Letterpressed Cards + Other Crafty Fun

A couple of weekends ago I spent two hours playing with letterpressing some 3x4 cards.  I had done one round of letterpressing last year and really liked the results. 

But using letterpress ink meant a lot of clean-up time.  I wanted to use a bunch of different colors and that would mean spending a ton of time cleaning up between colors.  So I decided to use Tsukineko Brilliance stamping ink instead.  These ink pads are pigment ink, so the coverage is better than using dye ink.  You can see the difference above in the first photo.  All the letterpressed cards used Brilliance ink except for the orange Hello Sunshine card.  I used Studio Calico’s Color Theory ink pad in Orange County on that one.  I do love the Color Theory ink pads for stamping.  They are dye ink so they dry immediately.  I use those for my Project Life pages all the time.  But with letterpress I think more coverage is better.  (Unless you like the imperfect blotchy look.)

Here’s a close up of one of my letterpressed cards using the Brilliance ink in Galaxy Gold.  I’m totally in love with it!  The gold specks are even better in person.

So what do you need to letterpress at home?  I use the LIfestyle Crafts L Letterpress Platform with my Sizzix Big Shot.  Almost all my letterpress plates come from Studio Calico.  I use the We R Memory Keepers Letterpress Paper, No.10-Size, Flat-Style, 25-Pack.  One side of that paper is already 4”, so it’s easy to cut 3 of the 3x4 cards from one sheet.  I also use the extra thick version of the same paper, which I love!

Over the July 4th long weekend, I also cut several boxes with my Silhouette to house some of my 3x4 Project Life journal cards. 

I used this cut file by Lori Whitlock, which contains cut files for both the box to house 3x4 cards AND the box to house 4x6 cards.  I also made a bunch of 4x6 boxes but forgot take any photos to show you.  I also used a Papertrey Ink 3x4 tabbed journal card die to cut all the tabbed dividers for my box.  I typed the words first and printed them on cardstock.  Then I diecut the tabbed dividers using the die and my Big Shot.

Last week I won the brand new Notes & Things collection from Crate Paper!  Out of over 4,000 entries from people who tagged other people on Crate Paper’s Instagram post, Peppermint & I won! 

On Saturday morning, the mailman delivered it to me.  Oh my gosh, so pretty!  I can’t wait to play with it all!

By now, you’ve probably heard about Two Peas In A Bucket closing.  In the middle of June, I discovered that one of my Project Life pages was their Featured Project in the gallery!

It may have been one of the last featured projects on their site, sniff.  I joined Two Peas in May 2006, when I discovered digital scrapbooking.

Lastly… I saw this tool container at Home Depot last week. 

I thought it would make a great carrier for Project Life cards!  The dimensions of the boxes were 3x4 and 4x6.  Each box comes out individually too, so you could just put a box on your table to work on your Project Life.  But… I measured the height  of the yellow containers and it’s only 3.7 inches, not 4.  So I don’t actually know if the PL cards would be too tall to fit inside the big container that holds the smaller containers.  Like, if the lid would be able to close or not.  Intriguing though.