... Gina K Designs DT Blog Hop, Day 1

The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to another fabulous blog hop celebrating the new stamp sets from the July StampTV Release Party! We hope to inspire you with some beautiful card projects as you hop along to each of the designer’s blogs! Today, we are featuring two stamp sets by Therea Momber and Melanie Muenchinger.

French Flair

The first set we are featuring is French Flair by Theresa Momber. Theresa has created this wonderful set that will leave you feeling like you may be in Paris or strolling around the wine vineyards in Europe! 

The wineglass stamp in the set got me thinking that it would be fun to do something a little different and create a wineglass lampshade. These are fun to use on the dining table for a cozy feel. The shade I've made for today's hop features the small Eiffel Tower stamp and the text stamp from Theresa's set and is perfect for a romantic dinner, but this idea is something that you could use to dress up your table for any reason or season.

The only thing I'm going to insist on is that you use a battery operated candle. Do not use a naked flame candle with these, they are too close to the shade. There's a plethora of good battery operated candles available today - just look at the illumination I was able to get with an already well used well used battery candle, above. Isn't that cozy?

Wineglass shade tutorial and Download

 Have you time for a little how-to? sure hope so, gonna go ahead anyhow... :)

OK, here's how I started - I cut out my shade shape from 12x12 cardstock, you can make a smaller or larger shade to suit your glass. I have a fairly large wine glass...no clue why that might be...
I stamped the smaller of the Eiffel Tower images repeatedly around the lampshade shape, and I stamped these on the side that I wanted to be showing, the outside of the shade.

On the reverse, or what will be the inside, I stamped an allover pattern with the text from Theresa's set. You can see the position of my tape in the pic. It's really important to use your strongest adhesive here, you'll see why in a bit.

Then I simply adhere the ends, without folding the little tab. You don't want your shade to have a corner...
You can add a little trim if you wish, a little ribbon or braid - I added a little scrap of floral braid that I had lying about. This is what it looks like in the daylight - c'est bon, n'est-ce pas?

However, it really comes into it's own when you turn off the lights - I love how the Eiffel tower image is just that bit stronger than the text, stamping on both side of the shade creates an interesting depth to the overall pattern.

Now that's pretty, but here's a tip for how to really make it shine. If you brush your lampshade with a little oil, the cardstock will turn translucent and you will get so much more glow! This is where extra strong adhesive comes into it's own, but just to be on the safe side, I didn't slather the join with oil, I just very lightly brushed over that area. You can see in the pic below that where I have brushed a patch of this lampshade, it is starting to turn transparent and you can see the text starting to show through from the reverse.

Yep, actually brush on some oil directly to the lampshade, I used olive oil because that's what I had in the cupboard. This is another major reason why you do NOT want to use these with a naked flame, use battery tealights only folks! I insist.

This is my battery candle in my wine glass, it's just a cheap battery candle that I picked up in Lidl, I got a box of 4 of them for under £2 last Christmas.

Now below I have two pics for you so you can see the comparison. The left hand pic is my lampshade before oiling, the right hand pic is my lampshade after oiling. Oiling is optional and if you want your shades to become a family heirloom I would consider not oiling, there's no way to tell if the oil you are going to use will stand the test of years in a cupboard, but for a piece of ephemeral fun it works a treat!

Oiling can be useful to make ordinary paper and card go translucent, especially if you are using lighter coloured cardstock. You can use light pinks, greens blues etc, colours that you can't sometimes find in vellums etc. If you are happy to use neutral tones then you could consider using baking paper or greased proof paper for your shades or even a heavy vellum, these would not require oiling as they are already translucent. Be sure to experiment with your cardstocks and the inks you will be using, just in case the oil makes your ink run. I didn't have any problems with that, but I did a test patch just to check first.

The French Flair set is filled with images that would look great on these shades!

If you fancy making a wineglass shade for yourself, I have made up the cut file as
a .pdf and as an .svg file, you can either use it in your Silhouette Cameo or similar or print it out as a pdf and just cut it out with a craft knife.

You can access those files here - click link to get them in my dropbox.https://www.dropbox.com/s/earnzazdqkms7vr/Wine%20Glass%20cut%20files%20Claire%20Brennan.zip?dl=0
All I ask is that you don't pass on the file, but tell folks where you got it and encourage them to come and get it from here - Thanks folks, much appreciated.

Theresa's set also features a gorgeous butterfly in two sizes and I used the larger one here as a focal point on this card. I stamped the butterfly in grey over Ivory cardstock and then stiched around the panel before sticking it to the card base. I stamped the large butterfly in black ink and then used clear embossing powder with a heat gun. This does two things for me, it deepens the black colour and it also means that the copic markers won't make the black ink bleed. Then I coloured with yellows and oranges, I think it looks like a mini stained glass window, the colours are so vibrant.

Stately Flowers 10

The second set we are featuring is Stately Flowers 10 by Melanie Muenchinger. As Gina says - Melanie has done it again! She has added another wonderful set to her Stately Flowers collection. This is set number 10 and what a wonderful set it is! You will be able to use all of Melanie’s flowers sets to fill the seed packet in this set as an adorable way to send the perfect message! The possibilities are endless for making beautiful cards for any occasion.

I am addicted to the dogwood flowers in this set, and for this card I stamped them on some white cardstock and coloured around them to make the flowers pop. I then made a seed packet out of an old brown envelope using the seed packet stamp. I cut an aperture from the front of the envelope (I opened out the envelope first and used a craft knife) and popped the coloured flowers in behind the aperture. I didn't want my flowers to be hidden behind the top of the seed packet and so I sliced around the edge of that top flower (craft knife again) and made sure to slide the seed packet down in behind the flower. I really adore these flowers, did you see my card from yesterday, I'm sure you did, if not, here's a reminder...

Okeydokey!
 That's all for today folks, don't forget to comment to be in with a chance of winning a $20 Gina K Designs gift certificate! To see who won, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop.

If you are ready for more inspiration just click on the links below 

for more from Gina and the Cast & Crew:

Gina K
Theresa Momber - Illustrator for French Flair
Melanie Muenchinger -  Illustrator for Stately Flowers 10
Allie Gower
Beth Silaika
Cathy Tidwell
Claire Brennan
Karen Hightower
Kendra Wietstock
Sean Fetterman
Laurie Schmidlin 
Sheri Gilson
Susie Moore
 

Don’t forget to pop over to the Gina K Designs Store and check out all of the new products available this month in the “What’s New” section at http://www.shop.ginakdesigns.com/

Thank you for stopping by!