Craft: More Card Making

A few weeks ago I posted about a Stampin' Up card making class I went to and I liked it so much I went back for another class. In this class we made three cards which were slightly more involved than the cards and labels I made in the first class.

Here is a Mother's Day card that I made first. 

I really love the bright colours in this one. It was the simplest of the three cards to make. The only techniques involved were stamping and gluing! 

This next one is also a Mother's Day card. For this one I had to emboss the paper after it had been stamped using Stampin' Up's "Big Shot" machine. I actually got this completely wrong and got the embossed pattern on the wrong side of the card. I did the embossing on the right side and you can hardly tell... in the photo at least :-P

The third and final card is definitely my favourite. I think it's too somber for a Mother's Day card so I decided not to put a sentiment on it. The stamp in the middle is done with an interesting mirroring technique. Basically you stamp onto a piece of acetate or something similar that the ink isn't going to be absorbed by, and quickly transfer the mirror image from the acetate to the paper below. 

Another cool effect used in the card is the "paper stretching" technique, which is a way to create a border with shapes that are the same size - like the main image in this card and the black outline behind it. This is a lot simpler than it sounds (I was disappointed that there wasn't any stretching involved). The black outline started out the same size as the white piece in front of it. To "stretch" it you cut the paper in half down the middle, from point to point, and position the two halves out the sides of the main piece. In this case the black pointy tips stuck up at the top of the white piece and had to be cut off. 

Like the last class I didn't design any of these cards. I'm not sure if they were designed by Stampin' Up or the class instructor. Whoever designed them, they are pretty cute and I'm glad I'm now prepared with cards for Mother's Day!