Dura-lar Flowers!

Hey! Hope you're doing ok?

I'm here with a new-to-me product called Dura-lar for the very reason that I wanted an acetate that could be sculpted.

Now you can get this look with plain acetate just without so much of the moulding. It's easy...

Stamp your images onto the polyester film.

I've used the Winnie & Walter sets In Bloom:Renee's Leaves & In Bloom:Anna's Flora

It makes these flowers even more interesting, that I can mould them. You simply dip them in hot water, mould under water and then bring out still holding onto the shape which then fixes it.

This is the completed card- I just wish you could see the shine!

The really hard bit was painting. I can't make paints do what I'd normally do with pencils or markers. To be hones, I rushed it. But there's definitely room for improvement!

Hopefully you can see on the next picture both the shine and the shape in the images

 It's so much fun creating shiny flowers by painting underneath acetate. It's a simple technique and you can use any acrylic paint. I do find the more you pay, the better the quality, but you could achieve the same look with paint nicked (borrowed) from your kid's room ;-)

It's a bolder brighter look and makes these flowers really look alive!

Do hope you'll give the technique a go!

See you soon!

xx

Spectacular Stamp Set

Hi there :)

This week I have tried my hand at sewing.... it's a very basic project as I'm not usually that compatible with a sewing machine!! I'm afraid I did not take photos of the process as I really did not know how it would work out but amazingly it did.....

I've used a great little stamp set from Lawn Fawn called Clear to See with pigment ink to decorate a piece of calico material which I've turned into a soft drawstring spectacle bag. I started with a piece of fabric that was twice the size I needed so the bag would be double skinned.... I didn't want the stamping to show through on the inside.  After stamping the spectacles and hearts with pigment inks you have to set them with a hot iron.... I used a piece of greaseproof paper between the material and iron.

After stamping the design  I turned over the top edge to make an open channel for the drawstring and then made up the bag by sewing round the bottom and one of the sides. Now I have a unique bag for my sunglasses :)

Whilst I had the stamps out I thought I'd use them with the coordinating dies, which are on sale in the discontinued items section of the website by the way... just sayin' ;)

I went with a primary colour palette in softer tones and made a card...

The spectacles look great when they're die cut but instead of using lots of tiny pieces of foam dimensional to pop the specs up, I backed a piece of white fun foam with a sheet of Stick It and then cut a load more glasses from that. The stick it makes adhering the foam to the die cut shapes easy and then they look great popped up on your card too...

The sentiments are from a couple of Altenew sets, Label Love and Figure effects ( the latter will be back in stock soon)

                                     
     

I hope you enjoyed my little foray into the sewing world... I must have caught the sewing machine on a good day!! Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Cosy Felt

I bet you could all guess what I'd be playing with today - I did say I couldn't wait for Newton's Nook fabby new book themed stamps!   I went with A Cosy Day In first as I wanted to do one of my favourite techniques of paper-piecing but using felt as well as paper as I thought felt would add a touch of realism to the comfy looking chair!

I stamped the whole image onto a square of grey felt from our sample packs using a Avery Elle's Dye Ink and just ran a hot iron over it with a piece of kitchen paper in between to set the ink.  Now to do the paper piecing.  I stamped the image onto white card twice so I could have the "girl layer" and "cat layer" separate.   I stamped just the cushion onto a patterned paper from the Hello Gorgeous pad from My Minds Eye - a good tip to make your image and background sing is to use the same paper in your image as your background as long as you have some plain colour to separate the two.

I coloured the image with our new Zig Clean Color Markers from Kuretake - I used the big set which is a bit of an investment, but we do also have the 24 set if you want to try them.  You can colour with them just as pens but they also work like watercolour markers and are really easy to use with the great brush tip they have.

To layer it all up I die cut a couple of circles of white card using the Lawn Fawn stitched dies and stamped the whole image onto the large one to make piecing it back together easy.   To finish the chair I used some tiny flat backed pearls to "stud" the chair where the circles are on the image.

NEWS FROM THE STORE:

• We will have the latest release from Neat and Tangled in store tomorrow.
• The new release from Avery Elle goes on sale on the 26th May (Thursday) and we will be live as soon as they are!
• We are waiting on the new release and restocks from Altenew to ship.
• We have an order pending for the latest couple of releases from WaffleFlower - we should have that by the end of the month.
• We are waiting for Hero Arts to hit the UK distributor.

That's all for today folks - happy crafting!

Tara

Die-Cut a Window for a Scene

Hey crafty friends! Today I am trying something new, which is to die-cut a window for an entire scene, with some of the images overlapping even! Enjoy!

The first step, which is to die-cut the window, is actually the easiest. You only need to invest some brain power into what kind of scene you want to end up with before starting the die-cutting. For this first step, you don’t need any masks, you just need to remember: whatever you die-cut first will be in the foreground.

As you can see, the only tricky part is stamping the images perfectly into the openings. The MISTI really did help, but you can absolutely do this with just an acrylic block and some patience. I’ve done this before, so it’s not a problem, it just takes a little more time. For the stamping, you will need some masks to make sure you can create the illusion of one image being in front of another.

The coloring with colored pencils followed my usual method of starting with light layers, not a lot of pressure, and then slowly building up my color in layers. After I was done with the video, I even added some more dark color on the bottom of the tail to intensify the shadows.

The added highlights with my gel-pen were not necessary, but I felt that it added something really bright and eye-catching to the design, making it much more interesting.

Thank you for stopping by today! I hope you got inspired!

Forest Friends

Forest Friends Die-namics

Stamp Shammy SHC UK

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Create your own inspiration.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm creating my own Pinterest style inspiration poster!

Using Mama Elephant's Block Party Letters, and the oh so beautiful Gansai Tambi Starry Colours.

You know the sort of thing I mean, they're very 'in' right now, always pretty with some cool fonts or graphics inspiring us to live the best life we can...or dare to dream to in any case.  Well...why not create your own?

I started by stamping out my chosen 'inspirational' quote using Mama Elephant's Block Party Letters and filling/masking them off with drawing gum (I've said it before and I'll say it again - this stuff is a must-have in your stash and if you haven't already tried it - you neeeed to!).  

I love alphabet sets as you can say anything and everything you want to.  It also means you can write sentiments in your own dialect, which for a northerner like me, is amazing (have you ever tried to find a card with 'mam' on it from your mainstream high street store? ...impossible!).  I especially love how these letters are open so your choices on how to colour them are limited only to what you have in your stash, and your own imagination!  I coloured mine using the Gansai Tambi Starry watercolour set as it fit perfect with the image I had in my head of a 'Pinterest' style poster.  Nothing to do with the fact I am in love/obsessed with them and can't put them down :) .

Once my drawing gum was dry, I created a watercolour wash over the background (well, it wouldn't be me if I didn't include a wash somewhere eh?!) and left to dry.  I then gently removed my gum and painted in my letters, like I say, using the absolutely beautiful Gansai Tambi Starry Colours.  The fact you get so many different shades of gold means you can create light and shadows to help with dimension.  I added a good few flicks and splashes of gold across the back and embellished with a scattering of sequins.  I matted my panel onto a piece of card I had gold embossed the edges of, mounted onto an Avery Elle notecard, and there you have it.

Now I did make another card, in exactly the same way (with a little addition of Sketchy Letters & Glossy Accents), for my friend's 40th birthday to emphasise how cool it can be to create your own sentiment saying exactly what you want to say...but forgot to photograph it before sending it!  Doh!  So got my friend to photograph it and send them over haha - and here they are...oh...and Happy 40th Stu :)

I hope you like them, and that they maybe inspire you to get inspirational!

As always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx

    

Watercolour & Gold

Hello everyone and happy Thursday! Lydia here with you and I'm so happy you stopped by.

Today I have a watercolour and gold creation to share.

When I saw the cute little whimsy flowers in My Favorite Things 'Pretty Posies' set I knew I had to have it!

I started with a piece of watercolour card and stamped and embossed the flowers and leaves in white. I had the floral images more concentrated at the top and fewer 'floating' down.

Once the embossing was cool I added a wash over and around the flowers using pinks and orange- I kept this quite light as I wanted the flowers to stand out more. When the wash was dry I added more of the same colours to the flowers and I just love the look this gives.

I then waited for it to dry before adding drops of 2 way glue around the flowers, I waited for this to go clear before adding some foil on top- yay... gold foil studs! For some added gold to the background I added some gold splatters.

For some added detail I used the stitched line from Mama Elephant 'Fine Trimmings' around the edges of the piece of watercolour card.

For the sentiment I used Concord & 9th 'Beautiful You' die set, I cut the 'beautiful' out of gold card, and it looks amazing. I finished the sentiment off using a 'you are' embossed in gold on a strip of vellum from Altenew 'Thinking Of You'.

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Hugs Lydia x

My Favorite Things- Pretty Posies stamp set (SHC)	Altenew- Thinking Of You Stamp Set	Concord & 9th- Beautiful You Die Set (SHC)	Mama Elephant- Fine Trimmings Die Set
Kuretake Zig- Squeeze & Roll 2 Way Glue Pen (SHC)	Thermoweb- Gold Deco Foil (SHC)

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