My swaps

It's been a while since I posted anything that I actually designed myself, so I thought this morning I would show you the swaps I took with me to Denver.

I was really short on time so I only took 90 swaps -- 30 of each card. That's not a lot compared to what some of my friends brought, but I was happy with the swaps I received in return and I took lots of photos of other samples so that I can be inspired at home via a computer slide show. I also purchased a copy of the "Art From The Heart" CD, which features a lot of the Convention displays projects. So overall I think my "strategy," such as it was, worked well.

I made this first card for an SCS organized Christmas card swap. This was rather time intensive, although in retrospect I think I made it more difficult than it needed to be. The base of the card is whisper white with a large night of navy mat that is embossed with three different snowflakes from the snow flurries set. The snowflakes were stamped with craft white ink, craft bashful blue ink and encore silver ink, and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

The central snowflake image from perfect presentations was stamped in bashful blue craft ink on whisper white card stock and embossed with clear embossing powder. I then used my night of navy marker and the emboss resist technique to color the actual snowflake and inserted a silver brad in the center. The image was then adhered to mats of night of navy, encore silver and bashful blue card stock, and adhered to the base with dimensionals.

The joy sentiment was stamped on whisper white card stock in encore silver ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. It was attached to a bashful blue mat and then adhered to the card base over a strip of narrow whisper white grosgrain ribbon with dimensionals.

The next card was stamped with the baroque motifs stamp set. i used close to cocoa ink to stamp the flourish image twice on the close to cocoa card base. I then used the close to cocoa ink to stamp the flowers and square medallion on the very vanilla strip and the cherish sentiment on another very vanilla strip. I used the direct to paper method to edge the sentiment and to stamp the round flowers in groovy guava ink on groovy guava card stock. I then punched just the centers of the flowers with the spring bouquet punch and attached the punched flowers onto the center of the images stamped in close to cocoa.
The last step was to mat the very vanilla strip with groovy guava and to use two way glue to add dazzling diamonds to the flowers.

For my final card i used the perfect presentations Level 2 hostess set. I first stamped the tree image onto very vanilla card stock using old olive ink and added a star at the top with more mustard ink. I added a mat of ruby red and a punched 1/2" circle in chocolate chip. I used the 1/4" circle punch to create a faux large eyelet and tied a piece of narrow more mustard grosgrain ribbon through the "eyelet".

I stamped the joy sentiment in ruby red ink on very vanilla card stock and the little snowflake randomly on the more mustard card base with more mustard ink. I tore an edge off a strip of chocolate chip card stock that I used as a mat and a narrow strip of old olive card stock which served as a mat for the sentiment. I then adhered the tree image to the base with dimensionals.

I know these cards are not exactly thrilling, but give the time constraints I was pretty happy with them and I hope the demos who swapped with me at convention were happy with them too.