... Introducing Vintage Baby Shower and Picot Panel die

Gals, this is a long post - go get the coffee, I'll wait on you...

Ok today I am previewing one of the 8 New Stamp sets that we are releasing on Wednesday - For tonight's post I'm also using 2 of the Eleven new die sets...yep, it's a big ole release!

Oh, just before I commence waffling, here are the ladies who are previewing with me this eve: Lynn, Kelly, Renee, Karin, Teresa, Jeanne, Julia, Jen, Anya, Laurie, Sandie, Tosha

My Stamp set is only a year and a half overdue, been working on this for a little while now...It features some scrumptious vintage engravings from my collection. I nursed them back to life with some detailed retouching and generally doctored them until I was able to create stamps with them. I absolutely adore vintage images. I've been collecting old books since college days and now and again I happen upon something especially beautiful - these images are a sample of those. I created some vintage style sentiments to complement them and at last I have some Vintage baby stamps, and by happy accident, they are just in time as I hear I'm going to be an aunty again this winter!

I used the parasol/umbrella image as the focal point for the baby shower invite card - can you see how neatly cut out that is? Dies! There is a die set to match this set (Vintage Baby Shower Dies) This makes me happy. The background paper, which was already patterned with some tiny text detail, has been sponged in Antique Linen distress in and then stamped with the baby shoe image - also from the Vintage Baby Shower stamp set. The umbrella image is a treat to work with - it is so detailed that you can just stamp it and leave it, or you can add some colour - I chose to add some ginger tones to my Navy scheme and I used a copic marker to add colour to the brolly. The ink was SU, Night of Navy and I was delighted with how this image stamps with a variety of inks. I'm using a lovely smooth stampers cardstock here (coughGinaKcough)...

Cardstock tip

It's worth trying to get yourself some decent smooth cardstock for all of your detailed stamps - the pic below shows what a difference decent cardstock can make - the top image has been stamped on a good smooth card and you can see how beautifully crisp it is - I then die cut it out so I could set it beside the bottom image - this was stamped on a lesser quality card and you can see how the ink has puddled at the top of the umbrella and not taken properly to the card - lots of times when this happens to folks, they blame the ink or the stamp - mostly it turns out to be the cardstock...

For the Baby Shower Thank You card, I have used the baby face image - I love how Victorians were so decorative - the more is more thing really appeals to me! Some days you just need a frill. The detailing on this image is gorgeous and is wonderfully suited for either colouring or just stamping plain. I did not need to spend a lot of time colouring this as the image is pretty much self shaded.

The dies make this so easy to trim out - in the image below you can see that I secured the die with tape before running through the GCalibur. You can also see how I'm working on white cardstock - but that I had previously sponged it with antique Linen Distress ink (be sure this is dry first), before stamping my image in navy. I like to do this as SU ink sometimes smudges if I sponge over it.

Picot Panel Die

My sentiment Panels are cut with a new die - Picot Panel die. This die is also releasing on Wed.

What's nice about this super useful little die is that it is self matting! Here's how:

The die has a double cutting line all the way around - when you run it through your die cutter it will produce a panel and a little frame, you will normally just discard the wee frame piece if you want to use the panel only.

If you have run it through the die cutter again with an embossing mat, you will also see the embossed line detailing and it will bring out the pierced lines especially well.

If you wish to create a mat for the panel, run the die through the die cutter one more time with a fresh piece of cardstock in the colour you want your mat to be.

While the die cut is STILL IN THE DIE - use ordinary tape to tape along both of the side of the die - you can just see the shiny tape in this pic. You should but the edge of the tape up to the lowest parts of the scalloped edge - DON'T put your tape right to the edge of the scallops or you will see it when the panel is done. It does not really matter how wide your tape is - I used ordinary household tape - just so long as it covers the tiny holes also.

When you take the die cut out of the die and turn it right side over, you will have something that looks like this - all you need to do now is snip away the excess tape at each end of the panel.

In the pic above I have cut a plain panel from blue card and I have made a mat panel from white card - just as I described above.

Now I layer the pieces to get a picot panel with a contrasting mat - happy clappy! :) - you can use the mat complete, or you can trim it flush at the sides like I did for the Thank you card. I love this look also.

Hope it tickles - we'll be back tomorrow with more new goodies!

LOL, just an aside here but this pair of cards reminded me of when i last used Ginger and Navy together - back in 2009.... do you remember my brown paper backdrops? lol!