Stretch your stencils and say what you want!

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and...HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I'm starting the year with a nice, bright and cheerful card to add a little light to these dark winter days (they don't half mess with my crafting time!)...

...using Echo Park's Hearts Stencils and Lawn Fawn's Quinn's abc's (lower case).

I LOVE this Heart's Stencil, and use it A LOT, so decided to stretch it's use and use the reverse side of it.  I spread and smudged my ink all over my actual stencil, spritzed it with water, and pressed my card onto it to pick up the print; an old but brilliant technique that means you get two designs for the price of one on all of your stencils!  Once dry, I took my Quinn's lower case abc's from Lawn Fawn, and cut my sentiment from the front, taking care to keep all the fiddly bits from inside the letters so I could add them back in.

I inked up another piece of card to use as my background, and adhered a piece of vellum behind my cut-out letters to mute the effect.  I inked another piece of card to match my background, and cut these gorgeous little sprigs using Reverse Confetti's Layered Laurel's Confetti Cuts to draw your eye in.  I added a wrap of twine and a little heart, cut using Paper Smooches Tiny Hearts and embossed in Silver Sparkle powder, to finish off my design.

I mounted my piece onto a card blank, and there you have it.

I really hope you like it, and I can't wait to see what amazing creations you all come up with in 2017!  As always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx

  

  

Painted Roses

Hi there everyone and happy Tuesday!

Today I have a very pretty one layer card to share.

I used the beautiful Altenew 'Painted Rose' and stamped from the bottom of my card base. I stamped the roses first, leaving out the base layer to give a lighter airier feel, in Blush and Rouge Crisp Ink. I then stamped the foliage around them, again leaving out the base image of these, using Frayed Leaf and Forest Glades. I did no masking but tried not to over stamp the rose images too much.

I used a sentiment from the same set. I do love how this card came together!

Thank you so much for stopping by and I'll see you again next week!

Hugs, Lydia x

Altenew- Painted Rose Stamp Set (SHC)

Altenew - Red Sunset Crisp Dye Ink Set

Altenew- Green Fields Crisp Ink Set

InLinkz.com

Interactive birthday card with Magical Unicorns

 

Hi everyone, and happy New Year! It's Esther here with an interactive birthday card that would be suitable for approximately ages 9-12. 

I inked up a panel using Tumbled Glass and Evergreen Bough Distress Inks. I then splattered it with water and mopped it up to give a soft speckled effect. I cut the panel to size using the largest of the Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Rectangles dies. Using different colours of card stock, I cut a rainbow using My Favorite Things End of the Rainbow Die-namics and the cloud from the same set from white card stock which I edged with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. The sentiment is from My Favorite Things Magical Unicorns, and it means exactly what it says! See inside...

The front panel is adhered to the card blank, which is cut to size and folded to create an inner. Inside are scenes from My Favorite Things Magical Unicorns, stamped in Antique Linen Distress Ink, coloured with Promarkers, masked and lightly inked over. I used a waterproof permanent marker and ruler to draw lines which the child can use to write their own story. I love being able to help a child grow their imagination, and this is a fun way to develop their creative writing skills at the same time. The smaller sentiment is from the same set, and the curved "Happy Birthday" is from My Favorite Things Make a Wish.

The back of the card is finished with a simple plain white stitched rectangle that matches the front, in order to hide any bleed from the Promarkers.

I used Magical Unicorns for this card because I thought the sentiment was perfect for the front, but you could use almost any character-based stamp set for this. Sticking just with My Favorite Things, you could use Magical Dragons, You're Rawr-some, Soak up the Fun, Chill Wishes and lots more!

I hope this inspires you with a way to make an interactive card that doesn't need any fancy pieces but that kids seem to love.

Thanks for stopping by!

         

Greenery - Pantone Colour of the Year

Hello, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year.

Today I have a card based on the 2017 Pantone colour of the year, which is Greenery. It's a lovely fresh yellow-green, and is a calming, reinvigorating colour for the new year.

What better set to use for my card than the MFT Leafy Greenery die-namics!

To create the leaves, on watercolour paper I blended Zig Clean Colour Real Brush pens (44 Light Green and 45 Pale Green) with a little water to create a wash of colour. I then die cut several leaves from it, using the MFT Leafy Greenery die-namics.

From an A6 piece of white card, I die cut an MFT Single Stitched rectangle frame to create a window. The background needed some colour, so I used the MFT Distress Patterns stamp set with some green inks to add paint splatter detail.

On an A6 card base, I blended on some light blue distress ink to show through the window when the card is put together. I arranged the leaves to sit within the frame and adhered everything down.

To finish the card, I added a sentiment using the MFT Label Makers stamp set.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope I've inspired you to have a go at making a card using the Pantone Colour of the Year 2017.

Gemma

MFT Leafy Greenery

MFT Distressed Patterns

MFT Rectangle Frames

MFT Label Maker Sentiments

Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens

Ombre Flowers

Hello there and Happy New Year to you all :)

There's not been a lot of free time for crafting in our house over the Christmas period so I'm sharing 

a birthday card I made a few weeks ago.

I've used the Scandinavian Prints Stamp set to add the black details but the coloured flowers are made using the coordinating Scoops Stencil from Neat and Tangled.... it's perfect for using with the stamps to make floral patterns :)

I inked through the stencil using three shades of Distress ink and then added the extra detail with black ink. The scalloped frame is cut three times and layered for dimension and I stamped and embossed the sentiment from Waffleflowers Congrats set onto black card and made it into a small tab to fit inside the frame. The whole panel is mounted onto a black card base.

    

Thanks for stopping by, catch you next week :)

Jenny x

January Challenge Week 1

Welcome to a brand new year of challenges here at Seven Hills Crafts.  If you are new to the blog then we bring you a new challenge each month switching between a sketch, a colour challenge and a theme from month to month.  You get around 3 weeks to enter and then we vote as a Design Team for our winners and the top choice each month wins £15 to spend in store.  The link to add your card stays on our Challenge page throughout the month so its easy to find.

This month we have a nice easy sketch for you to play with.  You can change it up a little but we do need to see that the sketch was your inspiration point and to be eligible for the prize (and for the DT to comment) you MUST use at least one product we sell in store (as we have over 6000 options we don't think this is too hard a rule so we do stick to it!)

As always, the design team play along too to kick start your inspiration and show you how you can interpret the sketch if you're struggling.  We have 3 players this week and we will have weekly reminders from the rest of the DT ahead of the deadline.

Jenny

I've made a simple thank you card using Waffleflower's Monochrome stamp set and a custom sentiment using Concord & 9th's Banner Alpha Bits stamp set

Gemma

using Mama Elephant Tiny Ninjas and MFT Skyline Border

Tara
Using Our Story from MFT and Stitched Rectangle and Circles from Lawn Fawn

So time to get your creative juices flowing and kick start your 2017 crafting - you have until 10pm on Wednesday 25th January to get your entries in.  Link them here when you're ready but don't forget to stick to the rules!

Happy New Year

Welcome to a brand New Year guys - here's hoping 2017 is a great year for everyone!   I know not everyone likes to celebrate the new year so I have a slight different take on a New Year card today, one you could send to someone who is finding the passing of another year a little tough.

I started with all the months from Concord & 9th's fabulous All Year Long stamp set and stamped all the months ombre style using Altenew Seashore inks going from dark to light to give the feel of the months dropping down the page.   I used a scrap of white card and die cut the numbers 4 times using Stitched Numbers Dienamics from MFT and used the inks again to give an ombre finish direct to paper.  I finished with a sentiment from the same set which I think sends out a battle cry to start the new year on a panel inked to match the rest of the card.  Using ink straight to paper is a great way of keeping your project colours on theme.

 

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Our new challenge launches this afternoon - so come back later to see the sketch you get to play with for a chance to win £15 this month.
• The store will re-open tomorrow at 9am with orders starting to ship on Tuesday when the post-office reopens following the delayed bank holiday and we'll have FREE SHIPPING on all orders for 48 hours so get your orders in quick!   We have some new items in our sale section too.
• We will have some restocks this week from MFT and Lawn Fawn (customs clearance permitting) and we hope to have some Avery Elle restocks next week too.  
• There is a new release from MFT on the 10th and we will get our order in on Thursday (the first time we'll see it).
• We have an order in for the new release from Neat & Tangled release which should ship this week.
• There will be a new release from Mama Elephant on the 15th which we are ordering today (no more days off for us!)
• Other releases will start to come in thick and fast following CHA, the big craft show that starts in the USA in a couple of days - we'll bring you news of that on here and on our Facebook page as and when we hear it so do keep in touch.