Altenew butterflies and watercolour for Mothers' Day

Hi everyone, it's Esther here with a card for Mothers' Day featuring Altenew butterflies and watercolouring.

I stamped and heat embossed in gold the large butterfly from Altenew Wild Hibiscus stamp set, then lightly watercoloured the butterflies in pale pink with darker pink highlights on their wings using Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens. The background used a pale blue Zig pen.

I stamped "You Are" from My Favorite Things Count the Stars stamp set and heat embossed it in white on grey card, cutting it to size with a sentiment die from My Favorite Things Blueprints 29 and adding a banner edge by hand with scissors. 

The "wonderful" is from Concord and 9th Wonderful Word Dies, layered up twice in white card and once on top in grey card.

I cut the panel to size using My Favorite Things Blueprints 29 and adhered it all together onto a top folding card base.

Thanks for stopping by!

          

Shoot for the Stars galaxy card with My Favorite Things

Hello, it's Esther here. The cards I'm sharing today were inspired by a recent visit to the National Space Centre in Leicester. If you've never been there, you must drop everything and go immediately! I spent most of a day wandering entranced through interactive displays, going on a wonderful and hair-raising flight simulator to Europa (Jupiter's icy moon) and watching open-mouthed as the Planetarium showed a "total surround" award winning, 3D trip back to the Big Bang and the very beginning of spacetime. Wow!

I decided to make a pair of children's birthday cards in different colour ways using My Favorite Things Count the Stars.

The card backgrounds are inked to create galaxies. To recreate this, try using My Favorite Things Premium Dye Ink Pads. My first card uses shades of pink, purple, light blue, dark blue and black. My second card uses shades of light blue, green, dark yellow, dark blue and black. Add semi-blended streaks of colour in different shapes/directions to the middle of the card, extending to the edges in some places, and then ink an uneven black border. Keep adding bright colours and then re-defining the border, and eventually you'll have a galaxy. Then splatter water lightly over the top and mop it off to create the effect of stars. I added metallic splatter too.

I then die cut the inked backgrounds into a stitched rectangle using My Favorite Things Blueprints 29. Using the long sentiment strip with pierced edges from the same set, I stamped, heat embossed and die cut "shoot for the" from my Favorite Things Count the Stars stamp set in gold on black card for my first card and silver for my second. I repeated this with "stars" from the matching Count the Stars Dienamic set, this time die cutting, then stamping and heat embossing as the word dies are closed. I used my MISTI for placement.

Finally I added a star to each card using My Favorite Things Lucky Stars Dienamics. I decided to leave the cards at that, as I wanted the backgrounds to really stand out and not get covered up with more stamping or die cuts. Galaxies are really easy to create, and perfect for kids' cards, so I hope this encourages you to have a go if you haven't tried them so far.

Some other sets you could use with galaxy backgrounds: Altenew's Space Travel, My Favorite Things Out of this World, Paper Smooches Space Dies, Paper Smooches Space Cadet, Carta Bella Space Academy Solar System Die Set, Carta Bella Space Academy Space Travel Die Set, or Mama Elephant Space Bears. There's also the fabulous My Favorite Things Space Explorer set , new in the February release!

Thanks for stopping by!

        

Peek-a-Boo polka dot birthday card

Hi everyone, Esther here with a simple but fun birthday card featuring the My Favorite Things Peek-a-Boo Polka Dots Dienamic.

I die cut a base panel with the My Favorite Things Peek-a-Boo Polka Dots Dienamic, and popped out a few of the circles, leaving the rest in place. That panel was stuck to a folded card base.

Next I attached the popped-out circles to a piece of Post-It tape and coloured them with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens (050 Yellow, 052 Bright Yellow, 070 Orange, 024 Wine Red, 031 Cobalt Blue, 032 Persian Blue) using two colours to blend each other into an ombre effect. When they were dry, I stuck them back into the main panel.

Finally, I used My Favorite Things Count the Stars stamp set and matching Dienamics to stamp the sentiment, heat embossing the first part in white on a black card strip and sticking it straight to the panel, and stamping "Wish" in black ink on to the pre-die cut shape and popping it up on foam pads for dimension.

I'll use this card for one of my nephews who has his birthday early next year.

Thanks for stopping by!