Big Bithday Wishes

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I have the feeling that this summer the companies came up with extra cute summer sets and I want to use all of them that I bought before summer is over! Although I think nothing is wrong with a summer card in winter when we need it the most, isn't it?
And I can't think about Christmas cards yet although I love to make them and all these super cute new Christmas sets are keep popping up. But it's still very warm in Germany and as long as the weather is good I keep making summer cards.
So today I have this card for you featuring Mama Elephant's Summer Splash.

I started by stamping all the images I wanted to use and coloured them with coloured pencils. To cut them out you can get coordinating dies.

To create the background I teared a piece of masking paper to get a rough edge. I used both parts of the torn piece, one to mask off the sky, the other for the beach. I added ink blending in beige/yellow for the beach and a mix of pinks and lilacs for the sky. At first I went with shades of turquoise for the sky but the elephant got lost on it wearing a turquoise swimsuit. So I decided to start a new background in different colours.

I die cut the background using the big frame from Mama Elephant's Framed Tags Madison Avenue. I thought I would use the frame as well but decided that it took too much attention from the scene. So I used only the inner part.

Again to tone down the background I added a layer of vellum. I die cut a circle using My Favorite Things' Jumbo Peek-a-Boo Circle Window as it had just the right size.

For the sentiment I chose one of Mama Elephant's Birthday Messages. I stamped it with Versamark on a stripe of matching cardstock and heat embossed it in white. And that finished up my card.

Are you still in summer card mode or are you preparing for Christmas or Halloween cards? Let me know.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

         

Birthday Hugs and Kisses

Hey stampers, Anni here!

I am back with a card featuring Mama Elephant's super cute Hogs and Kisses set. These pigs are just so darn cute and it might sound strange but I like to colour pigs.
There are critters I like to colour more than other. I prefer grey animals over brown and I find it difficult to colour foxes (also I love them so much). I never seem to find the right combination of shads of orange. But pigs are easy to colour in my opinion: This brownish pink goes well with a lot of colours and you can easily shade with brown (or violett) to get darker areas.

When I finished the colouring I cut out the images. There are coordinating dies available.
For the background I used the same colours as for the pig and the balloons and created a watercolour background. I die cut it using Lil'Inker Designs' Stitched Mats: Rounded Rectangles.

For the sentiment I chose one of Mama Elephant's Birthday Messages - love that set! So many great birthday sentiments in a really cute font. I stamped the sentiment on a narrow stripe of black cardstock with Versamark and heat embossed it in white.

Do you like to colour some creatures more than others? I'm curious, let me know!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!
Anni

      

Set of Birthday Cards

Hey stampers, Anni here! 

Birthday cards are the cards I send out the most. So I am always short on them. I decided to make a set of simple birthday cards with My Favorite Things’ Diagonal Design. That is an amazing background stamp that unfortunately will be retired. It is on sale right now so run and grab one as long they are available.

I started by stamping the background on four pieces of watercolour cardstock. On two I stamped with Versamark and heat embossed the background in white and on the other two I stamped with a black pigment ink and heat embossed the pattern with a clear embossing powder.

To colour up the backgrounds I used (very old) ink sprays I found in my stash. But you could also use ink pads or watercolours. I sprayed the backgrounds heavily with the ink and water. I inked up the white one in a warm and the black ones with a cool colour scheme. 

While the background panels dried I worked on the sentiments. I went through my stash and looked for big sentiment dies. The ones I chose were Altenew’s Script Words 3, My Favorite Things’ Celebrate and Neat & Tangled’s Hooray Word Die.

For one of the cards I just chose a Happy Birthday from Lawn Fawn’s Happy Happy Happy and heat embossed it in white on black cardstock. 

To make the word die cut stand out more I added also a layer of vellum to most of the cards. The Hooray word die comes with a shadow, so no need to add a extra rectangle.

I also added a sentiment to go with the die cut. Mama Elephant’s Birthday Messages is just the perfect sampler for this need.

For the finishing touch I added some sequins to the cards in various colours.

So you see: fast and easy and I can add four birthday cards to much stash.
Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.

Anni

               

Monster Hugs and Kisses

Hello, Tallie here. Hope you're enjoying the sunny weather!

I had three requirements for today's card: 1) bright colours, 2) can be sent to a boy or a girl, and 3) it had to use the Concord & 9th Monster Love set. This one's been sitting in my stash for a little while and it's too cute to stay there!

I started out by stamping the little furry guy and two balloons onto some blending cardstock with some MFT Extreme black ink. I then coloured him in with my alcohol markers, using lots of tiny strokes to give the fur effect. I stuck to bright colours and cut them out with the coordinating dies when finished.

I chose a simple background of green cardstock and used a strip of my pre-stamped background paper I mentioned a couple of weeks ago to ground the little guy. A sentiment strip from the Mama Elephant Birthday Messages set and a marker for to add some balloon strings finishes off the card nicely.

The design is simple and flexible so I made a bunch of different designs to bulk up my birthday card stash!

Thanks for reading, catch you next week.

Tallie

Panda Crossing

Hi guys, I'm back in my usual slot today, still lots to sort but time to try and get a bit of normality back.  Thank you so much to everyone who has taken time to leave a message or send me a beautiful card, I really do appreciate all your kind thoughts.

So back to today, I really couldn't wait to get my hands on one of the latest "little agenda" sets from Mama Elephant today - Pandamonium, one of their early stamp sets has been a constant best seller, so when they brought out a little agenda version of Pandas, we knew they were going to run out of the door fast.

On my version, I've decided to have the Panda's balancing on a birch tree to cross a ravine - I do love how many of them look like they are balancing on one leg so giving them a balance beam seemed a natural choice.

I picked 5 of the pandas, stamped and coloured with copic markers and die cut them with the co-ordinating dies.  I used the dies to die cut the same card twice more for each panda shape so I could stack them and give some depth without using foam as I wanted to suspend them in mid-air.

To get the suspended look, I stuck the coloured panda's on top of the birch tree (also coloured with copics using pointillism to get the feel of the peeling bark) where I wanted them to stand and then turned the tree over so I could stack the other two die cuts behind the tree lining them up from behind.  This means you have 2 layers behind the tree and one on top.

To keep them away from the card, I also stacked the frame in the same way.  I die cut the stitched detail frame from the Pegworks die set from Kiwi cardstock 3 times and adhered the ends of tree behind the top layer and then stacked the other two behind.   This means when you stick the frame and pandas to the card they sit away from the background but won't crush in the mail as all the elements are nice and solid.

For the card itself, I just blended a blue background with tumbled glass distress oxide ink and sprayed with water for an soft effect.   I went with a sentiment to match the Chinese look of the bears as it sounded to me like something you'd get in a fortune cookie.  It came from the Birthday Messages stamp set also by Mama Elephant.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We're still playing catch up on ordering new releases so sorry to those of you who are still waiting for the Altenew release to arrive.  They have another die release coming up this month of standalone dies so everything will be coming together with that hopefully next week.

The restock of Waffle Flower's Water Media Mats is due to arrive tomorrow customs willing.

A massive delivery from Hero Arts arrived late on Friday so we'll be working our way through that this week and will get it online as quickly as we can.

We are also expecting our delivery of the brand new Stazon Pigment ink pads this week.

There are going to be ongoing appointments I have to attend to sort out my mother's estate and we will be closed for the funeral (date as yet to be confirmed) but we will post updates on Facebook and here to keep you all in the loop as to when we won't be around.

Catch you next week

Tara

Little Mermaiden Agenda

Today I’m sharing a card featuring the fabulous Little Mermaiden Agenda from Mama Elephant. I created a underwater scene, adapting another set from Mama Elephant for one of the scene elements.

I began with the background. I die cut the Mama Elephant Hillside Cover die from white card, masked off the border, then added a blend of distress oxide ink. I used picked raspberry, wilted violet, broken china and peacock feathers for the ocean. For the sea bed, I used antique linen and frayed burlap.

I flicked the background to get some droplet texture, and added some more texture to the sand bank by adding dots of brown alcohol marker ink.

Mama Elephant have some other sea sets which would work really well with the mermaids. As I don’t have these, I decided to create some sea grass myself by drawing on card with my alcohol markers. I trimmed them out and adhered them to the scene.

Next, I stamped and coloured some Little Mermaiden Agenda images. I had fun using different colours for their hair. Can you spot Ariel and Flounder? 

I had an idea to create a large clam shell for the mermaids to sit in - a bit like the opening scene of Ariel's sisters singing in The Little Mermaid. To create my shell, I used the oval and circle frames from Little Agenda Frames. I coloured the frames to look like a shell, trimming the bottom off the circle frame before adhering on top of the oval frame. 

I added two of the mermaids on to the shell with foam tape, making sure to hide the edges where the frames meet. 

I adhered the shell and mermaids to my card, using foam tape for dimension. I then added some tone on tone stamped fish to the background, using the two small fish included in Little Mermaiden Agenda. 

I finished with a stamped sentiment from the Mama Elephant Birthday Messages stamp set, some white and glitter gel pen accents, and some clear jewels for bubbles.

Have a lovely day,

Gemma

ME Birthday Messages

ME Little Mermaiden Agenda

ME Little Agenda Frames

ME Hillside Cover

We Herd it is Your Birthday

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Sometimes I see a stamp set and fall immediately in love! That happened to me when I saw Waffle Flower's super cute We Herd stamp set. I knew of a friend that she is a big sheep friend. But when another crafty friend mentioned that she loves sheeps aswell I knew I hadto buy the stamp set.
It was the birthday of this crafty friend  and of course I used the stamp set to make a card for her.

I started by stamping the sheeps onto alcohool marker friendly paper with black ink. During the colouring progress I made some mistakes - I chose different shades of grey (warm and cold). That didn't turned out as I wanted to. Lucky for me that happened to the sheeps in the second row. I fussy cut the sheeps that I liked, stamped the sheeps a second time and coloured them in a colour sccheme I liked more. For the whole group of sheeps there are coodinating dies available, of course.

For the background I added a very soft inkblending to a piece of white cardstock. Then I applied another layer of ink, this time through a stencil called Birthday Confetti by Echo Park.
For the sentiment I stamped one of Mama Elephant's Birthday Messages on a stripe of grey cardstock and heat embossed it in white.

To finish up the card I added the biggest of Avery Elle's Wonky Scalloped Frames to my card and adhered the whole scene to a light grey card base.

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty weekend.
Anni

   

Monster Gift Box

Hey stampers, Anni here!

Today I have a gift card box for you featuring Neat & Tangled's Gift Card Box die set and Concord & 9th's Monster Love stamp set.

I needed another gift box for one of my nephews. Not so long ago I purchased the gift box by Neat & Tangled and I have to say I really like this one. I have a few gift box dies and what I love about this one is that you need no glue to put it together.

For the decoration I used the super cute Monster set. I love love love this set because you can create so many different monsters - just the way you need it for your project. I coloured the monster with alcohol markers and added some strokes with coloured pnecils and a white gel pen to make the fur look more realistic. There are coordinating dies available to cut out the monsters.

To personalize the box I added the name of my nephew using Mama Elephant's Lots of Letters. I heat embossed it in white.

For the sentiment I chose one of Mama Elephant's Birthday Messages. I also heat embossed it in white on a stripe of black cardstock.

I was very happy when I realised that one of Lil'Inker Designs' Stitched Mats: Rectangles fit nearlly perfectly on top of the box. I die cut it once from patterned paper and once from vellum to tone down the background.

Then I assembled the box.

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a crafty weekend!
Happy Easter to you and your family.
Anni