Coffee Loving Papercrafters

Hiya!! Dana here with a new Brew & Craft Your Stash!! Get some coffee and tea and sit back for some Style ideas!! If this is the first time you are seeing my feature or need a refresher, click here for my very first post, it gives a little background explanation of my feature!!

The next section in Paper Crafting Tips & Tricks Magazine is the Applying Techniques section! This is the last technique in this section and its called Style Squares. Basically, each square card is done in a different cardmaking style. Windy Robinson put together these fabulous styles:

• Fun & Cute – Animals, flowers, patterns bright colors, basically anything you think that is fun and/or cute!!
• Clean & Graphic – Basically Clean and Simple, can be anything from flowers to fonts. Less can be more!
• Vintage – Distressing, floral patterns, antique looking, vintage all can lend a vintage feel to any project.
• Classy & Elegant – Luxury cardstocks, pearls, fancy scripts can lend an elegant feel to your card.
• Shabby Chic – White, flowers, pops of color, vintage/antique look can make any project feel Shappy Chic.
• Collage – Mix of patterns, embellishments, fonts, basically put it all on the card!!

I quickly decided to to do each of these styles all on one card!! Sounds easy, right? Well, this card took me awhile to do, making all these styles AND having them all tie in together is HARD!!! But I love how it turned out!!

Okay, I’ve numbered the squares in the picture below to make it easier for you to match up my style explanation to each square! I started by die cutting 6 white squares. Then I found a watercolored doily leftover from a previous project and based my colors off the doily. I also used Gina K Designs – Coffee set and Lawn Fawns Science of Love stamp sets.

#1 – Fun & Cute: What is more fun or cute than some fancy glasses and coffee beans??? I did a little watercoloring smooshing on the background, even though my card stock is not watercolor paper. You just have to be a little careful not to rip the paper.

#2 – Classy & Elegant: A little-stamped background, black strip, a little bit of white all with a pop of color and a pearl for the flower center.

#3 – Shabby Chic: I’m not good at all with this style so this is my attempt at Shappy Chic. The doily, of course, some flowers with the pitcher and some pearls to finish it up. Not very white, but well, there you go!

#4 – Collage: Again not good at this one either!! I tried to add stuff I had already used on all the other squares (can you guess I left this one for last!! haha!).

#5 – Vintage: I stamped a big coffee pitcher, then went over the top with Distress Ink – Walnut Stain to make it look a little antique looking. I added a small brown button where a flower would be on the stamp. I like to think of my vintage, as vintage light, I tend not to add a lot of vintage embellishments, but rely on the look of vintage!

#6 – Clean & Graphic: I masked off a small border and did a subway like look with several sentiment stamps in the set. I also added a coffee bean and flowers at the edge to fill in some empty spaces.

Once my squares were done I played with placement for awhile and then added them to a grey card base with foam tape!

I hope you like this low down on the major card making design styles! And of course, you can do any variation of them! Challenge yourself to give one or two a try if you haven’t or do one you feel you’re not great at! It will help you strengthen those design muscles!! 🙂

Dana

Supplies

Stamps: Gina K Designs – Coffee, Lawn Fawn – Science of Love

Ink: Papertrey Ink – Autumn Rose, Plum Pudding, Hawaiian Shores, Smokey Shadow, Ripe Avacado, Dark Chocolate. Distress ink – Walnut Stain