China Pattern Inspired Notecard

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a happy Thursday!

I have been really excited to see all the new stamps flooding in to the store lately. Although I couldn't be at Creativation I certainly have felt very enabled!

Altenew have been killing it again in terms of flower stamps. Playing to their strengths they've released a whole bunch of gorgeousness in their last release. I practically ran to place my order!

Today I'm playing with the Altenew Beautiful Blossoms stamp set. The design really reminded me of the patterns you see on traditional china tea sets, so that's where I let my inspiration take me:

Isn't this beautiful?! I love how this turned out!

I stamped my image with navy and blue inks, being careful to pick inks that were not waterproof. I then used a brush and a little water and let that do all the work colouring my design!

I reached for another new set - the Altenew Wonderland stamp set. Another beautiful floral design, but it was the simple 'Just A Note' sentiment, perfect for all occasions, that helped me finish off my design - along with a little splatter of course!

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!

Mummy Love

Hello, Tallie here. Today's post features the Neat & Tangled Mommy, Daddy and Me set. Need a simple card to say thanks to a wonderful Mum or Dad? This set is perfect!

I started out by inking up the front of a card base with some Mermaid Lagoon and Broken China Distress Inks, splashing on some clean water for a little bit of texture. I then die cut a white card panel using an MFT Inside & Out Stitched Circles STAX Dienamics and adhered it to the card base.


I stamped out the two cuddly bears from the Neat & Tangled Mommy, Daddy and Me set with some MFT Extreme Black Ink onto some blending cardstock and coloured in with my Copic markers. I used my Scan N Cut to cut it out but there are coordinating dies available.

The stamp set has the American 'Mommy' sentiment, so I performed a little bit of stamp surgery to turn the 'O' into a 'U'. The imperfect font is perfect for this and I don't think it looks too bad! I white heat embossed the sentiments onto some black cardstock and adhered to the background window.


A few clear sequins finishes it off nicely!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Monster Sized Birthday

Today I’m sharing a fun birthday card, featuring the MFT Monster Sized stamp set.

I began by stamping one of the monster images, colouring it with alcohol markers, then cutting it out with the coordinating die. 

For the background, I die cut a white card panel with the the largest die from the MFT Mod Rectangles set. I then ran this panel through my die cutting machine again, this time with the Reverse Confetti Diagonal Stitched cover panel. I added the panel to a white card base with liquid glue.

Next, I used my paper trimmer to cut a rectangle of blue grid patterned paper. I layered this onto my card base with liquid glue.

On some black card, I white heat embossed a sentiment from the same stamp set, then cut it out with a MFT sentiment strip die.

I layered the sentiment strip onto my card with black foam tape, then added the monster image to the side. I finished by adhering some enamel dots around the sentiment, and adding glossy accents to the monster's eyes.

Have a lovely day,

Gemma

MFT Monster Sized

MFT Stitched Mod Rectangles

RC Diagonal Stitched Cover Panel

MFT Graphic Grid papers

MFT Slanted Sentiment Strips

Cacti Cutouts

Hi there, Jenny here and I'm back today with another turnabout stamp set.... in disguise!!!

These cacti come from the To The Point Turnabout stamp from Concord & 9th, I love the 

no line images and all the shapes of pot and cacti. I've just cut the them from the 

finished piece and mounted them onto a card front with foam dimensionals instead.

I'll agree you have to be a fan of cutting out for this design but if you leave a narrow white 

border its much easier and worth the effort. I've used a few different shades/colours 

for the cacti and pots so I ended up with a good selection of different images that all coordinate well.

 I added a few touches of gold and white to some of the pots and arranged them on the card 

front having stamped a couple of background patterns by Flora & Fauna beforehand.

I had enough Cacti to make a second card so I arranged them in a line, overlapping

 a rectangular frame and added an embossed sentiment using the Pretty Painted Letters from Lil inkers

I'm quite pleased how these turned out... well worth the scissor work :)

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Hibiscus Bouquet

I've gone all floral today with AlteNew's new Hibiscus Garden 3D die cut.  They may look a little complex but they are actually really easy to line up and get some real depth to your floral creations  - Altenew have several of these floral die cuts now but this one really appealed to me with the massive cheese plant leaves.

I die cut all my elements - my top tip is to line up your dies by "element" and store them in lines on a magnetic sheet so you know which bit goes with which flower and then you can easily create them every time.

I used all the flowers, the cheese plant leaf and one other leaf, all cut from plain cheap white card stock, and then simply inked them all once die cut using oxide inks and an ink blending tool, blending 2 or 3 colours together to get some natural looking elements rather than harsh layers.  A few dabs of glue to layer each flower and the lines on the cheese plant leaves and all the die cut elements were good to go. 

I wanted a rich warm glow to the background so picked a selection of colours I used to ink up the floral and leaf elements and used make-up blending brush to apply a super-soft blend.   If you struggle to get a "fade to white" blend, then these brushes really help!

I finished with a simple birthday sentiment using Altenew's Birthday Builder sentiment set.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

This week we will have the following items arrive in store:

• Some fabulous new papers, stencils and embellishments from Echo Park/Carta Bella
• A few items from Hero Arts monthly kit add-ons - the new catalogue is due late February
• The new Waffle Flower release
• The new release from MFT
• The release that Avery Elle previewed at Creativation - the first of the big releases of the year
• and there is a slim chance we will have the new Neat and Tangled release by release day but it not we'll have it the week after.

Lawn Fawn's new release is on order but is not released until late February.

That's all folks.

Tara

Dream Big!

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I am addicted to Distress Oxides lately! I loved them from the start but recently I use them again and again.

For this card I created the background using Distress Oxides. I started by die cutting two scalloped rectangle using Mama Elephant's All Prettied Up. One I used as the panel and from the other I die cut clouds from using Mama Elephant's Landscape Trio. For variation I also die cut some cloud borders with Lawn Fawn's Cloudy Hillside Pop-Up Add On.

I used different shades of green Oxide ink ( Pine Needles, Evergreen Bough, Lucky Clover and Cracked Pistacchio) and tried to achieve an ombré effect. To add a little bit of interest I also splashed some water droplets on the paper but also stamped some little stars using the same inks I used for the ink blending.

For the images on my card I chose different sets by Mama Elephant: The dragon and the tiny girl come from Me and My Dragon, the birthday cake I found in Dragon Wishes, the Balloon and the sentiment is from the set Space Bears. I stamped, coloured with alcohol markers and fussy cut all the images.
Then I assembled the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.

   

       

   

Felted Unicorn

I've been itching to make a plushie with the Neat & Tangled/Benzie unicorn die ever since we first got them but they sold out so fast I didn't manage to grab one but now they are back I bagged one and made my first toy with it.

We also got some new felt in stock recently from Sizzix, picked by them to work with their dies, but any of the dies we sell will cut it too (you might need a couple of passes in your machine for a clean cut) so I used 3 colours from their bold felt pack (we have pastels on back order) and just die cut all the pieces twice (4 times for the wings so I could have them on either side) so I could sew it all together to make a stuffed toy.

I did the decorative elements first - so stitched on the felt eye using a single french knot and then added a few sequins on his bum and wings for added detail.

I then sewed up the wings and tail and stuff them leaving the end of the tail open and unstuffed so it would easily fit into the body.  The mane was a little trickier - I used back stitch to hold each half in place on the respective side of the body, so it sort of becomes part of the body itself.

All that was left to do then is stitch all the pieces together using a simple blanket stitch with 3 strands of embroidery thread, switching from blue to yellow when I got to the main and leaving the ears unstitched.  I left the belly unstitched so I could add some toy stuffing- his legs were hard to stuff so in hindsight I should have stuffed those with bent pipe cleaners, but he came out OK for a first attempt - not sure he'd pass child safety tests but he is going to end up on on my spring wreath so he'll be fine amongst the pom poms.

Why not take a look at other dies you could sew together to make something a little different?

Catch you Sunday.

Tara