Cool Penguins

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Today’s card features one of my favourite stamp sets from last year’s Christmas season: Mama Elephant’s Cool Penguins. These are so cute, aren't they?

I cut down a piece of watercolour cardstock to a reactangle and stamped the images I wanted to use in a very pale colour. I didn't mask anything. Because of the light ink I used I didn't had to. When I coloured over them the lines got lost.

For my colouring medium I chose watercolours and did some no line coloring. To get more contrast I also added coloured pencils to the area that I wanted to be the darkest. I love the combination of watercolour and coloured pencils. With the watercolours colouring takes not so much time and the coloured pencils are perfect to add details.

The background I also coloured with watercolours! I added a wash of turquoise and sprinkled a little bit of colour on it to add some texture.

The sentiment came from Mama Elephant's Merry Greetings and I stamped it in dark blue. All there was left to do was to adhere the panel to my cardbase with dimensional adhesive. The colouring took some time but the rest of the card came together quickly.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.

Anni

   

Mini Skating Mouse Snow Globe Tag

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a happy Friday!

Winter is starting to set in in these parts - you can definitely feel the chill in the air! Whilst colder temperatures aren't exactly my favourite thing, there are a few fun things that this season brings - Christmas being one of them! I love creating for Christmas, with gift tags being a particular favourite - they're little little mini works of art!

I decided to pull out a few Lawn Fawn goodies to create a shaped gift tag using the Snow Globe Gift Tag Die set and the Mice On Ice stamp set:

Super cute, right?!

I started die cutting my tag using a folded piece of cardstock. I placed the top edge of the die just above the fold to create a shaped tag that also opens up! I also die cut the two globe base accent pieces and set them aside for the time being.

I stamped the mouse using a pale ink then pulled out my colouring pencils to create a no-line coloured scene! So adorable! I added some dots of white paint, tipped on some embossing powder and heat embossed for some beautiful snow before doing a pale watercolour wash for the sky!

Remember those pieces I set aside? I heat embossed them with gold embossing powder, embossed the top of the tag too by taking my Versamark inkpad direct-to-paper, and then adhered the bottom pieces in place using Multi Matte Medium. Some added sparkly ribbon and string completed the look!

I'd love to hear what you think of this creation. Is there someone you know who'd love to receive it? Thanks for stopping by!

Rainbow Wreath

Hey & Happy Thursday!

It's Bev here and today I have something a little bit different to share with you. I don't know about you, but I am always finding creative inspiration on Instagram lately. Recently I saw a beautiful rainbow wreath made from die cuts and it's been on my 'to make' list ever since!

I've also been having a 'treat yo'self' week and ordered lots of new crafting supplies, including the Winter Greenery dies from the recent WPlus9 release. These are designed to match the coordinating stamp set Winter Greenery, but I have just used the leaf sprig die seen on the right of the product image below.

I set to choosing a rainbow of coloured card offcuts from my stash and set to die cutting three of each colour and I have 15 colours as I just love colour and couldn't leave any of my favourites out! 

For the base of the wreath to secure the die cuts to, I used the Wreath Base available from the store and seen below. It is a jute wrapped wire ring and is perfect for adhering card, paper, felt and more.

Before I started adhering the die cut leaves, I added some linen thread to be able to hang the wreath once it was finished. I then started by adding one of each of the colours of leaf to the base using liquid adhesive, similar to this Lawn Fawn Glue Tube.

After adhering one of each colour I went back adding another of each colour, until I had used all three leaves of each colour.

I procrastinated for some time as to how to finish off the wreath and finally settled on the 'With Love' sentiment banner from Concord & 9th Mistletoe Messages stamp set. I've adhered this to the wreath using foam adhesive. 

I also added some adhesive crystals randomly around the wreath for a little added sparkle and interest. I think in all this took me about 3 hours to make from start to finish and it was thoroughly enjoyable. 

I am now thinking of trying a stamped & die cut rainbow version! The leaves in the stamp set are 2 step, so you could really play around with colour layering. I will be sure to share if I do get round to making it.

That's all from me today. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my project as much as I enjoyed making it! Until next time, thanks so much for stopping by.

Crafty Hugs

Bev 

Sledding Polar Pals

Hello, Tallie here!

Somewhat inspired by the recent colder chill in the air, I'm back with the Christmas vibes today with the Avery Elle Polar Playtime stamp set. I have a couple of friends who like simple cards, so this one-layer, alcohol marker coloured style suits them perfectly. Plus, the design is easy to adapt to any stamp set.

I started out by stamping the sledding characters from the Avery Elle Polar Playtime stamp set onto some blending cardstock with some MFT Extreme Black ink.

I took out my alcohol markers and coloured in the scene, sticking to Christmassy reds and greens for the accessories and making sure to use two different brown families to differentiate between the sledge and the bear's fur.

For the background, I used some light blue-green markers, concentrating the darker colour immediately around and behind the sled to give some movement to the scene.

I stamped the sentiment from the set beneath the scene and then added a few finishing touches of snow with a white gel pen.

A really easy design that can be customised to any stamp set!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Oh So Jolly Gift Bag

Hello, it's Liz here. Today's project features an upcycled plain white gift bag. First of all I stamped, coloured and cut out the two figures (twice) from the Stamping Bella set 'Little Bits Winter Collection Figure Skaters' (matching dies are here). Then I used three of the figures to decorate the bag popping them onto green and blue cardstock which had been die cut into dome shapes using 'Stitched Dome Stax Die-namics'. Before adhering the domes to the bag I wrapped some twine around and tied a bow. 

For the tag I wanted to stamp the sentiment from the 'Oh So Jolly' set by Sugar Pea Designs onto white cardstock but it just wasn't having much impact so I cut out a further two tag shapes from the green and blue cardstock and layered them together at a slight angle. Then I attached my fourth little figure to the tag using foam pads. I'm pretty pleased with how my little bit of upcycling turned out!

Thanks for stopping by today, happy crafting!

Bright Lights

Hello hello, its Jenny again bringing you a bright and colourful Christmas card which is 

ironic as it was anything but bright when I took these photos!! 🙄

The Party Lights stamp and die combo from MFT is a great set. I love different the curly strings for 

the lights and you have three options for adding the bulbs... three stamps that line all the bulbs

 up exactly where you need them or individual bulb stamps and of course, the dies

I've used grey pigment ink to stamp the wires across the card panel, they are easy to line up 

if you need to extend them. I have used the matching multi bulb stamps for each string

 and used different coloured inks for the bulbs. I thought it was not the best idea when I first 

started but actually it worked very well and of course using the stamping alignment tool helped.

It just so happened that the word Bright from the Rainbow Wishes dies fitted the space

 perfectly ... that never usually happens! The rest of the sentiment is from Mini Merry 

Messages and just snuggles into the gap nicely.

To add some dimension I used Nuvo Crystal Glaze on the bulbs, they really lift the 

design with a little bit of shine on each bulb 😊

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Seven Ways With Foiling Dies

If like me you've been resisting buying another machine for your craft room, then you may think the current trend for hot foiling dies is not for you.   Well, I caved and bought a machine last week, and although I did love the result, I wanted to challenge myself to see if the new foiling dies we have can be used WITHOUT a foiling machine - and I have 7 cards below all done without the machine as well as 1 with it, so you can see the original look too.   All the cards were made with one die - the Impressive Snowflake Die from MFT and one stamp set - Mistletoe Messages from Concord and 9th.


1)  Hot Foiled
So for those of you like me with no will power who bought a foiling machine (I have the spellbinders glimmer which fits in my existing die cutting machine and I found super easy to use - this card was actually my first ever try with it) then this is how the foiled impression looks. 

 
For those of you don't know about hot foil dies (and until last week I didn't!) basically you get a hot plate that replaces the bottom platform of your die cutting machine.  You plug it in, once its hot you put the die on, place your foil (coloured surface down) on top of the die and press the timer button.   Once the time is up, pop your cardstock on top, place the relevant plate that comes with your foiling machine on top of that and run the whole sandwich through your die cutting machine and it foils and debosses at the same time so you get a foiled letter-press look to your finished image.   All the foils we stock are heat activated so will work with your hot foil machines.   Here I used copper on some teal card and the sentiment I stamped and embossed with copper embossing powder.


2)  Glue Pen Foiling
For those of you who would love to get the foiled look, but don't have or don't want a foiling machine, then I've had a play and there are ways you can do it.

For this look I just ran the impressive die (in this case impressive means to leave and impression rather than being brilliant but it is that too!) through my die cutting machine with my embossing mat in the sandwich and then turned it over to work on the embossed side.   I used a fine glue pen and traced over the embossed lines and once the glue was tacky, I placed a sheet of teal foil over top and set it aside for 10 minutes so it could fully dry, a gentle rub and then peel back and hey presto - foiled look with no expensive machine required.

2½)  Glue Pad Foiling
I also think you can do it on the debossed side using a glue pad to ink up the die with glue before running it through the machine, then clean up the die place foil over the glue and run it back through to get the foil look more like the hot foil, but when I tried it this morning my flitter glue was dried up so I'll have to get more and give it a go later for you.

3)  Embossing/Debossing
The dies work brilliantly for just leaving an embossed/debossed design in your card stock.  For this one I just went for the straight forward embossed on white using my embossing mat in the sandwich - its a really crisp embossed texture.

4) Shallow Embossing
This one came out by accident - I got the sandwich wrong and the mat was behind the die (doh!) so the die only debossed the card very slightly as it had nothing soft to press into but it did leave a subtle pattern and I kinda liked it - so I just traced over it with a coloured pencil so it showed up better on photos (irl I would probably have left it as was as I liked the subtlety)  I added some gems for sparkle too.

5) Letterpress
By inking up the die (using really light dabs to ensure it only sits on the top) then you can get a letterpress loo to add more drama to the embossed impression.  Here I used navy cardstock and inked up the die with Unicorn White ink.

If you swap it round on white cardstock with a darker in you get a really dramatic look!

6)  Embossed Letterpress
By taking it a step further - you can ink up your die with versamark and then sprinkle on embossing powder - that's how I got a whiter look to the snowflake here.

7) Glitter Fill
For this last one, I debossed the die as before with my embossed mat in the die cutter and then used sea spray stickles to fill in the debossed lines with lots of festive glitter!

Hopefully that's given you lots of ideas for how to get the most of impression dies - with or without a hot foil machine!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We are expecting deliveries from the following brands this week:

• Newton's Nook
• Altenew
• Avery Elle

Catch you later

Tara