Football Frenzy + Letterman Stitched Dies + Mats

Welcome back to another day in the April 2014 Papertrey Ink Countdown. I'm here today with a bunch of cards featuring Lizzie Jones' new Football Frenzy Set and my Letterman Stitched Number Dies and Letterman Stitched Number Mat Dies. They are a match made in heaven. You will so impress your recipients when you let them work their magic together. 

Are you a football fan? I'm not, but my family is and if you can't beat 'em, join them. Here are my Ravens fans cheering on their team the year the Ravens won the Super Bowl. I've got a jersey too. Not that I know the difference between a football and a hockey puck. But I like hanging around and watching the commercials, purposefully mixing up my sports facts and asking silly questions to antagonize my husband,  and cooking up a batch of shrimp nachos to be consumed at halftime by this hungry crew. 

I thought my first card should be about cheering on the home team in colors of True Black, Royal Velvet, and embossed gold. I used both the Letterman Stitched Number dies (in Royal Velvet) and the Letterman Stitched Number Mats dies (in True Black) out of felt on this card. I heat embossed a sentiment from Football Frenzy below in gold. The sports stripes were trimmed from the Center Stage Cover Plate. SO EASY. My husband was very impressed with this card. And you don't get a better seal of approval for a sports themed birthday card than that. He's a bit jaded at this point and hard to impress when it comes to the paper crafting. :)

Let's talk about those numbers. You can buy the top layer separately from the mat dies, depending on your budget. I personally am completely in love with this look. I've wanted something like this in FOREVER, since my scrapbooking days. Out of felt and stitched, these numbers look exactly like something you'd find one a jersey or letterman's jacket. Very luxe. And think of all the PTI sets they could work with. Any of the sets where you can insert a number into a sentiment would be a winner. Kid Kudos, Big Birthday Wishes, Make a Wish Additions, Birthdays by the Numbers...etc. Lots of possibilities here and numerous applications. 

Next up, I wanted to see if I couldn't take Football Frenzy and a) turn it into a girly sports card and b) switch sports away from football. Mission accomplished! The two step jersey is included in the set and here I stamped it in Summer Sunrise and Hibiscus Burst directly on my white panel. There is a Football Frenzy Additions set that allows you to customize the jersey and I did just that by adding my daughter's name to the front. I turned it into a soccer card by adding a ball from Have a Ball and a bouncy ball path from Birthday Style. A star flourish from Red, White, & Blue adds a nice touch, no?

The sentiment is from Football Frenzy as well. I purposefully masked off the quotation credit (Vince Lombarti) because I didn't want any reference to football on this card. You'd be surprised by how much just a quotation credit can limit you. So just something to think about...sometimes it is better to mask them off to free up your creativity.

Next up, I've got a little something for team sports. If you have kids, you probably have them in some sort of organized sports. Maybe you are team mom? Or the coach's wife? Or heck...maybe you are even the coach? Why not give a little encouragement to the players by writing them little notes? Put them in these pocket envelopes (a new die this month) with their team number on the front and slip something encouraging inside?

Here's a close up. Love the two step helmet from Football Frenzy. The more two step stamps the better is my philosophy. The sentiment is from Football Frenzy too.

Now how is this for a find....the pattern strip stamps from Half & Half fit very nicely across this pocket die. SWEET! That's going to get repeated.

So say you are making these little pocket encouragement notes for an entire team. You don't want to be stitching up all those Lettermans Stitched Number dies. That would take forever. Good thing they look great without them.:) It looks really neat with the open holes showing the background of your project, but the numbers are still matted. Definitely a "how did she do that?" type thing. Again, I used both the Letterman Stitched Numbers and the separate Letterman Stitched Number Mats here to create this look.

Now I want to swerve away from sports completely. This is a card I made that was inspired by a t-shirt I saw on display at Macy's a few months ago. I made a mental note to recreate it when I got my Letterman Stitched Number dies. It had the same style of varsity font numbers, but accented with flowers. Sort of a juxtaposition of the masculine and the feminine.

I used The Sweet Life for my flowers and created my background with Watercolor Wonder and Soft Stone ink.

My Letterman Stitched Numbers are cut out of Smokey Shadow felt and stitched up with a pink floss. I wanted to show you how great they look without the Letterman Stitched Number Mats and with contrasting color floss. The sentiment is from Big Birthday Wishes. All the stamps in this stamp set would work beautifully with the Letterman Stitched Numbers + Mats.

And lastly today, we have a card using The A-Mazing Stamp Set and BB: Random Stipe together. This is a great encouragement/appreciation card for somebody who needs a little pick me up or thank you note.

The square maze was heat embossed in black for shine and divided with a BB: Random Stripe stamped stripe to elongate it. It makes a great background element.

BB: Random Stripe is really coming out to play on this card. Yesterday, you saw a project that alternated the thick and thin stripe strips on a card. The real magic happens when you layer them on top of each other with two different colored inks. I stamped the thick strip stripe in Summer Sunrise ink on Summer Sunrise cardstock and then stamped the thin strip stripe and stamped it with Orange Zest ink. You get this multi-tonal look that has a lot of depth and interest. Tomorrow I have another card that showcases this effect even more...so stay tuned.

That's it for today. I hope you are excited about all these new products. They'll be available to purchase on April 15th at 10 PM EST at www.papertreyink.com. More inspiration below for today and we'll be back the next three days with even more.


Nichole Heady
Dawn McVey
Heather Nichols
Lizzy Jones
Melissa Bickford
Lexi Daly 
Maile Belles
Betsy Veldman
Laura Bassen

Supplies

Champ Birthday Card
Stamps: Football Frenzy
Cardstock: True Black, Royal Velvet, Stamper's Select Whites
Dies: Letterman Stitched Numbers, Letterman Stitched Mats, Center 
Stage Cover Plate
Felt: True Black, Royal Velvet
Gold Filigree Embossing Powder

Soccer Girl
Stamps: Football Frenzy, Football Frenzy Additions, Birthday 
Style, Red, White, & Blue, Have a Ball, Hanging Out
Cardstock: Summer Sunrise, Stamper's Select White, Smokey Shadow
Hibiscus Burst Simple Stripe Patterned Paper
Ink: Summer Sunrise, Hibiscus Burst, Simply Chartreuse, Soft Stone
Dies: Stars Cover Plate
Silver Glitter Paper

Encouraging Team Notes
Stamps: Football Frenzy, Half & Half
Cardstock: Stamper's Select White, Blueberry Sky
Dies: Football Frenzy, Letterman Stitched Numbers, Letterman Stitched Mats, Monthly Moments: Journal Pocket 1 Die
Ink: Enchanted Evening, Soft Stone, Stamper's Select White, Simply Framed 

29
Stamps: Watercolor Wonder, Sweet Life, Big & Bold Birthday Wishes
Cardstock: Stamper's Select White, Smokey Shadow
Ink: Soft Stone, Melon Berry, Hibiscus Burst, Berry Sorbet, 
Simply Chartreuse, Ripe Avocado
Dies: Letterman Stitched Number Dies, Sweet Life
Felt: Smokey Shadow

You AMAZE me
Stamps: THe A-Mazing Stamp Set, BB: Random Stripe, Polka Dot 
Basics, Get to the Point Sentiments
Cardstock: Stamper's Select White, Smokey Shadow, Summer Sunrise, 
Pure Poppy, Tropical Teal
Dies: Get to the Point, Ad Sense, Uppercase Block Alphabet
Ink: True Black, Orange Zest, Summer Sunrise
Black Embossing Powder