Getting The Most From Layering Dies

I thought I'd show off one of the new layering die sets from Altenew today - the layering dies are a new concept from them and you can do a lot with them if you get a bit creative!  There are 3 sets to choose from currently but I went with the floral version today.

For the first card I went for a 70s vibe on my colours and cut Plate A from orange card stock, Plate B from lemon and then cut some more card from a darker yellow to sit just behind the flowers.   This is easy to do, I just drew around the flowers on the die cut of Plate A lightly with pencil and trimmed just inside the lines with scissors.  Doing that means you get some variation in colour between the flowers and leaves as the green background layer shows through the leaves and gaps but not the flowers.

For the second card I went for a more simple look - just simply cutting plate A from dark pink pearl card and plate B from lighter pink - but this time I snipped off the leaves so only the flowers were used.  This gives you a nice "gap" in the middle to tuck in a sentiment. I used one from the ever versatile Birthday Messages by Hero Arts.

The third example is actually going to be my Mum's birthday card so I went all out for a more detailed example using layers of copic colouring.

I die cut plate A from black pearl card stock and then cut plate B from white and had another sheet of the white to hand for the base layer.  To get the shading on the petals I simply flicked some dark pink away form the "holes" in the floral layer of the die cut plate B, blending into a paler pink towards the end. If you keep laying the Plate A die on top its easy to see where the petals are.

To get the colour in the correct place on the base layer is a little more tricky - except if you use the die as a stencil ;-)  Cut Plate B from thin paper and secure it to the base layer.  You can then easily apply colour through the holes so you know its where it needs to be (you could do the same thing with plate A to colour Plate B if you find it easier)   Here's what the stencil colouring looks like half way done.

For the final card I experimented with double-debossing to see if it would work and it does!  I simply ran both dies through my machine using a sandwich with a rubber matt so they would deboss the pattern but not cut.  Just do it one after the other on thick card stock using the cutting frame around the edge to line them up.  I blended some oil pastels gently over the top (think brass rubbings!) to make the debossed lines pop.

  
NEWS FROM THE STORE

• We have now received the new release from Sugar Pea Designs and will get it added to the store as soon as we can.
• There are several new releases pending for early May from Neat and Tangled, Lil' Inker Designs, Waffle Flower Crafts and of course the regular monthly release from MFT.
• Lawn Fawn have just announced a list of retired products ahead of a new release in late late May.  We will add the retired products to our discontinued page in the coming days - if you want them, grab them now as they won't be coming back!

Tone on Tone Butterflies

I'm filling in today as Kate has decided not to return to the blog.  My friend loves butterflies - we made thousands for her wedding - so the new butterfly set from MFT was a timely release as its her birthday this month.  The new Beautiful Butterflies are a set of layering stamps so you can go crazy with lots of different shades and make thousands of combinations but I decided to go tone on tone with Altenew's Sea Shore inks.

As I'll be posting this I wanted something flat but wanted to suggest some movement in the butterflies and to make it a more interesting card than an bog standard one, so I decided to have them flying off into the distance.  I added a few tiny butterflies from Concord and 9th's Butterfly Beauty.

To get this effect I arranged my butterflies over the card base to see where they would overhang, stuck them to my large block and then inked them up and stamped them on an oversized sheet of card.  I added the layers of colour individually and finished each with a coat of clear wink of stella.  I then placed the base card over the card with the top left corner just covering the antenna on the top butterfly and drew around it lightly with pencil.  I cut the two edges with the butterflies with scissors and then trimmed the others with my trimmer and fixed it to the front of the card.

I added a few dots of liquid pearls to add to the feeling of movement and finished with a sentiment from Hero Arts Birthday Messages.

I'll be back on Sunday with my usual post and weekly run down - in the meantime enjoy your bank holiday tomorrow.

Tara

Fabulous Frames, News and Challenge Winners

Good morning, I hope you're having a fun and crafty weekend.  I've got a simple card to share today as I wanted to play with some of the new goodies we got from Hero Arts last week.

I fell in love with the Floral Border die as soon as I saw it - it is so delicate and intricate but cut like a dream in a single pass through my big shot with no shims.  I also wanted to try the Daniel Smith water colour dot sheets as I have been itching to get my hands on his paint since I saw Sandy Allnock play with them at CHA last year.  I simply used a water brush and coloured the floral elements of the frame with the paints.  Hero Arts are only doing these sample sheets but I am looking to see if I can stock a fuller range of his paints as they are amazing.  I barely touched the dots to colour the entire frame - they are so highly pigmented a little goes a very long way!

To finish the card I die cut an oval frame in green card stock using the coordinating die in the set to frame the floral border and drew around the oval with a white gel pen in the corners to break up the green a little.  I created a soft blue panel by ink blending sno cone and blue raspberry inks from MFT before creating my own custom sentiment by mixing and matching some of the ones from Birthday Messages also by Hero Arts - as I make more birthday cards than anything else, I do love to have a good variety of birthday sentiments to play with.

I think this frame would make brilliant simple cards for mother's day too.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

Many of our brands have releases this month so this week we have placed orders with:

• MFT
• Mama Elephant
• Neat & Tangled
• Reverse Confetti
• Newton's Nook
• Concord & 9th
• and Wplus9

 They will be arriving over the next couple of weeks.

The SPD release was delayed due to a family emergency but it has now shipped so should also be here this week.


CHALLENGE WINNERS

There were some brilliant entrants this month - it looks like my favourite colours were some of yours too!  

Our winner of the £15 prize this month is Yming!  We loved her embossed resist card and the die cut sentiment really pops off the background.  The funny sentiment made us giggle too!

Our runners up were Caroline, Mirella and Jenn - all 3 were such great examples of using the colours to perfection!

We'll be back this afternoon with our brand new challenge for March and we hope you're going to like it just as much as this one!

 

Getting The Most From Layering Dies

I thought I'd highlight one of the new layering die sets from Altenew today as they are quite an innovative product.  You can find them all in the store using the new "filtering" system which we are working on brand by brand - if you see it on the left hand side of the page then it has been done for that brand.  If it's not there - we're working on it ;-)   If you click that link you will see that under the brand page of Altenew I have selected "layering" under theme and that shows you all the layering products be they stamps (and their co-ordinating dies), stencils or standalone dies.   You can select further options to reduce the number of results.  You can also search on themes such as birthday/family/pets so hopefully it will help you find specific themes across all brands as you need them.

Anyway, back to the crafting - for my makes today I used the Floral Layering Dies and wanted to show how you can get different results from them if you get a bit creative.

For the first card I went for a 70s vibe with my colours and simply cut Plate A from orange card stock and Plate B from yellow.  To get the second shade of yellow I drew around the flowers on the layer I'd cut from plate B onto a darker shade of yellow and trimmed just inside the pencil lines with scissors.  This gave me extra tone to my flowers and allowed the green from the background to show in the leaves and "gaps" only.   Finished with a sentiment embossed onto green and layered over the top.

For the second card I went with just simply layered Plates A and B using two shades of pink card onto a white background, but for a different look I just snipped off the leaves so you just have the beautiful flowers and a nice space to tuck in a sentiment.  The sentiments I've used came from Hero Art's Birthday Messages, one of my favourite of the moment as its a great mix of words and fonts (especially if like me you cut the bigger sentiments up for mix and match possibilities!)

For the third card I actually wanted to make a birthday card for my Mum so wanted something a bit fancy.  I decided to go for 3 layers with copic colouring.  I die cut Plate A from black card stock and then Plate B from white and had a second white layer read to go too.  I coloured Plate B using two shades of pink markers flicking the darker colour out from the edges of each "hole" on the die cut and fading it out to the edges of where the petals go (if you keep laying plate A on top you can see where the petals end and leaves begin).  I did the same thing with the 4 leaves in a couple of shades of green.

To get my colour in the correct place on the base layer I made myself a little quick cheat.  I die cut plate B from a thin sheet of paper, taped it with washi and used darker shades of pink and green as appropriate to colour through the gaps.   Once layered up this gives you a much fuller and more realistic looking floral image and its not too faffy if you use the paper stencil (you could create a stencil to colour through plate A onto plate B too).   The Mum word sentiment is from a new die set from Sugar Pea Designs which will be online soon ;-)

For the final card I wanted to experiment to see if you could use the dies for a double-debossing look and you can!

I simply ran both dies through my die cutter using a rubber mat in the sandwich on 300gsm white card stock one after the other (its easy to line them up with the outer cut line).   Once debossed I used some water soluble oil pastel crayons to provide an all over colour and make the debossed lines pop more.  Lightly rub them and blend gently - a bit like brass rubbings you did as a kid!  Finished with a die cut hello sentiment and a grey matt.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• We now have the new release from Sugar Pea Designs and are working on adding it to the store.
• We hope to finally get time to get the tonic restocks onto the store this week too.
• There are new releases pending for early may from Lil' Inker Deisgns, Waffle Flower Crafts, Neat & Tangled and of course MFT.
• Lawn Fawn have just announced a list of retiring products ahead of their upcoming new release in late May.  We will add the retiring products to our discontinued page shortly - once they're gone they're gone!