... 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!

...Special Lady and FREE Box cut files

Folks I still have a couple of things to show you that I didn't get time to post during the release.

One of them was the complete set of samples for my Special Lady project. I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to stamping, I like a load of different styles but one thing I keep coming back to is Vintage. I just cannot get enough of those fabulous Victorian style engravings. My mother was a huge vintage/antiques fan and so I think I will forever associate Vintage style with Mother's Day projects. This latest stamp sets, Special Lady was designed with her in mind. Even though she passed away a few years ago, I haven't yet managed to design a Mother themed set without thinking about my wee mum. I think she would have loved this set.

My card is pretty straight forward, I really wanted to show off this beautiful lady image, I created this image by working with a few original victorian engravings, reconstructing the damaged areas and combining a couple of images to get this finished image of a pretty lady in a fancy hat. I paired this with a pretty font which has an old world feel. I simply stamped her in dark brown ink onto a tag I had cut with our stitched tags dies. I added just a little more pink into her hat with a copic marker.

Making Rosettes with a Picot Panel die

Do you like that little rosette? I have never made one of these before now - gasp - I know, I'm a few years behind the times. Turns out that it is super simple to make these and we already have the perfect tool! - the Picot Panel die. Here's how to make one using this die:

Line up your picot panel die face down on your patterned paper, I'm using a piece of 12 inch long designer paper. stick the die to the paper with a little masking tape. Run the paper through the die cutter, but NOT ALL THE WAY - stop short before you reach the end of the die and rewind back to get the paper and die out. 

Resposition the die, further down the paper, towards the end of this first cut - it is really easy to line up the die using the holes, you can see in the image below that I had marked a little arrowhead in pencil, along the right hand side of my paper to tell me where the end of the die was. I cut this in my Cuttle bug as the clear plates allow me to see where I am with the die cut in relation to the rollers.

If you keep going, you will eventually end up with a strip of paper like this. You can either slice this down the centre to get two small rosettes or use it whole for a larger rosette.

In order to make folding the rosette easier, I scored the strip of paper with the back of the blade in my scalpel. I scored in between each of the scallops. I trimmed off a strip about three quarters of an inch wide from one side as I did not want the rosette to be too big. Then I just concertina folded all the way along. I joined the ends together with some double sided tape, and gathered one side of the folded edges together and secured them with some hot glue from a hot glue gun. you can just see the glue in the smaller, unfinished rosette in the top left of the photo below. 

This pic also shows some little embellishments I made with some air drying clay. I just pressed some of the Cameo creations  stamps and the Cameo to go stamps into a piece of clay and let them air dry, then I coloured them pink with copics to match my project.

I used the small three quarter inch strip to make this mini rosette for my box tag.

 I used the other piece of my strip to make the slightly larger rosette for the card.

And I created another strip using the Picot Panel die and used it full size to create an even larger rosette for this box lid. I made a plainer pink stripe rosette also and layered it with the Snowflake 3 die cut - this is a surprisingly versatile die also, it's not too 'snowy-flakey' that you couldn't use it on everyday projects such as this one.

What's nice about the Picot Panel die is that it matches the pretty circles die, which I used on the inside of the card, to stamp my sentiment on.

Picot Panel

Pretty Circles

Do you like these little boxes? I made up a quick template for these and for one of the samples I cut out an aperture on the lid using the pretty circles die.

I love how the pretty circles die gives two results with one cut, like our other self matting dies. A label and an aperture in one cut.

I twas simple just to tape the die in place before running the box lid through the die cutter.

The Box cutting file is available as a .svg file for free in our freebies section at the store - just click here if you would like to have it! It's around 3 inches square, perfect for little gifts of all sorts, - it would also make a great cupcake box!

Sure hope it tickles!

...fairy house...

Can't help it, love little boxes. This is another mag project and the cutting files may be accessed freely here. If anyone wants a how-to, shout, I might be able to scare up some pics I took while making it, but it's easy peasy, same principle as the tower box from eons ago.

I used Festive Foliage and the Cottage Home stamp sets to decorate my box like a wee fairy house!

This makes a super gift box, or glue the lid on and use it as a hanging decoration! make mini ones!! they are so dinky, must take pics of mine...

Hope it tickles!

...Freebie - Strawberry Suite Templates and cut files

ED  -Folks, this comes as a zip file, it is compressed and so you need to save it to your desktop first. Only once it has been saved can you right click (PC) or double click (Mac) to open it. If you try to open it first it won't work. hope that helps. 

And here it is - the Freebie templates are ready - you may download the package directly from the store by clicking on the pic above to go to the download page!

A Jumbo size Freebie! Included in the download are:

A downloadable PDF template and instruction booklet, packed with traditional style printable templates and guidance on how to assemble them.

SVG and DXF cutting files for all projects.

Templates and Instructions are for a Large punnet, two versions of a small punnet, and two sizes of strawberry! Enjoy!

Introducing Heroines - Fairy Princess

Good morning!! Wherever you are, I hope you are dry! We had a little flooding here at WMS last night, and so since we were bailing out water and sandbagging until late, I had time to upload the pics, but no time to write up the waffle!! I'm keeping it brief, since the weather forecast for this morning is worse and I need to be on hand to operate some kind of apparatus my husband refers to as a bucket....

Anyhow, this morning, we are kicking off our July release with a tiny little set called Heroines - Fairy Princess. These new photopolymer stamps will be available, along with others, on Sunday! pop back tomorrow to see what else is new!

Just before I show you through my bits and bobs, here are the DT ladies who are also previewing today:

Anya Schrier 

 Belinda Chang Langner  

Bonnie Sharp  

Clare Buswell  

Julia Aston  

Jennifer Holmes  

Kelly Schirmer  

Laurie Schmidlin  

Lynn Mercurio  

Mona Pendleton  

Sandie Dunne  

Tosha Leyendekker  

Heroines - Fairy Princess is a small 3x4 inch set, but in the very best WMS tradition is stuffed with stamps! BOTH the fairy outfit and the princess outfit are included in this set, together with a princess head, with crown, two darling frogs and a sentiment! All together at the super price of just £3.99. These mini sets are going to be a terrific way to introduce yourself to WMS or to build your armoury without breaking the bank!

I made this little card to showcase my princess. These characters are a direct match for the girls in the recently released Half Pint Heroines set, and may be used with that set, and indeed the Half Pint Heroes set. They share the same illustration style and sentiment stylings.

I made the card with a wee castle card template that will also be available on Sunday - do you like it? I will add more details about this on Sunday, but it will be available as a traditional template, and also as SVG files. There is a card template and also a liner template. I used the liners both inside and out of my card to achieve that nice mat effect. You can just see my little frog prince stamp in the pic below together with a sentiment from Half Pint Heroes.

I used the Fairy outfit stamp together with the princess head to make my fairy for a little tag. I thought it would be fun to have some rays radiating from her wand and I scored those on my scor pal. The sentiment is also from Half Pint Heroes.

Now, I need to know if you like my gift basket! I think it is just the sweetest thing!!!. It is another template that will be available on Sunday, same thing, you will be able to get traditional versions or SVG files. I absolutely adore it and it is super simple to put together, it is also very customizable, scroll down to see what I mean!

 

Here I have used the basic Castle basket, on it's own it's a delightful way to present a  gift, or even confectionery - it would make a lovely table centrepiece for a party! I couldn't resist making another little tag, this time just using the head stamp - these would make fabby cupcake picks also.

If you wanted it to be a little more substantial you could add the next layer, the clouds - don't they look pretty behind the towers??

I'm using my basket to present a soft toy wrapped in tissue and I think this presentation would impress most little girls! - If you were to make the cloud layer out of vellum and pop in a battery operated light source, this would be a terrific decorative item for a little girl room (supervised of course).

The final layer is the sky layer - very simple, but it adds another layer of strength and I'll use that when I fill the basket with sweeties for a table centre piece, all those wee hands....

I stamped a wee little birdie from the Half Pint Heroines set onto the sky layer, just for fun!

I'm positively itching to hear what you think!! AND I'd love your thoughts on the new set sizes!! Also don't forget to scroll back one and enter our wee comp, you have until tonight!! I'll be back then to announce the winners!! OOh and if you have any questions about this post do leave a comment and I'll answer it this evening!

Hope it tickles!!

...Free Template

 

Scroll down to see today's other post with a sneak peek!

My Spring box from the Blog party the other day!! I have a free template for you - Click Here it's for the box assembly only - you will also need to cut yourself two squares approx 3.5 x 3.5 inches. One is the base and one is the lid. For my sample here I used Spellbinder Label 16 die cuts.

This box is slightly out of the ordinary because the lid slopes down towards the front. I think it would make a neat treat box or desk tidy, I'm currently keeping paperclips in mine.

For my sample I layered several Labels 16 shapes together for the lid. In the top die cut I also die cut a butterfly from this Spellbinder die set.

For my sample, I also chose to sandwich the hinge flap - this is a piece on the template - between my label 16 shapes so that I wouldn't see it when I opened the box. To do this, be prepared to trim away a little of the bottom of the Labels 16 shape so that the box will close - I kept the trim off, and stuck it into the box right under the lid, I thought it just finished things off nicely. - That's it in the pic, below the flower, you can see it's just stuck on top of the pink paper that i lined the box with.

To line your box, you could print out the template at 98% onto pattern paper and cut it out, minus the adhesive flaps, it should then slot nicely into the box, a little glue to hold the base down at least and some on the sides if you feel it necessary.

Easy to construct, once you have trimmed out and folded the box you will see that it is simple to just stick it onto the label 16 die cut which acts as a base.

I scored the heck out of my hinge flap so that it would fold easily, if you don't so this, the lid has a tendency to want to come up, and so you might wish to use magnetic closures, I hear they are good, but I usually try to make the thing just work, so extra heavy scoring on the hinge flap should suffice.

Click on the image of the template to download it from our freebie section at the store, It will also be available in the freebie section of our store.

Have fun!!

...Freebie Heart

 ED - The download button on  the store seems to be having issues this evening and some folks are reporting problems grabbing the svg file. Please try This Link - it should take you to a google document page where you should be able to freely access the file.

I finally opened the Craft Robo/Silhouette that has been lurking unloved and unused since I paid extra shipping to get it to me in under two days.....over a year ago.....

My excuse is that I had no time, and I still have no time, but I figured if I didn't open it soon, then it would get outmoded....and yup that 12 inch Cameo looks good, but I figure I owe this guy an outing before I even think about upgrading!! lol!!!

So, here it is, I tinkered around with my machine and drew up this little heart to test the Craft Robo (the rather uncouth UK name for Silhouette...)

So here's the deal, since I'm just doodling, and trying it out I am giving this little heart out for free, you might like it, it might work, it might not....I completely disown it once you download it!! lol!!!

The deal is I will cut mine out and make a card with it - if you do the same, then come back and tell me and we'll compare notes, leave your link in the comments for this post and we'll see how this goes. I have already run this out at a slightly smaller size and found some of the smaller cut outs a little sticky to remove, but overall I was quite pleased! A pair of tweezers was a great help.

Making cut files is something I could really get interested in, but I want them to be good, so be prepared for more freebies while I practice on you!!!!

If you fancy it, click on the image and you should be taken to the freebie section of the WMS store, where you can download it for free.

...May new Stamps - Dainty Doilies

ED- and may I just give a shout out while I remember!! We have Belinda (Happy Birthday chickie!) to thank for the fact that our doilies match a Spellbinders die set!!! I believe she first suggested it!!

And just what is a cupcake without....Icing (that's frosting in USA I believe...)??? Today's cupcakes feature icing - two types!!! One type - the blue type, is included in the template - the other pink gingham frosting is very easily made if you have the benefit of owning the Spellbinders Holiday Ornament die - towards the end of this post are a few pointers.

Before I forget, here are the ladies - have you been loving their samples as much as me???

• Anya Schrier
• Belinda Chang Langner
• Bonnie Sharp
• Carly Robertson
• Claire Brennan
• Jennifer Holmes
• Julia Aston
• Kate Whelan
• Laurie Schmidlin
• Lynn Mercurio
• Mona Pendleton
• Niki Estes 
• Sandie Dunne
• Sarah Martina Parker
• Tosha Leyendekker

And before I double forget - scroll down to yesterdays post to comment for a chance of winning the May release!! That's 5 new sets!!!

AND - if you haven't seen details of the HUGE birthday competition challenge - see this post!!

Any self respecting cupcake needs a doily to sit on and so I have created two co-ordinating doilies with another of our new stamp sets - Dainty Doilies large.

We have two new Doily sets releasing on May 1st, which is only one sleep away!! I guess you can tell that I like doilies since I made two sets...

One set is a large stamp set and contains gorgeous doily inspired stamps that you won't have seen the like of anywhere else!! This is the easy set - the set you need if you just want to stamp and go...The smaller set is for those hardy individuals who don't mind spending a little time lining things up...lol - that would be me - I LOVE to footer!! But, I realise not everyone does and hence the two sets...

In the large set a couple of the doilies are designed so that they may be trimmed out with dies from the Spellbinders set - Big Scalloped Circles large - lots of you folks may already have these.

Below is a pic of the basic cuppie shape, I only sponged the bits that were going to show after I dressed it up with a wrap and some icing! You can see how the lid comes off so's you can stuff goodies inside - adding frosting provides a handy  'handle' to get the lid off!

I trimmed out 8 of the ornament die shapes (second from largest), stacked them together and trimmed off the bottom sections. The pieces were then scored down the centre, stamped and glued together, back to back to get a cupcake frosting shape.

Hope it tickles!!