Ho, Ho, Ho - Merry Christmas!

Hey!

It's Bev here today. I am really getting into the Christmas spirit now and I have a trio of Christmas cards to share with you using the recently released Winter Stencil Strips from MFT.

I didn't think I would really get into using stencils, but they are really good fun and there are so many techniques you can use them with. Plus they are really good value too, especially this one at £5.50 and a choice of 4 designs in one!

For my first card today, I couldn't wait to try out the MFT Merry Christmas Blend stamp and give it a rainbow look! 

Choosing to stamp it in a rainbow of colours was quite time consuming and required some masking while inking up. But with the use of a stamping tool it was pretty easy and straight forward. I used Altenew inks in Ruby Red, Orange Cream, Fresh Lemon, Parrot, Ultramarine, Azurite & Ultraviolet.

After I had stamped the sentiment, I went and added the snowflake stencil in Altenew Silver Lake ink and added some sparkly liquid adhesive to the snowflake centres. With the stencil having four designs in one, you need to use a scrap piece of paper to mask the designs off that you don't want to ink!

Next I used the same snowflake design to create a lovely background using Altenew Dew Drop ink.

I added gloss white liquid adhesive to the snowflake centres and this time finished the design with a trio of snowflakes and the 'Let it Snow' banner sentiment from Concord & 9th Mistletoe Messages Stamp Set.

The sentiment and snowflakes are adhered to the card using foam adhesive so that they stand out from the background. I used Altenew Aqualicious and Teal Cave ink colours.

Lastly for today I have a super quick clean and simple card using the HO, HO, HO design on the stencil.

I used Altenew Ruby Red ink for the stencilling and I added the 'Believe' sentiment, also from Concord & 9th Mistletoe Messages stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black ink onto a scrap of white card & adhered using foam adhesive.

So much fun with one stencil and a couple of stamp sets. I hope I have inspired your Christmas card making a little. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Bev 

Altenew Ink colours used can be found HERE in the Seven Hills Crafts Store and all the colour families I have used are currently in stock :)

Lapis Lazuli 

Enchanted Garden

Gentlemans Gray

Sweet Dreams

Pocketful of Sunshine

Tropical Forest

Warm & Cozy

Red Cosmos

A Heap of Cakes

I've moved away from Christmas today as I needed to top up my birthday card stash and I'm trying to avoid eating sugar my mind naturally went to cake!  So I have lots of cake on my cards thanks to Concord and 9th's Top It Off stamp set which gives you lots of ways to combine a cake

For my first one I went off the edge to give the impression of a huge cake and layered it up with the 3 cake layer stamps but repeating the striped layer - because I went off the edge this gives me the opportunity to get more layers but still get the stepped look.  I went with pinks and greys and stamped the fun sentiments directly into the cake as the cake itself fills the card.  A few dots of Oyster Grey Nuvo drops give the look of icing to finish it off.

For the second card I went with a more autumnal colour scheme of orange and browns and this time added the candles to the top.  Finishing with liquid pearl icing highlights and a couple of sentiments from MFT's Anything But Basic Birthday Wishes as finding sentiments from other sets is a great way to get variety from your stamps and this sentiment goes perfectly with cake cards!   I used inks from Warm and Cozy and Summer Afternoon from AlteNew.

I made one more card with a more weddingy theme whilst I had the stamps out and this time just used one of the cake layers but masked it off for the top two tiers to get the stepped up look just using one stamp.   I used tea party, warm gray, and red sunset inks and finished with "icing" in oyster grey and liquid mercury.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We will get the latest release from Lil Inkers in store later today or tomorrow - last week was a difficult week and we fell behind on store admin and are still playing catch up.

The latest release from MFT is in transit but it did ship late due to a PayPal issue so it may not be here in time for release day but we'll get it live as soon as we can.

The latest release from Concord and 9th is ordered but they never ship until around the 10th or 11th once they've got over their retail rush.  We therefore normally get that release around a week after release.

AlteNew have a stamp and die release on the 11th October - we are waiting for it to ship so are not yet sure if we will have it for release day or  not.  The new brush markers will come with that release as will the new build-a-flower.  As that brand are pretty much doing weekly releases, it is just impossible to keep up-to-date so we are trying to get them to ship everything that is released in a month ahead of time so we can release when they do but it's not proving possible at the moment. 

Mama Elephant have another release on the 15th which is gorgeous again and we will have that for release day along with whatever restocks on the last release they have available.

Neat and Tangled have just sent their new release details to us so that will be ordered this week.

We should also be able to order the new Hero Arts monthly add-ons this week (kits only available direct from them)

That's all for this week

Tara

Friday Florals

I'm back again - sorry you'll be fed up of me already - but we will have some new blood on the blog soon.

Today I've got a couple of floral numbers to share using AlteNew's Life is Awesome set - its been ages since I've played with florals but this set really appealed to me as it is so versatile which is how I have two completely different looks from the same set to share today.  It's a really clever set as they have added labels to each floral element (A1, A2, A3 etc) and drawn lines around them to group them so it makes working the layers easy peasy!  You just select a letter, start with 1 and your palest ink and work your way up to 4 with the darkest (or sometimes 4 is a green)

Firstly I have a super CAS floral arrangement.  I was actually intent on creating an arrangement surrounded by a frame so I drew around the inside of the die and stamped around the oval, masking as I went.  I used Tea Party, Pocketful of Sunshine, Warm and Cozy, Shades of Purple and Tropical Forest ink sets all from AlteNew - perfect for their layering stamps as most have 4 layers to match the 4 colours in each set.  However once I'd finished I decided I preferred the look without the frame, so I added some extra stamping to neaten up the edge that would have been hidden and finished with a sentiment from Anything But Basic Birthday wishes (two stamps cut apart to get the Happy Birthday I wanted)

For the second card I decided to use the oval burst frame from my original idea so I just picked the two large lily stamps and layered them up all over the oval in yellows and oranges, masking as required, and then in-filled with leaves.  I actually missed a birthday this week so decided to turn it into a belated-card using a sentiment from Newton's Nooks Birthday Essentials stamped boldly over the floral pattern.

There really is no end to the possibilities with this set - so time to turn florist and get building arrangements.  Its well sized to match lot of other floral sets (not just from AlteNew but the Wplus9 sets would work too) so there are even more possibilities to mix n match!

See you on Sunday....

Tara

Solid Stamping Tricks and Tips

I know some people avoid solid stamps as they have issues getting a good impression from them when using dye based inks so I thought in my post today I'd share a couple of hints and tips to ensure you can get a quality image when using them.  

Pigment inks will generally give a great impression every time with solid stamps as pigment ink doesn't "pool" even on the largest of solid areas.  However, there are a couple of tricks you can do to get dye inks not to pool either.   My favourite method is to use versamark (embossing) ink underneath the dye ink.   Here's a couple of examples - the top is fresh out of the pack and you can see some areas are less inked than others - on the bottom one where I applied versamark before the yellow you can see its a much more solid image.

The one thing I want to point out is how important the "DIRTY" label on my versamark pad is.  I  have mistakenly grabbed my "clean" pad sooo many times when doing this technique and if I'm multi-stamping an image I don't bother cleaning it between stamping which will ruin your versamark pad for clear embossing techniques (just ask me and Jill how many dirty versamark pads we own lol!)  So my advice is to have one pad for clean techniques and one for this one where it doesn't matter if the pad gets dirty but label them so you don't mix them up!

Here's another example using a slightly darker ink which perhaps shows the difference a little better - I've also shown the difference of how the ink does and doesn't pool on the stamp.

It's my go-to technique for this kind of image and works for me every time.  As I'd got the amazing new Hello Dino set from Lil' Inker Designs out on my desk I thought it would be rude to not make a card....

I stamped all the dinosaurs in a random pattern on the base card using a variety of AlteNew ink cubes.   I die cut a circle frame using the Lawn Fawn Stitched Circle Frames die which was coloured with a yellow ink from the new AlteNew Pocketful of Sunshine set.  I stamped one more dino in the middle and finished with a sentiment - love all the puns in that set.

If you don't have versamark then there is another trick you try.  All polymer stamps have a "coating" that is left behind during the manufacturing process, so if you remove that you find the ink pools far less.  You can VERY GENTLY sand it away with a FINE emery board (or if that is too scary, a real rubber eraser does the trick too but takes a little longer)  The trick is to only use one finger and keep the board really flat and gently rub it over the surface of the stamp.  Wipe with a baby wipe or stamp shammy before stamping.

Here you can see the large solid image from the new floral fantasy set from AlteNew stamped in pale pink ink both fresh from the stamp set and below after sanding.

Again, I continued with the technique and made a card using the Floral Fantasy set which I have to say is possibly my favourite so far of all the AlteNew layering florals - its very forgiving and the results are gorgeous!

I teamed it with the new die cut "ever" word die from Lil' Inker Designs cut from gold mirri card - it is such a beautiful font and you can pair it with the co-ordinating stamp set which gives you 10 different sentiment options for both before and after ever.

I hope you find a technique in there that works for you and you won't be put off by solid stamp designs in the future.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• MFT are a little behind on shipping orders due to their retirement sale (they have retired around 380 products and we are working on adding them to our retirement section too - once they are gone they are gone so if you have older MFT products on your wishlist, grab them now or forever regret it)  This means our order for the new release has not yet shipped (it normally ships the Friday before release day)  As a result it is VERY  unlikely we will have it in time to release on Wednesday morning.  Watch our Facebook page for details of its arrival - we will get it online as quickly as we can once it arrives.
• Avery Elle's fabby Autumn/Winter release is coming up on the 10th August.  They will start to show peeks of what is coming from tomorrow on their blog.  Our order should be here in time for release day.
• The new release from Neat and Tangled is in transit.
• The latest release and some restocks from Winnie and Walter is also in transit.  We still can't buy their dies or stencils so it's just stamps I'm afraid.
• Concord and 9th have a new release on the 9th (they release that date every month) but they don't ship to retailers until a couple of days after release date so we are always around a week or so behind them, but it will be coming!
• Mama Elephant who normally release on the 15th of every month, don't have a release in August as they always have a bigger release in September which is their birthday month.  I've already ordered that and can't really say much other than you are going to LOVE it!

Right time for breakfast....
Catch you next week

Tara