Take Two Dies......

I've got a couple of very different cards to share today both made using the exact same two dies - the Dainty Blooms Cover Die from Altenew and the Big Happy Birthday Die from Mama Elephant.

For the first card I die cut the dainty blooms 3 times, from Papaya,  Pesto and  Pebble Hero Arts Cardstock.   Pebble was the frame and then I pieced in the papaya for the blooms and pesto for the leaves, adhering it all onto a white background and leaving some gaps of white so the image reads more clearly.

Once I'd pieced it all together I blended some darker colour onto the leaves and petals with copics and then glued them all down - I won't lie - it took a while, but paper piecing is one of my favourite parts of paper crafting and I love a jigsaw so this time I did it manually one piece at a time.  However you can significantly speed it up by applying press and seal to the die cut before removing it from the die, remove the pieces you don't need then put press and seal on the front, glue the back and piece them all in at once.

Once I was happy with the overall design I wanted to add a sentiment but I didn't want to cover up all my hard work so I decided to get into a little double-die cut action and cut the sentiment from the finished piece.  Now this is essentially two layers of quality cardstock so it will take a couple of passes and a shim but it will cut.   I mounted it to a white base card and added 3 stacked layers of black behind the sentiment to make it stand out and then finished with some liquid pearls in yellow to fill in the stamens.

Then, I had a leftover papaya and pesto frame to play with so decided to make another card.  For this one I used the papaya frame but brushed some Altenew Enchanted Gold ink over the top to give it a richer finish.  I then picked out the stamens and leaves with metallic markers and added the whole thing to an Antique Ivory base card. 

Again I didn't want to cover the whole design with the sentiment but I wanted to stick with the same die, so this time I cut it from two layers of vellum and glued that together and over the top - you can still see the design through but the double layer of vellum breaks it up enough that your eye easily reads the words.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We are expecting the latest mini release from MFT this week along with lots of restocks but it may take us a while to get them into store as we have a LOT of orders to process following our heatwave sale and orders always take priority for us.  We will do our best to catch up as quickly as we can but other than Monday when Liz works for us - there are just two of us doing EVERYTHING - we really are a small independent store as much as you think we're hobbycraft!

We will also be getting some Kuretake paints and pens back as a new UK distributor has started to stock a small range.   Zig pens won't be back as the price point has doubled.

We will have some restocks from Ranger - we are still waiting on oxides to come back into stock but hope they will have a delivery soon.

We've had lots of people asking for the Lawn Fawn ruler - we can't get it as they aren't selling it a wholesale prices.  I know another USA store is selling it but they are selling it at a higher retail point than Lawn Fawn themselves as they bought it at retail prices - if we do that and then apply the import costs - it would be over £22 for us to sell it not at a loss.  So....   we've found a few alternatives and they will be in store this week too fingers crossed.

We will also have a few Fiskars paper trimmers and craft knifes - we are trying to add "essentials" to store as we grow along with the USA brands you know us for - we hope this will make us a more convenient one-stop shop so if there are non-USA essentials you'd like to see in store please let us know.

Catch you later

Tara

Safari party

Hello lovely people! 

I'm back with a very simple card today, which features MFT Safari Party stamp set.  ( Hey! This set in now 25% off! )

I must say, I often struggle with clean and simple cards.

I like splatters and dimension, so it was very hard not to add any of it here.

My first step was to stamp this adorable elephant on to watercolour paper with Versafine Onyx Black. This ink is waterproof and perfect for working with waterbased mediums. Then I've coloured it with Zig markers and cut out using scissors.

 

Before assembling this card, I die cut large circle from Large Stitched Circle Lawn Cuts in white. It has lovely stitched details, just enough to add a little bit of interest behind the main image.

I've also used Hero Hues Pebble Cardstock from Hero Arts, cut to be slightly smaller than my card base.

My next step was to stamp the sentiment. I chose one of the greetings from the same Safari Party set. I've curved it to fit along the circle part and stamped with Versafine Onyx Black. 

After adhering everything together, I added a few clear sequins and glossy accents to the hat and little bow.

 See all the supplies below.

Thank you for stopping by! I will be back next Thursday with another card.
See you soon!
Anna

Panda Crossing

Hi guys, I'm back in my usual slot today, still lots to sort but time to try and get a bit of normality back.  Thank you so much to everyone who has taken time to leave a message or send me a beautiful card, I really do appreciate all your kind thoughts.

So back to today, I really couldn't wait to get my hands on one of the latest "little agenda" sets from Mama Elephant today - Pandamonium, one of their early stamp sets has been a constant best seller, so when they brought out a little agenda version of Pandas, we knew they were going to run out of the door fast.

On my version, I've decided to have the Panda's balancing on a birch tree to cross a ravine - I do love how many of them look like they are balancing on one leg so giving them a balance beam seemed a natural choice.

I picked 5 of the pandas, stamped and coloured with copic markers and die cut them with the co-ordinating dies.  I used the dies to die cut the same card twice more for each panda shape so I could stack them and give some depth without using foam as I wanted to suspend them in mid-air.

To get the suspended look, I stuck the coloured panda's on top of the birch tree (also coloured with copics using pointillism to get the feel of the peeling bark) where I wanted them to stand and then turned the tree over so I could stack the other two die cuts behind the tree lining them up from behind.  This means you have 2 layers behind the tree and one on top.

To keep them away from the card, I also stacked the frame in the same way.  I die cut the stitched detail frame from the Pegworks die set from Kiwi cardstock 3 times and adhered the ends of tree behind the top layer and then stacked the other two behind.   This means when you stick the frame and pandas to the card they sit away from the background but won't crush in the mail as all the elements are nice and solid.

For the card itself, I just blended a blue background with tumbled glass distress oxide ink and sprayed with water for an soft effect.   I went with a sentiment to match the Chinese look of the bears as it sounded to me like something you'd get in a fortune cookie.  It came from the Birthday Messages stamp set also by Mama Elephant.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We're still playing catch up on ordering new releases so sorry to those of you who are still waiting for the Altenew release to arrive.  They have another die release coming up this month of standalone dies so everything will be coming together with that hopefully next week.

The restock of Waffle Flower's Water Media Mats is due to arrive tomorrow customs willing.

A massive delivery from Hero Arts arrived late on Friday so we'll be working our way through that this week and will get it online as quickly as we can.

We are also expecting our delivery of the brand new Stazon Pigment ink pads this week.

There are going to be ongoing appointments I have to attend to sort out my mother's estate and we will be closed for the funeral (date as yet to be confirmed) but we will post updates on Facebook and here to keep you all in the loop as to when we won't be around.

Catch you next week

Tara

Take one die cut...

 I'm a huge fan of geometric patterned dies - especially when you can see ways to carve them up and stretch their use and so I couldn't wait to get my sticky mitts on the new Mod Circles Cover Up Die from Lil' Inker Designs.   It's very versatile - you can use it as a full background, do some faux layering techniques with it - or as I have here, die cut it once, cut it apart and make two cards from one die cut!

I cut the die from Adriatic card from Hero Arts which is probably my favourite shade.

For my first card I needed a get well soon card for a friend, so simply used a trimmed panel from the die as a background strip to sit my character on.  I could have used the whole die cut to cover the base of the card, but I wanted "space" to sit the character in and to stamp the sentiment directly to the card.  To frame it, I used one of the strips I cut off the die for my second card to edge the right hand side of the card.

The fabulous characters is from Stamping Bella and is called Edna to the Rescue - I love her huge plaster!  She was coloured mostly with Altenew Set D Markers, except for the flesh tones and plaster which I used copics for.  I added a little glitter to her wings.  I die cut her using the co-ordinating die and then took my craft knife to the space under the plaster between her arm as there was too much white and it bugged me but you could happily skip that step if you're not a pedant like me.  The sentiment is from the same stamp set.

For the second card I wanted to go masculine so decided to just let the pattern do the talking.  I trimmed a row of circles so there were no straight edges and glued it to the bottom of my card.  I then took all the pieces I'd poked out and pressed them directly onto my versamark pad before dipping them with tweezers into my copper embossing powder.  I think the copper pairs so well with the dark teal card.  I gave each piece a double coat so it was nice and thick and shiny and then glued each into place once cool.

To give it an extra manly feel I added black diamonds - I just coloured the teal pieces with a black marker rather than doing another die cut and then added glossy accents and 3 round enamel dots inbetween.

For the sentiment I stamped several birthday messages from Mama Elephant across some black card and embossed them in copper to bring it all together. I think it gives quite a simple and elegant "can be sent to anyone" card that is always handy to have in your stash for those requests we all get for a cards from time to time.

Tara

Birthday Fishes

I've been lusting after the die I used on today's card before it was even a die!   The image was on last years' Hero Arts catalogue cover but the die only arrived this year and it was the PERFECT one to use to test out their new cardstock too.

If you find making cards to fit the USA cover dies an issue as you end up wasting half of sheet of A4 then worry no more as the Hero Arts cardstock cuts perfectly so you make two cards per sheet and all 26 colours are a good weight strong enough to be a quality card base.

Here I made a top fold base card from Adriatic, and then die cut the Lily Pond from Paradise trimmed a little to let the darker coloured base form a border.   I die cut the Lily Pond again from Pesto and trimmed the lily pads out from it and layered them on top of of the paradise ones.

The coy fish and lily flower come in the same die set - for those I opted for a little shading so I die cut the flower twice from white card and coloured it with 3 pink markers.  The fish is actually two layers for bulk - one plain white with a top layer of pixie dust cardstock with some orange spots applied with an alcohol marker so it gives the shimmery look you get on coy fish.

The sentiment is from the Waffle Flower Make a Fish set stamped onto a strip of pesto card and I finished with a few bubbles made with icicle stickles.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We have a few things in transit this week so, customs willing, we should have the following in store this week:

• MFT's new release
• Reverse Confetti's new release
• Neat & Tangled's new release
• The "missing" Waffle Flower items
• Mama Elephant's new release which should be here on schedule for the 15th

We have ordered the latest Concord and 9th release and hope it will ship early this week so there is a slim chance we'll have it by Friday, if not, it will be in store next week.

We are waiting on Lawn Fawn to process our restock order - hope to have it in store before the end of the month but do not at this stage know what they have available as they don't have a live ordering system so we just order and cross our fingers!