A Cool Kiwi Day

Well seeing as summer is here I had to get these new dies into use, I love the Cool Treats die 

set from Concord &9th and I just had to pair it up with an older stamp and die set to make this juicy Kiwi lolly...

Now I've never tried a Kiwi Lolly but hey, it looks good for a summery birthday card and the key

to make your lolly look real is sandwiching the slices between two layers of vellum.

I started by using the Orange you sweet dies to make three kiwis... I just love the die that cuts the little seeds out!! 

I used ink blending to colour up the edges and centres of the slices then backed the seed area with black card. 

I added the little green hearts back in place but gave them a swipe on a white pigment ink pad first to lighten the colour.

The white lines are created by just inking the centre of the small orange segment stamp with pigment ink 

and stamping a few times, rotating the stamp to get a circular pattern..

The great thing about vellum is you can layer two different colours to get the shade you need so I used a yellow green and blue green to get this bright shade. I of course used Stick it to adhere the layers together, always a great invisible adhesive on vellum. I love how you can still see the detail on the slices through the vellum :)

I used the small cluster of seeds in the set to stamp a pattern around the edge of the square card base.. love the black and white against the bright green. For a sentiment I reached for the Cool Treats Turnabout set and used my Misti to ink the word COOL in a few different inks to mimic the kiwi fruit colouring... even adding a few seeds with pen!! 

The juicy bursts are made using an older die in my stash and cut from the left over vellum scraps.

Mmmm is your mouth watering too??

 Just think, you could make a citrus set of lollies too using the same set :)

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Floral Die Cutting

It's my Auntie's birthday today so my card today is for her and as she loves flowers I decided to go down the floral route via the medium of die cuts!

I started with the Paper Smooches Single Rose die and added smaller flowers and the ribbon banner from Bountiful Blooms die from Wplus9.   I die cut them all from white card covered on the rear with Stick-It to make it easy to adhere all the pieces to my final design and then shaded them with copics for added realism rather than just cutting them from flat coloured card.  Both these die sets  have both solid and outline images but I chose to use just the solid parts for this design.  Auntie is from the ever useful Kinfolk stamp set by Paper Smooches.

The polka dot border is also by Paper Smooches and is brand new and will be in store later today or tomorrow.  I added some bright pink behind them to make them pop and added a little soft blue wash around the flowers for the same reason.  It doesn't show well in the photo but I finished the roses with glossy accents to make them stand out as the main focus.

NEWS FROM THE STORE:

• The latest couple of releases plus massive restocks from Paper Smooches are here and I am currently wading my way through them.  Will get them in store as soon as I can later today or tomorrow.
• MFT's April release is in transit and will be in store when they release on Tuesday.
• We have some Echo Park papers and dies which will be live in the next couple of days also.
• We have restocks in transit from Avery Elle and Lawn Fawn and they will be here mid-week.
• We have the latest release and restocks from Winnie and Walter in transit.
• Wplus9 have a new release pending and that will ship later this week along with restocks (yes including Ranunculus but wait until you see this month's bouquet!!!!)
• We are still waiting for Altenew to ship our order - it was due to ship on Tuesday last week but still hasn't moved.
• We are waiting on Hero Arts restocks which are due "early April" to our UK distributor.

Space Bear walk.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week I've got a little galaxy action going on...

Using those brilliant Space Bears from Mama Elephant.

These Bears are so fun!  I mean, what's not to love about a bear in Space helmet?!  So I decided to take them on a little space walk...

I started by creating my galaxy background.  I purposely made it a little more pastel by using a lot of grey on top of my purple, blue and yellow ink, with only a teeny bit of black as I didn't want it to feel too imposing.  I added a load of white and shimmery splats and splodges and left to dry.  I stamped my bears onto watercolour card and twice each onto vellum to create their helmets.  I coloured my bears using my Zig Clean Colour Brush pens and fussy cut, cutting off their  helmets (ouch) on the card, but only cutting out the helmets on the vellum...you with me?  I then adhered my helmets back onto my bears using the almighty Stick-it.

I created a planet base by cutting an oval and water coloured it with a mix of Distress Ink.  I added a black frame using Mama Elephant's Index Card Creative Cuts and stamped my sentiments, from the same cool Space Bear set, onto light grey card, in black, clear heat embossed, and cut into little banners.

Then for the fun bit...building my scene.  I used some bright yellow twine for my space rope...ok ok, I know it's not called space rope...but it is today...and tied to each Bear's hand, keeping it in place by adding a dab of wet glue.  My bears are kept in place with foam pads, and I added a load of stars I made using stick-it covered in silver glitter, cut using Mama Elephant's Confetti die, to my background.

And there you have it...Space Bears on a Space walk...now there's a sentence I never thought I'd say haha.

As always, everything is linked below, and I shall see y'all next week.

Jillx

    

  

Flowers, frills, and bows.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I've got a little bit of 'chintz' for you...

...full of flowers, frills and bows...

My main panel is made using Mama Elephant's Bloomsies.  A delightful set packed with gorgeous little flowers and sprigs, a ribbon banner and equally delightful sentiments.  I took a load of the different flowers, the ones with more 'open space' to them, stamped them all over a piece of watercolour card, and heat embossed them in white.  I then water coloured each little bloom with different Distress Inks, and washed over the whole of the background.  I then took a piece of vellum, and cut several layers of scalloped borders, (I used a die from my stash but I have linked this one from WPlus9 as it will work every bit as well), so once all lined up and layered on top of each other, it would create this cutesy little frill.  I then added this to my background panel, with a little wrap of ribbon and a sweet neat little bow.  

My banner and sentiment are also from the Bloomsies set, and are stamped onto vellum and heat embossed in silver powder.  I wanted my banner to have some dimension, which can be very tricky when using vellum, so I stamped it out a few extra times and just  used the 'tails' behind to help build it up.  I used Stick-it to adhere my extra tails to the banner, and my banner to the card - it works sooo perfect with vellum as it doesn't show!  Pretty magic really!  I embellished with a scattering of pearls to keep the whole 'chintzy' vibe up, and there you have it.

I hope you like it, and as always, everything I used is linked to our fabulous store, below.

See you next week.

Jillx

   

Hugs and Kisses

Hi, I'm standing in for Kate today as she has all her crafty stuff packed up for moving and is finding it hard going cold turkey with no crafting!

My card today is inspired by a song - I am really loving "Ex's and Oh's by Elle King" at the minute so I took my inspiration from the title and the new layers of love die set from Concord and 9th.   The die as the title implies gives you hearts you can layer up but on this card, I actually just used the waste from one of the 3 dies.

I inked up a scrap of white card with two shades of distress ink to give an ombre effect from pink to purple and then die cut the stripey heart after applying some stick-it to the back of the card for ease of application.  I used a bit of washi to hold the die cut in place and then popped each negative into its space before removing the die (saving it for another project)  I forgot to photograph it as I did it, but here's a shot which sort of shows you what I mean!

The sentiment is a die cut from Mama Elephant's "Type It" set, die cut from black card stock and given a thick coat of glossy accents.

Here's the quick card I made with the main die cut.  I added a scrap of dotted paper from the smitten pad from MFT using the floral outline die and a tonal "hello" from Mama Elephant as hearts aren't just for valentines!  To finish I filled in the holes punched by the floral frame with black glossy accents.

This is a really versatile die set - great value for money too with lots of looks from one product.

That's me for today - catch you on Sunday.   Kate should be back for her normal round of fabulousness next week.

Tara