmas Card (Surprise!)

Normally at this time of year, I would be really excited to be helping Michelle Lupton kick off her annual Case me a Christmas Card feature. This year, Michelle's decided to take a break, and when she gave me that news I was so disappointed. Michelle is such an inspiring and lovely person and crafter and I look forward to this every year, and it turns out I'm not the only one!  So A bunch of us got together and decided to throw Michelle a surprise party, filled with lots of friends casing Michelle's cards. And the best part? You can join in too, if you want! Details in my video below:

LIMES with Brennan

Today, I'm excited to be introducing you to one of my newest crafty friends, Brennan. He's a talented newcomer on the card making scene and also to YouTube, so I'm excited to introduce you all to him, and show you how 3 of his cards helped me squeeze even more out of LIMES! (you can get a FREE LIMES worksheet here!)

LIMES: Ribbon Tree Christmas

Welcome to this week's LIMES inspiration post!

I chose this card as my inspiration from the gallery of this week's Splitcoaststampers' Featured Stamper!

LIST: Colours (white, red, green, ), Techniques (die cutting), Elements (3 festive red and green patterned shopping bags with tissue, horizontal ribbon, die cut 3 word sentiment, embossed background)

INCLUDE: red, white, green, 3 focal images, landscape orientation, sentiment along the bottom

MODIFY: die cut bags are now stenciled Christmas trees, sentiment is stamped

EXCLUDE: embossing, ribbon

SPIN: gold splatter instead of embossed polkadots.

I have this Ribbon Twirl Tree stencil from Trinity stamps that I've never used, and I thought it would be perfect to imitate the plaid bags on Sarah's card.

But the stencil is designed to create one tree that fits an A2 card. I turned my card landscape (uncomfortable for me! lol!) and masked off the bottom inch of my panel, and just used the upper portion of the stencil to create 3 smaller trees.

I added more inkblending to the outside trees to make them more solid and green, much like the 2 outside shopping bags..

AND I ended up with smudges - nothing fatal, just little bits of 'misplaced ink'. The answer to this is always gold watercolour splatter! And the splatter kind of works to take the place of Sarah's embossed polka dots.

Happy Birthday Dots

Welcome to this week's LIMES inspiration post!

I chose this card as my inspiration from the gallery of this week's Splitcoaststampers' Featured Stamper, Carol!

LIST: Colours (green, yellow, coral, blue, white), Technique (stamping, colouring) Elements (vertical split panel, polka dots, rectangle sentiment strip, birthday theme)

INCLUDE: green, yellow, blue, dots on right side, birthday sentiment with large happy, script 'birthday'

MODIFY: stencil instead of patterned paper, die cut happy, 

EXCLUDE: vertical 'divider'

SPIN:

Anytime I see a layout that is divided in half, I immediately think "2 for 1"! I stenciled my confetti into the centre of a 8.5x6" panel of white cardstock, using similar colours to Carol's dots. I like how they fade out to the edge, to give the left half of the card a cleaner look, similar to my inspiration. I edged the panels with a black copic marker for some subtle definition.

I cut my two layered sentiment/shadow once from white and once from black cardstock, to give me two different looks.

I stamped the script birthday with black ink in some of the clear space where the dots fade out toward the edge.

Inspired by Quilts

 

Inspiration is found in so many places! I love patterns and geometry, so in today's video, I'm sharing how I used quilt inspirations and LIMES to create these 4 cards! Bonus: LIMES works with ANY inspiration!

A NEW TWIST on LIMES

It's an exciting week here - I've got a new in-depth look at my LIMES process, including tips and strategies for each step. And I've created a free, printable worksheet PDF to help you take any inspiration you have and turn it into your own work of art!

Click HERE for your FREE PDF Worksheet!

PLUS I tried 2 experiments - variations on some techniques I've shared previously and THEY WORKED! 

PLUS I reached 20K subscribers on my YouTube channel, so I've got a giveaway over there. 20 lucky commenters (on YouTube!) will win a pack of gorgeous Crafty Meraki gems! Winners will be announced on Thursday, January 20, 2022, on the channel.

Head to my video here for all the details!

Use your Stash to get the Latest Looks!

Seems like you want to see more ways to use your stash, rather than always feeling like you have to buy something new! Or maybe the product you want is sold out, or not available where you live. Whatever the reason, you can use LIMES to get the look!

LIMES is an acronym I developed to help me analyze an inspiration piece, and then change it up to make it my own. 

Watch this video to see how I CASEd myself, using LIMES and one of my cards from last week's new Pretty Pink Posh release to get the same look with products I already owned!

I have a supply list of the products I used that are still available, but really, the whole point is to use what YOU have, so take a look in your stash to see what you can use if you want to make something similar!