Pantone Colour of the Year 2019

Happy New Year to you all! 

For my first post of 2019, I keeping with my tradition of sharing a card that's inspired by the Pantone Colour of the Year. This year it's Living Coral, which is described by Pantone as 'an animating and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone that energises and enlivens with a softer edge'.

I began by die cutting the Reverse Confetti Stitched Rays cover die from white card. To this, I added a blend of distress oxide inks in abandoned coral, dried marigold and squeezed lemonade. I faded out the colour at the edges, then flicked the panel with water and bronze perfect pearls for some details.

For the sentiment, I die cut the MFT Happy Birthday script die from several layered of white card, and once from black. I layered these together with the black layer offset for a shadow.

I tried adding a coral patterned paper die cut to the top of the sentiment stack, but it wasn’t really standing out against the background. So instead, I layered some white glitter card on top for a sparkly look.

Before adding the word die to the card, I adhered a vellum circle onto the panel, to help the word die stand out a little more. An easy way to adhere vellum is to add some stick it adhesive sheet behind it first, which isn’t visible like other adhesives.

Have a lovely day,
Gemma

Reverse Confetti Stitched Rays

MFT Happy Birthday Script

Embossed Thank You

Hello and Happy New Year :)

Jennie here and I'm easing myself back into crafting.... I didn't have chance to craft at all over the holiday period and we all know what happens when you get back to creating.... Mr Mojo needs tempting back and things don't always go as planned 😉

So I decided to keep it simple and use the Triple Step Thank you from Concord & 9th along 

with the coordinating dies to give some dimension with dry embossing..

You can see on this photo how the stamped area is raised up ...

To make this card I first stamped out the sentiment in three colours of Hero Arts dye ink and added darker ink along the base of the letters for a ombre gradient. I used the dies to cut a mask which I placed over the lettering and then used the Warp Speed stencil from Altenew with MFT Sno Cone ink for a background.

For the embossing I used the die to cut three pieces from 300gsm card and glued them together with dry adhesive. I used  the torch on my phone to act as a light source to shine through the card stock so I was able to line the die cuts up with the stamping. Washi tape held it in place as I ran it through my Big Shot .... tab 1 and with an embossing mat under the card front. 

I love how it turned out.... its a large simple shape which works well for this technique 

and just gives that bit of extra interest to a CAS design . 

Why not give it a try with stamps and dies in your own collection.

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Two Friendly Monsters

We have a tonne of birthdays in January, one a day for the first 5 days of the year!   So I've been making some birthday cards and can share one with you today that was for the youngest member of our family who turned two on Thursday.

This is a really simple one layer DL card using Concord and 9th's Monster Love which although it's a love themed set, its easily adapted to events throughout the year!

You can "build" your monsters with different arms so they can hold different items - I used the "behind your back arms" on the purple monster and then masked his head so I could stamp the legs of the green one as if he was hoisting him up from behind.   The colouring was done with pencils so to give texture to the fur as I find that easier with a nice sharp point than I do with a marker (I often colour with markers, then add detail with pencils on top)

To make it into a birthday card I just added a die cut 2 on top of the balloon (I used pop up number die from MFT and cut along the pop up line to get a full cut)  I added glitter glue around it to make it pop more.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We're still behind on packing orders from our Christmas closure but we're getting there - we're up to New Years Eve now and will do our best to catch up over the next couple of working days.

In terms of releases we will have the following this week:

• MFT have a new release on 8th January and we'll have it in store by release day
• Concord and 9th have a release on the 9th every month but they don't ship to retailers until after they release themselves, so we will have the new release (including the kit) but it will be sometime w/c 14th January before we receive it.
• I'll try and get the Hero Arts release in store today or tomorrow.
• Reverse Confetti have a new release on the 8th - it is in transit but I'm not sure it will be here for release day, we will get it online as soon as we can after it arrives.
• Waffle Flower released yesterday but unfortunately the shipper "mislaid" the box they dropped off and it was only found yesterday so it will be late this week now before we get it.
• Stamping Bella are behind due to the Christmas closure so our order won't ship until later this week so we won't have that until w/c 14th January at the earliest.

That's all for now - time for breakfast!

Tara

Happy Crafty New Year!

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Happy Crafty New Year to all of you! Hope your holidays were awesome and you found some time to play with the new goodies you hopefully got.
I started the new year with a crafty card using the fanatstic dies by Concord and 9th called Crafty Dies.

I started by die cutting all the pieces several times. For the handle of the stamp and the brush I used wood veneer paper and for the scissors silver cardstock. For the other parts I used scraps from my stash.
The die cuts are easy to assemble because the dies are so well thought-out. You get one "basic" piece you can adhere the details to - very easy to do!

Because I made this card for a crafty friend of mine, I wanted to include "crafty" in the sentiment. So I had to create my own sentiment. For that I used (one of my favourite) alphabet dies: Bottlecap Letters by My Favorite Things. I die cut the letters I needed from white cardstock and coloured them with an alcohol marker matching the crafty tools. I added the word Crafty by stamping and heat embossing it in white on a piece of cardstock. The word crafty is part of a sentiment from Concord & 9th's Crafty Turnabout stamp set.

For a little bit of sparkle I added some sequins and that finsihed up the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

Say 'Thank You' with Owls and Stripes

Hello, Tallie here. Happy New Year 2019 to you all! I wish you a year filled with love, laughter and happiness!


I've swapped with Tara for today's post featuring some Concord & 9th and My Favorite Things stamps to create some simple handmade thank you cards. Not all cards have to be complicated or have lots of shading on them, especially when you have a lot of gratitude for the Christmas pressies!

I started out by stamping the large striped background from the Concord & 9th Stripes & Sayings stamp set. I used several different colours of Lawn Fawn Mini Ink Cubes, sticking mostly to the more pastel colours of peach and purple.


I then stamped the heart line border and the sentiments from the same set in between the striped background.

I then stamped the cute little owl couple and the smaller branch from the MFT Forever and Owlways stamp set onto some white card stock with some Lawn Fawn Soot ink. I cut these out with my Scan N Cut, though there are coordinating dies available. I chose some coordinating pencils to quickly give some colour to a few parts of the die cuts. I adhered these with some foam tape to the stamped card panels.

These are perfect if you need to mass produce several cards, especially since you can customise the colours and greetings.


Thanks for reading and I'll be back on my regularly scheduled Wednesday slot next week.

Tallie

  

Just For You - Holiday Stamps Card After The Holidays!

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a Happy New Year and a happy Thursday!

I've barely gotten over the fact that Christmas has been and gone [sob]. That magical time of year always seems to be over so quickly! Apart from all the yummy food and fabulous presents and pretty decorations and wonderful traditions, I also just love creating Christmas cards. Something about all those holiday supplies really brings out my festive spirit! So, with my mourning of Christmas having passed, I thought it only fair I don't put away my Christmas stamps just yet!

I love it when themed stamps can do double duty. I decided to use the Altenew Holiday Bow stamp set, the Altenew Starry Night stamp set, and the Concord & 9th Happy Plaids stamp set and give them a post-holiday workout:

Gorgeous, right?! I love how this turned out!

I used a couple of shades of dusky pink to stamp my bow then fussy cut it out. I used the reverse of one of the plaid stripes stamps to create my 'ribbon' on my card - inking up the colours and dabbing/stamping the ink unevenly really gives a realistic crushed velvet appearance!

I decided my 'gift' needed a bit more pizzazz on the 'wrapping', so I heat embossed the tree stamp from the Starry Night stamp set all over the card front then blended some ink lightly over it to bring the detail out!

I fashioned my own gift tag by trimming the shape by hand and punching a hole in it. The sentiment from the Neat & Tangled Just For You stamp set was the perfect finishing touch, along with some sparkly ribbon of course! I adhered the tag and the bow with dimensional glue fell to give everything some custom dimension!

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!

Welcome to 2019!

So as we start a brand new year I am sure we are all in contemplative mood wondering what this year will bring.  The last couple of years have been challenging for businesses with the uncertainty or Brexit and the political indecision.  We are hoping that come March things will be clearer and we can then start to plan to grow our business once we know how things will work with our relationship as a country with Europe and America.   We get lots of requests for "more" and we'd love to make this your go to store for all things paper craft related but we are still a relatively new business and have to take care how we grow as we want to be here for a long time to serve your crafty needs.  So don't think we aren't making plans - we are - but we have to do it carefully!

We have recently been working on a few things we think you will like - not new brands as yet - but changes to the store which we think will improve your shopping experience with us.  Watch this space for news in the next few weeks!

We also will be starting to plan to build a new dedicated office and warehouse space which will allow us to offer more brands  once its built so 2019 really will be a big year for us we hope!

In the short term, we did get a couple of deliveries on Monday so now we are officially back-to-work we will work on getting those in store and will be ordering lots of new releases as the brands return to work too.

Over the next couple of weeks we will have:

• The December monthly kit add-ons from Hero Arts featuring lots of fairies, dandelions, stars and wish related stamps and dies.
• Lil' Inker Designs December release - great if you love hot chocolate!
• The new release from Stamping Bella came out on Boxing Day - we did break our "holiday" and get it ordered but we are still waiting for it to ship.
• The latest release from Waffle Flower crafts is coming on 5th January.   We ordered last week but it has not yet shipped due to the holidays so may not now be here until next week.
• Next week also sees the first release of the year from MFT stamps - its a super cute and lovey one and will be in store on release day.

The weekend of the 19th January sees the Creativation Trade Show in the USA and all the brands will be featuring their big new releases there - they will be in store in February and we'll be ordering as soon as we get the information!

Now I wasn't completely uncrafty over the holidays, I did make a card I can share for a friend who had a big birthday yesterday.

I started with a big die cut bottle of bubbly using the Avery Elle Wine Bottle Die which is a nice large die for a focal point (and it's on sale if you missed it when it first came out) and paired it with a couple of wine glass shakers from the latest MFT release.  These are really easy to make shakers using the co-ordinating pouches which I filled with tiny 40 confetti using the MFT Confetti Numbers die and a few bits of added sparkle from Hero Arts Icicle Sequin Mix.

The sentiment comes from Sassy Pants Birthday greetings from MFT - one of my all time faves - as I do like a sassy-sentiment for most of my friends!

That's all from me today - we return to our normal DT from tomorrow and Tallie will be here on Friday.

Happy New Year!

Tara