Do you find yourself drawn to a certain style of cards? Perhaps you love the distressed look or the shabby chic style. Maybe you prefer that ultra clean card with lots of layers, or are you more of a beautiful background technique person?
I’ve always considered my style to be fairly eclectic. I do love a good distressed set of tags or a distressed art journal. I also love creating distressed mixed media pieces with lots of collage and layers of texture and pattern. I don’t share those very often. I’m not sure why.
The card and scrapbook layout style that I always find myself most drawn to is the clean and simple style with lots of white space. I’ve been challenging myself to create more cards with the CAS style. I actually have a scrapbook layout that uses a digital image and some great stamps that is a CAS layout that I will be sharing on September 11! Yes…I’m planning ahead!
I created several clean and simple cards that I shared yesterday using Altenew’s Be Strong stamp set and I thought I’d pull out several that I created over the last couple of months to point out details that I added that made me love the cards.
Here is my favorite card from yesterday:
This is my favorite little cactus image from that big stamp set! This one was colored in using my Altenew Artist Markers. I love how the simple coloring does all the speaking for this little stamp. (Although, yes, in fact I do realize that the shadow below the pot should be in going to the shaded side! Alas, live and learn. I don’t stress about that stuff. I embrace the imperfections!)
That little shadow detail, whether you get it on the correct side or not, grounds your image and prevents it from looking like it’s just floating in space. I do it often, but I was reminded by Nicole Watt during a virtual workshop about that little detail. We often do things out of habit and forget that we do them for a specific reason. That’s the reason I do it!
I fixed that problem with this card:
Ha! Problem solved. The only shadow is the one under the pot! This is one of my favorite techniques for when I create cards using the outline stamps. If you don’t love coloring techniques, you can leave them black and white and just add a small amount of color in one small spot on the card. Here was a card that I did several months ago using that same technique:
I also like to add those hand drawn lines to clean and simple cards. I think they add a boutique look to your cards. I never use a ruler. I learned from a super fun class at Brit & Co. that just draw two imperfect lines for an artsy look. Then your not so straight lines look intentional. Even with a ruler, my lines are never going to be straight. A nice journaling pen and a little courage to just go for it can add just that special touch that makes people look twice at your cards.
If you don’t love hand drawing lines, then you can score a couple of lines or a border. That always looks fabulous and elegant.
I shared this one using Catherine Pooler’s Peeking Pets stamp set:
Imagine if I had left the dog and hat just black and white but kept the iridescent blue splatter. I still think that would be a great card!
Of course, cute little images never hurt either!
This image is from MFT Stamps and isn’t is just the sweetest?
Here’s one using a sweet image from Kinda Cute by Patricia Alvarez and some Copic markers. I love starting with a plain sheet of paper, printing or stamping an image, then adding my details with colors or journaling pens. I created that little path to ground my image just buy using the stippling technique using dots of colors in several shades of the same color. A few flick in 3 shades of green along the side give an illusion of grass as well.
I also have a new card to share with you for today from Altenew. I’ve been addicted to Altenew’s Mini stamp sets for a couple of years now. I love that I can get a little stamp set that layers and has a sentiment for less than $5 and then create an entire set of cards that all look different using just that one card and lots of techniques. (Stay tuned for that video later in the week!) Most of the mini stamps have a coordinating die and now Altenew has started a Mini Delight monthly subscription plan. For $7.99 (plus tax and shipping), you get the stamp and die automatically delivered to your mailbox! (I believe Brutus Monroe has a similar subscription service as well.)
This month’s Mini Delight was the Cactus stamp and die set:
I love this little stamp set. It is a layering stamp. You actually get two cactus stamps that layer together, the flower stamp, the pot stamp and that little sentiment. Most of these mini stamp sets give you an image and a sentiment or several images or several sentiments. The images are often layering images. I love them and they are so cost effective on a crafty budget. (Stay tuned for that video later this week as well!)
A few simple tricks to create CAS cards or Boutique Cards:
- Do some simple coloring with your favorite medium to the entire image.
- Keep the image black and white and add a tiny bit of color to just one part of the image.
- Create a shadow under the image to ground it.
- Add some hand drawn lines, borders, or dots with a gel pen or a journaling pen to make your image pop.
- Add some score lines to create a border detail.
- Add some metallic detail to your card like a little heat embossing in gold or silver or a little foiling detail for a special touch.
- A few splatters make your card feel finished. Just know when to stop!
- Use your makers to add details to create small scenes for grounding and interest!
I’m going to be adding my CAS cards to the Addicted to CAS DT search challenge.
Supply List:
Are you interested in the products I used? To make them easier for you to find, I have linked them below. (Affiliate disclosure ) Your purchases help keep my blog running at no additional cost to you and I thank you for the support!
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I so appreciate that you stopped by to find out what I’ve been up to! I would love for you to leave a comment and let me know what your favorite card making style is!
