Little Elf Tree

My card today was totally inspired by the snowman card by Vera Rhuhay on the Mama Elephant blog this week - I really liked her idea of making a tree from the little characters (a bit like the kitty tree which will be back in stock in a couple of weeks hopefully) but I thought it would be fun to use the elves and make them all green to look more tree like!

I stamped all the elves in one go straight from the sheet just using a bit of tape to temporarily fix it in my stamping platform before colouring them all with pencils and die cutting them with the matching dies.

I kept the colours minimal - just 3 shades of green for their dungarees, hats and boots and one red for the shirts and accessories with tiny highlights of yellow and blue, the uniformity of colours gives the idea of a tree and decorations.

To make it into a card I did a soft blue sky blended with ink leaving a white snowy hill to stand them on and then just lined them up adding the ball on top from the same set as the tree topper with some rays of light which were taken from Concord and 9th Merry and Bright stamp set which is where I took the sentiments from too.

There are so many little agenda stamps that would work for this idea - I might be making lots of weird trees for Christmas this year!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

Last week was crazy busy both in the store and because I had lots of medical appointments and a whole afternoon with the accountants as its time to pay lots of taxes so I didn't manage to get any of the stock loaded to store that I had planned to last week.

So I am working a little today to play catch up and Flora and Fauna will be live today.

We got the new washi tapes from AlteNew late on Friday so will get those processed today and they will hopefully be live today or tomorrow.

We also got the latest release from Lil' Inker Designs - I will work on that tomorrow.

We also have some new Christmas themed papers and accessories from Echo Park / Carta Bella which I will get sorted as soon as I can.

The new release from Waffle Flower crafts is in transit and will be in store this week.

We will be hopefully be ordering restocks from Avery Elle, Lawn Fawn and Mama Elephant this week if they have their Christmas products available yet as many have sold out at their end too.   It's also the start of the month so we'll start to get emails to order all the new monthly releases from MFT, Neat and Tangled, Mama Elephant and Concord and 9th.

We've also kicked off a new colour challenge for October based on Halloween colours in our customer only facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/shcvips/   You have to provide an order number to gain access to this group so find one before you click the link as you have to answer the questions to get in.

Right, time for breakfast and then a little weekend overtime........

Catch you later

Tara

Yappy Woofmas!

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I am back with two Christmas cards! Yes, Christmas cards again, I am skipping cards with an autumn scene and I am blaming Mama Elephant. Their latest release is just so darn cute and I had to use the sweetest set called Yappy Woofness.

I couldn't decide which images to use so I went with a few and made two cards with the same layout. I started by stamping the cute dogs using My Favorite Things' Extreme Black Hybrid ink, colouring with alcohol marker and fussy cutting them (there are coordinating dies available,too).

Then I created the card bases from white cardstock and cut rectangles slightly smaller than the card base. From these rectangles I die cut a window using My Favorite Things' Jumbo Peek-a-Boo Circle Windows. I traced down the circle window onto the cardbase and created a background by ink blending and creating splatter with water and watered dowm white acrylic paint.

To give the critters something to stand on I die cut snow drifts from the same white card stock as the card base using Mama Elephant's Borderlines Trio.

The sentimentsI found in two other sets: Lawn Fawn's Say What? Christmas Critters and My Favorite Things' Merry Everything (this one is on sale right now!!).

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

    

      

   

Bat Boxes

I've been making something a bit different to share with you today - without kids in the house we don't really do Halloween but we do do bats and I couldn't resist the tiny gift box bat add-on from Lawn Fawn so today I have a pile of glittery bat boxes to share with you!

I die cut the tiny gift boxes from the black glitter card stock in the Autumn Sparkle card pack from Lawn Fawn and then used the off cuts to cut out the bat face.

There is a really clever couple of dies in the set which when placed behind the face give you coloured eyes and mouth but white fangs!

You die cut the the large piece (not the feet) in the red circle from coloured card and then the blue circle from white and you can see one has a bump and one a dent so they fit together to get the due coloured mouth.

Alternatively you can inlay the mouth and colour the mouth leaving the fangs white.

I went all out glitter on my bats cutting the wings either from purple and orange in the autumn sparkle pack, or the green is from the Concord and 9th summer glitter pack.

You can either have little sticky-out wings, or bigger ones that fold around the box.  

I think they'd be great if you want to avoid over-sugaring the kids on Halloween as you could fill the boxes with coins instead and who could resist a cute little glittery bat!

That's all from me for today - see you on Sunday with something new.

Tara

Just Because it's Autumn

Hello... yes it's Jenny back again this week as I've swapped with Taheera and I have 

a couple of autumnal cards... a twofer one...

I've used the Thankful Leaves Turnabout and stamped a pattern onto a piece of 6x6 kraft card using Distress Oxides. Instead of keeping one colour to one leaf or turn, I've multi inked the leaves so they're a rainbow of autumnal colours. I then cut five strips from around the edges of the large piece and adhered them to the card at different heights.

To make the water-coloured leaf embellishments I took the turnabout and stamped the

 three large leaves again in multi distress inks and heat embossed them with clear 

powder on watercolour card. The sentiment and banner comes from the Just Because die set.

I trimmed down the remaining piece of leafy cardstock and used the frame from the Just Because dies to cut 

out a central panel. I love how this die cuts a narrow frame so I layered it with another 

frame and adhered it inside the aperture.

I used the remaining two watercoloured leaves and then a sentiment from

 Altenew's Signature Words die.... that raised frame just adds an extra dimension to the aperture :)

Those colours are just gorgeous.... can you tell Autumn is my favourite season :)

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Witching You the Best Day Ever

Hello, Tallie here. I've had this set for a good long time and it's finally a good time to share it over on the Seven Hills Crafts blog today! I don't celebrate Halloween but I couldn't help but colour this cute little witch in the guise of my favourite Quidditch playing witch!

I started out by stamping the witch from the MFT Witch Way is the Candy set in some MFT Grout Grey Hybrid Ink. I brought out my alcohol markers for some no-line colouring! This one was quite a challenge to get the folds and shading right - I admit too looking at many other sample cards before I started mine. I finished up by using a brown coloured pencil to add the eyes, nose and mouth details and a white pencil to add a few more highlight details. I fussy cut her out.

This witch needed a bright and bold background to help set the scene. I'm imagining her walking back from the Quidditch pitch one night after training when the moon was full and high. I inked up an A6 panel with some Black Soot, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire and Dusty Concord Distress Oxide inks, splattering on some clean clear water to simulate stars in the night sky. On another panel I inked some Twisted Citron and Peeled Paint Distress Oxide Inks. I also inked up a moon die cut with an MFT Inside & Out Stitched Circle STAX Dienamic with some Antique Linen and a small bit of Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink. I cut the green panel with a Lawn Fawn Simple Grassy Hillside Lawn Cut die.

After adhering the panel to a top-folding A6 card base, I white heat embossed the sentiment from the MFT Witch Way is the Candy set onto a strip of black cardstock and adhered it along the bottom.
A striking card that my HP-loving friend will surely love!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Firework Cheers

Today I have a fireworks card to share. I kept the colour scheme minimal for a classic look.

I began by inking a piece of card with distress oxides in black soot, faded jeans and hickory smoke. I put this aside to dry whilst I worked on the sentiment.

Using the MFT Cheers word die, I die cut it three times - twice from black card and one from blue glitter card. I had adhered stick-it adhesive behind each before die cutting, to make it easier to stick them together.

Back to the inked panel, I stamped the MFT Fireworks images and stars, heat embossing them with silver and white embossing powders.

I added the panel to a card base, then the die cut stacked sentiment in the centre. I flicked the card with water for some distress details. To finish, I added some embellishments and rounded two of the corners for interest.

Thanks for joining me today,
Gemma

Time to Twirl

Hello and happy Monday to you :)

A couple of weeks ago I showed you an interactive card which had been inspired by a video tutorial from Jennifer McGuire..... well here is another, and this time its a Peek a Boo card.

I love the simple mechanics of this card and thought how the Tu-Tu Cute set 

from Waffleflower would work well for the design. When you open the card 

the ballerina changes position...

Hopefully (if blogger allows me to load it) here's a video to show the mechanism in action

I basically followed Jennifer McGuire's assembly instructions on the video which 

you can view here. I stamped and coloured the images in Alcohol markers and used circle dies to cut around the two inner ballerinas and the coordinating dies for the pair on the front.

For a subtle background decoration on the front and inside, I used the Star

 Turnabout stamp just randomly in green and lilac ink.....

Isn't it such a fun design? Can you think of a stamp set that would work 

well for this interactive card?... I hope you give it a try too :)

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Autumnal Friendship

As the leaves are turning around us now, and the heating is on, its feeling very autumnal so I thought I'd make an autumnal card with the ADORABLE new deer stamps from Neat and Tangled as the focal element (do they remind anyone else of the Babycham deer adverts or am I just showing my age now!)

I started with my background, stamping the Thankful Leaves Turnabout from Concord & 9th directly onto a kraft card base using red, orange and brown inks and yellow embossing powder (as the yellow ink dried too pale so I just re-inked it and embossed it)

To add the circle for the deer to sit on, I used the new birthday balloon stamp, also from Concord & 9th as I love the "not quite perfect circle" shape and I liked the idea of having an embossed circle rather than a die cut circle for a change.

For the deer and the word deer I stamped onto vanilla malt card and coloured with pencils before fussy cutting (I use a finger knife for the centre of the letters), the friend word is stamped directly over the top of the embossed circle with versafine ink.  I love the expression on the deer - so cute!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We will have the current release from Flora and Fauna in store early this week

Altenew have another release on the 27th September - not stamps  but I can't say what it is yet as they haven't revealed it - but we hope it will ship early this week so we will have it shortly after release (no restocks on this order as it was a last minute release we had to order quickly but we will also have the reinkers for the markers in this delivery)

We have also ordered the latest release from Lil Inker Designs - Laura has changed the way she releases now and has closed her wholesale arrangements with the majority of stores, but we were lucky enough to still be allowed to stock her.  From now on though we can only order once the release is available in her own store so we will get it a little while after and not on release day anymore.

That's all we're expecting over the next week or so, until all the new releases for October start again shortly!

Catch you later

Tara