27 April 2020

Stampin' Up! Demonstator Stamping Challenge #4 - Monogram


 Hello Everyone, I hope your day is going well.  I'm making the most of COVID19 isolation and watching lots of craft related You Tube videos and getting lots of inspiration.

Today I wanted to experiment with a stamping technique I had seen on Artful Stampin'.  I'm a HUGE fan of Ruth and I follow her You Tube Chanel religiously.  The hardest part is converting her tutorials into something that's worthy of publishing. Haha! You can find Ruth's video HERE

This was my first try at creating a monogram.  It takes a little preparation before you can start but once that's all done, the stamping takes next to no time.



To begin, I printed out my letter onto regular copy paper. I used New Times Roman as my font and 600 as my font size but if you use 500 and adjusting your margins, you can possibly get two letters to a page - handy if you want to do more than one.  You only need an outline of your letter, so you'll need to format your font to print this way.  It saves ink if you can. Once printed, I trimmed and folded both ways to find the centre.



I placed this over a piece of Whisper White  cardstock measuring 8 1/4" x 8 1/4" and traced my letter.  I used artists carbon that I had in my stash from my folk art days but you can easily achieve the same result by turning over your printed page, scribbling over the outline on the reverse side with a pencil, going back to the right side and tracing.  A skill most of us learnt in primary school.




Once traced, I chose Abstract Impression and Beautiful Bouquet stamp sets as these had flowers that fitted well within the lines of my letter. I started with the larger images first then filled in with smaller ones.  The colours for this challenge were Blushing Bride, Lovely Lipstick, Gorgeous Grape and Old Olive.











I'll now need to go shopping for a square frame to put it in.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope I have inspired you to try something different.  If you would like to purchase any of the Staming' Up! products I have used in this project, please click on this link which will take you to my online store:

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24 April 2020

Colour INKspirations Challenge #76 Autumn Leaves



Thanks for popping in today while I share this card I created for #CI76 over at Colour INKspiration Challenges on Facebook. Unfortunately it is quite product heavy as I wanted as many different leaf shapes as possible.  So I delved through all my dies and picked out all my sets which have foliage. I've used four different sets: Nature's Roots, Seasonal Layers, Bouquet Bunch and In The Woods and to add a little texture, I’ve embossed the Very Vanilla matte layer with the Subtle 3D embossing folder. I’ve also added the tiny leafy stem stamp from Rooted in Nature stamp set to the inside of my card.


To begin with, I've die cut the twig in Early Espresso and the full maple leaf shape in Pear Pizazz card stock from Seasonal Layers dies.

Three large and two small generic leaves were die cut from the Nature's Roots dies in Pear Pizazz and Pumpkin Pie card stock as well as one small leaf in Gold Foil. After die cutting, I ran each leaf through again using the embossing dies from the same die set. These dies add texture to each leaf without actually cutting. Clever, hey?!


Using the Bouquet Bunch dies, I die cut three leaf stems from Pear Pizazz as well as the tag in Cherry Cobbler.

Finally I die cut three different leaf stems from the In The Woods dies also in Pear Pizazz. This gave me all the leaves I needed to complete my card. 

Except for the smaller gold one, all the leaves were sponged using Pear Pizazz, Pumpkin Pie and Cherry Cobbler in varying shades to give the look of autumn leaves. These colours together with Very Vanilla are the colours for this particular challenge. 

To put my card together, firstly I embossed the Very Vanilla matte layer with the Subtle 3D Embossing Folder and one by one, I added my generic leaves in a circular arrangement and adhered them onto my card matte with dimensionals. To complete the circular shape, I adhered the maple shape leaf down again with dimensionals. I added gold thread on my tag to match the gold leaf (I needed to raid my retired stash for this as Stampin' Up! doesn't have anything suitable at the moment) and adhered the tag to the gold leaf then using a dimensional, added this to the centre of the leaf arrangement, hiding where they all came together in the middle. To finish the card, I glued down the leaf stems and twig underneath using Tombow. Don't be afraid to trim your die cuts if you need them to fit where you want them to go.











 

If you live in Australia and would like to purchase any of the products I have used today, click here to access my online store: SHOP ONLINE 

Please note that the following die sets will be retiring 2nd June 2020, so if you're keen on purchasing them,  I highly recommend ordering sooner rather than later to avoid missing out:
  • Seasonal Layers
  • In The Woods
  • Bouquet Bunch
Thanks for stopping by, I really appreciate it. Hope you have a great day!






21 April 2020

Something Old

Hello, and welcome! Thank you for popping in for my very first Blog Post!  This is something I have been wanting to do for a while but almost went into a panic attack at the thought of dealing with computer technology.  I bit the bullet, so to speak and with a little bit of help,  here I am. 

Today I would like to show you a card I created using an older, but still current stamp set called Flourishing Phrases. This is a great stamp set that has many different images as well as sentiments that would be a good general purpose set to have in your collection.  There are also dies which co-ordinate with the set however, I haven't used them today.

For my card, I've used the large flower stamp to create a background by stamping second generation Seaside Spray randomly over a piece of Whisper White card stock which has been trimmed to fit inside a card base of Night of Navy. 

I then used the large flourish stamp and using Night or Navy ink, stamped twice diagonally in opposite directions together with the leaf stamps using a punched circle as a guide.

For the sentiment, I used a stamp set called Tags in Bloom which was a free set during Stampin' Up's Sale-a-Bration, however, you could easily use one of the sentiment stamps which come in the Flourishing Phrases set.  I used Night of Navy ink again for this and stamped it on Whisper White.  This was die cut using the Layering Circles dies together with a matching scalloped circle in Night of Navy card stock. To add a little bit of interest, I used the leaf stamp from the same stamp set and stamped around the outer edges once again in second generation Seaside Spray ink. These two pieces were glued together then placed on the front of the card using Dimensionals.

On the inside of the card, I trimmed a second piece of Whisper White card stock to the same measurements as the front piece, and using second generation Seaside Spray ink, I stamped in opposite corners using the large flourish stamp.






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Watercolour Christmas - Colour INKspiration Challenge #178

    Hi and welcome! And thanks so much for popping in.  I know time is important so I really appreciate you being here. Colour INKspiration ...