Beary Merry Christmas

Hello and happy Wednesday! I'm going all Christmassy again this week with this cute little bear from the Beary Merry Neat & Tangled stamp set.

I started out with a piece of watercolour cardstock and used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolours to create a bright and vibrant background. I used a few different layers to build up the colour, drying between each layer and then splattered on a mixture of clean water and white paint to give a snowy effect.

Whilst I let that dry, I stamped out the bear, penguin, gingerbread man and candy cane with my MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink, coloured in with my alcohol markers and cut them out with the coordinating dies.

Next, I gold heat embossed one of the sentiments from the stamp set on some black cardstock and adhered it to my background panel. As I was adhered the die cuts I noticed the white border around the die cut pieces was a little too harsh in comparison to the background so I took out a gold marker and coloured in the white edges. This matched the sentiment and balanced out the amount of gold on the card.

A little Wink of Stella clear glitter over the die cuts and that finishes off a cute, bright and colourful Christmas card!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

  

Intense watercolour wash with a silver emboss overlay.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I've got some pretty, strong watercolour for you...

Using my Gansai Tambi paints with a little help from Mama Elephant and My Favourite Things.

I've seen a few of these beautiful but intense blue watercolour backgrounds with a stunning silver embossed overlay floating around blog land, so thought I'd give my own a blast.

I started with a piece of water colour card & my Gansai Tambi paint set (I have the large set which is currently out of stock , but we still have the smaller set and theses paints are so beautiful you could achieve an awesome look easy, using fewer colours).  I wet my card and, instead of washing & swooshing colour across it to create a gentle blend, I kind of 'dabbed' it on randomly around my card, changing colours and doing the same until my piece was covered.  I then went back in with my darkest colour to make sure I had some areas of real intense concentrated colour.  Once dry, I added a splattering of white & gold flicks and splashes and left to dry again.

I then stamped out one of my all time favourite background stamps, the MFT 'Geometric background', onto my card and covered in Silver Sparkle embossing powder.  I then took a dry cloth and 'buffed' away the powder from the edges so it didn't cover my entire background.  I love doing this as I think it makes more of a spotlight of your background, and gives it a more organic feel.

I then heat embossed a piece of card in matching embossing powder and cut Mama Elephant's 'Birthday Script Creative Cut' from it. I wanted something to anchor my die to my card, and also give me space to finish up my sentiment, so cut a circle from vellum.  My sentiment is then made up and completed of words from other stamp sets.  You could pretty much write a book if you look at all the words and phrases in all your other sets, so don't be afraid to mix and match and even (don't hate me), chop stamps up to say what you want to say! 

I adhered everything in place by adding teeny weeny drops of glue behind the chunkiest parts of my sentiment to avoid any adhesive showing up behind the vellum.

I added a scattering of matching sequins, matted my piece onto light grey card, and mounted the whole thing onto a white card blank.

I really hope you like it.  As always, everything I have used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx

 

Watercolour and Gold Poinsettias

Hi there everyone and happy Thursday !

Today I have a card to share using the beautiful Mama Elephant 'Poinsettia'...

I stamped three of the large flowers at the top of a piece of watercolour card and heat ebossed them with gold powder. I then water coloured then using a lot of colour at the base and really watering it down towards the tips. I love the effect this gives.

I then took the gold from the Gansai Tambi set and coloured in the land-locked areas at the topand between the leaves and around around the bottom edge of the flowers. To create the gold ombre effect I added clean water to the gold on the bottom edge to draw out the colour.

For the sentiment I used Altenew 'Lyrical Script' and gold embossed it on to some vellum before attaching to my card layer with staples.  

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my card today!

Hugs, Lydia x

Mama Elephant- Poinsettia Stamp Set (SHC)

Altenew- Lyrical Script Stamp Set

Gansai Tambi- 36 Set

InLinkz.com

Thanks

Hello.

Today as well as a card to share I have some news. 

I am taking a break from Seven hills crafts. 

Real life has gotten in the way of making but  you still have the most awesome talented design team.

Back to the important stuff ...Today's card features Concord and 9th.

I love clean and simple and today Ive gone for a one layer card.

I have stamped all of the images with distress inks but any water based inks will work and spritzed with water.

This gives a very different look. 

 If done with water colour card it works very well and gives a more water colour effect.

The small dots were stamped in versamark and then dusted with gold powder.

Then not being able to resist the gold water colours i splashed some gold gansai tambi paint over.

The sentiment was then stamped in black archival ink.

I love making thank you cards and I'd like to say thanks to Tara and to everyone that leaves comments.

Thanks for looking.

In Bloom: Renee's Leaves Watercolour wonder

Hello.

Today I have a card featuring Winnie and Walter's  In bloom:Renee's leaves stamp set.

To start I stamped the image onto water colour card with versamark and then heat embossed in platinum.

Then using the Gansai tambi water colours I coloured the images really loosely.

I let it all dry then added splashes of the white gold from the starry colours set.

The panel was die cut with Lawn fawns stitched rectangles and also a smaller rectangle of vellum.

For the sentiment I used Lawn fawns scripty thanks die. 

Its cut from water colour card and then coloured with the white gold water colour.

I adhered to the vellum and then added the same adhesive on the reverse of the vellum so nothing shows through once everything is put together.

To finish I added more splashes of the white gold.

 

Thanks for looking.

Rainbows , unicorns and glitter

Hello.

I have something magical to share today, in the shape of My favourite things magical unicorns.

I started my card by water colouring my die cut panel with some water colour paints. 

Once it was dry I splashed some of the gold starry colours water colours.

Next i stamped the images and coloured quite simply with copics.

They were then fussy cut and added to the water colour panel.

The sentiment was stamped directly onto the panel.

To finish I added some clear sequins.

Thanks for looking.

All Things Avery Elle

Sorry for the late post - we were out at a gig last night and early mornings are not good after a late night these days!  I've been having lots of fun this week with the new release from Avery Elle and mixing some of the sets with older sets to create a great scene.  I have 3 projects to share as a result so bear with me...

First up is a fun birthday card using the Tough Guy stamp and matching die - the die is particularly brilliant on this set as it cuts out the "inner" bit around his arms which would be tricky with fussy cutting!  I paired it with one of the fun panels from Reverse Confetti's Party Time pack and their double banner die.  The guy was coloured with zig clean color markers.   The quick card panels are really good for making quick cards as you don't need much more to make them pop.

Next I wanted to play with the Japanese set, Konichiwa, as I met my husband on a Japanese course so we like all this Japanese!

I love the versatility of this little set - you can change her expression and the little single flowers mean you can dress up the kimono as I did here - just use a post-it to make sure some of the flowers go over the edge for added realism in the fabric.  As I added the chopsticks to her hair I fussy cut her and popped her up on foam squares over a simple background with the cherry blossom stem stamped onto coloured card and shaded with pencils.  This time I coloured her with the Kuretake alcohol markers.

Finally I went to town on what was going to be a card but I like how it came out so am going to make two more to make a triptych scene for the bathroom and frame them.  Stamps are little works of art in their own right so do think beyond cards!

I really loved the coral reef die in the new release and the fun characters in that bites and thought it would be fun to hide one amongst the coral so that was my starting point for this make.  I die cut the coral and painted them with my gansai tambi (we are waiting for the standard sets to come back in stock at the UK distributor and will then have them for you to go with the starry colours) and added some of the golds over the top for coral like shimmer (really hard to photograph - sorry!)

I used the paints to watercolour a sea like background and left it to dry whilst I stamped and coloured the fish from that bites, the whale from whale wishes and the shark from Hello Chum onto more card and coloured with the clean colour markers again before fussy cutting.  It was then just a case of arranging them onto the sea and stamping a few of the little fish in and around the coral directly onto the background with pigment ink.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We are not expecting many new arrivals this week with the bank holiday but we will have the first of our two restock deliveries from Altenew later today or tomorrow which includes the first of our large ink pad sets deliveries - not all colours are currently available but we will get them as soon as we can. They are working hard to increase their stock and staff to ship orders so hope we can get things more quickly in the coming months.   Edited Sunday night.   Having just checked off our Altenew stock it is apparent that we are missing 2 boxes and we don't have the one with the invoices in to check it off!  DHL will not deliver now until late on Tuesday so stock will be replenished Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.