Enchanting Washes

My card today features some beautiful patterned paper. Patterned papers are great for when you need a card quickly but don’t have time to make your own background.

The patterned paper I chose is from the Altenew Enchanting Washes paper pad. I cut a piece to fit my card base, adhering it with liquid glue. 

To add extra interest, I flicked the background with gold perfect pearls. Any gold paint would work well for this.

Next, I stamped a sentiment from the Altenew Birthday Builder stamp set. I layered this over some vellum, then adhered to the card.

I finished by adding some gold enamel dots around the sentiment.

Have a lovely day,
Gemma

Hibiscus Bouquet

I've gone all floral today with AlteNew's new Hibiscus Garden 3D die cut.  They may look a little complex but they are actually really easy to line up and get some real depth to your floral creations  - Altenew have several of these floral die cuts now but this one really appealed to me with the massive cheese plant leaves.

I die cut all my elements - my top tip is to line up your dies by "element" and store them in lines on a magnetic sheet so you know which bit goes with which flower and then you can easily create them every time.

I used all the flowers, the cheese plant leaf and one other leaf, all cut from plain cheap white card stock, and then simply inked them all once die cut using oxide inks and an ink blending tool, blending 2 or 3 colours together to get some natural looking elements rather than harsh layers.  A few dabs of glue to layer each flower and the lines on the cheese plant leaves and all the die cut elements were good to go. 

I wanted a rich warm glow to the background so picked a selection of colours I used to ink up the floral and leaf elements and used make-up blending brush to apply a super-soft blend.   If you struggle to get a "fade to white" blend, then these brushes really help!

I finished with a simple birthday sentiment using Altenew's Birthday Builder sentiment set.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

This week we will have the following items arrive in store:

• Some fabulous new papers, stencils and embellishments from Echo Park/Carta Bella
• A few items from Hero Arts monthly kit add-ons - the new catalogue is due late February
• The new Waffle Flower release
• The new release from MFT
• The release that Avery Elle previewed at Creativation - the first of the big releases of the year
• and there is a slim chance we will have the new Neat and Tangled release by release day but it not we'll have it the week after.

Lawn Fawn's new release is on order but is not released until late February.

That's all folks.

Tara

The Big 80

Hey stampers, Anni here!

My mom is turning 80! Wow! Well, when your mom has a big birthday you have to make a special birthday card for her, don't you!
Hope you can see the card well. The white on white effect is difficult to catch on a photo.

I just recently treated myself to Altenew's Mega Number Bundle - a Christmas present from me to me. With my mom's birthday coming up and my nephews (twins) turning 18 this year I had just the right excuse to order them - after eyeing them for a long them. You can buy them seperatly, too (Mega Number 8 and Mega Number 0).

I combined the big numbers with some flowers from Altenew's Layered Floral Elements. I die cut several flowers and leaves from scraps of cardstock and layered them up if needed. Then I embossed the sentiment - one of the many Happy Birthdays from Altenew's Birthday Builder - in white on a stripe of black cardstock. I added some dimensional adhesive to the back and arranged the flowers and the leaves to the stripe.

After I finished it all there was left to do was to adhere the stripe to the 80.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

      

Personalized Birthday Card

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Today's card was inspired by the amazing Kelly Latevola. The technique called watercolour bleaching I learned from her.

I started by stamping the beautiful flowers from Altenew`s Adore You on a piece of water colour cardstock (with a little bit of masking) and heat embossed them in white. Then I added some ink blending to the flowers, to the leaves and to the whole background. For the bleaching you add water to the flowers and leaves and dabb it away. This way you take away some of the colour.
Then you add some shadows with alcohol markers.

I made this card for a special friend and wanted to personalize it. So I added the name. I die cut the letters that I needed from the background I created. For this I used Altenew`s Caps Bold Alphabet. Unfortunately they are out of stock at the moment (but will be back in stock mid-September) but the lower caps would work just as well for this technique and are in stock now: Altenew's Bold Alphabet Die.

I also die cut it from white cardstock and from vellum. I stacked up the white die cuts, on top I added the ones I die cut from the background and then the vellum ones. I didn't want to cover too much from the background but on the other hand I wanted to make the letters to stand out.

For a birthday sentiment I stamped one from Altenew's Birthday Builder on black cardstock and heat embossed it in white. Then I assembled the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

         

Happy Birthday Stripes

Hello, Gemma here today, sharing a quick and simple birthday card.

The Altenew Birthday Builder stamp set is a favourite of mine. I love the variety of fonts in this set, which give so many possibilities. I thought it would be fun to use lots of them on a card.

To create a place for the sentiments to sit, I first used the Altenew Watercolour stencil and some distress oxides to add stripes to a card base. I used blueprint sketch, twisted citron, wild honey and antique linen.

I then used my stamp positioner to help me stamp all the sentiments in the stripes. The stamp positioner is useful for allowing several lines to be stamped at once, speeding up the design. I also like to double stamp to get a darker impression.

This design would is perfect for recreating in different colours, or using with different sentiments you may have in your collection.

Thanks for joining me today,

Gemma

Altenew Birthday Builder

Altenew Watercolour Stripes Stencil

Triangle Patterns

I have a fun geometric card to share today. I love geometric patterns and I think they are perfect for masculine cards. 

I'm really enjoying using stencils more at the moment, so I reached for the MFT Triangles stencil and my favourite distress oxide inks. 

To add some interest, I also used some patterns from the Flora and Fauna Texture Two set, stamping them through the stencil to create patterned triangles. As well as being easy to blend, the distress oxides stamp very well.

I created three rows of triangles, increasing them in size for each row. I then added a birthday sentiment in black ink above to finish this one layer card.

Thanks for joining me today,

Gemma 

Words and Numbers

I've got a really fun age card to share today that can be easily adapted to suit any birthday you want to highlight the age on.  I was inspired by the gorgeous new Brush Alphabet Die Set from AlteNew.

I die cut "four" several times using thick white card and using copics shaded just one in a rainbow effect to be my focal number.  I placed this one where I wanted it first and then used the other white fours around it in different orientations to make a fun number-word background.

I coloured a strip of card with the same rainbow of markers and cut a flag end on each end and stamped a Happy Birthday sentiment  from the brilliant Birthday Builder also from AlteNew which has so many different fonts in different sizes I know it's going to be one I reach for again and again and again.  It'll be nice not to dig through other stamps looking for the right sentiment too.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

It's going to be a busy week in store this week as we'll start to get the first of the post trade show releases.........   We'll have the following arrive this week:

• Stamping Bella's year end release
• MFT's February release
• Avery Elle's December and February releases.  The new stuff releases on February and it shipped yesterday so fingers crossed that customs clear it quickly and we should then have it for release day.
• We may have some Lawn Fawn restocks this week too, if not early next.

Some brands are still waiting for their trade show releases to be manufactured so we don't yet know when we will get them.  It seems dies are the hold up for both WaffleFlower and Flora and Fauna.

We have the new release from Neat and Tangled shipping on Monday so there is a SLIM chance we'll get it by Friday but if not it will be next week.

We've ordered the fab new release from Concord and 9th but they never ship until after they release (the 9th of each month) so it will be mid-Feb before we get that.

We have already ordered the next release from AlteNew so should be back on schedule with them now and won't miss out on any new items as we did this time.  I know many of you have been disappointed that we haven't received some items - very little I could do about that because of the move so I missed the pre-order - there is only one of me and I can't yet operate a computer with my feet particularly when I didn't have internet!  We have everything on back order and it will arrive soon so you won't miss out for long.

We've ordered the full new release from Hero Arts along with the January monthly-add ons.  This comes via a UK distributor so never comes as quickly as they release in the USA and we never know when it will come until the day before we get it.  It currently says expected late February but that's as much as I know.

Could I also ask everyone to think about what they email - kindness doesn't cost and customers who send rude, hurtful or angry emails without thinking will no longer receive replies.  We are happy to help, particularly where there is a problem with product you've received but please think about how you ask.  You may feel aggrieved but if it's the first time you've pointed something out to us, please be nice and give us the chance to fix it before you hurl abuse at us!

Catch you next week.

Tara