Two Tips: Cutting panels without waste from Bristol Smooth & Using Hero Arts Color Layering Stamps

Thought I'd also share two tips I used on the sea turtle card.

First on is for cutting Strathmore Bristol Smooth card stock with little waste.  I buy the large pad, I found mine at Hobby Lobby and bought it with a 40 % off coupon. It is 11 x 17 inches and has 24 sheets. With this size there is no waste if you plan to cut the sheets into 4.25 x 5.5 inch panels. Just cut the 4.25 from the 17 inch long side and you'll get exactly 4. Then cut each strip of 4.25 in half for the 5.5 inch side for 8 panels of 4.25 x 5.5.

Second tip: Figuring out the stamps to use for each layer on the legs of the turtle took me a while. When I had them figured out, using the back of the packaging diagram included with the stamps, I put each leg and head layer stamp onto an acrylic block. So one block had stamp layer two's stamps arranged on it in the shape of the turtle...forward legs near head and back legs at the far edge, and layer three had the same arrangement on a separate acrylic block. That way I could make a bunch of turtles without getting mixed up or having to figure it out each time I stamped a new turtle. I also arranged the mini ink cubes from lightest to darkest to match the order of stamping. The lightest cube was layer one which is one whole stamp of the turtle. Layer two adds some outline lines to the shell , head and legs and layer three is mostly the dotted parts on the skin using the darkest ink and it also adds the dark rings and edges to the shell. The shells were easy to keep track of so I didn't put them on the acrylic blocks. 

Hope this helps for the Hero Arts Color Layering Sea Turtle Stamp set and for cutting Bristol Smooth into panels without wasting paper. 

Hero Arts Color Layering Sea Turtle card for Father's Day: Husband card

Hey fellow card Crafters!

It's been a while but I'm trying to work on setting up my equipment to record videos and it's a learning process for me.

I did need to make a Father's Day card and although this one looks quite unconventional it fills my need to make cards personal for the recipient. I made two cards because the first one surprisingly turned out pretty good as my test run to figure out the inking process for the Layered Sea Turtle stamps from Hero Arts. Using a MISTI tool really helped but I don't think would have been necessary.

Products used:

Strathmore: Bristol Smooth
Hero Arts: Color Layering Sea Turtle Stamp set
Altenew Inks: Frayed Leaf, Forest Glades and Evergreen
Distress inks: Salty Ocean  and Peacock Feathers
My Favorite Things 6 x 6 paper pad Black & White Basics pack
Embossing Powder: Ranger White Super Fine
My Favorite Things: Essential Fishtail Sentiment Strips Dies
Nuvo Jewel Drops: Sea Breeze
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive
Spectrum Noir: Sparkle glitter brush: Crystal Clear

I cut the Bristol paper into a 5.5 x 4.25 panel and ink "smooshed" the distress inks onto the center of the panel mostly using salty ocean and reserving the peacock feathers ink for accent splotches. I did use the distress water sprayer and that worked great to give me just the right controlled spray of water onto the ink before using some acetate pieces to dab it onto my panel (aka smooshing).

I used the altenew inks in the order I listed them above to make the turtles and cut them out by hand close to the images using a black marker to darken the cut edges.

The sentiment was made from basic black card stock die cut with the fishtail strip dies and stamped with Simon Says Stamp Clear Embossing ink using a sentiment from the stamp set. I heat embossed this using Ranger White Embossing powder and my heat tool to melt the powder. I cut a strip of black and white paper from the 6 x 6 paper pad and glued the turtles, strip and sentiment down using Nuvo glue. That glue is great by the way.

I glued the panel down to a top folding 5.5 x 4.25 Neenah 110# card stock in white and on the one card I used that corner rounder chomper tool to round the edges.

Lastly, I couldn't resist adding some shine so I added a simple embellishment of jewel drops to add to the water look and dabbed the water splotches lightly with Spectrum Noir: Sparkle glitter brush: Crystal Clear..