Hello and happy Monday everyone!

The other day I totally thought I had lost my large stitched rectangle die and I nearly cried. Honest to goodness, I nearly did cry! Of course, it was just hiding, but I had the realisation that I hardly ever use any of the other rectangle dies apart from the largest A2 size one. I decided to challenge myself – so I set out to make a card using a smaller rectangle die – and this is the result- a card featuring Playful Pups, Celebration Box, and Sending You Sentiments.

I first inked up an A2 panel with some distress ink and a blending tool – I used tumbled glass and cracked pistachio inks – i love these two together! Then I cut out my small rectangle and added a few layers of clouds using a cloud die, which would be the perfect backdrop for this cuddly canine!

I stamped this pup from the Playful Pups set in memento tuxedo black ink as well as the roundest balloon from the celebration box set. Before cutting out the balloon I drew in a straight line with a copic multiliner and a ruler so it had a straight string coming from the knot. These sets come with coordinating dies, but mister postie hasn’t brought mine yet so I had to do it the good old fashioned way with some fussy cutting.

Can you see the texture on the pup? To create this I used the stippling technique to add tiny dots of colour with the copic marker. It gives more interest to the final project and doesn’t make it look so flat. I think it looks especially fun on critters as it brings them to life a bit more I think.

Of course I needed a greeting, and the Sending You Sentiments were the perfect choice! I chose the ‘sending you’, ‘loads of’ & ‘love’. I used a little washi tape to mask off the ‘loads of’ image so i could separate the two letters out slightly to create a more balanced greeting.

To finish the card, I added a sprinkling of Baby Boy sequins along with some stars that I stamped from the Welcome Baby set. I love that these teeny weeny images have coordinating dies – it makes it so easy to add those finishing touches to a card!

Thanks for stopping by

Have a great week!

Helllllloooooo from this cute little mouse! I hope all my crafty friends are having a super day!

Today I want to share this card which features some of my favourite stamps sets, alongside some new products from a company which I have only recently discovered – AladinE.

When I was at Creativation, I was was walking down an aisle when I overheard a french accent coming from a demo table. I studied french at Uni so I was excited to check out the booth – and boy am I glad I did! I was excited to see a massive booth called AladinE, which had a huge range of crafty supplies – ink pads, stamps, dies, masks, fabric paints, markers and so much more. One of the most exciting products in my opinion was their texture paste. It works in a similar way to embossing paste, but it is far more robust. You can use it on metal, glass, card, wood and EVEN FABRIC! Yes – fabric, and its machine washable!

I decided to give it a try on a card today, along with a fun chevron mask and some embossing powder also some AladinE.

I thought I would use the paste to create a textured background, and then create a more whimsical design using layers of stamped images and vellum. I reached for the Mama Elephant Page Huggers stamp set along with the Yay, Kites set from Lawn Fawn -they were perfect for this card!

In the video you can see how I put together the whole card, although I will admit that I pre-stamped the images off camera first. I used my trusty copics to add some lovely colour to the images before diecutting them. I needed a few extra elements to build a ‘ground’, so I also used the Mama Elephant Up, Up and Away set to stamp some cute flowers.

I admit, I got a little bit stuck when it came to adding a greeting. I ummm-ed and aahhh-ed for about 10 minutes before settling on this scripty hello die cut from Simon Says Stamp. I used the Izink embossing powder to get the rich tomato colour, and mounted this onto die cut layers of foam to get great dimension on the card.

To finish it off, I added some little gems and dew drops from Honey Bee Stamps.

This card is a bit different to some of my other cards, but I am really happy with the way it turned out. I was really happy also with the texture paste and I cannot wait to try it out on some fabric. I even bought a little kids apron and I thought that Piper and I could have a go at decorating it for her. I think she will get a kick out of designing her own apron.

Thanks for stopping by and watching the video. See you again soon!

Lesley