Happy Graduation

Hey stampers, Anni here!

We have exciting times in my family at the moment: Two of my nephews finsihing school this summer. Overhere in Germany the graduation is called Abitur or short Abi!

So I decided to make a card for my nephew (I am sure you will see the card for my other nephew in the next weeks). Mama Elephant's Page Huggers is just the perfect set for this occassion.

I started by stamping the cute critters and all the accessoires from the set which are graduation related. For the colouring I used alcohol marker. After finishing this part I fussy cut all the images iwithout leaving a white border. I decided that these were images simple to cut out so I didn't need a white border.

I added white highlights and Glossy Accents to some part of the images to achieve a more realitstic look.

For the sentiment I stamped out ABI with Owen' ABC by Lawn Fawn in black ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. On a narrow stripe of turquoise paper I stamped You Dit It from the set Congrats by Waffle Flower.

I assembled the card and added a little bit of shadow beneath the animals.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

Anni

      

Hipster Birthday

Isn't it funny how words appear in our language seemingly out of nowhere?  A couple of years ago I had no idea what a hipster was and now I can't seem to avoid them!   So today I have quick card perfect to celebrate a birthday for the hipster dudes in your life.

I started with a kraft panel and used a black pigment ink and a sponge dauber to ink through the mustache stencil from Echo Park.   I then used the funky new Happy Birthday Border die from Lil' Inker Designs to die cut a double border from both teal and gold card, layering them up with a little off-set for a 3D look.  I cut the panel down and layered up the sentiments over a black background.

I die cut a mustache using a Paper Smooches die from gold cardstock to make focal point - I was taking inspiration from Blackpool illuminations (or Vegas) the sort of bright neon signs that run up lamp posts so a strip of the teal card with Hipster spelt out using Owen's ABCs from Lawn Fawn added a bold statement front and centre.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

August is set to be a BUMPER month for stock arrivals with lots of brands bringing their seasonal offerings to the market.

• We have brand new paper collections from My Minds Eye in stock with some beautiful designs for Christmas and all year round.
• The August release from My Favorite Things which features lots of fun products for Halloween as well as lots of other fun items will be in store on Wednesday
• We have our order in to Concord and 9th for their 1st Birthday release which has some gorgeous new products (including a follow up to the super popular Hugs die "wink") which will hopefully be in store for 9th August (or very soon thereafter)
• We ordered the entire new release from Altenew plus masses of restocks yesterday (within seconds of the new release going on sale to retailers)  We hope to have that by mid-August but Altenew are always busy so it takes them a little while to ship to us.
• Both Lawn Fawn and Avery Elle have HUGE releases this month including Christmas and Halloween products and both will be in store at the same time as they are released in the USA (towards the end of the month) as our orders are already in.
• Mama Elephant took July off but will be back on 15th of August with a great new release.
• We are still waiting for the new Hero Arts products to arrive - the UK distributor has updated that to be "expected mid-August" so watch this space.

The final bit of news is that we are taking a mini-break next weekend to go and see a gig on Friday night so although the store will remain open orders received after 5pm on Thursday will start to ship on Monday 8th August and it may take us a couple of days to catch up on packing so please bear with us if you don't get a shipment notification quite as quickly as you're used to!

Building Houses

When I saw the Make Yourself at Home stamp set from MFT I thought it would be great for making new home cards, although there isn't a sentiment to go with that idea in the set, sometimes that's where I find the fun in crafting and using sets for something the designer didn't envisage.  With the addition of the Classic Window and the Brick Wall Cover-Up dies you can make a house and furnish the inside ;-)

I started with an A3 sheet of brown kraft card and cut it down to 18cm across the long length to get the height of my house before scoring at 12, 20, 32 and 40 cm to get the 4 walls plus a little left over to create a closing flap. You could use a sheet of 12x12 and create a slightly smaller house if you don't have large sheets of card.   I used the brick wall die to create a stencil from a scrap of the off cut card and used distress ink a blending tool to create the outer walls. I added the classic window die - I had to trim the centre from the kraft card by hand as I'd made my house too big to fit my die cutter - doh!   The new home sentiment was created using Owen's Alphabet from Lawn Fawn as it reminded me a little of those number tiles you see on house.   I created the roof with just a couple of scraps of grey card which I embosses some lines in using my score board and a ball tool.

Now comes the fun part - interior decorating!

I added a wooden floor with some wooden paper (our wooden veneers would be too thick and heavy) and selected an old 12x12 paper to make my wallpaper - make sure you line it up on each wall so it looks realistic.  I added another window on the inside to match the outer and added some green curtains.  A neat trick you can do with the curtains in the window die is once you die cut them, swap them over and put them back in the opposite die and that way you get the impression lines on both sides of your card so you see them through the window from the outside too.  You could add acetate to the window but I wanted people to be able to poke their fingers inside!

I stamped the furniture and coloured with copics and fussy cut as I didn't want the white lines as it would spoil the realism.  For the rug I used the die that would match the stamped image but just cut it from some patterned paper to get a patterned rug.  The mirror is made using the stamp on wood with the centre cut out and stuck over some mirri card.

You could go to town with this set and some empty shoe boxes and make DIY dolls houses for kids too - there are endless possibilities. 

If 3D is not your thing, then I have a more simple project this week too - a wild birthday card.

I love the animals in Avery Elle's new Wild Birthday set and wanted to get them all on a card at once so decided they'd been climbing the vines to create an animal tower!  Simple masking makes creating a stack really easy and then I just cut them out keeping a little white border like a die cut would have.  The vines were created using Paper Smooches Foliage 2  Having the scene flowing out of the frame and keeping the design to one side is a neat trick for adding impact on a CAS card.


NEWS FROM THE STORE

It's going to be a BIG week around here this week.   We will have:

• Waffle Flower's latest two releases and restocks tomorrow
• Wplus9 is in transit and I hope to have it by Tuesday
• MFT's new release early on Wednesday morning
• Altenew's Latest release as FINALLY shipped so providing there are no customs issues again we should have that this week too.
• Reverse Confetti and Lil' Inker Designs latest release are on order and should ship this week too.
• Concord and 9th's latest release plus restocks (including the scripty fonts) should ship by the end of the week for arrival the week after along with the Mama Elephant new release on the 15th.
• We are still waiting for Hero Arts to reach the UK - the distributor has now updated the expected delivery from "May" to "mid_June"