Skating Santa

I've been having fun making my card this week - I do love to spend a little time deep in colouring-in heaven and Stamping Bella images are my favourite images to colour!

I used Santa's Special Delivery and coloured him with copics and pencils before cutting him out.  I used 300gsm card so he was nice and thick as I wanted him to move across the card.

For the base card I used Avery Elle's Falling Snow die on a piece of white card and inked it lightly after cutting using Sno Cone ink.  I used a glue runner on my base card and covered the area behind the die cut holes and then used my finger to rub some fine clear glitter into them for a gentle twinkling snow scene.

I used Lawn Fawn's Stitched Tree Border again from white card to create the foreground and just coloured the trees leaving them leafless for winter.   I die cut a slider channel from it so Santa could skate across it and used a slider under his boot to secure him through the channel. 

I marked where the hills would go and then used sentiments from Merriest curving them to match the hills and spacing them out across the card to add to the feeling of movement.

Now this is where I fess up a mess up!  I had intended on the tree layer and my idea to support Santa had always been to add some extra sliders behind his hat and body (just on top of the card not with extra channels) so that they would glide across the surface and keep him straight.  When we add a layer with sticky out bits this won't work as they get caught!   So now I have a slightly drunken Santa - particularly at the edge where the channel dips!

I doesn't bother me enough to remake the entire card - I think he still "works" but if I make it again I would either use a straight channel so he's more straight or make the tree layer flat and die cut the channel from both that and the snowfall layer together so I could support him more easily.   Hope it gives you some ideas for movement on cards and now I've made the mistakes so you don't have to!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

What's coming this week 

• We have the new release from MFT in transit and customs willing it will be live on Wednesday morning (or a little later if it gets stuck again!)
• We have the new release and special Jennifer McGuire kindness project release from SugarPea Designs awaiting shipment - hopefully we'll have it by the end of the week.
• We have the new release from Altenew in transit too so hope to have that live this week.
• Our order for the new release from Wplus9 is in - we are just waiting for that to ship too.
• We have restocks of everything that was available with all the above brands coming with their new releases - if what you are waiting for doesn't come back this time, it was out of stock at their end and we will try again with our next order.

New Design Team Members

Thank you to everyone who threw their hat in the ring for the space on our design team following Keren's departure a few weeks ago.  We have over 50 applicants for the one spot so as you can imagine it was quite hard to narrow it down, so if you didn't make it, don't take the rejection to heart - it's just a matter of numbers!

I am thrilled to announce that Gemma from Mygirllollipop will be our new girl Tuesday!  Gemma has been a regular player of our challenges so I am sure you will recognise her fun style and we are sure she is going to bring your lots of wonderful inspiration over the coming months!  The decision was only made on Friday so she'll be bringing you her first post next week (you're stuck with me again on Tuesday - sorry!)

Also, as Kate is taking a break, I picked another person from the applicants to have a 6 month spot on the team to fill in for her.  So I am also thrilled to let you know that Esther from The Carnelian Wood will be bringing you her creativity every Wednesday for the next 6 months!   Esther is a challenge stall wart as a DT member over at Less is More and we're sure you'll love her varied style.  Again she'll be starting next week so we'll have a fill in this week.

Do welcome the new ladies to the team when they make their first posts as I'm sure they'll be full of nervous anticipation!

That's all for now folks - I'm heading out for the day on a mammoth house-viewing session so wish me luck that we find a nice new place with more space for more store stash!

Tara

Cats, Dogs and Vikings

Good morning - I have a few cards today using Avery Elle products, some new and one older one that we've been waiting ages to get back into stock.

For the first one, I had to ink up the stunning new cat from the Dear Santa and with that look on her face I wanted to have her do something naughty to match the sentiment so I used the lights from Retro Ornaments and wrapped them around the dog from Happy Howl-idays.  To do this I stamped it on rough paper to get the shapes I wanted and then started again on card stock with the lights first which I coloured and covered with glossy accents before stamping the dog.  This is a form of masking as you can wipe the ink off the lights when you stamp the dog over the top.   For the background I used the fabulous new Falling Snow die on white card and placed it on one of their new Silver Fox base cards.   Avery Elle have discontinued their mixed colour card packs so all we have left are all we will have.  Silver Fox was their most popular colour request and is a lovely soft grey (NB it does not have a silver sheen)

Then, as with the real life version, I wanted to show that a cat is not just for Christmas so I used it to make an anytime card too.

I used the Avery Elle Burst die direct onto my card with a rubber mat so it just embossed the lines and didn't cut the edges.  I stamped the cat twice and on the second removed the ink from the eyes before stamping so I could just draw in the eyes without eyelashes to make a boy cat and for him I just trimmed off the bow after colouring.   The sentiment is from MFT's new and super useful Essential Sentiments.


For my last card I used the Viking which has been oos at Avery Elle for ages so I am thrilled I can use him again now we have him back as he's just wonderful!   I have an article in this month's Simply Cards and Papercraft all about creating scenes using the End of the Rainbow die from MFT and here I have one more use for it - a viking longboat!

To create the scene I stamped the Viking, coloured him with copics and fussy cut him out.  The rainbow was cut from Kraft card stock and I blended a little darker ink on the bottom.  The sea was created from two layers of patterned paper (scraps from my stash but any blue would do) and I cut the wave using MFT's Stitched Cloud Edges die.   The sentiment is another from Essential Sentiments.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Tomorrow sees the great new release from Mama Elephant and we have it already so it will be live in the morning.
• The order I made to Altenew in July has FINALLY shipped so we hope to have it early this week.
• Lawn Fawn have now confirmed that their release date will be 25th August.  We haven't had confirmation yet that our order has shipped but we normally manage to get it just in time to release when they do.
• We are still waiting on Hero Arts to reach the UK distributor - we'll let you know when it arrives.

Catch you later.

Tara