Reindeer Fuel

Hello Crafters!

Today’s craftroom creation is a Christmas card featuring the caffeinated reindeer by The Rabbit Hole Designs . I have always loved celebrating Christmas in July, as a kid we went camping in July each year the campground would hang Christmas Decoration and have a parades. Now as an adult I celebrate by starting my Christmas crafting.

Holiday cards are one of my favorites to make because I have lots of fun Holiday scrapbooking paper. I kept this card cards layout simple, I started by coloring the caffeinated Reindeer with my Copic makers. Once my image was all colored this card came together quickly because I used scraps from my stash.

Color combos:

R27, R29, R59, Y18, B00, B000, C7, N5, N3, C1, O, W2, W4, W5, E29, E37, E99, E33

I trimmed down the image to 2 1/2 by 4 3/8 and matted with pearl red cardstock. I used a black A2 ( 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches) card base and matted it with Christmas paper that coordinated with my coloring. Side note if you use dark colored card bases either add white cardstock to the inside or write with a white gel. once all my layers were cut I decided the card was missing some texture and added a thin gold ribbon and bow by the focal image which is popped up with foam.
I think it’s important that we remember to shop our stash and create using our scraps every so often. I hope you enjoyed this quick card share. I’ll be back soon to share more projects.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean

Leopard Print

Hello Crafters!

I have a bonus card featuring the “shoe” digi stamp by Coffee Bean Designs. Today is my last guest design team post over on the Coffee Bean Design’s blog which is where you’ll find the first card I made with this digi stamp. I just want to take a second to Thank all the wonderful ladies over at Coffee Bean Designs for letting me craft along with them.

This card was inspired by my favorite pair of heels that I got when I was maybe 19. I have worn my leopard print heels on many occasions because they are fun and flirty which is exactly why I love them.

For my card I printed the heels a little larger so I could play with coloring the leopard print. I am most comfortable coloring with my Copic markers so that is what I used. I started by shading in the whole shoe first with a warm gray combo. The inside of the shoe heel, and sole were all colored in red combo.

W1, W4, W7, &W9R17, R27, R29, & R59Y35, YR23, E35

Drawing the leopard pattern is easy, start my making dots with the lightest yellow then add a mid and dark tone on top off setting a bit. Then make C shaped scribbles around each dot with layers of gray, filling in with smaller gray and yellow dots as needed.

Once everything was colored I fussy cut out my now leopard shoes edging them with a water based black marker. I typed up a sentiment on my computer and printed it out onto white cardstock and trimming it down to slightly smaller then an A2 card base. I like my card to have lots of dimension so I popped the front shoe up with foam. lastly I made two small bow black ribbon from my stash to each shoe.

I hope you enjoyed this craftroom creation as much as I do. If this inspires you to create please tag me on social media @TheCraftBean.

ThanksBrandi M.

The Craft Bean

Birthday Cake

Hello Crafters!

I hope everyone is doing well. My family and I have been spending a lot more time outside since the weather here has been beautiful. Today’s craftroom creation is a Birthday card featuring the “Wedding cake” digital stamp by Coffee Bean Designs.

The great thing about digi stamps is you can resize them to fit your project. For this card I printed my cake larger so it would take up most of the card front. For the Card I made for the Coffee Bean Design’s blog I printed it smaller.

I had a ton of fun turning this Wedding cake image into a rainbow Birthday cake I used the dotting technique to create rainbow sprinkles at the bottom of each cake layer. To add more depth to the cake I used light gray Copic makers to add shading.

I have been stamping for over a decade now, many years ago big box craft stores sold small clear stamp images in the 50 cent bins. well I have a ton of them in my stash so I dug through them and found a rainbow that was perfect to make a cake topper. It is very satisfying to use thing from my stash that haven’t been used in years.

I trimmed out my cake and rainbow with my favorite fiskers scissors and like always when fussy cutting I ran a black water base maker around the edge to hide the white core of the cardstock. I stamped my “Happy Birthday” sentiment on the bottom cake layer. lastly glued my two images together and add foam tape to the back.

I kept the background simple I add light blue clouds with tumbled glass distress ink and my cloud stencil by Kindred stamps. I popped my cake onto my A2 card base and was done.

I hope you enjoyed this card and I will be back soon to share more craftroom creations with you.

Thanks

Brandi M.

@TheCraftBean

Perfume Bonus

I have another craftroom creation bonus for you all today! I was playing with the perfume jars digi stamps from Coffee Bean Designs and made this fun foiled slim line card.

The inspiration for this card came from the paper scraps I had been digging through while making my other two card for the Coffee Bean Design’s blog. I loved this 12 x 12 sheet that Said ” Truly madly deeply” at the bottom center, it made me think “love potion”. However I was unsure how to use it, so I set it a side and worked on my other two cards.  In the middle of creating them I got an idea for this card that I just had to try.

I printed the digi on white 80 pound card stock then I traced over the image lines with a deco foil adhesive pen. Well sort of… the tip on my glue pen was clogged, so I pulled the top off and poured out the glue onto my glass media mat and used  a small paint brush. But feel free to skip all that if you actually remember to put the tops back on to your glue.

I heated up my laminating machine and folded a piece of  standard printer paper in half to make a carrier sheet. I place my glue covered image face up inside the carry sheet, then added my silver deco foil shiny side up on top of my jar image, then closed my carrier sheet and ran it thorough my laminating machine.

Since the paper was 12 X 12 I decided to make a slim line card (3 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches)  I cut the patter paper down to be an 1/8 of an inch smaller then the black card base. To fill in some of the white space and play of the love potion idea, I made smokey potion by ink smooching watered down fired brick distress ink onto the pattern paper with left over clear stamp packaging.

The now potion bottle was fussy cut out but this time I left a white boarder around the image. Popped it up on an bit of foam tape and this card was done.

I hope you have enjoyed spending time with me and if you want to see more of my craft room creation follow me on social media @TheCraftBean.

Brandi M.

The Craft Bean

May Flowers Bonus

Hello! I hope everyone is enjoying all the extra crafting time quarantine has allowed.

Today’s craftroom creations is a bonus project made with the Coffee Bean Design’s “Daffodils” digital stamp. To see my guest design team creations check out their Blog.

I recently watched a Kristina Werner video where she showed how to water color a digital stamp image and knew I needed to try it.

I created a light box out of a light and a large rectangle plastic container. I place my printed image down first then laid my water color paper over top.

Then traced over the digi images with a pencil. If I were to do it again I’d either use a water color pencil or trace over my line with a waterproof black pen because some of my pencil lines got trapped under the water color.

I wanted the no line look so I traced over the lines with a yellow and green water color pencils by Arteza. I used my Daniel Smith water color dot chart to paint the daffodils. (Mayan yellow, Indian yellow, Raw sienna, chrom. green oxide, Duochrome mauve) it took me a bit to find the right yellow

Things I learned along the way:

Less is more when it comes to water coloring. You don’t need a lot of water.

Start with the darker shade and add water to lighten as pull it out to the edges of the flower.

Paint one section at a time so you don’t end up with color blobs instead of petals.

Paint in layers to get more dimension and contrast.

To finish my card I trimmed it down to be a 1/4 inch smaller than an A2 card base. added a sentiment strip and pretty pink posh 4mm clear droplets. 

Even though I am not a water colorist and have more to learn I really enjoyed playing with this technique. If you are inspired to create please share and tag me on social media @TheCraftBean

If you want to see more of my craftroom creations follow me on social media @TheCraftBean.

Happy Crafting

Brandi M.

The Craft Bean

Magical Christmas Ornament

Today’s craft room creation is a part of a You Tube advent hop, I am day five if you’ve missed days 1-4 you can join the Facebook group live art journaling and self development.

I altered a Dollar Tree bird house craft into a gingerbread bread house ornament using stamp sets by Kindred stamp and supplies for my craft horde. A few have asked about the hockey tape I used to put together this ornament, So here is the link to it on Amazon.

I used National gingerbread cookie day, wizard friends and arcade friends but use what you have. There is a full video tutorial here.

I used zig clean color real brush markers to color all of my images.

064, 071, 999, 050, 067, 024, 260, 062,065, 090, 091.

Please check out all the other wonderful artists and crafters that are part of this hop.

I hope you enjoyed this craft room creation I will be back very soon to share more holiday creations with you.

Brandi M.

The Craft Bean

Season’s Grootings

Are you ready for lots of holiday themed craft room creation? lets hope so. Today is the first of many nerdy Christmas cards. This card features two characters from the Space Heroes set by Kindred Stamps decorating for the holidays.

I made a full video tutorial for this card check it out here.

Copic maker colors:

E07, YR07, YR15, C5, C9, W1, W3, W5, W7, W9, W2, W4, YG91, BG96, R59, YR24

Colors used to fix my background

R37, E17, E09, G24, BG34, YG67, G46

I hope you enjoyed this holiday craft room creation I will be back soon to share.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean

One kit, 25 cards!

If you’re like me you collect card kits from all the amazing craft companies. My favorite kits are by Kindred stamps because I love all of their pop culture sets. I realized I have been hoarding my kits and not using them, so it was time to create with one of my older kits. I picked the Toy Box kit but any card kit would work for this. I challenged myself to do the “as many as” challenge with the papers and stamps included in the toy box kit. I used ever inch of paper and was able to create TWENTY FIVE cards.

I started out by choosing a card design that was a bit more paper heavy that way I knew I would have plenty of paper to play with. I started my paper crafting journey as a scrapbooker so I tend to be drawn to fancy fold and layered card designs. Since the stamp set had 6 character I made 6 cards in each style.

I went through my scrap bin to find some solid cardstock scraps that coordinated with the paper collection, to add some interest to the designs.

with this design you can see the inside of the card, which meant I couldn’t leave it blank. it inspired me to finish off the inside of all my cards. plus it was a great use of the smaller scraps.

For the second set of six I used a rectangle leftover ( 4 1/4 x 1 7/8 Inches) and solid color strips at the bottom of my card. This set is very simple card design to add a bit more dimension, I fussy cut each character and pop them up with foam tape.

For the inside of this set I used a simple pattern paper strip along the bottom.

The next set is another simple design that was made with another leftover rectangle (5 3/8 x 1 7/8 inches). I stamped sentiment under each character to ground them. to make my focal point stand out more I matted it with solid cardstock scraps. I popped the main image up on foam to add more interest.

The inside of these card got a white card stock mat because I used a black card base. again I used a pattern paper strip at the bottom to finish off the inside.

My last set of cards are square ( 4 1/4 x 4 1/4) because I had these triangles leftovers from creating my first set. I added a solid color strip to the triangle edge to make them bigger and take up more of the card front. I stamped each character with a sentiment on a smaller square (3×3 inches) to create a focal image. I love layers so I again matted them on solid colored cardstock scraps.

At this point I was down to tiny scraps of paper but still wanted to add a little something to the inside of this set so I made little flag/banner out of scraps left from cutting my strips down.

I got to the end of my fourth set and had 6 small squares of pattern paper left and I wanted to use ever inch of this adorable paper so I made one last card with all the characters. This ended up being my favorite card.

I did a ton of coloring I used my Copics and my Zig clean color real brush markers and played with the no line coloring technique with both. Here are my color combs.

Cowboy:

Copics: E51, E31, E23, E19, E29, E57, E79, R14, R29, B24, B18, B39, C1,C3, C7,C9, Y13, Y17, YR24

Zig: 036, 032, 030, 072, 071, 072, 064, 091, 095, 010, 022, 020, 051, 050, 067, 066, 065, 062

Cowgirl:

Copic: C1, C3,C5, C7, C9, Y18, Y06, Y11, YR24, E31 E23, E51, RV10, RV20, R27, E07, E19, E29

Zig: 060,260,029, 022, 026, 028, 095,091,900, 071072,064,050,051, 067

Horse:

Copics: E23, E31, E51, E79, E29, E57, R01, Y17, YR24, C1,C3,0

Zigs: 072, 064, 065, 062, 071, 091

Alien:

Copics: V17, V25, C9, C7, G05, YG06, YG03, B12, B16, B18, B24, B39

Zigs: 041,004,045,036,030,084,803, 090,091

Spaceman:

Copics: C1,C3, C5,C7,C9, V09,V17,V25, YG03, YG06, G05, R14, R29, E51, E31, E23, B000, B0000

Zigs: 803, 084, 303, 206, 020,090, 091, 041, 045, 096, 072, 071, 064

Dog:

Copics: E31, E35, E79, E29, E51 YR24, Y13, R29, R14, C9,C7, C5, C3, G05,G29, YG06, YG03

Zigs: 044, 041, 010, 090, 091,020, 260, 062, 065, 064, 072

I had so much fun with this challenge! I have several more kits to play with, let you know if there is something you want to see me create. I hope you enjoyed all these cards. I’ll be back soon with more craftroom creations.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean

Phobia Inspired cards

What? two craft room shares in one week! Yup, I told you I missed sharing my craft room creation with you. Today I have a set of phobia inspired cards to share featuring the adorable caffeinated spider by The Rabbit hole designs.

The phobia that inspired these card? The fear of Running out of coffee….

and maybe spiders.

The first card I made is part of a phobia inspired art video hop over on You Tube, if you’d liked to see my video or any of the other wonderful phobia inspired art click here to start the hop.

I loved coloring this little guy so much I just kept play with coloring styles. Some of the spiders are stamped in black while others I stamped in antique line distress ink for the no line coloring look. Copics are my favorite coloring media at the moment and I have been playing and practicing with them a lot as of late.

Color combos:

Purple(s): V09, V17,V12 / BV08, BV17, BV04 Black/Gray: C5, C7, C9, 100/ C5, C3, C1, 0 Orange: YR07, YR15, YR21 Green: G05, YG03, YG25

I ended up creating five cards, I kept them simple by creating layers with Halloween scrapbook paper and solid color card stock. All of my cards are A2 size 4 1/4 x 5 1/2.

I hope you enjoyed these cards and I will be back soon to share more craft room creations.

Thanks

Brandi M.

The Craft Bean

Building Blocks Party!

The last couple months have been crazy but I’ve missed sharing my craft room creations with you, so I took the morning off to hang out in my craft room and update my blog.

My twins just celebrated their 6th Birthday and they wanted a building blocks themed party, Which means that is what has been taking over my craft room. I started out with creating invitations to send into school with my kids. Yes, I am that crazy mom that invited both of my kids full classes to the party. I needed to make 36 invitations and the fastest way to do this is mass production. I knew I wanted to use the Building blocks stamp set by Kindred stamps, I picked the to building block boy and girl as the main images. Before I could start any stamping and coloring I need to design the invitations on my computer with all the party information. I use open office and paint to keep it easy and simple. I do measure the stamp images I plan to use to leave enough space for stamping. The invitations are A2 size 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 in order to fit 4 on a page. I printed them on yellow card stock for a fun pop of color and cut them down with my large paper trimmer. A stamping tool like the misti is amazing when you need to stamp the same image multiple time. I lined my stamps up in my misti inked them up in blackout ink by ink on 3. I recently switched to this ink since it a hybrid ink that is Copic safe and waterproof. 36 cards later I cleaned my stamps and started coloring with color Copic markers.

Boy Shirt: G05, G14, G19 Girl shirt: RV04, RV13, RV19, Pants: C5,C7 or B16, B18 Girl Hair: E23, E25, E57 Head/Arms: YR24, Y13, Y35.

Next I hit up the dollar store because they have great party supplies for cheap! plates, napkins, table cloths, decoration and goodie bags all in my building blocks theme. I am all about inexpensive and easy, mixed with a little handmade.

To add a handmade touch to the goodie bags I created small circular “Thank you” tags using a sentiments from the building blocks set and Polynesian Adventurers set by Kindred stamps. I set the stamps up in my misit again so I could stamp all my tags at once. Using my colored pencils I colored the heart block from the building block set. lastly I had my kids sign the back. Add to the goodie bags with ribbon and your done.

To entertain the kids during the party I had simple games and activities. like building kits from the dollar store, bean bags made out of felt and rice, coloring pages, block key chains to decorate and I even brought my kids block table so they could build and play with their friends.

For me adding little handmade touches takes my inexpensive party supplies to the next level without being to over whelming.

P.S Theses are the cakes that the kids Grandmother made for the party!

I hope you all enjoyed these craft room creations. I will be back soon to share. If you want to see more of what I am up to you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube @TheCraftBean.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean.