Lifestyle Crafts - Part 2

As mentioned yesterday, I am going to show the Lifestyle Crafts embossing folder cards for the next few entries. There are 8 cards/projects in this series from me, and I just don't think that you will be able to really see the beauty of the embossing folders if I show them to you all at one time -- total sensory overload (grin). All of the embossing folders are available at Dutch Paper Crafts (link in my sidebar), and believe me, they are well worth the purchase. They are all quite lovely and add so much to any card. So now onward --

I used two different embossing plates from two different sets to create this beautiful little card. The first plate on the front of the card is from the Springtime set. The images are a lovely flower which embosses with clear, deep details. I used a yellow cardstock and then lightly sanded the flowers. The light sanding brought out more of the beautiful details of this embossing plate. I started with a white card base and place a piece of brown card on top. I embossed the yellow and cut it down, leaving about 1/8" brown showing all around. I added brown ribbon to the lower part of the card, leaving the top for my saying. The saying is a stamp by Inkadinkado which I inked with brown ink. I then layered it onto the yellow and then onto the brown. The flower is a plastic flower called Flora Doodles by Petaloo. It matched perfectly, and I tucked it under the bow using dimensional pop-up dots. (The flower, however, came off during shipping my cards to Darlene at Dutch Paper Crafts. She did recognize which card it went to, but she attached it at the corner of the saying rather than under the ribbon. To be perfectly honest, it looked just as nice in either place.)

For the inside of the card, I used the 2nd embossing plate in the birthday set. I really liked the swirly lines, and when lightly sanded, they were even prettier. I've left off adding a sentiment to the inside of the card so that you can better see just how neat this embossing plate looks. It has a lot of versatility, in my opinion, and I can see it being used with more elegant or formal cards and images. I used the plate sideways, but vertical, it would make an elegant border -- embossing only one or two images rather than your whole piece.

For this card, I again used one of the plates from two different sets. The outside images are from the Springtime set, and the inside is from the Floret set. Remember, each set has two different embossing plates -- a great bargain for your money! Anyways, I thought the two plates complimented each other since they both had butterflies. The Springtime plate is all butterflies while the Floret plate has flowers and a large butterflie in the corner.

I started with a white base card and then cut a piece of Core'dinations card called "whitewash" which I embossed. The whitewash is kind of the reverse from most of Core'dination's papers in that it is white on the outside and colored inside. After I embossed my images, I heavily sanded so that the blue inside core would show. This gave the piece a lovely subtle color. I matted the the embossed piece onto a piece of matching solid blue Core' dinations card. I added a piece of white ribbon and a piece of white lace across the middle of my embossed piece. I then cut a white doily using Spellbinder's heart circles die. The swirl is made using the Vine, Swirly Sizzlit die by Ellison. I cut three of them, then snipped here and there and built the swirly to fit my card. I added three blue pearls to the ends of the swirls.

The butterfly is made from Cherry Lynn dies (sold by Dutch Paper Crafts). I absolutely adore this butterfly and use it often. It is just gorgeous layered such as I've done on my card. The flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts, and I've added additional leaves which I cut using a Sizzix regular die. The sentiment was printed from my computer onto white card and matted with the blue card.

The inside of the card using the plate from the Floret set. Again, I used the whitewash Core'dinations card and treated it the same as the front, sanding it heavily to bring out the blue. I mounted the embossed piece straight onto the white card, then using another Spellbinder die, I cut out my sentiment (computer generated) and matted it with blue cut from the same Spellbinder set in a larger size. This worked up into quite a stunning card.

I know this entry is getting a bit long, so I'll end it here. I have three more cards/projects to share with you in this release. I will probably do two more tomorrow and then the last one by itself.