Birthday Coffee Cup

It's always fun to have a different way to give a Gift Card and I love Waffleflower's

Coffee Cup die which makes a cute 'Take Out' cup complete with a pull out panel

to tuck your coffee shop Gift Card into...

I followed the simple tutorial on Waffleflower's You Tube Channel HERE about 

cutting and assembling the pieces and then set about decorating the cup.

I stamped and coloured one of the girls from Friends at First Sip along with her little four 

legged friend. As you can see I've paper pieced her clothing with scraps of 

patterned paper, a fiddly job but well worth the snipping :) 

I've used the Bundles of Blossoms background stamp with Natural Dye ink to make 

a subtle tone on tone pattern for the cup and then added a sentiment 

from Uplifting Wishes which fitted perfectly in the space.

On the reverse side of the cup I've used the tick boxes 

from Waffleflower's Coffee Cup Sentiments. 

When you pull the inner panel out it reveals the gift card which is neatly

 held in place by two semi circle lugs, which are cut by the die. 

I masked an area off for a sentiment and stamped the same Blossom background 

in the natural ink for extra decoration to match the sleeve.

What a fun way to give a Gift Card!

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Feminine and Masculine Metallics

I needed a couple of different cards this week, a catching up card for a guy and a special birthday card for a girl, and they both ended up with a metallic twist so that's my theme this week.

Firstly let's go with the girly birthday card as that is a full on shimmer-fest!

I used the MFT Bold Blossom background which is currently out of stock, but I was inspired by the Floral Fantasy version from this month which is currently in stock but I didn't want to use as I wanted to leave some for you lot!   I embossed it with an off white powder on Lawn Fawn Storm Cloud card stock and then did fast watercolouring using Starry Colours from Kuretake's Gansai Tambi paints.  The main sentiment came from MFT's absolutely fabulous die with a little embossing to finish it off with some extra words.

For the masculine version I used a couple of brand new products from Waffle Flower.  I am still working on adding these products to the store but didn't want to delay my post any longer so I'll pop back and edit the links later.

I used the fabulous new Layering Marble stamp set which I am sure is going to be a perennial favourite as the options for using it are pretty much endless.  Here I layered it using Altenew seashore inks in 3 shades onto an Avery Elle silver fox card base.  I added some copper embossing here and there too using the top layer again in different places for my metallic element and to give it that glint you get in marble.  Don't get obsessed about how to line up this stamp - it really doesn't matter!   Just make sure you follow light, medium and dark on the right layers then the world is your oyster - stamp and go and it just all works!

I wanted the pattern to shine so just opted for a single die from the new Hey Hi Hello word set using a scrap of grey card from my previous project.


NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Mama Elephant was added this morning - the new release (more super cute otters in case you missed the MFT ones!) plus restocks
• Waffle Flower will be live this evening.
• We have Concord and 9th in transit but it is currently stuck in customs in the USA - with luck we will still get it this week but no promises as customs is customs and you can't do anything to influence them!
• We have the gorgeous new release from Newton's Nook already, they start their peeks tomorrow and it goes live on Friday so we'll make ours live when they do.
• Lawn Fawn and Avery Elle will be making their CHA peeks soon - we'll get our orders in but they won't release the actual products until mid-to-late February so you'll have to patient for those ones!
• Altenew have released some new markers - they are currently exclusive to their website but they have said they will wholesale them soon so we'll look at them when we can.

That's it for this week.

Catch you all next weekend.

Tara

Christmas card using everyday stamps and dies

Hi everyone, Esther here with a Christmas card that was fun to make and mostly used everyday stamps and dies - though I did make an exception for the gorgeous sentiment stamp! As you've probably picked up by now, I think it's great when you get lots of different use out of products, especially if it's something where you might not immediately think of using them.

For this card, I stamped and gold heat embossed My Favorite Things Bundles of Blossoms. This is such a gorgeous background stamp, really versatile, and its look totally changes depending what you do with it - plain stamping, heat embossing, emboss and watercolour, have it in black and white or vibrantly multi-coloured, have it all showing or just a corner peeping out from under something else... love it! 

I then used My Favorite Things Inside and Out Stitched Circle STAX Dienamics to cut a circle and a matching frame. I coloured the circle with inks to get an ombre effect, and then splashed with water and mopped up to bleach out splatters here and there. I glued the circle and the frame to the embossed background.

Using My Favorite Things Make a Wish stamp set and coordinating Make a Wish Dies, I then stamped, heat embossed and die cut three candles and three flames and adhered these over the circle.

The little leaf from the stunning new Concord and 9th Lace Leaf stamp set looked really festive stamped and heat embossed in gold. I cut it out multiple times using the coordinating Grateful Leaf Dies and glued the leaves into a decorative foliage cluster at the base of the candles.

Next, it was that sentiment set I couldn't resist - My Favorite Things Hand Lettered Christmas. How fab are they?! I stamped and heat embossed "noel" in gold on vellum, and used a trimmer and fussy cutting to get it to the shape I wanted before wrapping it over the leaves and gluing it on the rear of the embossed panel.

Finally, the whole panel was mounted on matching blue card stock and then on to a heavy weight card base.

I hope this helps to inspire some of your own Christmas cards. Luckily, this year I "only" have 86 to make compared to over 100 last year, but I know some of you make way more than that, and others just do a few for special friends and family. How about you? What's your card making target for Christmas this year? I'd love to know :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Spotlighting a Background

Good Monday morning

Do you like background stamps?... I do, I love them for adding subtle patterns to card bases with tone on tone colours, small geometric patterns and that type of design so I was most surprised that I was drawn to the Bundles of Blossoms background from MFT's latest release. It has lots of detail but would still easily melt into the background with the right colour ink... but I thought I'd make these whimsy flowers the feature on my card instead..

The thin lines and busy pattern lends itself to simple colouring as well as more detailed shading so I stamped the background out and die cut a circle of the pattern and started colouring with my pencils.

When I'd finished I stamped the background again, I matched up the coloured circle of pattern on top so I could work out where to cut a slightly smaller circle in the black & white panel. Once I'd done that, I lined the pattern up behind the b&w piece and used low tack tape to hold it in place so I could trim to size and then adhere it to my card base.... the top layer is mounted on foam tape. I added a die-cut 'hello' from Paper Smooches which has had a liberal application of shimmer from a black wink of stella pen which I also used in various spots on the coloured piece too.

                


To simplify the spotlight design you could adhere the coloured circle above the b&w panel .... or for a one layer card just inlay the die-cut circle back into the original patterned panel.

Thanks for stopping by, see you next week :)
Jenny x