...Lovely Lilies

Morning! Last night we had the Gina K new stamp release - there's a ton of new goodies available over at Gina's - to see all the new stuff pop over here.

My new set is called Lovely Lilies and it's a layering set that you can use in a few different ways. Here's what it looks like:

The main Lily image comes broken down into three solid layers plus a line art outline, plus a separate stamen stamp, and you can use all of these together or you can use only a couple of the layers, or maybe just the lineart outline - that's a good option if you like to colour with copics or pencils, or maybe watercolours.

Just in case you could use a little help putting these together I have a little graphic for you:

I'm still working on a video, but I can tell you right now that my favourite way to stamp these is to begin with the darker colour first and then stamp the medium tone over that finishing up with the lightest tone, it is way easy to line them up when you do it this way. Thanks for popping in, if you have any questions, just leave me a comment :)

...an espresso of thanks

Howdy do? I'm taking the ostrich approach to politics this week and just sort of ignoring everything that has been happening with Brexit etc, I've no clue how all of this will pan out and sadly I don't think the folks 'in charge' have any clue either...but hey-ho the sky hasn't fallen in today so far, so here's a card.

I made this for last weeks MIUM challenge over at Stamp TV forum. I must admit I'm pretty hit and miss with challenges, but I wondered what MIUM meant and nope, I'm not going to tell you - pop over here and see this weeks MIUM challenge for yourself, lol!! and then maybe you will be reeled in like I was!

Anywho this card started as a great excuse to further explore my new Gina K inks and I am smitten, I'm loving these inks for solid images, I'm loving how the stamped image seems to sort of smooth itself out as it dries, the coverage is so good and the colours that I have used so far are scrumptious.

I stamped my coffee pot and did a little random shading with a brown colouring pencil just to give the image a little depth. I didn't bother with working out where a light source would be or anything so complicated, I just added a little rough shading on areas of the image that I thought would look good. I wanted to keep the illustrated feel rather than make it look too realistic.

I used the Coffee Set stamps, just released at Gina K's for this one. Huge mileage in this set, many, many sentiments for lots of different occasions.

How to ground a stamped image

Many times when you stamp an image, it can look a little lost there, floating on the page and when that happens you need to ground the image on the page somehow by making it look like it was meant to be there. There are loads of ways to do this, and I did it for this card by roughing in a suggestion of a tablecloth. Here's how, I'm using a slightly larger set of images on my example, but it's the same principle:

 I masked the bottom of the coffee pot with a post it. The I lightly sketched diagonal lines with a colouring pencil.

 Changing direction, I then went back and sketched diagonals going the opposite way. I sketch lightly and I stop short of the edge of the panel, I was just interested in creating a 'suggestion' of cloth, I wasn't aiming to actually draw a tablecloth. I lightly shaded a little crosswise also, but not enough to take away from the diagonal lines.

I removed the post-it note and had a nice tablecloth effect. You can see how I did the same thing on the actual card below. The background floral panel was stamped with flowers and dots from the same stamp set. Inks used were Sweet Corn and Dark Chocolate both Gina K Designs.

...Oversized Paperclips - Boo and Friends

Good evening folks - how are you? It's been a virtual craft desert around here I know but I have a quick little project to share with you this evening featuring the Boo and Friends stamps and dies.

Feel free to pin these to your Halloween inspiration Pinboards at pinterest - or wherever else you keep your ideas! 

I made some oversized paperclips, because a) I found a couple of boxes of oversized paperclips while I was burrowing in the craft room looking for something else and b) because these are handy dandy little items - I can use them on notebooks, they are also good for closing paper bags etc, they are fab as bookmarks, which is something I always need and also, these are great for bribing the kids.... not that I need to bribe my kids you understand...

Simple ingredient list for these:

• Stamped image - which has been trimmed out with the matching die - I'm using Batty Boo here.

• A piece of co-ordinating card - for the back piece - also trimmed with matching die.

• A piece of thin foam - I'm using black fun foam (cheap in 'The Works' store in UK currently)

• A large paperclip.

• Superstrong glue - I used a combination of our extra strong Double Sided Tape and also liquid glue for funny shaped bits.

It's a pretty straightforward assembly job - but the one piece of advice you should take away is to flatten the foam with the paperclip BEFORE sticking the front on - press the paperclip in really well, until it leaves an imprint - like in my pic below - that way, once you have applied glue and stuck on the front - you won't end up with a paperclip shaped bump in your image. :)

Sandwiching the foam between the two card pieces gives the paperclip top a little chunkiness, which feels better and helps it to last longer than a simple card topper - If you really want to get the maximum lifespan from your paperclip topper, I'd advise varnishing with some sort of clear varnish - at a push, 2 parts PVA glue mixed with 1 part water should do it.

I love all these guys, but this one's my fave...

Hope it tickles!

...Monday morning Make...DIY Washi Tape Challenge?

Good Morning! I have another Monday Morning make for you! As I settle back into some sort of routine after the Christmas blur I am finding that Monday morning is a good time to post something to the old blog. LOL, let's see how long that lasts...

I thoroughly enjoyed the entries from folks who played along with our Chalkboard challenge last week and I will be announcing a random player tomorrow who will win a wee gift code for the store!

Trying to kick start mojo has never been easy for me - I am one of those twits who needs to have acres of time in front of me before I can tune into my muse and truly 'create' - this is pretty much never the situation in a house with 3 children and a full-time business, and so I often struggle. I waste a lot too...but sometimes, just sometimes, I make something neat. The added bonus with home made washi tape is that I also recycle!

I have yardage of tissue paper - I keep it when it comes my way wrapped around gifts or in packaging. I always KNEW it would come in handy for something and Washi Tape is that something.

I love washi tape, I have been making up little rolls of the stuff and it looks pretty all piled together on a shelf - must get around to actually using it. There are many tutorials on the web about how to do this, I use an easy method, because I am pushed for time.

I use double sided tape if I have it, but I use ordinary tape also if I don't have the double sided stuff in the right width. I lay out a piece of  tissue paper - I don't mind if it has been a little wrinkled, infact I prefer it to smooth tissue. I stick strips of double sided tape across the tissue paper. In my picture the gold backed tape is the double sided stuff.

The cream tape is masking tape - I had no double sided one inch tape available and I wanted some thicker washi tape so I'll show you how I do it with single sided tape also.

Next thing I do is run a rotary cutter down the side of the tape to trim it out and get rid of the tissue in between the strips. I use a rotary cutter because I was once a quilter, but scissors or a craft knife will do just as well.

This is what you are after - lots of strips of tissue paper with tape already adhered to the reverse.

Next thing to do is colour on the tissue - I like to use copics because there are lots of shades available and they dry quickly and I have no time to wait on anything drying...

 

...except for distress inks...love distress inks...

Then it's time to have fun stamping! - Anything you fancy, words, patterns, repeated images, whatever tickles...

And hopefully you end up with a bunch of lovely patterned tapes! The beauty of making your own tapes lies not only in the customization, but in the fact that you can make small quantities. If you are at all related to me you no doubt have rolls and rolls of the stuff that you will never use because  'strident red stripes' just don't really work on that many cards....

Stamps I used on my tapes included, Woodgrain, Victorian Frippery, Off Beat Backgrounds, Heirloom Patterns, Dainty Doilies large and Little box Labels for the herringbone patter.

The Washi tapes that you make with double sided tape are all ready to use - simply peel off the backing and adhere.

For tapes made using single sided tape such as masking tape or similar - there is onemore step to follow - run the washi through the Xyron machine to add stickiness to the reverse. Failing that you can just use a little clear adhesive tape on the reverse, or even a little thinly spread glue. Easy peasy.

Your tape is now ready to use! I was itching to make a wee card and decided that I wanted to make one that sort of co-ordinated with my tape - another thing you can't do with some  store bought tapes....

 

I used some of the same stamps in my background that I used on my tapes. Love that pale green tape with the white doily image especially much.

So, what do you think? Fancy having a go? Why don't we make this another challenge then, have a go at making some patterned Washi tape with your WMS stamps and use it on a card. Link up your card here and I'll randomly pick another winner!! The winner of this challenge will scoop a large stamp set of their own choice!

The links will open (hopefully) at around 2:00pm today (8:00am Chicago time) and close the same times next Monday - I argued with Mr Linky this morning and although I'm pretty sure I had the last word, you never quite know...

...More Gracie and Cicely...

Good morning, if you are just tuning in I am showing samples made with stamps from two little Halloween stamp sets I am 'leaking' early  - August 1st, this Monday! These were destined for September, but I have no patience, I was so excited to show you - It's a little different for us to have people stamps!!

Today's first card shows off one of the sentiment stamps from Cicely at Halloween,

It's a vintage verse and it reads:

"By pumpkins fat and witches lean
By coal black cats with eyes of green
By all the magic ever seen
I wish you luck this Halloween"

I chose to make it the feature on this card and I set it off with one of the little decorative motif stamps, the moon, also from Cicely at Halloween.

I used the bat and the moon to make the background pattern, stamped on the ginger card. I set the verse on a cream panel, which I then mounted on a black mat. I set all that onto a green panel I made with one of the new Edgeability dies from Spellbinders, the excellent Classic Petal. I simply trimmed out a long rectangle and used the edgeability die on each end. I cut two more 'ends and offset them under my main green panel to get that nice offset point look. Here's a few pics so you can see what I mean. Finished off with a couple of flourishes from the Scallops and Dots set and added the moon, which punches out nicely with a 3/4 inch circle punch, or die.

My second card this morning is a simpler take on the main Cicely stamp - I stamped her in versamark, clear embossed and then did minimal colouring using a water pen and some SU inks, finally added a little extra shading with just a plain graphite pencil, I wanted it to be sort of faded looking. I added the Jolly Japes sentiment from Gracie at Halloween.

Jolly Japes will be a curious phrase for some. Jolly, most folks will understand, but 'Japes' is an old fashioned English word for tricks, or practical jokes, which I think fits perfectly with Halloween. Anyone who has ever read Enid Blyton, may well have come across this word. I thought it was a charming addition to my Halloween sentiment arsenal. Here I cut a slit with a scalpel above and below the sentiment, and pushed two slivers of card through from the back. I took a moment to edge them with my pinking shears first. I like the clean cut graphic edge.

Next up is a little How-To, a sort of picture tutorial for folks wanting to make the toothed aperture from this card.

First I selected two dies, a classic circle and a pinked circle - both Spellbinder dies from sets of that name. I picked a plain circle which fit inside the pinked circle. I die cut a plain circle - you can see it here in the first pic, I have set it inside the pinking circle die so that you can see that it is smaller than the pinked circle die - it's the green circle.

I use the green circle as a template and draw around a portion of it onto a pre-cut rectangle which is exactly the right size for the front of my card. I do this 5 times making sure the arcs for a star shape. You can just see the pencil lines on the orange card.

Next, I trim out the star shape with a scalpel. Then I cut two pinked circles with my pinked die.

Then I sponge the front of the piece of card.

Next, I cut up the pinked circles roughly into sections, just larger than the arcs in the star shape.

 

Then I start adhering them to the back of the  sponged card rectangle so that only the teeth show up in the aperture. Glue was best for this so that I could smooch it around for the best position. One thing tho - if you are stamping a sentiment directly to the front of your card, it's best to do it now, before you adhere the 'teeth'...

See? simple! If it's difficult, I don't do it!! lol

Hope it tickles, and call back later, I have more!!

...Christmas Greetings

Nope, I'm not apologising! Christmas creeps up and surprises me every year! No matter when I start I am never ready, so there's no time like the present!!

This is a little set I made just before the release took hold!! - By the way, there is light at the end of the tunnel and by tomorrow morning I should be completely caught up with orders! I just thought I'd put this up, it's the blog equivalent of ambient elevator music...it'll entertain you while I'm too busy to really 'be' here...lol!

The interesting bit is the tree ornament - I recently got the lovely Spellbinder snowflake dies....ahhhh...

I made a little snowflake with a panel in it for a cameo of my favourite little boy, I am super lucky in that this little pic is actually drawn from my little dude, on a tidy hair day, but I think it makes a lovely nostalgic, Victorian style ornament even if it didn't have any sentimental meanings attached.

I used that fabby crackle glaze from ranger to get the cracked texture over the image. In all, I trimmed out the large snowflake 3 times, two of them face front and the last one faces back, I didn't want the back of my ornament to be unfinished and so it's just the same on both sides.

I wanted a card to match, as I think this would make a nice wee 'aside' gift for granny! I took my cue from the ornament, but added a sponged blue frame around the sentiment. The gorgeous frame shape is a labels Seventeen. I added a ribbon tag (Ribbon tags trio 3) to the centre so that it would cut out as a nice frame, I then sponged it with tumbled glass distress ink with a touch of Lapis Lazuli Versacolour ink. The sentiment is from Compliments of the Season. The background of the card is a pattern stamped with ovals from the Cameo Creations set.

Stamping the background pattern.

Cutting the snowflakes - see how I added a classic circles die to the centre of the snowflake, so that the snowflake would come out as a frame - I placed a little stamped image of the junior boy in the frame.

I sponged the snowflakes one darker than the other and layered then, giving the top one a little turn so that the flakes don't quite line up and you can see the darker flake behind.

This is the reverse of the ornament - you can see the sheer ribbon threaded through, and the glue dots where I am just about to adhere the reverse snowflake.

Hope it tickles!!

...A very merry Christmas and some patterns!

LOL, couldn't resist, it's not long now folks!!! I have a little sample today that I didn't have time to put up before the release and so here it is. I love rich colours, lots of sponging etc and so I'm sorry if you were hoping for a little fresh summer fun!! lol!!

I stamped an oval frame from the Ovals - Classic frames onto some cream card. I lined up the oval die (Spellbinders, classic ovals large set) around the frame - being sure to centre the design before I taped it in place, especially important with oval dies as the embossing flange is not the same width all the way around, and ran it through the GC. I didn't emboss the oval on this occasion.

I stamped a sentiment from Compliments of the Season (Versacolour, pinecone ink) and added a chocolate coloured scalloped mat (Spellbinders Big scalloped ovals LG)

I used a slightly bigger die to cut an aperture in a rectangle of kraft cardstock to make a frame - I had pre-stamped this card with a pattern made with stamps from the Ovals set, you can see the details below.

Behind the frame and the sentiment panel, I placed another piece of patterned card - also stamped with a pattern and sponged heavily with green ink.

I used the stamp that I'm going to call the snowflake stamp - you can see how I built up the pattern below. I used Cherry Cobbler ink...yum! I also did the sponging first!

These pics show the build up of another pattern, made using an oval frame. The last pic shows how it looks when you use the same ink all the way along, and when you use another colour of ink to highlight the design. Stamping patterns like this is my absolute favourite thing to do!!

Hope it tickles!