Winter cards with December Guest Designer - Jenn Shurkus

I have had so much fun sharing some cards with you this month, I hope they have inspired you and you find some time to create soon!

If you haven’t noticed by the other cards I have shared with you, I LOVE Distress Inks. There is just so much you can do with them and I find myself using them a lot! I recently organized my ink blending tools for both regular Distress Inks and Distress Oxide inks so they are more convenient to use. I find because of this I not only use the inks more, but I also experiment more with different techniques and color combos. You can see how I did so here in this post. ( link: https://shurk.us/organize-distress-handles )

Today I wanted to share two cards with you, and even though Christmas is over, I think both of these could be sent throughout the winter!

Sending Winter Wishes

For this card I started with the background on Distress Watercolor Cardstock. Using the “Fa La La” Stencil I spread Ranger Texture Paste through it, while still wet I sprinkled gold embossing powder on it, and then heat embossed it.

For the little houses I die cut out the “Warm Winter Scene” Cover Plate out of Distress Watercolor Cardstock. I watercolored each of the houses and trees with regular Distress Ink.

On the background I watercolored some Tumbled Glass Distress Ink towards the top, that will eventually be the sky.

I arranged the houses across the card with various heights of foam tape.

I white embossed the sentiment “Sending Winter Wishes” from the “Stay Cool” set on black cardstock.

For some finishing touches I created a ground, snowy roof tops and snow on the trees with white liquid applique. I also added a touch of chunky glitter.

You’re COOL

For this card I started by stamping, Copic coloring and die cutting out images from the “Stay Cool” stamp set. I then ink blended the background on the smooth side of Distress Watercolor Cardstock with Distress Oxides ( Picked Raspberry, Blueprint Sketch and Wilted Violet).

I cut out 2 stitched hillsides, and arranged them onto the background. I then added the images.

Using Chipped Sapphire Distress Oxide, I stamped some snowflakes around the background.

Once I determined where the word “COOL” was going to go, I used a powder tool and dusted the card background to stamp and white emboss “I think you’re cool”.

I then used a quickie glue pen and some Prisma glitter to add some sparkle to the trim of their coats, and the centers of the snowflakes.

I used a glue tube along the hillsides and where the characters were standing and added chunky glitter there.

Thank you!

Thank you so much for following me along this month, and Danielle and Miriam for having me as a guest designer. I had a wicked fun time and hope to see you over on my site soon! www.shurkus.com

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Celebrate It's Your Birthday - with December Guest Jenn Shurkus

Hello everyone! Jenn Shurkus back with another card to share with you. For this card, I wanted to make a birthday card for my niece Drew. She turned 5 at the beginning of December and she LOVES to create at her easel. Neat and Tangled’s “Paint Night” set was perfect for this! 

I started by stamping, coloring and die cutting the images with Copic markers. I added a little cupcake and 3 balloons from the “Little Monster” set.

For the background, I blended Distress Oxide inks ( Picked Raspberry, Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed, Twisted Citron, Peacock Feather, and Wilted Violet). To do this I pressed some ink onto a pallet directly from the ink pad. Then I used a wet water brush and placed water onto the background in a stripe. With a wet water brush I picked up the ink, and brushed it along the water stripe. I repeated this process for each color. Once I completed the colors I heat set it and spritzed some water droplets as it was drying with the Distress Sprayer.

Once the background was dry I stamped the sentiments from the “Celebrate” set using Versafine Black and Wilted Violet Distress Oxide.

I used a Quickie glue pen and Prisma glitter to add a touch of sparkle to the balloons, cupcake and her dress.

When my niece Drew got this card for her birthday she didn’t believe her mom that Auntie Jenny made the card- the best compliment I could get! Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

everyone!

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Introducing Our December Guest - Jenn Shurkus

Today we're introducing our December Guest Designer, Jenn Shurkus.  Jenn's no stranger to Neat & Tangled.  She's been a mainstay in the card making world.  Jenn loves working with a variety of mediums and techniques and we are so excited to have her with us this month.  Here's a little more about Jenn:

Jenn lives on Cape Cod, with her kitty Mister Harley and her boyfriend Chris. She's been papercrafting for 18 years, and has played multiple roles in the paper craft industry as an independent store manager, designer and teacher. Jenn loves to show people new and clever ideas to design their cards and projects. Jenn is eager to share her creative passions with others and encourage their artistic growth. She currently teaches in person and online classes as well as host Art Retreats. You can read more about her, on her blog {creative chick} http://www.shurkus.com/ as well as follow her creative endeavors on

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/jennshurkus
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jennshurkus.artist
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/jennshurkus

And here she is with her first project:

Hello everyone! I am wicked excited to be here guest designing for Neat & Tangled! I love everything that N&T releases, but I am a HUGE addict of all of Elena’s designs. I have lived in New England my whole life, but I can’t stand winter… I live on Cape Cod and wish we could have summer beach days all year long. This is what inspired this card.

I combined a few sets to create this card. Using “Oh Deer”, “Get Yeti”, “Hello Winter”, and “Merry Kisses” I decided to create a card to celebrate winter, the best way I know how, by saying “Oh deer!” :)

For the background I started by ink blending a little bit of Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. Then using some Matte Embossing Paste, I spread some through a snowfall stencil and sprinkled Prisma Glitter all over the wet paste. I set this aside to dry.

I stamped and colored all of the images with Copic markers. I then die cut them all out.

I arranged all of the images on the card using foam tape to pop some of them up off the card.

In honor of guest designing for Neat & Tangled this month I have a fun little giveaway over on my site- so be sure to check that out! {creative chick} www.shurkus.com

Hope this card inspires you, and I can’t wait to be back next week with more!

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Jenn Shurkus: Distress Ink Techniques!

Hi friends!

Our sweet friend, Jenn Shurkus, created a really beautiful card using our Sailmates set and her Distress Inks! It's amazing! Check out the video below and then head over to Jenn's post HERE for more details and to see the card!

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July Guest Designer: Jenn Shurkus!

Happy Friday friends!

I'm here today with our last post from July guest designer, Jenn Shurkus! It has been such a blast having her for the month! Thank you so much, Jenn!

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Hey Everyone, It's Jenn -  This is my last week guest designing for Neat and Tangled- and I have to say I’m sad :( I loved sharing my ideas with you.

Hopefully our paths will cross again and until then be sure to keep up on all my creative posts at shurkus.com

For this card I really couldn’t wait to play with Neat and Tangled’s “Ink Splash” stamp set! To get it to look realistic I used gelatos directly on the stamp, you can even lay down multiple colors as you can see I did here

Once you have the stamp covered very well with the gelatos, I misted it with just a little bit of water, and then stamped it on Distress Watercolor paper. You could spritz it again and stamp a second time for a lighter version, but I wanted all of my ink splashes to be bold and vibrant. So I covered the stamp in gelato again, spritzed and stamped. I did this 3 times and then using the smaller ink splash I filled in the white spaces a bit.

I then stamped the “Dreams” sentiment stamp in versa fine black, once directly on the card, and once on some scrap watercolor paper I had. Using a black glaze pen I gently traced the word “dreams”, let that dry and then went over it again. I like how this really made the word pop off the card.

On the second sentiment that I stamped I just colored in the banner “do come true” with bubblegum gelato, fussy cut it out and popped it up off the card.

I adhered the card front to a red notecard, and then added some sequins with glossy accents from the “Pixie Dust Sequin Mix”

This is such a fun and easy card, and you could recreate it in all different color schemes!

Well, that is it. I can’t believe July is almost over! Thank you so much to Danielle for inviting me to  guest design for Neat and Tangled, it was truly an honor!

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July Guest Designer: Jenn Shurkus!

Hi friends! Thank you for another exciting release! I cannot wait to see what you create with our new products!

Today we have another awesome project from our guest designer, Jenn Shurkus!

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Hey Everyone, It's Jenn again from shurkus.com - This week I am bringing it back to card making and using the oh so fun “Just for You” set.

I started by creating the background with some gelatos and distress watercolor paper. I colored the gelatos directly on the paper and washed a wet paintbrush over it to blend and mix the colors. I heat set it when I was happy with how it looked.

I then took the open balloon stamp from the “Just for Fun” stamp set and stamped it 3 times varying the height. Using a quick lie glue pen and ultra fine crystal glitter I filled in the balloons with some sparkle!

On another piece of card stock I stamped the solid balloon twice and fussy cut it out. 

I added strings to the open balloons with the stamp provided in the set and using versa fine smokey gray ink. 

For the solid balloons I secured some bakers twine behind the balloons with foam tape and adhered them to the card.  Wrapping the excess twine to the back of the watercolor paper and securing it with some wash tape. 

I then stamped the ‘Celebrate’ sentiment in purple ink, cleaned the stamp and stamped it again in versa fine black just down a touch to give some dimension. This is easy to do with clear stamps, but still makes you nervous after all of your hard work- you might mess it up in one swoop!

I then tore towards me to get rid of some of the excess watercolor paper. I adhered the layer to the card and then embellished it with some Neat and Tangled “Birthday Bash Sequin Mix”

I can’t believe I only have one more week of guest designing for Neat and Tangled- it has gone so quickly!

In case you missed my other posts:
Hope Anchors Art Journal Page & Tutorial Video 
Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining Card 

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July Guest Designer: Jenn Shurkus!

Hello friends! Happy Friday! Here today with a gorgeous art journal page by our July guest designer, Jenn Shurkus! She also has an amazing video showing the process!

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Hey Everyone, It's Jenn again from shurkus.com - and I am excited to bring to you a video using my most favorite Neat and Tangled stamp, Hope Anchors. 

Funny little story about that stamp is I wanted it so much and  it was so popular every time I went looking in the shop it was out of stock. So I took to social media to help me in getting it, and I just stalked and started a conversation with Neat and Tangled on twitter. Once it was in stock again they tweeted me so I had a jump start in purchasing it! Now that is customer service! I posted a sneak peek on instagram (http://instagram.com/p/qKzAbmEqj7/?modal=true)  before I started this weeks project and I had a bunch of people commenting how much they love this stamp too. Danielle has mentioned that this stamp will be back in stock next week just in time for their July release so be sure to order it!

So, today I have something a bit different for you, I did a tutorial video explaining my process of creating this art journal page. Its a bit of a different style then what you are used to seeing here on Neat and Tangled, but I thought you might enjoy it! Enjoy the video and please let me know if you have any questions!

Thank you so much Jenn for sharing your process with us! :)

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July Guest Designer: Jenn Shurkus!

Hello friends! I am so excited introduce our July guest designer, Jenn Shurkus! I am such a fan of her work and thrilled she will be creating projects for us throughout the month!

Here is a little about Jenn:

Jenn lives in New England, with her kitty Mister Harley and her boyfriend Chris. She's been papercrafting for 15 years, and has played multiple roles in the paper craft industry as an independent store manager, designer and teacher. With a degree in graphic design she is also Copic and Ranger certified.  Jenn loves to show people new and clever ideas to design their cards and projects. She has a flair for the "artsy-fartsy" without going over the top. She designs her projects in the way to inspire, but not intimidate. Jenn is eager to share her creative passions with others and encourage their artistic growth. You can read more about her, and her handsome kitty Mister Harley and wicked cute boyfriend Chris on her blog {creative chick} http://www.shurkus.com/

And now for her card!

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Hello Everyone, It's Jenn here and I am wicked excited to be guest designing here at Neat and Tangled throughout the month of July.  I was so excited when Danielle emailed and asked me. 

I have a lot of favorite stamps from Neat and Tangled, but today I wanted to focus on one of my new faves and that is the  "Clouds" set. I recently dug out my Twinkling H2O's again and have remembered how much I enjoy playing with them. 

For this card I stamped and painted in the cloud with "heavenly" H2O, then cut it out. I lightly traced it onto a sheet of Distress Watercolor paper with a pencil. I then removed the cloud and started to paint in my rainbow. I let the colors blend a bit, but I also used my heat tool to heat set it here and there so the colors wouldn't bleed together too much. Once I had my rainbow the way I liked it, I erased my pencil lines and used some foam tape to pop the cloud up off the card. 

I stamped the sentiment and attached the layer to a kraft notecard. I didn't want any other colors to distract from how pretty my rainbow turned out. Then using a tiny attacher I adhered some ribbon.

Thank you for joining me today. I do hope you will visit me over at shurkus.com and I look forward to sharing some more inspiration with you throughout the month!

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