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

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

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.

Unicorn Card Set

Today’s card set is featuring an adore unicorn set by C.C design. I love this set! it’s fun, cute and playful.

I started by stamping out each pony with a sentiment on to a cardstock panel slightly bigger then an A2 card in Memento tuxedo black ink.

I colored each of the images in with copic markers. I had originally intended to make simple one layered cards but right after this photo was taken my toddler decided to help, twice. Once spilling water all over my desk and then again by adding some flare as I was just about done redoing my blue pony.

I decided to finish coloring and fussy cut the blue unicorn instead of redoing it again. I created an embossed background with a clouds and rainbow embossing folder. I created a sentiment strip out of blue cardstock layering it over the embossed background. I added the blue pony with foam tape to the card panel. lastly I added the panel to a blue top folding A2 card base.

I was lucky the other two colored panels just had a bit of water damage on the edges so I just cut them down. The white unicorn panel was added to a silver glitter cardstock with fun foam and mounted it onto a A2 card base.

The pink unicorn panel was die cut with a stitched rectangle die and layered on purple and white cardstock. using fun foam the center panel was popped up. I created a fun bow with teal glitter ribbon to match the bow on her tail. Everything was mounted onto a purple A2 cardbase.

I hope you enjoyed these cards. I will be back soon to share more craftroom creation with you.

Badass Mother

If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m a bit of a nerd, I love all things Star Trek, Doctor who, classic video games, game of thrones, Disney ect… well last night one of my favorite series ended. So I created a card featuring an adorable stamp set by The sassy club “sassy games”.

To start my card I loaded all my stamps into my Misti, I love that I can double stamp my images to get a nice chirps images. I used Memento tuxedo back ink since it it Copic marker friendly.

I stamped and colored both my panels with Copic makers:

G99, G94, YG61, C3, C5, C7, E31, E51, E53, E59, E70, E74, R39, R29, Y00, Y11, Y13, Y18 & B00

I wanted a light blue distress Oxide background on the main panel so I cut masked for all the images out of full sticky Post-it notes and then blended over the main card panel.

To add texture to the background I splattered clean water over the distress oxide ink and blotted it up, I used a light blue Copic maker to fill in a gaps from masking. I pop the main panel up using fun foam and trimmed my second panel to the same size as my A2 (4 1/4 x 5 1/2) card base. I added both panels with double side tape.

I hope you enjoyed this card, I will be back soon with more projects to share.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean

Golden Age Card Set

Today I’m sharing a card set I created using the new “Golden Age” stamp set by kindred Stamps.

The entire Kindred Stamps April release will be available Friday, April 26th at 8am PST/11am EST. Be sure to subscribe to the Kindred Stamps blog to see a daily line up of sneak peeks from our amazing Design Team and see the full product release on Friday! Come join the Fan Club and release event to be part of the release fun, and you may just win some Kindred Stamps credit!!

There are 6 characters in this set, they are all amazing! I used each character as a focal image on a card within the set. I wanted the cards to feel cohesive so I decided to use the same general card layout and color palette. They are all A2 (4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches) size top folding cards. The background were cut from 12 x 12 pattern papers from my craft room hoard while the stitched rectangles were die cut from sold card stock. All the characters were colored with copic makers. I used foam tape to pop up some of the images and sentiments.

Golden Age Lady

Copic colors: E79, E59, E57, C9, C7, C5, C3, 100, E31, E51 and E53.

Golden Age Girl

YR24, Y35, Y18, R20, R17, R29, R59, C3, C1, 0, E31, E00, and E51

Golden Age Musician

C9, C7, 100, C3, C1, 0 , E31, E51, E53, Y18, Y35, YR24

Golden Age Chap

C1, C3, C5, C7, C9, 100, E31, E51, and E53

Golden Age Bombshell

Y13, Y18, Y35, R59, R29, E31, E51, E53, C3, C1 and 0.

 

Golden Age Wife

YR24, YR15, Y35, B39, B99, B34, R27, C3, C1, 0, E31, E51, and E53

I hope you all enjoyed this card set I will be sharing my last kindred stamp design team project with you all next week.

If you are interested in this stamp set or any by Kindred Stamps consider using my affiliate link, It cost you nothing but helps support my blog. Kindred Stamps.

Brandi M.

The Craft Bean

Arcade Friends

This week I am to sharing how to draw a scene or background for your cards. I will be using the “Arcade Friends” stamp set by Kindred stamp for my card. I decided I wanted to have my arcade friend bust though a brick wall.

but I don’t have a brick wall stamp, so I need to draw one. I know drawing can be intimidating but start with something simple, a brick wall is just a bunch of rounded rectangles.

Step 1: draw guide lines, this helps keep the bricks similar in size. My horizontal line are ½ an inch a part. I started with the top row of brick; the bricks are about ¾ of and inch in length. I left a small gap between each brick as to be the grout. Once I had my first row in I draw in the second row off setting the bricks to the first row.

Step 2 for the rest of my brick rows I altered between lining up with the 1^st and 2^nd rows. Rows 1,3,5,7,and 9 are all aligned the same, while rows 2,4,6,and 8 are all aligned with one another. Side note bricks are imperfect its ok if your drawing isn’t perfect. I left out brick where I waned to put my character. I used the stamp to judge how big to make the opening

Step 3 out line the bricks with a pen. I planned on coloring with Copic markers so I used a copic multi liner in a 0.3 size. You’ll want to use an ink that works with your coloring medium, has a similar thickness and color so your drawing will blend with your stamping.

Step 3.2 erase all of your pencil lines.

Step 4 making a mask for the foreground. I used a full sticky post-it note I placed it over the area and traced around the bricks I wanted to mask off. Fussy cut along the edge.

Step 5 once all your mask are in place stamp your character image.

Step 5.2 remove all mask and scream YESSS! when everything came out as planned.

Step 6 color in with your medium of choice, I used Copic makers.

RV69,R59,R27,R29 (Bricks) C3 & C5(Button) R15,YR07,YR15, YR65,YR02 (Shirt) W9,W7, W5 (Hole and Grout) E31,E11,E00 ( Skin) E29, E37,E57, E15 (Hair and Pants)

I hope you enjoyed this card share! I will be back soon with more craft room creations.

If you are interested in this stamp set or any by Kindred Stamps consider using my affiliate link, It cost you nothing but help support my blog. Kindred Stamps.

Brandi M

The Craft Bean