Welcome Little One

Hey stampers, Anni here!

A friend of mine got a baby girl last week and I wanted to make a card for her. I LOVE to make baby cards, in fact Christmas cards and baby cards are my favorite to make. Of all cards I like creating cards for teenage boys and of course sympathy cards least.

I started by stamping the cutte little fox with an umbrella from Mama Elephant's Up an Away with My Favorite Things' Extreme Black Hybrid ink. I chose this ink because I wanted to colour with alcohol marker. Then I fussy cut the image (there are coordinating dies available).

When I make baby cards I like to personalize them and put a name on them. The little girl is called Nika. So I stamoed the letters using Lawn Fawn's Quinn's Abcs. I coloured them in the same colours I used for my focal image.

For the background I did some ink blending over My Favorite Things' Cloud stencil. I used inks matching the colours of the fox and the letters but in a much lighter shade. This way the image and the letters would not get lost on the background.

I die cut Avery Elle's Wonky Scalloped Frames dies from the background and a second time from white cardstock. I combined the white frame with the cloudy inside rectangle.

To go with the name of the baby I inked up a part of a sentiment I found in Avery Elle's Storybook. Actually the sentiment says Welcome Little One bt I wanted to say Welcome Little Nika.
Then I assembled the card.

So what about you? Do you have favourite occasions to make cards for? Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

      

         

Reach For The Stars Watercolour Galaxy Card

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a happy Friday!

I seem to be on a real watercolour kick lately. It's just one of the best mediums and so, so versatile.

I also love galaxy backgrounds. I usually create them with ink blending - but I felt like creating a watercolour version this time! So I decided to pull out the Altenew Watercolour 36 Pan set and put it to work!

Out of this world, right?! I love how this turned out!

I finally got to play with the awesome Concord & 9th Star Turnabout stamp set. This is one of the best turnabouts - totally up my street I stamped the turnabout 4 times and heat embossed the stars with a mix of white and glittery embossing powders.

Now it was time to play! I used a few of the pans in the Altenew set and painted my watercolour. The heat embossed stars just work so well with a resist technique!

Once my watercolour was dry, I painted over some of the areas with some diluted glimmer mist for some extra sparkle! The sentiment from the WPlus9 Little Dreamers stamp set was the perfect finishing touch!

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

Bitty Circles

I've got a couple of cards today using Bitty Burst from Concord and 9th - I love this set for creating easy backgrounds and it's a very forgiving mini-turnabout so you can use it with or without a stamping platform (you can actually use all the turnabouts without a platform - its just easier to get good results with one). 

I decided to stamp it entirely in blues so used 4 shades and to me that looked a lot like when you get circles of insects on water so I thought it would be a good background for some dragonflies - we've had some stunning ones in our new garden this summer now we're on the edge of the countryside.  So I inked up MFT's Fluttering Friends and set about painting them with my cosmic shimmer paints to get that real dragonfly shimmer.

Once dry I cut them with the co-ordinating dies and used foam tape to pop them over the "water".   I added a simple circular sentiment to the centre using  Reverse Confetti's Circle Wishes.

Whilst I had it out I did a similar background in greens and blues to emphasise a central sentiment - this time from Neat and Tangled.  The Celebrate You die has two parts so I decided to go for double glitter to really make it pop - the background is graphite glittler, the words silver both from Concord and 9th's Neutrals Glitter pack.  It's really easy to layer up and then once mounted on the card the bitty burst becomes confetti and would work with lots of word dies!

That's all from me today - Taheerah will be here tomorrow and I'll be back on Sunday.

Tara

Watercolour Florals

Hello! Tallie here with some bright and cheerful watercolour inspiration.

The Grateful for Everything set from Concord & 9th is perfect for stamping out in multiples and just playing with the colour!

I started out by stamping the main floral stamp from the set onto some watercolour paper with some Versafine Black Onyx ink. This is actually quite a large stamp so I knew I would eventually be cutting down the panel. Once it had dried, I took out my watercolour paints and had some fun!

I think the secret to getting dimension is layers, building up the colour intensity to get the feeling of depth. I used bright, bold yellows, greens and reds with a cerulean blue wash for the background. Once dried, I added a few paint splatters to help bring the flat background to life.

I die cut this panel out with an MFT Stitched Wonky Rectangle and mounted it onto a side folding A2 card base made of Lawn Fawn Sunflower cardstock. To finish off the card, I stamped a simple sentiment from the Lawn Fawn Simply Sentiments set.

I made a bunch of these in different colours using different sentiments for a variety of occasions!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Hot Air Balloons

Hello and happy Tuesday. 

Today I’m sharing a hot air balloon card. I love the retro vibe of the C&9th Happy Balloon set. The set includes a hot air balloon basket so I decided to use that for my card.

I began by die cutting the background, using the Lawn Fawn Stitched Cloud Backdrop Portrait die to add some lovely detail to a piece of white card. I adhered this panel onto my card base.

Next, I stamped two large balloons and added details with copper and silver embossing powders. I also stamped two hot air balloon baskets and a banner. I embossed a greeting on the banner, then cut everything out.

I used foam tape to add the balloons to the card, then finished the card with some clear sequins.

Have a lovely day,
Gemma

Frightfully Fun....

Hello hello... Jenny here to start your week off with some Halloween fun... just look at this group of rather cute monsters and ghouls....

Yes it's not long until Halloween and I'm not massively into it but I do like to have a few cards on hand in my stash. This is a bit of a different card shape.... long and narrow and to change it up a bit, I decided to cut the front shorter than the back and add a piece of black card to the inside for a fun contrast...

These spooky litte characters are from Sugar Pea Designs Monster Mash Stamp set and I've coloured them all with Polychrome Pencils, keeping to the greens, purples, greys and reds.

I have used the Bewitched Spider Cob web stencil to add some pattern to the card front by sponging through with Distress Oxide inks in greens and purples.

To ground the images I used a strip of black card across the front which also seemed a good place to heat emboss the sentiment.

What a frightfully fun gathering... not scary at all !!!

   

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Hidden Elves

I've got a fun card to share today with a mini tutorial with a whole lot of "not to do's" as I made a lot of mistakes figuring out how to do what I wanted to do, but now I can tell you what not to do as well as how to do it all better!

What I wanted to do was use the new double slider loop slots die from MFT to make multiple characters appear with one pull tab.

So I created a scene using Rosie and Bernie in the North Pole as my focal point, and then when you pull the one central tab, 3 hidden elves appear!   The elves are from the new Mama Elephant Little Elf Agenda set.

So the how to, and more importantly, how not to goes like this:

Create the background - I used two shades of blue oxides to blend a soft sky and then used a glue pen and white embossing powder to add snow.  (I had a light pencil line so I knew where my hill would roughly go.

Using the pencil line as a guide to ensure the slots will be hidden, die cut your 3 slots where you want your characters to appear, and a small circle die to cut a hole for your pull tab.

Thread some strong plastic strips through the 3 holes.   So - far - all is good :-)

Now here is where I made my first mistake - I needed a piece of card across the 3 strips of plastic so when you pull the tab all 3 move at once.  That's correct - but what I did wrong was put that on the front with the 3 characters stuck onto......

So when you pull the tab - the characters go DOWN not UP!   WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

So I took it apart and got it correct - the acetate tabs the characters were attached to where attached with red liner tape to the plastic on the FRONT of the panel.   Here's the shot of the fix (the card tore where I peeled the previous layers apart - that was mistake number 2 - NEVER put an interactive card together before you check the mechanism!)   But it will be hidden anyhow so no big deal.

The card strip then gets connected to the plastic strips on the BACK of the panel.  I did this and check it and it still didn't work :(    What happened is that the two little girls popped up but the boy on the left didn't.   Basic physics right - the forces on the pull tab nearest to the pull tab are greater than the forces further out, so the card strip was pulled in a diagonal.

I did a REALLY clumsy fix as I had to work with what I had to get this finished to share with you.  So here's the big fat mess on the back.

I basically stuck a strip of really thick (400gsm) card stock to strengthen the strip to try and even out the pressure and stop it buckling to a diagonal.  Still didn't work, so I added a diagonal strip to exert more force on the boy elf - hey presto - that worked, but the blue card (my only super thick colour!) showed, hence the notch I had to cut out of the diagonal to stop it showing on the front!   If I do this again, I would use thick board (like the back of the do bend envelopes I send dies out in) or a wooden lolly stick and I would fold the pull tab around it so it was double thickness for pushing back up.p

So now you know what not to do on the mechanism, you should be able to apply the idea - having your pull tab centrally between any popping up characters should also make the "physics" work better.  (so for example if I'd put another elf further on the right, that would have helped spread the pull forces equally.

For the main element of the card I also did something a little different - I layered decoupage style image stamped and coloured on white glitter card (I used the Concord and 9th neutrals pack, but pixie dust from Lawn Fawn would work too)

You can see here the detailed layered and depth.  I started with an image stamped on plain white card and coloured Bernie on that layer, then added the igloo which was shaded with grey alcohol markers, then I added the mailbox again on white card and added the snow, flag and pole back on top with coloured glitter card.  The snow was added as another layer on top of the igloo for more depth and then finally Rosie coloured on plain card with glitter snowballs on top.

The sentiment is from the new Santa's Sleigh set from Mama Elephant.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• The latest release from Mama Elephant is live in store and selling fast.

• We have a huge delivery of Lawn Fawn restocks which we are working on sorting and will be in store either today or tomorrow.

• Concord and 9th's new release got held up in customs and is expected early this week.

• Neat and Tangled also got stuck in customs - again due early this week.

• AlteNew's latest release shipped on Friday so is due this week (customs willing!)

• Flora and Fauna's new release also shipped on Friday so is due later this week.

That's all for today - catch you later.

Tara