Masculine Tuscan Vineyard Birthday Card

My hubby celebrated his birthday two weekends ago and I wanted to create a personal card for him, so I looked through my masculine themed stamp sets to find something that would be appropriate and didn't see anything that inspired me. Then one of my downline asked to borrow the wine set, and thinking that she meant Tuscan Vineyard, I got that out to share with her. But as I looked at it, I realized that this would be the perfect set to use for Ken! He loves a good wine with his meals and likes to try different varieties and compare them! So I asked my downline if I could use it first and it turns out that it wasn't the set she was looking for anyway. That gave me lots of time to create a really unique masculine card for my sweetie. Here's a closer look:

• I'm afraid this week is setting out to be a fussy cutting week, because none of these images have matching framelits, so Paper Snips were my option. I used to have a Scan'n'Cut, but I sold it because I didn't use it enough to justify having it, so it was just me and my scissors. Fortunately, I rather enjoy fussy cutting. It's mindful therapy for me and I cut all you see here except the sentiment label and the oval opening in the embossed panel.
• I haven't used my Watercolour Pencils for a long time, thanks to my excitement over my Stampin' Blends, but they were the perfect thing for these images. I didn't add water for these, but just coloured the images stamped in Soft Suede ink for that sepia look.
• I tried a new-to-me trick with the grape bunch at the top. I added some glue from the Fine Tip Glue Pen to each individual grape and let it dry, giving the image a 3D texture and look. I did this after colouring the image with the Watercolour Pencils.

• The front panel is Soft Suede, embossed with the SAB reward - The Basket Weave Dynamic Embossing Folder. I embossed it after die cutting the oval hole in it using the Layering Ovals Framelits. On another piece of Soft Suede, I made the frame by die cutting the larger oval first and then centering the smaller oval inside it and running it through the Big Shot again. 
• Some Burlap Ribbon works really well with the design and was added to this panel before mounting it on the card front.
• I added Foam Adhesive Strips on the four sides of the panel and around the oval opening and then, having pre-adjusted where to adhere the vineyard image so that it would appear perfectly in the opening, I added the basket weave panel to the card front.
• The sentiment is from two stamp sets: Guy Greetings and Feather Together and they just fit inside the label framelit from the retired Project Life Cards and Labels Framelits set which I will never give up because it is my go to! I mounted it over the burlap ribbon using some Fast Fuse. The other images are mounted using Dimensionals.

Newsletter Changes

I am making some changes in my business in the coming weeks, to give me more time for other important things in my life. At 66, I have started to look at the time left in my life as limited rather than endless, and there are things I still want to do with that time. I want to spend more time with friends and family. I want to explore other passions! I want to get out of my crafting cave in the basement and see the sunlight once in a while. So I have started to evaluate the things I spend my time on in terms of their profitability, not just in money, but also in satisfaction, and I want to change or eliminate the areas that I spend a disproportionate amount of time doing with little or no reward or satisfaction in return.  One of those areas is my newsletter. I spend hours on it, especially on the free tutorial that comes with it, and I rarely even get a comment back. I get no sales or new customers from it and I feel that it is not a good use of my time. I am also cutting back on the number of classes I do a month and so it is not as necessary any more.

You can still get all the information that you would get in my newsletter from this blog, Playing with Papercrafting, where all my classes are listed and I post all my tutorials and you can access them all. And you can subscribe to my blog by email, if you need a reminder to view it. See the right side menu for that.

I'm hoping also to make more video tutorials which you can access on YouTube if you subscribe to My Channel there.

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Tuscan Vineyard Wood-Mount Stamp Set [141899] $36.00	Tuscan Vineyard Clear-Mount Stamp Set [141902] $27.00	Guy Greetings Clear Stamp Set [138828] $51.00	Guy Greetings Wood Stamp Set [138825] $68.00	Guy Greetings Photopolymer Stamp Set [137178] $32.00
Feather Together Photopolymer Stamp Set [141597] $21.00	Very Vanilla 8-1/2" X 11" Thick Cardstock [144237] $9.25	Very Vanilla 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [101650] $11.25	Soft Suede 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [115318] $10.00	Watercolor Pencils [141709] $21.00
Soft Suede Classic Stampin' Pad [126978] $8.50	Early Espresso Classic Stampin' Pad [126974] $8.50	Sahara Sand Classic Stampin' Pad [126976] $8.50	Basic Gray Archival Stampin’ Pad [140932] $9.25	5/8" (1.6 Cm) Burlap Ribbon [141487] $9.25
Fine-Tip Glue Pen [138309] $9.00	Paper Snips Scissors [103579] $13.50	Basket Weave Dynamic Textured Impressions Embossing Folder [146841] $0.00	Layering Ovals Framelits Dies [141706] $46.00	Big Shot [143263] $136.00
Foam Adhesive Strips [141825] $10.75	Fast Fuse Adhesive Refill [129027] $10.00	Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755] $5.25	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430] $5.25	Mini Stampin' Dimensionals [144108] $5.25
Glue Dots [103683] $7.00

Feather Together for a True Gentleman

Browsing through my stamp sets, I was shocked to come across one from the Annual Catalogue that I had yet to ink up! And it is one that I loved from the moment I set eyes on it, Feather Together! It's a Two Step Stamping set - actually Five Step Stamping, but so easy with photopolymer and with a Stamparatus - except I had to do the first step by hand because there are only 4 sides, but that's no biggie, unless I wanted to do multiple copies. But you could easily leave out one image without a noticeable difference I think.

This set lent itself well, sentiments and all, to two challenges this week:  Freshly Made Sketches and Color Throwdown.

Here are the challenge banners for both:

I know the feathers are a bit more elongated than the sketch indicates, but I love the look of them for a masculine card anyway!

This is a great colour combo, but I wanted to jazz up one of my feathers with some metallic embossing, when my eye caught sight of a scrap of the Painted with Love Specialty DSP with its gold foil and Calypso Coral and I stamped a feather right on it!

Here's the result:

• The colours from the Color Throwdown challenge gave a lovely soft look to the feathers and they blended so well together. The two oranges - Pumpkin Pie and Calypso Coral complement each other really well, especially with the addition of the gold.
• The background DSP, from the Myths & Magic series, is absolutely perfect for a masculine card, in Basic Gray with the lighter fleur-de-lis design. 
• The feathers from Feather Together were stamped with different colours for the 5 step process depending on the overall colour wanted. The aqua feather had shades of Smoky Slate, Sahara Sand, Soft Sky and Pool Party, while the orange feather had Smoky Slate, Sahara Sand, Peekaboo Peach and Pumpkin Pie. I used Smoky Slate and Calypso Coral on the third sample, stamping right on to the Painted with Love DSP.
• There are no dies for the feathers so I fussy cut them, but I also add the feathering touch by cutting the narrow fringes in them in two different spots and "feathering" them up, for a more 3D look.

Just wanted to remind you that Sale-A-Bration 2018 is in full swing, and my customers are earning some amazing rewards, not only for shopping, but also for hosting and for joining my team! So far they are all thrilled that they did, because the rewards have been more than they expected! 

Let me also remind you that to receive an invitation to my exclusive Celebrate Sale-A-Bration Party in April, once Sale-A-Bration is over, you need to have earned at least one Sale-A-Bration Reward during the SAB period, by the end of March. So don't wait until the end to place your qualifying orders! There are so many great ones to choose from and you want as much time to play with them as possible!!

In my last newsletter, I promised that I would be loading many of the photo tutorials that I had made for my past newsletters on to my blog site for you to download. These include past tutorials up to 4 months previous to the latest newsletter. I am sharing them with you for free, so just go to the top menu to the Photo Tutorial Tab and download to your heart's content.

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Feather Together Photopolymer Stamp Set [141597] $21.00	Myths & Magic Specialty Designer Series Paper [145600] $17.00	Painted With Love Specialty Designer Series Paper [145580] $17.00	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730] $11.25	Pool Party 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [122924] $10.00
Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad [132708] $8.00	Smoky Slate Classic Stampin' Pad [131179] $8.50	Sahara Sand Classic Stampin' Pad [126976] $8.50	Soft Sky Classic Stampin' Pad [131181] $8.50	Pool Party Classic Stampin' Pad [126982] $8.50
Peekaboo Peach Classic Stampin' Pad [141398] $8.50	Pumpkin Pie Classic Stampin' Pad [126945] $8.50	Calypso Coral Classic Stampin' Pad [126983] $8.50	Gold Cording Trim [139618] $6.25	Paper Snips Scissors [103579] $13.50
Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755] $5.25	Fast Fuse Adhesive [129026] $13.50	Mini Stampin' Dimensionals [144108] $5.25	Glue Dots [103683] $7.00