Peek-a-Boo!

Hello, Tallie here. This week I'm bringing you some cheeky little animals playing peek-a-boo. That little sloth is definitely my favourite! These cards can be customised for any colour theme and depending upon the sentiment used, can be used for a variety of occasions. I'm looking forward to doing a Christmassy version with the Polar set from the new release!

I started out by stamping out multiple of the critters from the Avery Elle Peek-A-Boo Pals set in some MFT Extreme Black Hybrid Ink on some blending card stock. I coloured these in with my Copic markers using a variety of colours, making sure to use at least three markers to bring the critters alive. I cut these out with my Scan N Cut, though there are coordinating dies available.

I then took three white A6 card panels and cut four circular apertures using the Avery Elle Circle Frames die. You can do this manually with a stitched/pierced circle die, but using this die means only one pass through the machine. Plus, the circles are lined up and this makes me happy!

On some top-folding A6 card bases, I blended on some Distress Oxide Inks in Salty Ocean, Picked Raspberry and Wilted Violet in the areas where the apertures were. I then used some foam tape to pop up the white panels and more to arrange my critters peeking through.

I also used the coordinating colours to create some sentiment strips, which I then white heat embossed the 'just wanted to say' sentiment from the Peek-A-Boo Pals set. I added three white dots with my gel pen so the greeting could continue on inside. I also mounted this on some foam tape and positioned it to the left of the critters.

You could add some sequins (I only added a couple of stars I coloured in from the set) but I think these are beautifully clean and simple as they are. I'm sharing three colour combinations today - blue, purple and pink - though any colour would help highlight these cute little pals!

 

Tropical Bird-Day

Hello and Happy Monday to you... Jenny here, and today I'm channelling a Tropical Vibe thanks to a new Flora & Fauna stamp set....

I started by blending Distress ink across a panel of white card and made the green darker in the top corner. I then used the various leaf stamps in the set with distress oxide inks... I like how the inks show up but have a muted effect to give a subtle leafy background.

When the piece was completely dry I used Avery Elles Circle Frames to cut the apertures. I layered the panel onto a card and adhered the circles through the holes onto the card front before using foam pads to add the leafy piece over the top.

The birds are stamped and coloured with markers.... I used the mirror stamping technique to give myself another parrot facing in the opposite direction. There are lots of tutorials on You Tube if you type Mirror Stamping into the search bar 😊

I added the birds to the apertures along with leaves from the same set... it's a long leaf which I have cut in half  to fit inside the circles. I also added perches using snippets of branch from a Concord & 9th die set.

I'm really happy with how it turned out loving the circle frame die... much easier to cut apertures in one pass through the big shot 😉

           

Thanks for stopping by :)
Jenny x

Sea-Prise Birthday Party!

I've got some fishy birthday wishes going on today featuring the fab new Sea-prise! set from Avery Elle along with a couple of their older sea themed stamp sets.

The inspiration for the card actually came from their fun new circle frames die which I thought looked like 4 portholes.........

I started with a square base card and covered the front with some paper from Reverse Confetti's Fun Time paper pad and die cut the 4 circles from it.  To emphasise the porthole effect, I picked the circle die that closely matched the frames circles and die cut it 4 times from white card.  I then lined a circle up (one at time otherwise they overlap a bit if you do them all together) on the Avery Elle die and ran it back through the machine to get my dotted circle rings.

To finish the front I wanted the word "sending..." so it pairs with the sentiment inside but I couldn't find a die to fit the space I wanted so I decided to just use word dies and let the sentiment flow around the portholes.  I think we can get hung up on "straight" sentiments and sometimes mixing it up just works.  I used the simple alpha from AlteNew.

To create the scene on the inside I just drew very light pencil marks through the circles so I knew where to stamp.  Starting with the grinning shark from Sea-Prise as I just wanted his teeth in the porthole so there was an element of reveal when you opened it up.  I did the same with the puffer fish - trying to not show the party bits from the outside.

I added three dots with a pen in front of the top sentiment to link it to the sending on the front and put the second sentiment from the Sea-Prise set at the bottom.   I added the whale from whale hello which I just realised has been discontinued so I am sorry about that but I forgot to check before I used it.  You could add a mermaid or some of the other fish from "that bites" which is where the front facing fish comes from.

I filled in the final porthole with the shoal of fish from Sea-Prise and filled in other gaps with them too before adding a very light blue colour wash over the background to finish and give it a more sea theme.  All the sea creatures are coloured with pencils.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

It will be another busy week of releases this week:

• Mama Elephant will be live on Tuesday
• Lawn Fawn will be live on Thursday

We also expect to get deliveries from the following brands this week and will get them online as quickly as we can around the major releases as we have no packing assistance this week so order packing will take priority over loading stock:

• Neat & Tangled
• Newton's Nook
• Concord & 9th
• Hero Arts Restocks

OK that's all for today, catch you next weekend.

Tara