Liquid Watercolours and Mandalas

I've been having a play with the new liquid water colours from Avery Elle this weekend.  I must admit when I saw them being peeked at Creativation I wasn't sure what the fuss was about but so many people were raving about liquid water colours in general that I knew I had better get them in store for you or risk missing out on the next big trend (lots of brands have them - we'll have the Hero Arts version in a few weeks too)

Now I am no water colourist so was not about to create a landscape masterpiece, so I just decided to play and see what I could do with them.

Firstly I just tried a background technique - I wet a piece of thick watercolour paper all over with a water sprayer and then just dropped random drops of colour in shades of green and blue all over and allowed them to expand and run.  Once dry I added some neat drops for a stronger pigment look and then added a few spatters with a paintbrush.  I allowed it to dry again and then went about die cutting it to create a big birthday wish card using the big balloon border from MFT's Blue Prints 26, their new Wish word die and the simple alphabet from AlteNew.

Next I wanted to try painted with them over embossing.  I embossed the new MFT Mandala stamp from MFT using satin pearl embossing powder on watercolour paper and then got it good and wet.  I then just drew circles of colour -the bottles are great for this technique - and spread the colour with a paintbrush.

I trimmed it down to fit a 4x6 card once dry and stamped over a sentiment from the new Anything But Basic Birthday Sentiments from MFT using versafine black ink so it would hold on the embossing.  [My top tip is to have a Kuretake Sketching pen to hand for this - its a permanent marker so will fill in any gaps!]

Whilst I was playing with Mandalas, I wanted to play with the co-ordinating die - this does not cut the stamp - it's smaller but the same shape so you could do some fun layering.  I thought that it had a floral shape so die cut it twice from some old ombre purple paper and layered them over each other to create my floral shape.  I added some silver glitter highlights around and finished with another sentiment from the previous MFT set.

 NEWS FROM THE STORE

This week we will have the following:

• The new release from Mama Elephant - it has shipped so fingers crossed will be here for release day on the 15th.
• The current release from Concord and 9th is hopefully shipping to us tomorrow so we should have it by the end of the week customs willing.
• The new release from Newton's Nook  is shipping this week.
• The new release from Sugar Pea Designs is shipping to us this week hopefully.
• We are waiting for the new Altenew release to ship. 

• We are still waiting for the Hero Arts new release to reach the UK distributor - all we know is that it is "expected late February"
• The Lawn Fawn release date has been confirmed as 22nd February.  We will have it in store on that date.

We have our Stamping Bella delivery but due to the massive numbers of new releases we've still not managed to open it all and add it to the store yet (there's a tonne of it!) so bear with us - we'll fit it in around the new releases when we can.

Birthday Wags

Good morning - hope you're having a great weekend so far.

I seem to have lost my mojo somewhere this week so only have one simple card to share today, a card for the youngest member of our family who will turn one this week coming.

I love the super-sized numbers in the Decor and More range from MFT - they make such a statement for an age related card.  Obviously I used the number one but you have everything from 1 to 0 so you can make those big number cards for milestone birthdays too.  I just used some bold papers to  make it pop.

I paired it with one of my favourite die sets for adding quick impact to birthday cards - MFT's Blueprint 26 - I just love the large balloon border!  A little strip of the same paper on the bottom frames the card and draws the eye down to the focal image.

For that, I used the super-cute new Playful Pups which may not seem very "birthday like" but by combining sentiments you can use them in a variety of ways and I think they are perfect images for little people!   I coloured those with Zig Clean Color Markers and a water brush for a soft shading effect - they are great pens if you've not tried them - a lovely set to pop on your Christmas wish list!  We will be getting the brand new 80 pen set in stock soon too - every colour they do finally in a set!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

It's going to be a busy old week in the store again....

• Mama Elephant have a new release (including the ninja's we saw a few months ago) on Tuesday and fingers crossed ours should be delivered tomorrow so we will have them live in store on Tuesday.
• Neat and Tangled's new release has arrived in the UK but is in customs at the moment but we should get it mid-week.
• Concord and 9th's new release (and restocks including perfectly penned) is also in customs at Heathrow so again hopefully midweek.
• Lawn Fawn have confirmed our order is ready to ship, but so far it hasn't yet left the USA.  There is a SLIM chance if it ships tomorrow we'll have it by the end of the week.
• We are still loading all our new goodies from Tonic Studios - there are LOTS of items to add and we want to launch with them all at once, so bear with us.  It takes at least 5 minutes to add each item and when we have HUNDREDS of items each month, you can imagine how long I sit at a computer every day!  There is only me and my husband who do EVERYTHING, from ordering the stock, answering your emails, printing and packing orders, running the blog, managing Facebook and Instagram.  There is no team.  We work as fast as we can but we have no magic wand to wave sadly!!!

ROYAL MAIL AND CHRISTMAS

We have noticed that there has been a significant increase in the number of parcels that are taking longer to reach their destinations.  This happens every November/December.  Once people start to do their online Christmas shopping (not just with us but online in general) then the volume handled by the post office increases significantly and more parcels get stuck/lost.  We are generally very lucky and so far this year can count on one hand the number of lost parcels which considering the thousands we've shipped is not a high number.  Whilst we know it is upsetting if it doesn't arrive as quickly as normal, there is nothing we can do about it once it is in the hands of Royal Mail.  We still ship orders within 24/48 hours but after that any delays are down to the Royal Mail system.  You can see all the delivery estimates and how long you need to wait before a parcel is officially classed as lost on our Customer Service Page.  We will help you out after the full period of waiting time has expired but please do try to wait as it can turn up even when you think all hope is lost!

It's a little early to be discussing Christmas shipping dates, so will let you have those in a couple of weeks, but please bear in mind if something is required for a specific date over the next couple of months, the longer lead time you have give it, the safer you will be.

Thanks and see you next week.

Tara