Triple Time/Seamless Tiers Love Card

Happy Tuesday!  It's a beautiful day here and I'm feeling a bit spoiled by the brilliant sunshine and mild temperatures.  This weather is really unusual for us at this time of year.  What a blessing!

I rarely make New Year's resolutions, but this year I decided to focus my resolutions on the "creative" part of my life.  One of my resolutions is to try new techniques and projects this year.  I have developed a bad habit of seeing techniques I want to try and "pinning" them but never actually trying them.  So I'm going through my Pinterest boards and my gallery favorites at Splitcoast Stampers and pushing myself to try new things.  Here's to breaking out of my comfort zone in 2013!

This week's Try a New Technique challenge at Splitcoast Stampers gave us the opportunity to try one of the many challenge techniques from 2012, so I chose to try Triple Time Stamping (also called Seamless Tiers) for my card.  I have seen so many magnificent cards using this technique, but it involves a bit of measuring and I'm more of an eyeballer than a measurer.  Thankfully, many wonderful bloggers are willing to share their recipes and measurements and they've taken all the hard work out of this technique!

Here's my card:

And here's a link to the tutorial I followed at Jan's Stamping Creations.

There are many wonderful tutorials online and some of them include videos, so you can certainly find many options for this beautiful technique.  I've seen lots of different measurements for the layers and I may try other combinations in the future.  You could easily cut the pieces for several cards at once and then construct them as you have time, or make several of the same card assembly-line style.  I was truly surprised at how quickly this card was completed. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope you have a wonderful day!

Products Used:

Ink: Real Red Classic Ink (Stampin' Up!)

Paper: Real Red, Whisper White card stock (Stampin' Up!)

Stamps: Field Flowers (Stampin' Up!)

Flowers After the Rain

Happy Monday!  I had a whirlwind weekend of turkey, family and shopping and now it's time to settle back in to reality for the next few weeks.  I really love holiday weekends, though.  I get spoiled having my husband home to help me with the kids and sometimes I even get to sleep in a bit...pure heaven!

I created today's card for the current CAS(E) This Sketch Challenge.  This challenge is for Clean and Simple cards (little or no embellishments and lots of open space).  You can read more about this challenge HERE. 

Here is the sketch:

  

And here is my card:

I started with a brown card stock base and a piece of Natural White card stock (Natural White is a vanilla shade).  I stamped my flower stems with Ancient Page Pine, then added the flower heads with Memento Rhubarb Stalk.  I wanted my sentiment to have a slightly darker hue than my stems, so I inked the stamp first with Memento Rich Cocoa, then inked over that with Ancient Page Pine to create a subtle difference.  I also inked the edges of the panel with Memento Rich Cocoa to bring out the brown shade in the sentiment.  I have a really tough time lining up sentiments sometimes, so I used a stamp positioner.  That tool is worth its weight in gold!

I wanted to use a piece of very light gold card stock behind my stamped panel but I didn't have one that was long enough (this piece came from a grab bag and it is just lovely in person).  I ran it through my Big Shot in the Swiss Dots folder, then cut it in the middle and adhered it to my card base with a gap to make it "stretch" to the necessary length.  I covered up the gap by adhering my stamped piece over it with Stampin' Dimensionals. 

I stayed fairly true to the sketch with a couple of exceptions.  The sketch uses a horizontal panel behind the stamped piece, but I felt the height of my flowers called for a vertical panel instead.  I also switched the sentiment and image to opposite sides to accommodate my flowers.  This sketch is a really versatile one that I plan to use again!

I hope to finish another card this evening that I will share with you soon, but for now I'm off to check the Cyber Monday specials and try to finish up my Christmas shopping!  Thanks for stopping by!

Products Used:

Stamps: Field Flowers, Brighter Tomorrow (Stampin' Up!)

Paper: Classic Crest Natural White card stock (Neenah); brown card stock, gold card stock (unknown)

Ink: Ancient Page Pine (Clearsnap); Memento Rhubarb Stalk, Memento Rich Cocoa (Tsukineko)

Tools/Accessories: Swiss Dots Embossing Folder (Cuttlebug); Big Shot (Sizzix);

Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!); stamp positioner