New Year, New House, New Arrival

I've got a couple of "new thing" cards to share this afternoon as we have a friend with a new house and a new baby girl in the family.  They are linked not only by their newness but also by the technique I used which is one I think is often overlooked but is really effective - and stash stretching - using your dies to emboss with.

I started with the new house card - and used a simple but effective highlighting technique by keeping it all white on white except for the single house in the middle.

I used one of the border dies from Lawn Fawn's stitched border to emboss a simple line to represent the street and cut houses from white card using Mama Elephant's Home Collection dies with stick-it for ease of stacking up multiples (I used 3 layers for some dimension)   To highlight the middle house on my last die cut I put stick-it on BOTH sides of the card before die cutting and then simply rubbed on some foil using Pumpkin Deco Foil for a bit of bling.  (you could use gilding flakes too)   The sentiments come from Altenew's Succulents stamp set.

Now for our new family arrival, I've gone for a full-on pink fest but paired with grey for a nod to good taste!

I used Itty Bitty Welcoming Committee and coloured the images with alcohol markers before fussy cutting it out.  I stamped it again onto some pink spotted paper for the banner they are holding and cut that out to paper-piece it together using a craft knife to cut around their arms so I could slot that element it to make it look like they are really holding it.

I used the Essential Cover Up Vertical Dienamic from MFT and embossed it onto my grey card base by putting my embossing mat under the card stock and adjusting the plates accordingly.  This gives a nice frame to sit the image in and another underneath to add the name to make the card more personal.  The name is simply die cut using Stitched Alphabet also from MFT.

NEWS FROM THE STORE:

We've just had large restocks from Lawn Fawn and MFT.

This week we are expecting:

• Neat and Tangled's New Release
• Reverse Confetti's New Release (please note as the owner is currently fighting cancer, their releases will now be every OTHER month throughout 2017)
• MFT's New Release
• Restocks from Avery Elle
• The new release from Lil' Inker Designs
• Mama Elephants new release and restocks (on the 15th)
• Newton Nook's new release
• Waffle Flower's new release plus their last planner release too

We also have orders in for Concord & 9th's new release and Stamping Bella's new release which we hope to have later this month.  We believe there is a pending new release from Altenew as well which we will order as soon as it becomes available to us.

We will get items onto the store as soon as we can, but as always, these things take time, so bear with us - we will get the items into stock as soon as we physically can.

Catch you next week
Tara

Peace on Earth - clean and simple Christmas card

Hi everyone, it's Esther here with a clean and simple Christmas card to show you. 

When I saw the Mama Elephant Home Collection Creative Cuts set, I couldn't resist it. There's just something about those little houses and trees, and I know I'll be able to use them for Christmas cards, and also birthday and new home cards throughout the year.

I used My Favorite Things Inside & Out Stitched Circle STAX Dienamics to cut a circle in a panel of card stock. I use these circle dies on so many cards. They're one of my all time top buys!

Next to the circle I stamped a sentiment from My Favorite Things Hand Lettered Christmas. 

Taking a new, smaller piece of card stock I inked a night sky in dark to light shades of blue, then splattered it with water and white paint. You can use any ink of your choice, and I particularly like the frosty, cool look of Altenew's Glacier Caves Ink Cubes. This smaller panel was stuck behind the main one to show through the die cut circle.

Using Lawn Fawn's Stitched Hillside Borders, I cut a hill and then re-cut it into a circle at the base using My Favorite Things Inside & Out Stitched Circle STAX Dienamics before sticking it into the circle.

I cut the houses and trees using Mama Elephant Home Collection Creative Cuts, and coloured the trees and windows with Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens in 040 Green, 041 Light Green and 050 Yellow, then splattered the trees with white paint. I hand cut the base of the houses to fit the curve of the hill, then stuck them down and positioned the trees around them.

Finally I layered up the finished panel onto coordinating coloured card and then added it to a card base.

That's it for this week - thanks for stopping by!