Crafting Days! : Hand Carved stamps

So I have been holding onto these for about three weeks now since I wanted to give them to my friends at our monthly craft meetup. It was so hard to keep them a secret but now I can finally show them off! I got the idea while searching through Pinterest (of course) and I already had the supplies so I wanted to give it a try

Supplies needed:

• Image to cut
• Printer
• Tracing paper - I used Vellum
• Pencil
• Linoleum cutter - I used a speedball cutting tool
• Carving block - I used the speedball speedy carve block
• Patience

1. I first found an image of what I wanted to carve and printed it onto regular paper

2. I then used vellum and my pencil to trace what I wanted to carve

3. I placed the vellum, pencil side down, onto the carving block and used my nail to transfer the pencil onto the carving block. The image should be mirrored from the print-out

4. Go over any parts of the image that did not transfer completely with pencil

5. Cut around the image to cut down the working area and to save the rest of the carving block for future stamps

6. Start carving by using the smallest nib for detail then move onto the larger nibs to take away chunks!

7. ENJOY STAMPING!

Crafting Days!: Two New Birthday cards

I am starting another weekly post called: Crafting Days! I have been crafting a lot and I wanted to start to dedicate a portion of my blog to just that. Working on different projects allows me to take a creative break from doing the same thing over and over again.

I have been working a lot of paper crafts and this weeks post is going to feature some more handmade cards! I created these two cards for birthdays last weekend. A lot of my inspiration is found on pinterest, it is so useful but it is also trouble at the same time. As I start pinning I start to find new tools that I don't have or new stamps that I *need*. 

Card #1 was all card stock paper materials. I used my Silhouette Cameo  to cut the balloons and then hand drew the strings hanging down. I had a lot of fun making this card and was glad that the recipient liked it as well!

Card #2 is made out of card stock with flags that were cut from washi/decorative tape. I then found a random piece of twine in the kitchen and glued it on top of the flags to give it a 3D effect. This was inspired by a card I had found on pinterest. I don't have any pictures of this card in progress since I was not home when I made this card.

One of my other hobbies!

Photography and eating are not the only hobbies that I have! I actually do a lot of random crafts and I recently got into scrapbooking and paper crafts in general. A few months ago, I bought myself a die cutting machine called the Silhouette Cameo and since then I have been trying to find things to do with it. Several people have borrowed it before but I wanted to make sure that I actually used it to get the most out of it.

Last month for Mother's day, I used it to create 12 cards to hand out to all the women in my both my family and my husbands. All cards were made using card stock and cut using my machine. The cards were made using a template I bought off of the Silhouette Cameo's online store and the envelope was designed by me.

Well, we are less than a week away from Father's day so of course I had to make more cards. I can't let the men in my family feel left out! This time, I wanted to do something different and actually design my own cards. I started to look online for inspiration and I found plenty. I ended up with two different designs.

The first design was meant for all the uncles in the family. I had used a silhouette of a tie and rather than have all 4 ties cut out, I used the designer software that came with the die cutter to put a bit of a pattern in it. I then decorated it by adding a striped background and washi tape to the front

The second design is meant for my dad and father in law. Every layer to this card was also cut using the designer software so that I wouldn't have to do any calculations to make sure that each layer was smaller than the previous one. The hammer is also cut out and I used double sided tape to stick it to the card, which gave it a nice 3D effect.