Mama Elephant Big News stamp set - birthday card

Hello there! Hope, that you're having a great day. 

 I'm back to show you this girly birthday card, made with Mama Elephant Big News stamps set. 

Let's start with the main images - I decided to use all three critters from this set. I just couldn't decide which one to chose, they're all soo cute! 

 After stamping them on a piece of watercolour paper with waterproof ink, I coloured everything with Distress Inks and added a little sentiment to each of the wooden signs. I chose greetings from the same set because they're so little and fit perfectly into small spaces.

My next step was to fussy cut all of my coloured animals and move to the background.

For this, I decided to do ink blending with Distress Oxides in lovely pinks. I also added water splatters and few metallic splatters for much-needed interest behind the focal images.

 

After my blended background was ready, I adhered all the critters with foam squares and stamped an additional sentiment from Avery Elle Simple Sentiments stamp set.

To tie everything together I added few sequins and glossy accents to the boards.

This card turned out so cute! I'm definitely going to do similar - boy version of it with blues and maybe greens too! 

Thank you all for stopping by today! I will be back with another card next Thursday.
See you soon!
Anna 

Mama Elephant - Shall We Dance

Hello everyone!

 I'm back with another card - this time I used Shall We Dance stamp set from Mama Elephant and ink blending technique with Distress Oxides to create the background. 

My first step was to stamp those cute critters on to piece of watercolour paper with Versafine Onyx Black. I also added clear embossing powder while the ink was still wet, and then heat set it. ( I took advantage of the fact that Versafine staying wet longer, but you can also add embossing ink and different colour of embossing powder to change the look of this card ).
For watercolouring today I chose Arteza markers in greys and pinks. 

To create the background, I did ink blending with Distress Inks. I also added splatters using clean water.
After fussy cutting ( coordinating dies are also available here ) and adhering everything in place, I stamped sentiments from the same set with black ink and added Nuvo glitter drops. 

 My last step was to add my card panel to a white card base with double-sided adhesive. 

That's it! Thank you for stopping by! 

Have a great day! See you soon!
Anna

Travellers Notebook - memory keeping

Hello. Today I want to share a couple of pages in one of my Travellers Notebook Journals. I use TN's to plan and record memories - I have nature, blogging and travel journals to name a few. This one is an ongoing project to record my visits to places listed in the book '111 Places In Glasgow That You Shouldn't Miss' (there are similar books for cities all over the world). 

Glasgow is my home city but quite often we don't know or don't visit what is on our doorstep! These two pages record numbers 4 and 30 in the book. I always include two or three pictures and some journalling - either a fact quoted from the book or a short personal observation.

The background papers and washi tape are Spring Farmhouse by Simple Stories. The numbers have been diecut using Number It Creative Cuts by Mama Elephant and the headers have been stamped using Birdie Brown Alphabet and Numbers.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into my journal, thanks for stopping by today, Liz

Dream Big!

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I am addicted to Distress Oxides lately! I loved them from the start but recently I use them again and again.

For this card I created the background using Distress Oxides. I started by die cutting two scalloped rectangle using Mama Elephant's All Prettied Up. One I used as the panel and from the other I die cut clouds from using Mama Elephant's Landscape Trio. For variation I also die cut some cloud borders with Lawn Fawn's Cloudy Hillside Pop-Up Add On.

I used different shades of green Oxide ink ( Pine Needles, Evergreen Bough, Lucky Clover and Cracked Pistacchio) and tried to achieve an ombré effect. To add a little bit of interest I also splashed some water droplets on the paper but also stamped some little stars using the same inks I used for the ink blending.

For the images on my card I chose different sets by Mama Elephant: The dragon and the tiny girl come from Me and My Dragon, the birthday cake I found in Dragon Wishes, the Balloon and the sentiment is from the set Space Bears. I stamped, coloured with alcohol markers and fussy cut all the images.
Then I assembled the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.

   

       

   

Clean and Simple shaker card for autumn or fall

Hi everyone, it's Esther here with a Clean and Simple shaker card for autumn or fall. 

Don't you love this time of year? I'm lucky to live right next to woodland. When I get out to walk the dogs there on an afternoon, the sky is a wonderful clear pale blue, the air is sharp, and the leaves crunch under our feet. Perfect!

I wanted to capture these sensations in a card, and thought I'd also show some of the steps for anyone who might find that helpful. 

Here's my card:

I used four products for this card. The front panel is cut using the Concord & 9th Grateful Leaf Dies. The sentiment is from the matching Concord & 9th Lace Leaf set. I've been so impressed with this stamp set - did you see my Christmas card that used the small leaf? This is a really versatile set for every season and I'm going to get a lot of use out of it. 

The inner layer of the card uses Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens for the background, the grey shading on the birch trees and the colouring on the leaves. These pens are another absolute win. I got the 24 pen set to test them out, but the bigger 60 pen set quickly went onto the wishlist! A massive bonus is that these pens don't bleed through decent quality card stock, so you can colour images on one layer cards with no leakage through to the other side. (Obviously don't use water with them unless it's watercolour card stock!)

Finally, those beautiful birch trees are from Mama Elephant Birch Trees Creative Cuts.

I used leaves as the shaker element of this card instead of sequins so that they would have the right matt texture and would "stick" in the tree branches when the card is shaken. I'm thrilled with how that worked; it produced exactly the effect I was aiming for.

Just get your Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens and shade from dark to light on the front and back of a scrap piece of card using each lighter colour to blend over the darker colour next to it. From the left, I used 062 Dark Brown, 060 Brown, 070 Orange, 052 Bright Yellow and 050 Yellow. Then die cut multiple leaves using the various sizes of leaf die in your Mama Elephant Birch Trees Creative Cuts.

To get the loose watercolour background, take your Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens and scribble them onto an acrylic stamping block, slightly overlapping each colour with the previous, then mist lightly with water so the colour beads up. I find I get a softer edge if I then take a sheet of kitchen paper and lightly tap excess ink away from the edges of the block. Then press your base panel over the acrylic block, lift away and either dry with a heat tool or leave to dry naturally. I repeated this step twice to get the coverage I wanted. From the top, I used 092 Blue Gray, 031 Cobalt Blue, 043 Olive Green, 072 Beige and 062 Dark Brown.

Finally, the sentiment! I love that long sentiment strip from the Concord & 9th Lace Leaf set with its descriptive autumn/fall phrases. Here's how to shape it perfectly for the edge of the negative leaf shape on the front panel if you're using a MISTI.

Place your die cut front card panel into the MISTI, use the magnets to hold it down and close the lid. Use a dark colour of Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pen to draw on the top of the lid along the right hand edge of the leaf. Remember, Zigs are waterbased pens so it will wipe right off when you're done with a baby wipe or damp tissue. 

Then open the lid and press the sentiment into place on the underneath of the lid, a short distance from the line you've drawn. 

Keep closing the lid to check you have the placement right on the card panel in real life. When you're happy with the placement, ink up the sentiment and stamp it onto the card panel. You can then clean up the stamp as usual and wipe the Zig off your lid.

Final tip - always give the acetate on your shaker cards a quick wipe with an anti-static pad before adhering everything together. That way, your shaker filling won't stick to the acetate but will instead move freely.

Thanks for stopping by!

Getting Organised!

Hi! How are you?

Well the organising part is the second project. This project came out of the first one because I had lots of sets lying out whilst I was trying to choose one. I love this Wanderlust set.

I wanted to use the background stamp to onto acetate

Maybe I had Smarties on the brain, but it does look a little like sweets!

                                       

Anyway, on to the organisation. For those of you anticipating the back to school uniform buying, it can be a hassle and as I have several to buy for, I thought I'd make the buying a little more pleasant and make myself a proper list so I don't forget anything.

I started off with the Mama Elephant New Family set

This set and the coordinating Creative Cuts are on special offer now- so do grab a bargain here!

I created the tag using Embellished Tag Creative Cuts

I added a strip of stamped stars so I could colour each one as I buy them

I put the tags together with a D ring and added some seam binding to decorate. 

This would make a perfect record of your family 'measurements' for shoes and collar sizes etc that you can slip in your bag or add in room sizings or curtain measurements. Just the thing for when you spot a bargain!

Hope you are inspired to get organised.
(just wish I could get organised in other areas)

See you next week
xx

Wheeeeeeeee!

 Wheeeeeeeeee.
It's one of those days where a high degree of fun is required.
Those days where you might even climb UP a slide rather than down one.
These little animals are just having a ton of fun

I'm all for having fun with sets too.

Yes, this Mama Elephant 'New Family' is a baby themed set.

But don't let that restrict you

It's a really fun set. 

You just need to start not with the set, but with your imagination.

Just think of any scene and plonk the characters into it. I thought they'd have a laugh on a slide, so I simply googled a slide image, sketched it, coloured it in, cut it out and then took a long hard look at the set.

I could see that the animals could be turned in different directions and realised that to 'hide' some of the animals slightly behind the slide rim, I'd need a top layer raised with foam pads to keep the story believable ( ha ha!).

Once I'd positioned them on the slide, I looked again, saw the swags of foliage and thought it would soften the look plus give the idea of a more woodland playground.

Having been reading 'The Faraway Tree' (by Enid Blyton) yesterday, I don't reckon this scene would look out of place!

I masked off half of one of the sentiments, so this set becomes even more adaptable. 

Hope you like my whimsical take on an animal playground. Go and have fun yourself; if you see a slide today I dare you to go up it the wrong way, or even just slide down it!

See you next week,

Keren xx

Unicorn Merry-go-round!

Hi! Fancy a spin? 

There's something incredibly nostalgic about fairs and I love seeing those ornately beautiful Carousels. That's where I got the inspiration for this card..plus I wanted to combine two fabulous Mama Elephant sets.

and mixing it up with 'New Family'

So I started out with the whole idea of adding the New Family animals on the back of the horses. I needed the unicorns to look more like carousel horses so I masked off the manes as below and used the moon in the set to act as a saddle.

The 'pole' things- were created using the little dashes and star and stamping opposite ways. Once you start with a theme and work out what you actually need to complete the picture, you can find similar shapes if you look hard enough!

It's also a useful example of 'suggestion'. I was trying to work out how to add the top and bottom and make it look realistically like 'flying Jennies' (another name for the Merry Go Round) but once I'd connected the riders and horses and poles, it was enough. The imagery is strong enough to suggest the scene- plus it's less work for me too!!

Hope you're day is a fun one, and you don't feel like you're going round in circles!
See you next week,

Keren xx