Featured Artist/Designer: Maureen Plut

I’m a St. Patrick’s day baby, the youngest of 6 children and live in Beautiful British Columbia, Canada.  When I’m not in the studio indulging in my passion for making cards, I’m a Grade One/Two elementary teacher to joyful, energetic 6 and 7 year olds, new wife to Tony, and proud mom to Jake who just graduated from Civil Engineering.

Card making is food for my soul.  The process of having an idea in my head and then taking plain paper, ink, stamps, ribbon, buttons, etc and creating something beautiful brings me great joy.  And there’s nothing like seeing others smile when they buy or receive one of my cards.

I’ve been lucky enough to have my projects published in magazines such as Paper Crafts and CARDS and serve on design teams. I currently design for Verve Stamps, Clearly Besotted Stamps, and the challenge sites,  CASE Study and the new Curtain Call Inspiration Challenge.

I’m honoured to be featured here on Paper Crafter’s Library and hope you’ll like my projects.

Project Description/Tips

 This first card is one I mass produced for the generous parents and students in my class this year.  I spend the first week of summer vacation making and sending out some fun thank you notes.  This is the last batch of 8 cards I made.   I’m using the apple from Verve’s Teachers Count set, one that I inspired and pleaded to Julee, the owner of Verve, to create.  I gathered all my supplies, cut and scored my card bases and die cut the apples.

Tip #1: don’t fold your scored card bases right away.  They will lay flat and therefore be easier to stamp on.

Tip #2: Since both apple dies are attached, I used both sizes of apples for my cards, only having to feed them through the die cutter 4 times instead of 8.

Then I stamped my apples, then the lined paper image.  I lined the stamp up on my large acrylic block (it’s 4.25 x 5.5) for perfect placement every time.

Tip #3: Use a light gray (or blue) for lined paper images.  Your sentiment will be easier to read.

Here is the card set showing the 2 different sized apples.

 

My next card is a fun birthday card using several sentiments from the newly released set, A Little Sentimental, from Clearly Besotted Stamps.  It’s fun to group similar occasion sentiments onto various banners.

Tip #4:  Vary banner lengths and shapes for more interest.

Tip #5: Stamp only the words you need.  The word “wish” was actually part of “make a wish.”

 

What’s in them?

{thanks ever so much}

Stamps: verve teachers count, treasured words, making a statement

Ink: versafine onyx, stampin’ up going gray, gumball green, real red

Paper: papertrey ink white

Accessories: verve apples die

{happy birthday}

Stamps: clearly besotted stamps a little sentimental

Ink: versafine onyx

Paper: papertrey ink rustic white, soft stone, kraft, fancy pants country boutique

Accessories: verve stormy skies ribbon, papertrey ink tiny tag and double banner dies, rustic twine, daric star embossing folder, heidi swapp chipboard star, my favourite things fishtail banner die

We hope you have enjoyed today’s projects courtesy of Maureen Plut. Also, be sure to stop by Maureen’s blog to see even more of her beautiful work (and let her know we sent you).