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

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

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

Caffeinated

I know I’ve been a little MIA lately and the honest truth is …. life. Summer is here which mean it’s busy season for my day job and my kids are home. I’m only one person and something had to give and that was typing up my blogs, I have been able to sneak in bits of crafting here and there. Anyways for today’s craft room creation I want to share my new obsession which is the caffeinated line by The Rabbit Hole Designs. I adore these characters! There are five cards in this set because I had to color all the characters I have. I haven’t collected them all yet but I’m working on it.

All five cards were created the same way in assemble line style I just changed up the colors and background stencils. I started out by stamping each character with sentiments on to white cardstock. Then it was time to color I used my Copic markers, I find coloring fun and relaxing so I do spend a good amount of time on it. I hear a lot about how many can’t afford Copics just remember there are a ton of different coloring mediums find one that you like. I have been a crafter and artist most of my life and have slowly built up my arts and craft hoard.

Shark: YG06, G14, G05, E23, E57, C7,C5,C3,0

Rabbit: RV21, RV10, R17, R27, R39, W1,W3,W5,W7, C3, C1,0

Fox: B99, B34, YR07, YR15, W1,W3, 0, C5, C3, E15, E07, E19

T-Rex: Y13,Y17, YR24,C1, C3, 0, YG11, YG03, YG06,G14, G05

Cat: C1, C3, C5, C9, 100, 0, E23, E57, V25, BV11, BV00, R14, YR07, YR15, YR24

Once everything was colored I used full sticky post-it notes to make mask of each character.

I pulled out a bunch of different stencils and distress inks to create the backgrounds.

I masked my images, taped my stencil in place with low tack purple tape then blended each panel.

I trimmed my panels down with a stitched rectangle die. The purple tape works great to hold the die in place while going thorough the die cutting machine

I dug through my scraps bin to find matching card stock for each of the character’s coffee mug. I cut and layered these panels behind the image panels leaving an 1/8 inch boarded around. I used fun foam to pop them up and added them each to a white A2 card based.

I hope you enjoyed this craft room creation and I will be back next week to share another fun card set with you.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean