Good Things Come In Small Packages!

Hey!

Today I wanted to share the fun and creativity I have had with one tiny stamp set from Flora and Fauna, the Mini Merry & Bright stamp.

This is my first purchase of Flora and Fauna products, so I wasn't sure how 'mini' the stamp set was, but gaging from the £3.95 price I knew it would be fairly small. This didn't put me off, it inspired me as to how creative I could get with these two stamps! 

First of all I wanted to use the foliage stamp to create a wreath, with the sentiment stamped inside.  This is really easy to do with a stamping tool and I also used a homemade wreath building template to guide me. There are lots of templates & guides on Google.

For this card I decided just to stamp the foliage four times to create a circular wreath. I was tempted stamp another four times to fill the gaps with a darker green ink, but I didn't want to loose the detail of the beautiful image.

Again I used a stamping tool to stamp the sentiment and I also added some very fine dots of coloured dimensional to the itty bitty berries in the stamped foliage image. I felt this added a lovely realistic finish without going over the top.

Next I went for another clean and simple design, using the foliage to accent the sentiment rather than frame it.

For this card I stamped the foliage in a slightly darker Altenew green, Moss. This is one of my favourite greens, especially for Christmas cards. Again I added some very fine dots of coloured dimensional to the itty bitty berries in the stamped foliage image. 

Lastly for today I stepped out of my comfort zone and used a coloured card base, along with a less clean and simple design.

For this card I again used the darker Moss shade of Altenew ink and randomly stamped the foliage image onto my green card base. I then added all the fine dots of coloured dimensional to the itty bitty berries in the stamped foliage image! This was quite time consuming, but the results are so pretty.

So you can gauge the size of the stamps a little, the sentiment on this card is stamped onto a 4.5 cm square piece of white card and embossed with gold embossing powder. I then adhered it to a 5 cm square piece of red card and adhered it to the card using foam adhesive. 

That's all from me this week, I hope I have inspired you to give these mini clear stamp sets a try! Have a lovely and safe Halloween if you celebrate and don't eat too many sweet treats ;)

Crafty Hugs 

Bev x

Products Used:

Flora and Fauna Mini Merry & Bright Stamp

Altenew Tropical Forest Mini Ink Cube Set

VersaFine Onyx Black Ink

VersaMark Ink

Hero Arts Gold Embossing Powder

Simple Backgrounds for CAS Cards

Hello, Tallie here.

More often recently I am finding I am creating cards that move towards the CAS - clean and simple - style. Lots of white space, one layer and perhaps one central image. Sometimes, just adding a simple shaped background can frame your central image and create a focal point. Today, I used the Mama Elephant Fuzzy Hugs stamp set, two sentiment sets and my alcohol markers to create two different cards.

I started by stamping out the adorable central image of hugging bears in some MFT Extreme Black Ink onto some blending cardstock. I then stamped out the sentiment from the Sugar Pea Designs Everyday Sentiments Stamp Set, centred underneath the hugging bears.

I then took out my alcohol markers and coloured the image in.

To create the background, I drew around one of my heart dies that perfectly framed the image lightly in pencil (make sure it is lightly as the pencil will be trapped under the marker ink). I then selected three coordinating teal markers and coloured in the heart, keeping it darker at the bottom and lighter at the top.

A little light grey shading under their feet grounds the image nicely.

This design is versatile and can be adapted to any shape or stamp set. Here's another example using the Mama Elephant Fuzzy Hugs stamp set and the MFT Bitty Thanks & Gratitude Stamp set.

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

  

November Monthly Planner Pages

Hello, it's Liz here today. Last month I shared my October monthly planner pages and told you a little bit about how I use the monthly pages (if you missed it the blog post is here). So continuing on from that here are my November pages. I have taken a totally different approach this month and have left lots of space in the boxes for notes - November is going to be a busy month! That's what I love about these blank pages by Waffle Flower, you can customise and decorate as much or as little as you want to suit your needs in any particular month.

Because I wanted to leave the boxes blank I simply decorated along the bottom of the pages. I also added some extra 'list' space on the side. The stamps I have used this month just hint at Christmas, that's because I like to go all out Christmas on my December pages! 

Here are links to the stamp sets I used -

Birdie Brown Alphabet and Numbers by My Favorite Things

Sticky Note by Mama Elephant

Little Peguin Agenda by Mama Elephant

Stay Focused by Waffle Flower

Holiday Houses by Wplus9 

The monthly planner pages are by Waffle Flower and are on special offer at the mo' here.

Thanks for stopping by today. Happy crafting and happy planning! 

 

Big Holly Jolly

I have another splash of Christmas cheer from me this morning as I couldn't wait to 

watercolour this large Holly Sprig from Colorado Craft Company...

I love how the image just gatecrashes the whole card! 

I stamped the whole image out onto a piece of watercolour card with Versafine 

Onyx black ink and just enjoyed having a play with water-colour ...

trying to get the areas of highlight and shadow on the leaves.

I trimmed the finished piece down to a 5" square using an aperture template to find the best

 position for the sprig on the card front. I embossed the sentiment in gold but didn't 

feel it stood out enough so embossed it in white on black card instead. I used scissors 

to trim around the sentiment and adhered it over the gold version.

I used a glue pen and some foil to add a few touches of gold as well as 

white gel pen for highlights on the berries

I'm pretty pleased how this turned out .... 

a nice stamp to practice water-colouring with 😉

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

Halloween Banner

I had lots of fun last weekend, I had a girlfriend round for a cocktail crafting session - seeing if combining my two favourite things would work - and before we got too squiffy, we did manage to make a fun Halloween banner.   Here it is hanging on my dinning room wall under my perfect street sign!

We started with a pile of old Halloween papers I had in my stash and die cut them using Altenew's Party Banner Die as I like the shape, but you could choose from lots of different banner shapes by filtering in the store on banners and dies.  To spell out Halloween we used the Mega Alphabet bundle also from Altenew - quite an investment as a set, but once you have it, party banners are so easy to create for any event!

I really love Halloween products but don't make Halloween cards as no-one I know does "Halloween" as an event, so I wanted to play with all my favourite stuff to decorate each letter.

Here's what we used banner by banner starting top left and finishing bottom right:

Lil' Inker Designs Large Spooky Word die (plus some googly eyes)
Spooky Trees, Stitched Ghosts and Boo word die all by Lil' Inker Designs
Colorado Craft Company's Big and Bold Jack-o-Lantern embossed in Copper
H - Lil' Inker Designs Spooky Trees again cut from Concord and 9th's Neutral Glitter Card pack
A - Lil' Inker Design's Stitched Bats
L - Sugar Pea Designs SpookyScape Die
L -  Lil' Inker Designs Boo word die
O - Lil' Inker Designs Large Spooky Word die
W - Sugar Pea Designs Hocus Pocus die set cut from Concord and 9th's Neutral Glitter Card pack
E - Lil' Inker Design's Stitched Bats
E - Sugar Pea Designs SpookyScape Die and the moon from Sugar Pea Designs Hocus Pocus die set
N -  Lil' Inker Designs Spooky Trees
Colorado Craft Company's Big and Bold Haunted House
Hero Arts Cloudy Moon die (Pieced together using black and white glitter card) and Lil' Inker Deisgns Spooky Script Die
Cauldron taken from Sugar Pea Designs Hocus Pocus die set with glitter bubble accents using stickles
All strung together using Candy Corn Twine from Lawn Fawn.

There are over 270 products in our Halloween Theme Section now so you have tonnes of items you can make your own banner with.  You could also make a Christmas one, a Birthday one, a new baby one - the world is your oyster once you've got the banner dies!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We've had a massive amount of MFT restocks this weekend which are in store now, and will be adding the new vault items later today or tomorrow - the new kit-add-ons are in transit and due this week.

It will be a quieter week for arrivals as this is "order" week in the monthly cycle so we'll be busy ordering all of Novembers products!

Happy Diwali to those of our customers who are celebrating today and Happy Halloween for Thursday.

Tara

Heart Pals

Hey stampers, Anni here!

It was my sweetheart's birthday this week, so I had to make a special card. Reverse Confetti's Heart Pals are perfect for the special persons in your life.

I started by stamping and colouring  the cute little bear with Distress reinkers using the no line technique.

The die cut word love is part of Mama Elephant's Tri Window Cover. I prepared a piece of cardstock by blending the same colour of ink I used for thr bear's heart on it creating an ombre effect. From that piece I die cut the word Love.

I was very lucky to find a small speech bubble with a matching sentiment in W Plus 9's Friends for all Seasons: Fall set. I embossed it in white on a piece of dark brown Cardstock.

When I adhered the bear, the speech bubble and the I love you sentiment on s stripe of cardstock, I got the feeling it looked a little bit boring. So I took the hearts from the Heart Pals set - there are two kinds - and stamped them in a lighter and in a darker brown.

All there was left to do was to assemble the card.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

      

Found on Friday October

It's time to celebrate our talented customers again with our regular "Found on Friday" feature here on the blog where we highlight makes that caught our eye over in our SHC VIP's group on Facebook.

First off this month I wanted to feature Kieron's amazing record collection card - how awesome would it be to get such a fabulous card?   I loved the little pocket full of records at the top of the player which really took this make over the top.  Kieron used the Greatest Hits stamps and dies from Sugar Pea Designs for this make.

I also really loved this fabulous see-through snow globe card that Felix made - seeing behind the snowman inside the card takes a standard shaker to the next level!   Felix used the Classic Snow Globe Die set from MFT.

Whilst we're looking at inside and outside cards, I also wanted to feature this super cute alligator birthday card from Sarah Kaplan.   The pop up elements inside just make it extra special!    Sarah used the Later Alligator set from Neat & Tangled.

Sticking with the birthday theme - I just loved this tall card with the mahusive cake made by Annamaria.  That's my kinda cake!  Anna used the small but mighty Cake Layers die from Concord & 9th.

Michele created this perfect autumnal card using MFT's Squirrel stamp which is perfectly framed against the stencilled background square.

Annemarie created a really spooky and atmospheric background for this fabulous Halloween card which really displays the fabulous witch from MFT's Witch Way is the Candy stamp - her fabulous colouring really makes her pop!

I'll finish with a flurry of Christmas cards - its time to get serious about making them now to avoid that last minute panic (or is that just me lol!)

Firstly I loved the beautiful colour blending on this beauty from Natty.   She embossed the foliage frames stamp from Neat & Tangled and used the co-ordinating die to cut the shaped frame from the centre.  The glittery snowflake is the perfect embellishment!

Jackie created her first ever shaker card using the Trim the Tree die from Concord and 9th - great job Jackie!   I'm sure it won't be her last - I loved the embossed ornament details to match the gold shaker elements.

Paulina shared this fabulous set of cards she made turning a heap of previously stamped backgrounds into actual cards!   She used Lil' Inker Designs Festive Florals to stamp her backgrounds and Concord and 9th's Banner Die.

Jodie used Stamping Bella's Tangled Yeti to make this super cute Christmas card - who couldn't fail to smile at a yeti all wrapped up in Christmas lights!

Finally for this issue of Found on Friday, I wanted to feature this fabulous floral card from Linda - the mirror stamping of Pine and Cosy from Mama Elephant makes for such an elegant card, especially when paired with just a hint of glitter in the sentiment!

We'll be back with more Found on Friday features in November so if you want to be featured on the blog and are a customer of our store - head on over to our private SHC VIPs group on Facebook (you need a valid order number to gain entry as it is strictly for our customers only) and link up your projects using items you bought in store.   Please leave a note of what you used to make it easier to link you up.

Laters

Tara