Tips & Advice

Mothers’ Day Cards – inked & stenciled backgrounds

on March 11, 2018

Hello everyone,

It’s Mothers’ Day in the UK today – so a massive Mums Day shout out to everyone celebrating today! You all rock! I was awoken to a treasure hunt of gifts and a beautiful handmade card from little Piper.

I have a video today showing how I made two Mothers’ Day cards – one for my Mummsy and one for my mother-in-law. In both, I used a stamped image in the place of a letter – I love that this is so fun!

Both cards have a similar inked background, and i used stencils to create some interest. The stars are from Winnie & Walter and the hearts are from Simon Says Stamp. I also introduced a bit of glitter on both.

For this one, I used holographic embossing powder on the sentiment (which is from reverse confetti), and on the second card I covered the bear’s heart with glossy accents and showered it with ultra fine glitter. Ohhh such sparkle!

As for the colours, I am trying to fall back in love with yellows and oranges, so i thought i would mix that with some pink. I used Picked Raspberry, Dried Marigold & Squeezed Lemonade distress inks, and in order to make the colours match nicely, I also used the same ink to colour the letters.

I love the way we can make cards which are more personal….like for example having a card that says mummsy on it! teehee!

Here’s the video – enjoy, and Happy Mums Day you guys!

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CCWM – Autumn has arrived!

on October 4, 2017

Hey guys,

Friday’s CCWM LIVE stream was a hoot! And I well and truly got my Autumnal vibes on the go! I made two cards – one of which incorporates the Chibitronics LEDS.

To start, I made this sweet Fall card – with lots of distress ink blending in the background. I die cut some leaf shapes onto the top panel using some coordinating dies, so that it peeked through the the layer underneath. I often come back to this fun technique – i like the contrast between the white top layer and the rich tones underneath.

For the main image, I decided to use the deer from the Forest Friends set from MFT stamps, along with one of the tree images. They are super cute! I added some purple tones behind him, although its hard to see when the stamped images are stuck on top. I used my copics to colour them in.

For my greeting, I used the same purple distress inks to colour some white card and then die cut this using a HAPPY die. To complete the greeting, I white heat embossed a partial sentiment from a clearly besotted stamp set on top of an orange ink blended background.

TA-DA! And a little sprinkle of sequins to finish!

For the next card, I asked the viewers what they wanted to see, and someone suggested a light up pumpkin! Even though I LOVE pumpkins, and I love pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin pies — I have very few pumpkin stamps! Can you believe it! BUT, I am never one to shy away from the challenge!

Here’s the finished card!What a cutie, huh?! I used a pierced circle die from Studio Katia to make the circular areas of my pumpkin, and coloured these with some distress inks. I also dug out a die that came free with a magazine which had a flourish – so I used this for some greenery around my pumpkin.

The background looks simple – I wanted a spooky effect, so i added colours with distress inks and then covered it with chipped sapphire and black soot – this is the same way that i create a galaxy effect background, except i didn’t add specks of white for stars this time.

The real magic is of course the light up LED! I used orange lights from the tropics LED set, and put the battery at the top right corner of my card.

I added a greeting using Lawn Fawn’s Milo’s ABCs and also the Monster Mash stamp set – and white heat embossed on top of my black background. I also wanted a small image where the battery lies- and this little spider was perfect. He is a wooden stamp that I have had in my stash for several years – but i think he is super cute!

Thanks for stopping by, and this Friday there will be another LIVE crafting video over on my YouTube. Hope to see you there!

Happy Crafting

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Rainy Day – ft. MFT Bitty Bears & colouring embossing paste with gelatos

on September 13, 2017

Hello gang,

We are testing out a new video software this week. Thats good news for you, because you get an extra video tutorial! 😀

Today’s card is a fairly simple design, but I love the texture created by the embossing paste. And doesn’t this bear just look the CUTEST with his little brolly!

A few weeks back I shared a card for the Love From Lizi birthday blog hop, and I used my gelatos to colour the die cut feather shapes. I got LOADS of comments saying how they loved that I showed a way to use gelatos – so i decided to pull them out again for another fun card. Yep – that’s right, I coloured my rain BLUE with my gelatos. It’s quick, it’s simple, IT’S MEGA FUN!

The bear is from Bitty Bears from MFT and I coloured him with my new Zig clean color real brush markers. The greeting is from Hero Arts.

Enjoy the video!

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