...Introducing little deer and some Flaky characters...

 

Good evening folks, and welcome to the previews of the sets we will be releasing on Sunday the 28th! I'm very excited! it's a small release, but I think that small will be key for us as we settle into our new routine. If you have not heard already, we are going to hold our releases on the 28th of the month from now on (everyone keep your fingers crossed for me...)!

Little Deer - new stamps releasing 28th Sept

Today I'm showing you a couple of things - I have a couple of cute critters for you up first, these guys are from the Little Deer set. I drew these when I was going through my 'cute phase' - I think the wee folks put a spell on me, everything I drew for about a month a while back was turning out cute...which was nice for a change...we don't have a lot of cute at WMS so it's been an interesting change of pace and I have been enjoying these more than I would be happy to admit in public...lol!

My deer has a little cardinal friend, he is quite adaptable and can either sit, stand or perch depending on whether you decide to stamp some legs for him. There are a bunch of other useful stamps in the set, I clear embossed two birch trunks on white paper and then sponged in antique linen. I then clear embossed another trunk and sponged some more with darker inks, this gave me two pure white tree trunks and a lovely pale gold tree. A little torn paper for a snowy base. I popped the tree scene in behind a card front - I had cut an aperture with the gift card die, it's the perfect size for a little window like this. I stamped my critters onto cut file shapes that I had already cut out with the Cameo. I used Versafine black ink and clear embossed so it would not run with the copic markers.

I have decided to go down the cut file route with these sets, so matching cut files will be available also. I decided this because of the large amount of dies that would have been needed to match the 3 sets we are releasing. Ideally we would eventually have cut files and dies for all sets, but it's just not possible at the moment.

If you have no idea what a cut file is - read up on them here.

Design Team Previews

 I know the DT ladies are previewing today also, and here are the links:

Anya Schrier
Becca Feeken
Jeanne Jachna
Julia Aston
Karin Akesdotter
Laurie Schmidlin
Lynn Mercurio
Sandie Dunne
Tosha Leyendekker

Going forward we will also be posting the entire teams creations on the Inspiration blog - ideal if you are on limited time - one click right here will bring you everything previewed on the day!

Snowflakes and die cutting

Do you like my poinsettia decoration? It's made out of snowflakes. One of the dies we are releasing on Sunday is this Snowflake One, inspirational name I know, but I was having trouble thinking up fancy names for snowflakes, because snowflakes never come in ones...there's usually a bunch of them...

The pic above shows the die, top right, with the scrap left after you cut the flake (top right - don't throw these out, they are quite useful, more later) The cream flake at the bottom is the actual die cut - lovely simple detailing, this is going to suit so many projects.

I'm going to be introducing 4 snowflakes over this release and right up front I am going to recommend that you consider your die cutting technique. All but one of the snowflake dies are quite detailed and, if you are like me, you will want to get the best results with minimum fuss. If you are a seasoned die user, you will know that detailed dies can be temperamental - it's a fact of life, the more detailed the die, the harder it can be to get a good clean cut - the solution that works for me is a metal shim. 

In my pic above you can see that, starting at the bottom - I lay out my cutting mat, my card, the die, then comes the metal shim - and I taped round the edges of mine as these look a little slicey - then I finish up with the base plate. I'm using a Grand Calibur and these metal shims are recommended for Cuttlebugs and Big Shot - they are expressly NOT recommended for the Calibur, but so far so good....

So anyway, I was finding it so easy to get lovely crisp flakes that I was thinking of how to use a whole bunch of them - this flake really reminds me of poinsettia for some reason and so I decided to just build myself a poinsetta embellishment. I cut out two green flakes and two red flakes for each flower and just layered them on top, I just rotated them slightly as I went - you can see the two green flakes layered above, I used two different shades of green and two shades of red.

The design of Snowflake One really lends itself to a poinsettia, it's so easy to pop some pearls onto the centre. I only ever use plain cream or white pearls and I colour them up with copics to suit whatever project I'm working on. I do the same with crystals (see the centre of the poinsettia in the first pic).

 Popped a nifty tag on - I cut it with the small die from the Stitched tags set and added My Cardinal and a sweet sentiment from Little Deer. I like to colour the faces of the cardinals in grey, I know they are probably meant to be black, but I can see his beady eye so much better if his face is grey.

I made up another cream and green embellishment with the snowflake ides and finished the centre with a natural button, I'm loving how versatile this one flake die is turning out to be. I cut the tag on this package with the bonus tag that comes in the Folding Tag set. I dotted the i's on the sentiment (Little Deer) with a couple of red coloured crystals... winter birthdays are just that little bit more...sparkly! lol!

Hope it tickles, back tomorrow with the next set of previews!