Danny's Cards Blog

After a card show I have one of two feelings. One: I feel reinvigorated and want to craft as much as humanly possible. Or two: I'm exhausted and I need some R & R to get my creative flow back in check. After my last show I fell firmly into the latter category.  Thankfully, November is here, and with that comes a host of Christmas and holiday inspiration. Inspiration struck yesterday thanks to Sketch Saturday's wonderful sketch #686 .  Here's the sketch in question: A fun sketch no doubt. I just purchased the Starry Night Recollections paper from Michaels, and so using that and this sketch, here were my two creations. Here's my submission piece: As you can see, the gold foiling really catches the light. It's quite a stunner. My second piece I was also really proud of: I'm all about that blue and gold Christmas, so I was super thrilled with how these came out.  Hopefully, my inspiration keeps coming. Thankfully, I have a number of holiday cards I have to make,...

I mentioned yesterday in my Koala Cards post that I had a huge win with an abundance of clearance stamps at Hobby Lobby. These stamps come from Tracey Hey , but my Hobby Lobby had them for a mere $2.49! Anyway, I was super excited by these pretty big stamps, but I knew the tactic had to be different as A2 size would be too small for these huge stamps. I made these cards for two distinct challenges. Over on Making the Cards they had this sketch challenge: And here's my interpretation of that challenge: I've never really done this type of coloring before where you don't color the whole image, and it wasn't until assembly that I ended up happy with how it looked. All cards were colored using Copic Markers. For the second card, I went with Sweet Sketch Wednesday's sketch challenge.  I don't make too many square cards so it was nice to be challenged in a different way. I went into my scrap box and used an assortment of circle scraps to complete the sketch: In my f...

My local Hobby Lobby had a blowout sale on a number of stamps, and I loaded up (which means tons of inspiration for the next few weeks). I was excited about these koala stamps thatwere so charming from first sight. The stamps come from Art Impressions , but my Hobby Lobby had these marked down on clearance for $3.49. I made these koala cards for two distinct challenges. Let's take a look. The first challenge is courtesy of The Color Throwdown blog. Here were the colors they wanted makers to use: And here's what I did with the red, blue, green and grey. I used Copic Markers to color in the koala. The background is a basic cuttlebug brand emboss folder. For my second card, I used Paper Craft Crew's sketch. I used the exact same stamp, but without color restrictions, I made a far more eclectic card. Here's the sketch: And here's the card I made based on the sketch: Using 3D Dot adhesives, this card ended up with a lot of dimension. Here's another view of the card...

While perusing Facebook, I saw a post today that caught my eye. The only Facebook card groups I am still apart of are JOANN Loves Papercrafters and a handful of Melody Lane and Cricut groups. The Anna Griffin Facebook groups are too filled with toxicity from the various mods. Today on Joann's, Anthony M showcased a fantastic blending technique with a bricks embossing folder using Distress Oxide. You can watch his full tutorial here .  Blending always looked like next level work. It's something I've avoided for about five years since I started my papercrafting journey. Today, thanks to Anthony, I took the plunge and invested in some distress oxides and an assortment of blending brushes. I used a variety of colors but the main stamp and die set I used were Tim Holtz's Cat Chat . All the coloring of the stamps were done with Copic Markers. I made four cards and assembled them after an assortment of sketches found on a variety of blogs. So without further ado: The simple sk...

Sometimes you make a card, and then you think the link party ended and you're like, "okay, I'm going to restructure this and turn it into a sketch challenge," and then you realize that not only was the first challenge still having its link party, but so is the second challenge. This is a long way of saying, this card is made for two challenges. I originally thought the link party ended at CAS Colours & Sketches ... turns out I was wrong. Their challenge was to use the following colors: Then, over on Try Stampin' on Tuesday they gave us this wonderful sketch: I mentioned yesterday that I purchased a random donation box from Stampin' Up. In it was this  Brutus Monroe  stamp set. I used the stamp from that and pulled out my Copic Coloring markers. And here's the end result: Overall, I'm really happy with the design. I don't make a ton of horizontal A2 cards, so that was nice from a visual standpoint. So a 2-for-1, which is not something I normal...

Over on Tuesday Morning Sketches , they had one of the most fun sketches I've done in a while. Let's take a look: What I loved was the sort of parallelism that occurred between the semicircles. I recently acquired a stamp set from Brutus Monroe out of a random box I purchased from Stampin' Up. I'm completely unfamiliar with Brutus Monroe products, but after stamping with these, I'm a huge fan. They stamp clean and easy, and all the details pop evenly. I settled on the owl as a center piece. From there I thought about a tree bark background, and then I embossed a circle with leaves. I used a foil leaf background to offset the tree, and voila, here's my end result: I used an assortment of Copic Markers to color in the owl. I even did a little bit of shading around the owl's forehead, his arms and his belly. Overall, I'm thrilled with how he came out. If you enjoy what you see, be sure to hit the SUBSCRIBE button at the top to see new posts. Please follow ...

I recently acquired Anna Griffin's 3D Fantastic Fans dies . I was excited to get these dies because it takes the traditional flat fans and reenvisions them with more dimension.  The dies require a little more finagling than you would think. Because they pop out, you're going to need a powerful glue or lots of 3D adhesive dots to make this work.  Using these dies, I looked at an assortment of challenges that I could utilize for inspiration. Over on Time Out Challenges, they wanted us to use a quote to help make a card come to life. So for my first card I wanted to use each of the pieces of the fan. I've had this vintage paper with a rose for the better part of four years when I first got into card making; I then pulled out my new metallic rose paper and paired it with this vintage paper. I then added in the "For My Friend" sentiment from Anna Griffin's Wild Flower box. For my second card, I used Color My Heart Color Dare challenge . The inspiration photo was ...

I received my new Anna Griffin Bell Pop Out dies this week. I missed almost all of the Christmas in July work, so now here I am in August late to the parade. Thankfully, there are plenty of sketch challenges to get my inspiration going. Over on Atlantic Hearts , they provided a sketch that I thought I could work with. Here's the sketch in question: I went a different route than I usually go with a card like this. Normally, I would cut out squares and follow the sketch as closely as possible, but now that I own a Cricut Maker 3, I thought I would try something different. With Jingle Bells as my theme (because of the pop out), I decided to deboss my paper with my Maker 3 and then I found some bells I liked and cut them out and added a bow to give it a little dimension. Here's the end result: Of course, the real star of the show is in the inside of the card is the pop out. Here's a still of the pop out: But in case your curious, here's what the card looks like in action: T...

Over on Anna Griffin, she recently released her Baby Icon Cut and Emboss Folders . Baby cards are often the hardest items for me to keep in stock. They're often my biggest sellers at trade shows, and as someone in their 30s, I know so many people having little ones. So I went to work. I really didn't know where to begin my day, so I started with creating a whole slew of sentiments. I often struggle with what a baby card should say, but Best Wishes kind of covers all the bases. But that didn't really help with inspiration. I went looking for Sketch Challenges. The first challenge comes courtesy of Sketch Saturday :  And here was my result: Using an assortment of pattern papers, I was really happy with the result. I ended up using the horsey cut so that the little mustache could peek through. Over on Try Stampin' on Tuesday , they're up to their milestone 500th sketch. Here was the sketch: And here was my creation based on that: I was thrilled with this result. It fe...