Hello my sweet friends!
The time has come! You know what they say – time flies when you have craft supplies to play with! 🙂
Today is my last blogging day as part of the Honey Bee Stamps Design Team. Of course I am a little sad, but I prefer to look at this differently and be thankful for the last year that I have spent on this sweet design team. So today, I am sharing a celebration card!

I am celebrating the fact that I have had the pleasure of serving two terms on the HBS team, and that I have had the opportunity to play with so many of their awesome products. I am celebrating that the awesome Melissa helped make it possible for me to go to Creativation in January, where I not only had a blast, but also allowed me to meet so many more wonderful people in this industry. I am celebrating that this year, I was lucky enough to be invited to illustrate stamp sets for the Honey Bee Stamps brand. It still makes me smile so much to see projects made with the stamps that started life as a doodle in my notebook! So, THANK YOU Melissa, to Lisa, Taniesa and EVERY single one of the other wonderful people that work behind the scenes to make this a fabulous craft company. ALSO, thank you to everyone who visited the Honey Bee Stamps blogs to see my projects and for the sweet comments that you leave!

Anyway… enough blubbering, let’s get on with the card for today! I hope you like it!

Every one knows that celebrations need balloons, right? YEAH! So I used the balloon dies from the Celebration Box die set to cut out some mini masks from post it note paper. Next up I grabbed a few distress inks so I could add some colourful balloons to create a background. I did one at a time, working from the left to the right, and I overlapped them slightly to create more interest.

 I was mindful of colours that would work well together – I didn’t want to accidentally create any muddy looking overlaps. I love the soft effect this gives! The round mini blending tool from ranger was perfect for this technique.  After I had finished my balloons, I used some of the confetti element stamps from the coordinating Celebration Box stamp set, and used the same colours to add some fun confetti to the background.

Next I die cut a rectangle from vellum to layer on top of my card, and then I simply had to add my greeting and a few embellishments. Of course I HAD to use the Celebrate Honey cuts die – it was simply perfect for this occasion! I used it on some self adhesive black foam and carefully stuck it to the front of the vellum. To adhere the vellum to the balloon panel, I used tiny glue dots behind the sentiment, and I also added a few in other places, which I managed to hid with a few pretty sequins!

There we have it!

Thank you HONEY BEE STAMPS for all the fun and creativity over the last year. You’re so SWEET – sweet as honey in fact!

Big hugs!

Lesley

Oh my! These sentiments in the Blah Blah Blah set are bloomin’ hilarious!! I totally laughed out loud when I saw them for the first time. I realised that there were a couple of phrases that work really well together, so I wanted to try to make a comic strip card – a card where you are telling a story in pictures” I started by pulling out some small rectangle dies and tried to create a series of rectangular apertures which would fit onto a standard A2 notecard. Next I used a larger stitched rectangle die to cut out this frame – it was a little fiddly, but I got there in the end.

I wanted my card to focus on the characters, so I kept the background simple – just a little distress ink blending using Wilted Violet and Salty Ocean. After I had blended it, I spritzed it with water for a more textured look. Next I had to figure out what characters I would use for my comic strip- and I thought these Curious Kitties would work well. I stamped a couple, and also some accessories, making sure I had multiples so I could recreate the idea of a scene. Next I coloured them all with copic markers and cut them out. The Curious Kitties dies are so great – they have so many dies – even that tiny mouse was so easy to cut out! I used my craft knife to add a slit in the box for my first kitty. I thought he looked particularly sorrowfull! Kinda like I do when I actually do forget someone’s birthday.

I gave little kitty some rosy cheeks – after all he is rather embarrassed that he was so silly and forgot something so important! I like the way at these kitties all look similar but have different poses, so it is easy to make it seem like it is the same cat in each scene.

So.. for the last kitty, I was feeling a little stuck. I wanted another style – one that was looking forward, but the kitty in the stamp set had a massive cheesy grin, which wasn’t going to work for my shameful card! LOL. Instead of giving up, I inked my stamp, then used a baby wipe wrapped around my finger to remove the ink from his face. Once I had stamped my faceless kitty, and coloured him in, I used a copic multiliner to add some features to his face!

Once I had all my kitty scenes stuck down with glue dots, I finally reached for my Blah Blah Blah sentiments and stamped a load of phases over the card – I think it turned out so funny! I contemplated adding some sequins, but decided that it would detract from the story, and there is already a lot going on, so I had to resist my natural tendencies to embellish! it was pretty hard actually! I just get so addicted to Honey Bee Stamps embellishments!

have a great day, and make sure you don’t forget any birthdays this week! HAHA!

love,