How I got my card making mojo back!

I haven't been making cards much recently....art journaling, slow stitching, mixed media projects have all been absorbing my attention and I have got out of practice. However, 2 things have sparked my card making mojo again:

• Working on my 100 day project

• The new products that we are releasing this Friday.

The process of working on small abstracts every day as part of my 100 days of mixed media circles is really transferable to card making - simplifying designs down to blocks of colour and graphic shapes has helped me to focus on composition. Here are days 1-50:

The 100 day project has inspired some of the stamps and stencils that i am releasing on Friday...

The Circularity mini collection contains a fab combination of geometric and organic circles in stamps and stencils.

My Guy mini collection contains fun abstract stencils and men illustration stamps. This mini collection will have you covered. for all of those men's cards :)

A set of A7 mini stamps - perfect for adding textures and patterns.

So let's put the inspiration from the 100 day project and our new products together to make some cards :)

I taped around the edge of an A6 card panel and then sectioned it off. I inked the bottom third in teal and the top two thirds in grey.

I stamped one of the circle images from the A5 Circularity stamp set in black ink.

I stamped the mix and match half circles in the top section - they provide different texture combinations.

I taped off the remaining section and added the new A7 mini squares stamp before stencilling over the top with our Bold Borders stencil in black ink.

It is always great to see the reveal when the masking tape has all been removed! This 'grid' style format offers endless options and is great for playing with patterns and abstract shapes....

I followed the same process a few more times as it is so relaxing and easy to do - it was a nice reminder of the looks you can achieve with just a few stamps, stencils and ink pads. I liked the large stencils on the smaller card front as it gives the impression of genuine fragments from other things being combined. Have a play with different scales of images - part of a larger image can add interest and create the sense of a collage grid rather than having fit neatly within the sections. Here are the process pics from the green version:

To finish the cards, I simply added sentiments from our Sticker Stack, matted them on to some black cardstock and mounted them on 5x7 card blanks - adding a bit of black and white washi to extend the linear style.

I really liked how this trio of cards turned out - it was interesting to see that I used a similar colour palette to my 100 day project as well! These things really do cross pollinate in our creative process....

I enjoyed the process so much that I used a similar grid style layout for some cards featuring the fun guys from the My Guy mini collection. This time I cut up stencilled backgrounds and combined them with the Monodoodles papers and black and white washi tapes for an even more graphic look:

I hope that you can see some ideas here that you can incorporate in to your own card making! I will be sharing a short video on Friday featuring some different cards that I made with the My Guy collection too. I think I have made more cards this week than the last 6 months combined :)

The new products showcased here will be on sale from 7am (GMT) on Friday, 17 April and I will be live at 7pm (GMT) on YouTube to walk you through the products and have a play. I hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading....