Easy card tricks

Nope, this is not about how to do magic, at least not with playing cards. It's how to do magic when you're making greeting cards. I'll tell you my secret. I don't come up with a lot of card ideas, I just come up with a lot of variations on cards I already have. Take, for instance, the one below. It's made with the Ice Crystals stamp set by Close to my Heart. It's one of the cards my customers make at my Christmas card workshops (call me to schedule one of your own). I love this card, so much that I wanted to come up with some other versions of it. Complete directions for this card can be found in my newsletter, sign up HERE.

While having trouble sleeping one early morning I was thinking about how I could make this card differently. I thought about reversing the pattern of the card by putting words in the random stamping area and a stamped picture on the little oval. The result was this. With a little dry embossing and going vertical instead of horizontal, the card is brand new. The Peace on Earth saying comes from Say It In Style (my most used stamp set) and the little sleigh comes from Snow Days.

Here's another look. Instead of cutting the randomly stamped piece horizontally, I cut them vertically. I rounded the corners of the brown paper and moved the horse and sleigh. I also skipped the dry embossing.

This last card is the one I'll teach you today. It's still the same card pattern, just changed some of the parts.

Cut a piece of white paper 3 inches by 4 1/4 inches. Using the Peace on Earth image, stamp it on the paper (held vertically) in brown bag ink. Move it around so that your lines are straight but let it go off the paper at some points (it's supposed to be random, remember)?

Using Moonstruck ink, do the same thing, leaving space for the next two colors, lagoon and heavenly blue. Fill in by using just the left or right hand side of the stamp until the page is full.

Cut a piece of brown bag cardstock 5 1/4 by 4 inches. Using your paper trimmer and a dry embossing tools, draw lines about 1/8" apart around the outer edge of the piece. Sand to show off the white core of our paper. (All cardstock doesn't do this, paper must have a white core).

Cut a piece of moonstruck cardstock 5 1/2 by 4 1/4 inches. Round the corners off from both pieces and distress edges with moonstruck ink. Attach the brown paper in center of blue.

Cut moonstruck paper 3 1/2 by 4 3/4 inches. Cut heavenly blue paper 3 by 4 1/4 inches and round the corners. Distress both and attach to center of card.

Cut your randomly stamped paper. Cut an inch off top and inch off bottom. This will leave you with a wide center piece. Round upper corners of one of the one inch pieces and the bottom two corners of the other one inch piece. Distress and attach to card. Add a matching ribbon about two thirds of the way down the card. Cut a small piece of ribbon, tie in knot and glue down to flat ribbon.

Stamp the sleigh and horse to small punched oval in brown bag, distress and add to scalloped oval piece (distress that also).

Add the stamped image to bottom right of the card (or top right, whatever you like). Attach whole card front to card base that you've cut 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches (fold in half and round corners). I would love and post your own versions of cards you work your own magic on, just send them to my email! caldreamin05@comcast.net