Cozy Snuggles

I've been masking to create a cozy little scene on my card today - I forget how useful a technique masking is and how you can make so much more of a stamp set by using it.   Here I used the new Cozy Companions set by Stacey Yakula from MFT Stamps which is just adorable!

I just layed my stamps on the front of the card, layering them on top of each other so I could work out my rough layout, and then set to work on masking.  I only needed a mask for the fox in his chair and the little table so I stamped them on post-its and cut them out.  I stamped the fox, masked him, stamped the table, masked that and then stamped the lamp and fireplace.   With masking you just have to remember to start with the foreground image and work backwards.

I coloured the stamped images with my pencils adding a yellow glow from the fire and lamp to really emphasise the cozy feel.  To turn a set of stamped images into a more realistic scene all I did was draw some straight lines with a ruler - one horizontally under the fireplace so I could create the floor, and then some vertical lines to make stripey wall paper.   I added a hearth rug by just drawing an oval and added some shading under the chair and table to ground them.

As I do my colouring on my Art-Stay-tion (I like to sit and colour in the evenings on the sofa in front of the TV and I find the hard metal stay-tion perfect for that) - I just used the lines on that and the magnetic ruler to draw the stripes with the coloured pencil I used to colour them in with and used a blender pencil to get a soft finish.

To finish the card I used a sentiment, but as I want to send it to someone I don't necessarily want to snuggle up with, I cut the sentiment apart so I could make it make more sense to the scene I created.  You just need some small sharp scissors and then trim the sentiment apart.  They will still go back together on your block if you want to use them as intended but you'll find pretty much all my sentiment sets are snipped into bits so I can say more with them!

I was going to do a second card with both chairs sitting either side of the fire but I didn't get time to colour it - but you can see the masking at work with the black stamped image and with a simple pencil line you immediately sit the pair in a "room".

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We are still waiting for our Waffle Flower Crafts order to arrive - it was held up in customs in the USA so hasn't reached the UK yet.  Fingers crossed we will get it in the next couple of days.

Our Wplus9 order is in transit and providing its not stuck in customs should be here by Tuesday.

Our Reverse Confetti order has arrived so that will be in store on Monday.

As usual, Concord and 9th don't ship to retailers until AFTER they release stock in their own store.  It will likely ship Monday/Tuesday this week and should hopefully be here by the end of the week.

Mama Elephant have a new release on the 15th as usual and we already have it so it will be live in store on Friday.

We've got our order in for the latest Altenew stamp and die release, build-a-flower and metallic paints - we are just waiting on them to ship it to us.   Again hopefully that will be this week.

Newton's Nook also have a new release pending which should also be here by release day.

We've also go orders in for Lawn Fawn and Avery Elle who have their valentine's releases in early December so watch this space for news of their arrival.

Work is ongoing with the new website too - which is looking good and is going to answer lots of your "can we" questions too we hope!  We think you're all going to love the new functionality.

Catch you later

Tara