Happy Forevering

Hello crafters! Tallie here and I'm back today with a wedding card featuring the Colorado Craft Company Lovely Legs Happy Forevering stamp set. I haven't used my coloured pencils for a while so this card was a perfect time to bring them out! These stamps have a lot of detail in terms of shading so are perfect to practice your light forms and shading.

I stamped out the married couple scene onto some white cardstock with some MFT Extreme Black ink. I used my Prismacolor coloured pencils to colour in the scene. I personalised the colours based on the couple I was sending the card onto. The trick with these wax-based pencils is to use lots of light layers, finishing with a heavier layer to make sure the the tooth of the cardstock is evenly covered. When finished, I cut this out with a Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die.

Using another slightly larger Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle, I die cut two more rectangles, one from Blue Jay cardstock and the other from vellum.

For the card base, I stamped the MFT All Lined Up background stamp in some Versamark ink onto some kraft cardstock. I then layered the stitched rectangles onto the card base and white heat embossed the 'CONGRATULATIONS!' sentiment from the MFT Essential Sentiments set.

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

A Herd of Birthday Bunnies

Hello, crafters! Tallie here today with a cute little bunny birthday celebration! This uses three different sets - Starry Scene, We Herd and Essential Sentiments - from three different companies - Avery Elle, Waffle Flower and My Favorite Things. It's such a great and simple design that you can customise both colour-wise and scene-wise to your tastes.

I started out by stamping the Starry Scene background onto an A6 card panel with some Distress Oxide inks in Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon and Faded Jeans. Here's a tip: to get a smooth transition between the colours, after inking up the portion of the stamp use an ink blending foam to blur the lines. This worked wonderfully on the Distress Oxides! I set these aside to dry to work on the foreground.

I stamped out the group of bunnies and balloons from the We Herd set in some MFT Extreme Black ink. I coloured these with my alcohol markers, sticking to cool greys and contrasting reds and oranges. I cut these out with the coordinating dies.

I white heat embossed the 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' sentiment from the Essential Sentiments set onto some black card stock and die cut it with a Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment Banner die.

Using some foam tape, I popped up the pieces over the background panel. I added some of the balloon strings with a black pen and a little bit of Wink of Stella to to add some sparkle to the balloons.

A cute little birthday card scene!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

  

Textured Botanicals

You've got to put up with me again today as Taheerah isn't quite ready to make a return so I have a last minute make to share with the new 3D texture folders from Tim Holtz and Sizzix.  This is the Botanical one, we have just two at the minute but more to follow...

It is REALLY IMPORTANT to follow the sandwich instructions.  These folders are MUCH THICKER than a standard embossing folder and if you don't adjust the sandwich you WILL break your machine (I know cos I nearly did!)  For the big shot you place the folder directly on Tab 1 without a cutting plate underneath and just one cutting plate on top.........

You can see the texture is really crisp and there are 3 layers to it so more fine details within each leaf and flower than a normal folder.

I simply ran the folder through with some kraft sandwiched in between and then added colour using distress crayons as the layers of texture the folder provides make adding colour this way super easy.

I used the green from set 2 for the leaves, red, orange and yellow (also set 2) for the flowers and then highlighted the tips with white from set 3.

To turn the panel into a card I cut it and separated it and used the same red orange and yellow crayons on the base card to blend an ombre background.   The Sentiment (MFT Essentials) was stamped in black onto a kraft strip that I blended with the green crayon before stamping.   Quick, tonal but looks like you spent ages!

That's all from me, until tomorrow when you get me again!

Tara

Seasons

I love to see all the beautiful blossom on the trees in spring. The changing seasons each have their own beauty, and that inspired my card today.

 

On a piece of white card, I first used the Lil'Inker Quilted Swirl Stitched pattern die to add some pretty detail before die cutting the tree tops from the MFT Trees in the Forest die-namics. 

I had a similar idea for the tree trunks and branches, using the Lil'Inker stitched woodgrain cover die to add detail first. They ended up being too small to really see the detail of the cover die, but the idea would work well for larger tree dies, I'm sure.

Next, I used MFT inks to add colour to the die cuts. For the winter trees, I kept them white but added some clear glitter to represent snow.

I created four square frames by die cutting two of the Lawn Fawn Stitched Squares together. To add some colour behind the frames, I die cut some squares from a piece of blue MFT watercolour wash paper. 

I layered the frames and background papers, then added them to the card with foam tape. Then I attached the trees to the card with liquid adhesive.

Finally, I stamped a sentiment from the MFT Essential Sentiments stamp set. 

Thanks for joining me today.

Gemma

  

MFT Trees in Forest

MFT Watercolour Wash Papers

Lil'Inker Quilted Swirl Die

Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Squares

MFT Essential Sentiments

Lawn Fawn Small Stitched Squares

Cats, Dogs and Vikings

Good morning - I have a few cards today using Avery Elle products, some new and one older one that we've been waiting ages to get back into stock.

For the first one, I had to ink up the stunning new cat from the Dear Santa and with that look on her face I wanted to have her do something naughty to match the sentiment so I used the lights from Retro Ornaments and wrapped them around the dog from Happy Howl-idays.  To do this I stamped it on rough paper to get the shapes I wanted and then started again on card stock with the lights first which I coloured and covered with glossy accents before stamping the dog.  This is a form of masking as you can wipe the ink off the lights when you stamp the dog over the top.   For the background I used the fabulous new Falling Snow die on white card and placed it on one of their new Silver Fox base cards.   Avery Elle have discontinued their mixed colour card packs so all we have left are all we will have.  Silver Fox was their most popular colour request and is a lovely soft grey (NB it does not have a silver sheen)

Then, as with the real life version, I wanted to show that a cat is not just for Christmas so I used it to make an anytime card too.

I used the Avery Elle Burst die direct onto my card with a rubber mat so it just embossed the lines and didn't cut the edges.  I stamped the cat twice and on the second removed the ink from the eyes before stamping so I could just draw in the eyes without eyelashes to make a boy cat and for him I just trimmed off the bow after colouring.   The sentiment is from MFT's new and super useful Essential Sentiments.


For my last card I used the Viking which has been oos at Avery Elle for ages so I am thrilled I can use him again now we have him back as he's just wonderful!   I have an article in this month's Simply Cards and Papercraft all about creating scenes using the End of the Rainbow die from MFT and here I have one more use for it - a viking longboat!

To create the scene I stamped the Viking, coloured him with copics and fussy cut him out.  The rainbow was cut from Kraft card stock and I blended a little darker ink on the bottom.  The sea was created from two layers of patterned paper (scraps from my stash but any blue would do) and I cut the wave using MFT's Stitched Cloud Edges die.   The sentiment is another from Essential Sentiments.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Tomorrow sees the great new release from Mama Elephant and we have it already so it will be live in the morning.
• The order I made to Altenew in July has FINALLY shipped so we hope to have it early this week.
• Lawn Fawn have now confirmed that their release date will be 25th August.  We haven't had confirmation yet that our order has shipped but we normally manage to get it just in time to release when they do.
• We are still waiting on Hero Arts to reach the UK distributor - we'll let you know when it arrives.

Catch you later.

Tara

Quick Anniversary Card

Sorry I'm late today - we overlayed after our long drive home from our mini break and I didn't manage to prep a post before we left.  I have a quick anniversary card to share today using one of the dies from MFT which are great if you need big impact in a hurry.

The Essential Cover Up Vertical Dienamic is a great die to frame a smaller image and still have big impact (there is a horizontal version too).  I used the cake images from Celebrate with Cake and simple embossed it on cream card with white satin pearl embossing powder decorating it with flowers and dots of liquid pearls.  The sentiment is from the new Essential Sentiments set which is exactly as described as there is pretty much a sentiment for every occasion!

Very quick and simple this week but hopefully still effective!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We'll have lots of new releases in store this week:

• Reverse Confetti is due tomorrow (8th August) but it has not yet been delivered so it may be a day or two later.
• Concord and 9th is released on the 9th August - again not yet delivered but it is in the UK so we just need it to clear customs and make it up from Stanstead.
• Avery Elle is released on Thursday 11th and will be here by then so should be released at the same time as in the USA.
• Mama Elephant will be here for the following Monday (15th August) with Lawn Fawn and Altenew to follow fingers crossed as we are still waiting for both to ship.

With our mini break we have lots of orders and emails to catch up on but we'll get on top of it as quickly as we can. 

That's all for today folks - see you next week.

Tara