scrappystickyinkymess


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A fun Roben’s Nest project

OK so you will have seen the BIG TEXT papers from yesterday, maybe, so I’ll begin with how I painted and inked them up to make them a bit more interesting

I think they turned out fun. Where I am now is that I’ve constructed the folder that forms the base of the project in my own way, beginning with a fully opened cereal box. I decided to make it thicker and more substantial by slicing the box down the middle then overlapping it so the side flaps would meet in the middle

That left me with the other side of the box, which I wanted to use to make the back/center of the book more sturdy. I stuck the last piece of the box to the back, which reinforce the top and bottom flaps and the middle back nicely.

What else did that do, can you guess? I’ll give you a second….

Yep, it made it so the side flaps no longer met in the middle because of the extra thickness. DOH! OK so now I need to do a bit of problem solving before I can move on. What a numpty.


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WOYWW 871 – tidy and re-cap

Happy WOYWW to everyone. My desk began as a mess

then morphed into a nice tidy space with just my completed cards and the leftover backgrounds still to use

Then became a display space

and finally, when that was all cleared away, because the beginnings of a new project!

That will be a slow burn, so not much till next week I expect. Poppy has been interested in all the rain, but loathe to go out in it

Wonder what she is looking at?

Happy WOYWW!


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Cards 10 and 11 – just made it!

So these are my last two cards. Neither anything complex or super innovative, but I like them well enough.

Card 11 is a Thank You one, using a stamp and die set I got at some point, and never used.

I really should have made it a Valentine’s day card and might so, with something over the top or by adding the right words to the inside. I love this cover die – it cuts easy and looks good, but those teeny curls are tricky to get perfect when sticking them down. I kinda wish the die that cuts the sentiment gave it a bit more breathing room, but I love the thin text.

This one is also a simple one. Again, the thin and fragile die cut is tricky to stick – my favourite method is to roll out mate medium on a gel plate (or my glass mat) and coat the back of the die cut all in one go. Beats dotting tiny spots of glue on every little frond, right?

I used the same die set, and still think a bigger border around the letters would be better, but it fits the space, so that works, and I got to use some of those cut-down foam squares to pop the tiny text stamps tha go with the die-cut ones.

I love the final card. The white die-cut and the pretty cheery green background make me long for Spring.

So that’s that. I’ll do a quick shot of all of them – and a look at how many backgrounds I have left for future cards, then move one. Pretty happy to have increased my card stash with some new options for when those card-giving occasions roll around and take me by surprise!

I do have a bit of a crazy idea that I might need to test and also think about 100 days in a more serious way. The 22nd is looming!


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Not entirely happy with this one

So one more card and probably the last Happy Birthday one. I ran into a bit of a problem in that the backgrounds were ever so slightly too small for the cover dies! I tried loads of them:

and this was the only one I could make work, because of the way the dotty holes were aligned. You can see the little extension meant the join was totally covered by the solid area. Phew.

I used the same inks to colour a scrap of card then die-cut a sentiment from a few different dies.

I thought it needed something, but was also aware I always default to monochromatic colour-schemes and wanted to punch things up. So I cut the little numbers, the ones I mentioned when I did the hearts-on-stems for Card 1, from the contrast colour and:

I mean, I guess it’s OK, but I don’t love it. It’ll do for a stash card, but probably won’t be the one I grab for my favourite people, IYKWIM.

So I think I will wrap this up with a couple of cards tomorrow, then clean my desk and get ready for WOYWW with a look at all the ones I made. Then I have to turn my thoughts to 100 days. Looking forward to that!


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This brings me to eight. Carry on or stop?

I started this with the idea I wanted about 10 cards. That will mostly get me thru birthdays in 2026, although a few people will get electronic cards and some will get more targeted special cards. I think I’ve got enough so I need to decide if I want to carry on making cards (maybe branching out from just Happy Birthday ones) or pivot to something else before the 100 Days project starts. Undecided….

This is another twofer. I have this die and really liked the stark black over the colourful background, but wanted to make use of the numbers as well.

I had another background that I liked but when I turned it over to add glue, I found I liked the reverse a lot better. Unexpected!

After very carefully sticking the surround and the inner bits I needed to the first background, I added glue to the backs of the numbers still inside the die so I could flip that onto the second background and push the numbers out and stick them to the card all at once.

Great way to get two cards from one die-cut.

I needed to pop the sentiment on the bright one up and cut my little pop squares in half to fit the tiny letters. I wish I could fins where I stashed my fun foam! That would have been a lot easier.

But it worked and I quite like both cards. The muted background feels more like a card for a man, while the bright colourful one could almost be for either one.

I think maybe the bright one could have benefited from a black mat, for a bit more breathing room between the white border and the white sentiment, but it could be more the angle I was at to take the photo. I like both, and it was an effortless twofer. I will assess over the weekend, because off to the side in a couple of photos you will have seen a background paired with a cover die that is a card 90% done, and I have a couple more of those, I think. But I also have some backgounds that are not going to work at all, for various reasons. The original class was 20 days of Play and I will 100% not get 20 cards. But can I squeak out maybe 4, 5, even 6 more? I hope so!


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Finally, Two cards!

I really intended for my cards to be done more than one per day, but I seem to be incapable of limiting my photos to a reasonable number. This time, I had two backgrounds that were very similar, and a new die set I thought I could use in two ways.

No idea. the origin of the die, I’ve had it for a while and forget. But I have wanted to use it and just never got into a cardmaking groove, till now.

My thought was that the two background lent themselves to opposite colour sentiments – a white Happy for one, and a black Happy for the other. The outline part of the die was tricky to detatch but I wanted to do that so I could have a solid piece. And those teeny words were super cute, I thought.

I did both cards more or less at the same time

although I felt the black text was a little harder to read on the darker card. I also dithered about the lighter one, and if adding it to a card with a thinner border or letting it float in a wider border was better.

In the end I decided the fat border was better, and also added the background to the black text to make the card brighter and have it stand out more. And I left a thin border on this one.

I really like this die a lot and can see me using it quite often – I like that the little word dies include Everything, Holiday (should be HolidayS, right?) and Just Be as well as Birthday. I only wish I had left them attached in a group (I cut off Just Be before I realized) cause they are TINY and I am fearful of losing one. Oh well.

I think one of the prompt I have not yet used is cover dies over a background. I don’t have a lot of cover dies, but I am going to hunt at least two of them up and aim for another twofer tomorrow. That might get me close to my goal of 10 cards and then I’ll see if I want to keep going. 100 days is looming….


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WOYWW 870 – still with the cards

Happy WOYWW all! I am still working on my card stash for 2026 and the free class from Tiffany Solorio. I am actually using backgrounds I made from her 20 Days of Creative Play class. All very meta. After just a few cards my desk was in quite a state, and then I tidied it up:

I am doing my best to only use my Sizzix sidekick – cause I’m too lazy (weak, tired, you pick) to get out the big Gemini. I had a card blank+envelope I wanted to use so I looked for a background that would kinda work with it. I settled on one, and a pair of dies

I ended up trying to create a sort of drop-shadow effect, AND I used embossing powder, for the first time in YEARS. Liked it a lot. WOW indeed. And then I had to re-do it cause I was too close to the edge for the wider die-cut oval. Numpty.

Final card was…OK.

I have to sneak this in – I remember Julia telling me once that with pre-made card blanks, the hump has to go on the inside. It seems like there was a vaguely smutty way to remember it (like “just like with sex, the hump belongs inside?” Maybe she can fill that in for me! LOL!) and I have always remembered that. Or have I mis-remembered it? Oh dear….

Poppy has rediscovered her little teepee, and it has moved into rotation again. She seems to work her way thru this, the top of the wardrobe or the cat bed in the guest room, the chair in the master bedroom, one of two chairs or the little cat-shaped pod in the living room, the cat tree there and the bed or cat tree in MY office – but only if I am in there when she beds down for her morning sleep.

This is why I can often be found calling her and walking from one room to the next, trying to figure out where she is before I open a door for a delivery or guest! She is almost always not where I expect to find her and if I have the heated blanket on the sofa turned on, she is going to pick that spot over any other. Often, even over a lap!

Have a lovely day. Hoping to get round quickly today if I can.


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And finally a not super complex card!

Phew. This one came together pretty quickly. and stress free. I had a stamp+die set that I really like a lot.

And the perfect background – I’ll admit I did consider die-cutting the leafy bits from that green, but I preferred using it as the background, which is the point of the class anyway. I did intermingle the die-cuts a bit and liked that lots better than simply layering them. I just needed to do a bit of creative trimming.

I had a bunch of previously-die-cut words, mostly quite tiny, and I matched a couple of them with a large die-cut word.

I ended up rounding the corners so the background and the oval sentiment backer had the same vibe. I liked it. But I am always saying green is not a fave colour of mine, so why do I seem to use it so often??

Still, it’s one more card done!

Also, why am I incapable to snapping a photo that is straight?? Honestly….


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I cannot make a quick or simple card!

Again, so many photos. Eventually I will hope t be able to streamline this, but I’m not there yet. I wanted to work with the samples that had writing on them, and I initially thought I would need to use bits of two backgrounds to accomplish it. I found one was enough!

I dithered a lot about what to use for the sentiment. I spied that new stamp set and thought it would woirk. I found one of my oldest (but still juicy) ink pads – wish I had more than two.

I liked that, but felt I could use some black. I messed about with a couple of ideas and decided edging the letters in black was needed for sure. And maybe a bit more

I wasn’t as keen on the circles (that has to be a first LOL!) as I thought I would be, but the die-cut Hey There really did what I wanted. So much so that I added another line and that finished the card off.

Crikey, it looks like it took a minute, but it just didn’t come together as smoothly as I might have liked.

Now my one knitting friend has retired, we tend to knit each week. And I am still going to the flat to help with a variety of things at least once a week, as well as being super family busy on the weekends. I have to figure out how to get to my WOYWW visits a lot quicker, cause it isn’t working like I want it to, at the moment. I will also hope my tomorrow card is a bit less photo intense!


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First card, and who’d a thunk it?

Well, I did not expect this post to be quite so full of photos, but it is so just the one card. I followed the first prompt to add a bold focal point, in the form of a large sentiment. Kinda. The sentiment was actually pretty thin, so I used an old trick of flipping over the whole die and tracing the outline

and then I used Distress Oxide ink to colour the cardstock to match the background I picked.

I thought the background was a bit lackluster, really so I tried dribbling on some water to try to lift some spatters.

But even so it was just not doing it for me. I remembered I had gotten some cute thin dies to use as a sort of cluster and decided to give them a go.

I also have numbers, which would be lovely if I had a plan fr a specific birthday and not just a stash card, so I went with the hearts. I also picked a much better background, a lot brighter and just overall a better choice. One on the right.

I decided to add some double-sided thick tape to pop the sentiment up, and I used that to also secure the hearts

and the first card is done!

And I rather like it! I am aiming to create at least 10 cards, but might end up doing more than one per day. I feel I could easily just do one of my many large sentiments on the top of virtually any one of the backgrounds from 20 Days of Creative Play that feels a little like cheating so I will check out the other options and try to match them to the backgrounds I do have. Maybe something will spark a 100 Days idea in the process – wouldn’t that be nice?