Cowboy Sunsets

I sadly don't have anyone to make father's day cards for anymore, but felt in the mood for a masculine make so knocked up a few cards that could work for father's day but gave them an every day twist with added cowboys....

My inspiration was the new Desert Sunshine fancy die from Hero Arts - this really is my kind of product, I love a silhouette die and an excuse for some ink blending.  I die cut a circle from kraft using the Lil Inkers Stitched Mat Circles and trimmed the panel to fit my base card and lightly traced around it so i knew where to ink blend.   I used oxide inks to blend from purple to yellow on the white base and fixed the kraft panel in place over it once dry.  I then die cut the desert sunshine silhouette from black and used the same circle die to trim around it to get a circle to fit in my aperture and glued that in place.  I wanted to add some clouds so used some white liquid pearls - and then discovered it reactivated the oxides so my clouds turned golden (let's just call that the sunset effect shall we!)  To finish I wanted a really strong masculine sentiment to match with the strong black silhouette so used the large happy birthday from Snarky Mix and Match sentiments also from Hero Arts.

So I had a circle of kraft card left and I am trying to not through away bits of card, but also NOT add to my scraps stash, so I made another card....   I used the same inks and blended them as before but the effects were so much more subtle on the kraft as you can see here from the side by side shot.  I quite like the softer look.

Once dry I ran it through my die cutter using the safari sunset die to get the cloud effect as its a perfect size to match the silhouette die..  I die cut another desert sunshine from black and used a large circle from the circle infinity die set to again get another circular frame but this time without the stitched detail.  I popped them onto a white base card again and finished with a sentiment from AlteNew's Birthday Builder set.

 Finally I decided to go full on cowboy using bits from the die paired with the new Cowboy Adventure stamp set.

I started with the sunset stamp and embossed it with detail white powder [this stuff in the bomb by the way - I'll be doing a future post featuring detail white and black powders as they really are amazing] and then masked off the back of my base card so I could ink blend a sunset sky.

I added hills and a "canyon edge" foreground using Mama Elephant's Kingdom Trio die just using plain white card blended with more oxide inks.  I stamped the grand canyon elements from the stamp set and used pencils to get some extra colour depth to those which I then fussy cut as I didn't want the borders from a die showing in this card.  I tucked the two on the right behind the foreground so their lack of a bottom edge didn't show.  I die cur the cacti from the desert sunshine die twice from scraps of black left from previous card and just trimmed the bottom edges with scissors to get a bit of ground for them.  Finished by stamping the cowboy in black across the two layers [use a fine pen to draw in any bits that don't meet up] and a sentiment from the same stamp set.

 NEWS FROM THE STORE

• We will have the new release form Lil' Inker Designs in store tomorrow - it's a fab one for coffee lovers!
• We will also have a small new release from Echo Park with papers and stencils and a couple of dies
• We also have a small Hero Arts restock of products that didn't arrive with our last order and were on back order.  The new kit add-ons should be here later this month.
• There is a fab new release from Newton's Nook coming this week and we will have it for release day.
• We are still waiting for the Sugar Pea Designs and AlteNew to ship our orders for their releases.  We HOPE they will do it this week.

That's all from me this week - hope all of you who still have them around are making the most of father's day.

Tara