BA Inspiration - Technique Tuesday, Using Sentiment Stamps For Backgrounds

 Good morning Uniko fans, Julie here with another BA post using sentiment stamps in a background. I love using sentiments for a background and have shared many ideas over the years such as here, here and here but this time I've been inspired by Jennifer McGuire to use a turnabout jig to create one.

Here's my first idea, using English Country Garden stamps and dies and some birthday themed sentiments.

I started with an A6 panel of white card and using a freehand cut shape to match my jig middle, I glued it temporarily onto the center of my panel and secured my jig into my MISTI. To get a feel for my layout, I started with the largest sentiment stamp and set off, turning the panel after each time I stamped. Once I could see where the gaps were, I used smaller sentiments to infill and repeated the stamping and turning. 

I stamped my butterfly on one of 3 white butterfly die cuts and coloured it with Copics. From the remaining die cuts, I removed the antennae and lower half of the body and folded them in half down the middle. These were then glued to each wing, meeting at the center and the other flaps were glued over the turnabout panel.  My panel was trimmed and added to an A6 white note card.

I rather liked the effect of the dancing butterfly over the sentiments, so tried another idea out, this time using the Sparkling Snowflake die and some appropriate sentiments.

This time I used Altenew Iceberg ink for the stamping, some of which I double and even triple stamped to increase the saturation of colour. Instead of using all 8 points of my stamping jig, I just used every alternate one, it gives a slightly different effect and I was able to use more sentiments.

The main snowflake was cut from holographic silver card and two others from matching white card folded down the middle and attached the same as the butterfly. One of Bev's sentiments describes the effect perfectly, Snowflakes are winter's butterflies!

So that's all from me for the moment, hope I've given you some inspiration for you to give it a go

Stay safe and keep crafting!

Wonderful AND Win it Wednesday!

Hello & Happy Wonderful Wednesday!

I feel like I am finally catching up on things (and sleep) after a busy few weeks of shows. It has been lovely to get out of the studio and meet some of you face to face again and some of you for the first time 😊

A few weeks ago I promised a giveaway, so I am here with it today after I share a card of course! So let's have a look what I have created today...

When I think of having a Wonderful Wednesday, I always think of the Wonderful Day clear stamp set! So that is what I reached for. I stamped and fussy cut some colourful blooms and paired them with the Stencil, Wonky Stripes.

I started by placing the stripes on an angle and inking through with black ink. I've then adhered the flowers with foam adhesive, the leaves with glue and embellished with some glittery enamel dots.

This leads me onto the giveaway...

I'm giving away the two Uniko products I have used. Wonderful Day and Stencil - Wonky Stripes to one lucky winner who leaves a comment on this post, on Instagram and Facebook. If you leave a comment on all 3 then you have more chance to win! 

The giveaway is open worldwide and an alternative prize to the same value will be offered if the winner owns any of these products. 

The giveaway will close Midnight Wednesday 26th October 2022 and I will announce the winner at some point on Thursday 27th October 2022.

That's all from me today! 

Crafty Hugs

Friday Focus - Wonderful Day

Happy Friday!

I have survived the school holidays - haha! It's actually been alright and we have had some fun. The weather could have been a little sunnier, but we can't have everything.

Today I have a trio of cards using Wonderful Day. 

This clear stamp set recently came back in stock and I was immediately inspired to create a card using it with the recently released Background Blocks Rays. I've also used a sentiment focal point from Sentiments Outlined.

I started by stamping the 'Have a Wonderful Birthday' sentiment central on my card base. I then positioned the Background Block Rays in my stamping tool so that I could stamp it in opposing corners on my card base in a soft yellow ink.

I then stamped the flowers and leaves from Wonderful Day in black ink. I used a little bit of simple masking to have the leaves pop out from behind the flowers. I finished off with some glittery enamel dots from my stash.

My second card uses just Wonderful Day. 

I stamped and fussy cut two flowers and a selection of leaves from the set, which I have arranged around one of the sentiments stamped in black on a white mat layer.

I've then used the larger of the outline circles, intended for flower centres and stamped it around the edge of my base card in black ink. I then adhered my mat layer to the base using double sided tape and added some Nuvo Drop accents.

The use of the circle stamp on my second card inspired my third! I love it when creativity flows like this.

Here I started by stamping my sentiment. I then selected 5 colours to stamp both the large and small solid dots. I also added in some black ones to tie in the outline circles, which I stamped overlapping each other and some of the coloured dots. The smaller trio of dots is from Floral Vines to fill in a few of the gaps.

Wonderful Day is such a fun set to let your creativity flow and it pairs wonderfully with the Background Blocks. I've also shown, that even though it is a floral set, you can achieve masculine one layer makes too.

That's all from me today.

Crafty Hugs

Merry Monday - BA Inspiration

 Good morning folks, Julie here with a little bit of BA Inspiration. 

In keeping with my aim to create all my Christmas cards before the end of November, I'm back with some Merry and Bright Christmas inspiration for you.

For my inspiration, I used the latest challenge over at CAS Christmas, where their cue word this month is RAINBOW. Rather than use the larger stamps from our Christmas sets, I used some of the smaller ones and used them in unusual ways in a rainbow theme.

My first card uses the tiny tree from Christmas Pop and stamped it in a rainbow pattern following the line of my die cut snowdrift. 

I first cut a snowdrift from some scrap card and traced a line in pencil as a guide for my stamping, then starting roughly in the center and working outwards, I added my rainbow of trees. After stamping the sentiment from Festive Sentiments onto the snowdrift, I glued it onto my card, as simple as that.

My second card is probably my favourite of the three. When I was teaching, many years ago, Rene Magritte was one of the artists that we used as inspiration, especially the paintings where he paints features of the face but without the actual face being there, such as Les Belles Relations and The Paysage de Baucis. The features are in the correct anatomical place so your brain fills in the gaps. This card is a little like that, this time it's Rudolf!

The antlers are from Background Builders:Vines, Winter Additions, the baubles are stamped with the small flower center from Wonderful Day and his nose is the flower center from Kindness Blooms. His eyes were drawn freehand with a black fine liner and his nose was made shiny by the addition of some Glossy Accents. A few hand drawn lines for the strings and the same sentiment from Festive Sentiments completes.

My final card was a little trickier to make and had a bit of a shaky start!

My first attempt ended up in the bin as I managed to get an inky splodge in the bottom corner after I had completed it, this is the second attempt, after an initial dry run on some scrap paper!

I doodled some lines in the rough shape of a tree in pencil before adding the bulbs from Background Builders Christmas 2018. Once the ink was dry, I drew over the pencil lines with a black fine liner then left it again to dry before rubbing away  the pencil lines and coloured the bulbs with my Zig watercolour markers. To give the bulbs more impact, I gave them a coat of Glossy Accents, the same sentiment completes.

Well that's about it from me for the moment. I hope I've inspired you to use those tiny stamps that sometimes get forgotten and to think outside the box when it comes to your cardmaking. 

Keep safe out there.

Celebrate World Card Making Day 2020!

 Happy Weekend

& 

Happy World Card Making Day 2020!

I hope everyone is having a lovely day & those in the UK are staying warm and dry. It's a very wet day here in the North East and the perfect kind of day to stay in and create! Which is exactly what I have been up to today ;)

I've been inspired by the changing colours from Summer to Autumn on my morning walk to school with The Beans and like the card I shared for the Uniko Challenge Reminder HERE, I decided to use Altenew Warm & Cozy ink collection for my card today.

It's been a while since I used the Uniko Stencil - Wonky Stripes. Here I have used the masking technique to ink the individual stripes in each of the four ink colours.

I've then embellished my card with a floral bouquet and sentiment from Wonderful Day. Brand Ambassador Jane has been using this clear stamp set recently and totally inspired me to dust mine off! I'm so glad I did, as I really like how this Autumnal card turned out.

As it is a celebration today and I am feeling a little sad with not being at Happy Stampers Festival today, I have a BIG Giveaway to add some cheer to the day!

The Prize valued at over £85* contains a few of my favourite Uniko products:-

Alphabet Outlined

BIG & BOLD Happy Clear Stamps & Designer Dies

BIG & BOLD Wish Clear Stamps & Designer Dies

Hello Lovely Clear Stamp Set

Stunning Snowflakes Clear Stamp Set

Designer Die Sparkling Snowflake

Stencil - Let it Snow 

*If the randomly selected winner already owns any or all of the prize contents 

a suitable replacement will be offered.

HOW TO WIN!

There are a few ways to enter the giveaway...

1. Leave a comment on this blog post.

2. Comment on the Facebook post. An extra entry if you share the giveaway post on FB.

3. Instagram - Be a GENUINE Follower of Uniko, Like, Comment, Tag a Friend/s to tell them about the giveaway, Share on your IG stories for an extra entry. 

You CAN enter on all 3 social media platforms. 

The giveaway will close at Midnight GMT Sunday 4th October 2020.

The winner will be randomly selected from all the social media platforms combined and announced early next week. Any comments left after the close of the giveaway will not be included.

Crafty Hugs Bev x

Brand Ambassador - Sharing some Happy Succulents

Hello there! 

It's Sarah here with my Brand Ambassador Inspiration post for March and I've been playing with the Happy Succulents set in a mix of mint and mauve. 

I've teamed it with the Background Block: Horizontal Stripes on the first 2 cards and a shaker example on the third one, with a sentiment from wonderful Day.

There's a little bit of fuzzy cutting on the first 2 - not my favourite past-time but in the absence of dies and to add some lovely dimension to my cards, it was a must! 

This is my first attempt of a shaker card using an acetate wrap around the front panel - I quite like how it turned out and think I might be having a slight shaker addiction at the moment! 

Thanks for calling by and I hope you've enjoyed the succulent inspiration here.

Brand Ambassador Inspiration - Wonderful Day

Bonjour !

Izzy here with some inspirational cards made with the Wonderful Day stamp set.

As you already know, this month is the Uniko's 8th Birthday, so to go on with the celebration, I made my first card a birthday card.

On a white double card, I made a strip on the left edge by stamping the foliage of the set in two shades of green. Then I used the Background Builders Classics set to make the black stripe.

I masked these strips and I aleatory stamped the different stamps of the set in different colours except the large bold flower that I didn't use. 

One of the flowers has been stamped on a piece of white card stock and fussy cut to be foam mounted on the card. I finished off with a sentiment from the set.

My next card is also a celebration card but with brighter colours. I also used the BIG & BOLD - Wish stamp.

I used a rainbow ink pad to stamp repeatedly the same image so that it looks like some fireworks.

 I stamped part of the bold wish sentiment on top. 

 

Then to finish I added some Wink of Stella on the colours as well as on the black sentiments. It's always hard to show the sparkle on a photo but believe me, it's all shiny with vibrant colours !

For my last card, I chose a totally different look and occasion.

As a lover of blue, I couldn't finish playing with this set without a blue card ! So I decided to make a smooshing background with two Distress inks. Once dry, I die cut this background into a crimped frame. 

Then I stamped the flowers and the berries with the two Distress inks I used for the background. To give it more sparkle, I put some drops of Diamond Stickles on the flowers and the berries. I finished off by stamping the sentiment (from the Flower Power #6 set) on a stripe of Vellum that I previously covered with Wink of Stella.

That's all for me today. I hope you will get inspired and that you will come and join the Birthday Linky Party HERE with your birthday card ! And don't forget, during the whole month of February 2020 you can take advantage of the fabulous 10% discount on all your orders !

Thanks so much for stoping by and have a wonderful (and crafty) weekend !

Brand Ambassador Inspiration - Originally Organic Additions

Hello! 

Sarah here with my first Brand Ambassador Inspiration post of 2020! 

Firstly, I'd like to wish you all a Very Happy New Year. I hope you've all enjoyed the festive season and ready to move on to a little 'spring time' theme. I certainly am with all the dark and miserable early mornings we're experiencing of late in the UK!

With Spring in mind I'm featuring the beautiful Originally Organic Additions Collection. The set has coordinating dies and easily teams up with lots of other Uniko sets; as I've done here using a sentiment from the Wonderful Day set plus a die-cut butterfly from English Country Garden: Butterfly collection.

For the first one I stamped the 'heart' image directly onto my cardbase using the Misti to line up a second panel to use for the negative die-cut areas of the card and for the image on the second card. The images are coloured using Promarkers with some added detail using Polychromo pencils plus a touch of glamour dust. 

The first card shows the focal 'heart' image slightly off-set and tilted to the left whereas this one has the image straight on the cardbase and popped up on 3d foam. I die-cut the centre section in turquoise cardstock to coordinate with my colour scheme and having heat-embossed the sentiment in-laid it inside the 'heart'

I hope you feel inspired by these ideas. Personally I find this set brilliant for many occasions; due to the 'heart' style image. It works well for weddings, anniversaries, mothers day as well as general birthday / every day cards. Adding the dies into the mix opens up loads more opportunities for shaker cards and other techniques making it super versatile. 

Thanks for calling by and I hope you too have a wonderful day!

DT Inspiration - layered combinations with Stencil and Stamp

Time is running and and we almost reached the center of September!

Has Friday 13th in your cultural estimation a negative character? Do you believe in superstitions, bad omens or auguries?
I don't! - So today is a perfect day for me to present you my new DT-Inspiration Post!

I made two different cards for different occasions with the same combination of Stencil and Stamp Sets: the popular Mandalas of Uniko. Yes, there are two different products with Mandalas in the Uniko range of products available:

• the Mehndi Mandala Stencil and 
• the Marvellous Mehndi Stamp Set

They have almost the same outer shape, but the details are a bit different and even more important: they have different sizes! Great preconditions to give this idea a try, right?

The sentiments are both part of the Wonderful Day Stamp Set.

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For the first card I added Oxide Inks with my blending brushes over the Mandala stencil.
I used a bright yellow and orange colour scheme - squeezed lemonade, mustard seed, dried marigold, carved pumpkin and ripe persimmon. The blending brushes make it so easy to get a nice and smooth colour gradient without hard edges!
I started with the light yellow and then got darker with every new layer of colour in the order of the listing above.

Detail of the yellow layered Mandala

After I had cleaned the stencil, I replaced it on my paper, added the stamp (the stencil helped me to get the stamp in the perfect place!) and put all together in my stamping tool, closed the lid and the stamp was on its place!
To fix the paper, you can add temporary adhesive before you put it into the tool or you can fix it carefully with the magnets while you remove the stencil. Try out what works best for you!

Then I simply stamped the smaller Mandala and then also the sentiment in black Ink.
To put some special accents on this simple one layer card I added half-pearls in two sizes (2 mm and 4 mm).

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For the second card I used almost the same supplies - just changed the colours into another colour family: blue - tumbled glass and salty ocean.

Again I started to add the colours with the blending brushes, beginning with the lighter tone, tumbled glass, all over the stencil and then darkening the center with salty ocean.
I rotated the combination of stencil and stamp this time a bit. The 'petals' of the stamp are placed now in between the 'petals' of the stencil.

The rest was easy going! I layered the paper on top of two slightly bigger blue papers to get a nice two-coloured frame (yes, it's a heavy card now!). Then I added the heat embossed sentiment with thin 3D pads and embellished the Mandala with some nice rhinestones. There are some round 4 mm gems in an opalescent clear-blue colour and also some tiny little drop-shaped gems in clear and in blue.

Detail of the blue layered Mandala

* ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

To see the full list of all used supplies, please hop directly to my blog.

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Which combination of stencil and stamp do you prefer? The yellow on top-combination or the more masculine blue offset-combination?

I looked through my Uniko stash and found some more combinations of stamps and stencils to give this technique-mix another try.
Would be great to read in the comments which combinations you found and tried!


Have a great and creative day!
Greetings from Wiebke

DT Inspiration - Use a Stencil with watercolour pencils

Hello and happy weekend to everybody!

It's time for another DT-Inspiration!

As always I made cards with a stencil for you.
This time I used the Uniko Stencil "Scattered Polka Dots".

Let's get started!
I traced the stencil edges with my watercolour pencils on a mix media paper (it's a great paper for different kind of techniques qith many different colours or mediums).
To activate the watercolours I added droplets of clear water on every little circle with a pipette, waited a while and then moved the water very carefully with a small brush to mix every droplet with the solved pigments.

Cause these added waterdrops were so beautiful, I took some photos before and after I mixed the colours.
See it here:

Different shades of blue with waterdrops on top.

The whole blue-dotted paper with waterdrops.

The unsolved and the solved colours with waterdrops on top.

My plan was, to wait until the droplets were dry and then use the paper.
It took a long while (was an over-night-process!) but then all the water was gone and I had little watercoloured dots... They were beautiful, but in my mind were still the pictures of the little "water-hills"... and these flat colour-dots wer not really spectacular!
So I decided to change my plan, added Glossy Accents on the one and clear Nuvo Drops on the other paper and let it dry again.
The result was almost as amazing as the water-version!

I combined both backgrounds with the "Big & Bold Happy Stamps and coordinating Dies" and the second one also with the "Wonderful Day Stamps".
The stamped parts of the sentiments were heat embossed both times.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

For the first card I coloured the front of the happy DieCut word with the same two blue watercolour pencils and added water like I did for the background. To speed the process a bit I used my heat tool to dry the water this time.
I cut and adhered my polka dot background on the cardbase.
Then I adhered the blue "happy" layer on the shadow DieCut of the word and glued it with little dimensional pads on the card front.
To finish the bold word I covered it with glossy accents (like the background dots).
While this layer was drying I stamped and heat embossed the Everything anf adhered it also with dimensional pads on the front of the card.
(The dimensional pads were necessary cause of the dimensional drops of the background.)

 

Finished blue "Happy Everything" card.

Finished blue "Happy Everything" card.

Detail of the blue "Happy Everything" card - DieCut with glossy coating.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

For the second card I coloured the stencil edges in rainbow colours, spread over the page.

I mixed the water and the pigments as I did on the other card, but during the drying process there developed darker rings on the outside. I like this optic, cause it reminds me more on the look of the waterdrops. So I just added the clear Nuvo Drops.

Rainbows always makes me happy, So I included this feeling in my sentiment and heat embossed "Oh happy day!" on a banner-strip of Vellum.

The watercolourd drops were mounted on a bit bigger piece of light green cardstock and then on the card base.

Colourful "Oh happy day!" card

Detail of the different elements.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I think this technique works great with a stencil with small open areas, but maybe a bigger  pattern will give also great results?! Let's give it a try!
I hope I inspired you to stretch your creative muscles and try (or re-use) a not-so-popular-technique with your stencils! - Would love to read in the comments, what you tried out and which results you got!


Have a great and creative day!

Greetings from Wiebke