Hey guys,

Yes I am STILL in love with Autumn, even though it is starting to feel more like Winter outside these days! I don’t think I am quite ready to let go of my favourite season just yet…. but soon I must face reality and start my Christmas shopping!!… Soon, but not quite yet! 🙂

A few weeks back, I shared an Autumnal Wreath card with you guys on the HoneyBeeStamps blog, and a few days after, on my craft table I noticed the leftover piece of cardstock that I had used to cut out the die cuts. It looked so pretty- almost like a mask or stencil. I decided that it would be fun to try using die cut negatives as a stencil for embossing paste.

To start this card, I took a piece of white cardstock, and drew an oval on it with pencil – I actually used a spellbinders die as I had one in my stash. Next I used a selection of dies from the Honey Bee Stamps Country Wreath die set to cut out leaf shapes within the oval.

I knew I wanted to use embossing paste, but I only had a white colour, so I reached for my gelatos. I chose yellow, red, green and gold. Using a craft mat, I scribbled the gelato onto the surface, then added a blob of embossing paste and mixed the colour throughout the paste with my palate knife.

I used washi tape to secure the handmade mask on top of my cardstock, and carefully added blobs of each colour of embossing paste. I tried to go slow and use small amounts, as I didn’t want all the colours to blend together into a muddy colour. Once I was happy that each leaf had a variety of colours, I gently lifted the stencil away, and put the project to the side to dry completely. This is always the hardest part for me — I can be so impatient!

To be honest, when it was dry, I did not love it. The colours didn’t look quite right, they were too bright, and some of the shapes had lost their leafy-feel. But I don’t give up that easily!

I then took the co-ordinating stamps from the Country Wreath stamp set, and stamped on the top of each leaf. I love the way the stamped image almost creates a debossed image in the dimensional embossing paste! And those colourful blobs really do look like leaves now!

For the rest of the card, I wanted to go for a simple and elegant look, and I really didn’t want to cover those awesome leaves, so I reached for craft foam, mirror card and the Beautiful HoneyCuts die. Its hard to see but on top of the leaves I have stuck the word beautiful, die cut from craft foam, and then layered a piece of acetate on top. Then, I carefully added another die cut foam beautiful on top, before finishing up with a piece of die cut mirror card.

To finish the card, I added a thin golden border to the acetate, and some Honey Bee Stamps Diamond embellishments!

Doesn’t that gold mirror card look so pretty when the light catches it! And I think those leaves turned out sweet after all!

Thanks for visiting, have a great day!

Morning crafty friends! Today I am sharing a video showing how I made this fun card – I promise, there is more than meets the eye!

This is an interactive slider card with a fun magic wand (and by magic, of course I really mean magnetic, but MAGIC sounds better to me, teehee) <3

Over the last few weeks, we have seen the arrival of quite a few bambinos – first it was baby Wesley, then baby Arlo, then baby Amelia, then Baby Murray! I guess it is a Baby Boom year within our circle of fiends! So it no wonder that I am super inspired to make baby cards at the moment.

The inspiration for this card also come from my new box of polychromos pencils which arrived that morning. I managed to pick up a box from a crafty clear out on Facebook, and my idea was to use colouring pencils to create a soft, storybook feel to my stamped images.

First I stamped the owl image from the Jump For Joy stamp set from Lawn Fawn onto smooth white cardstock with black ink. Then I also stamped a cute star shaped balloon which is from the Ellie stamp set from Avery Elle. To create the soft storybook look, I used my polychromos colouring pencils to make dots and small strokes to the paper instead of solidly colouring the whole image. The polychromos were great for this, because they are not as waxy as some other colouring pencils can be. After colouring, I fussy cut the star with scissors leaving a small white border around the star, and I use the owl coordinating die to do some partial die cutting of the owl – I left the area under is feet uncut, as I wanted to create a tab under him – you can see exactly what I mean in the video.

For the background, I cut out some watercolour cardstock using the All Prettied Up scalloped rectangle die from Mama Elephant, then I stamped some trees onto the background using SimonSaysStamp mint ink. I used the MISTI to stamp right on top of the inked trees with some clear embossing ink. By melting some clear embossing powder on top of the trees, this creates a protective barrier on the trees which can be used in the embossing resist technique.  This means they are prefectly maintained when I then went in and inked the blue sky over the top! You can see that I also added some clouds with white embossing powder- which are from the Lawn Fawn Yay, Kites stamp set.

I used the Lawn Fawn Big Scripty Words stamp to add the word congrats onto the front panel of the card (which was cut using the Simple Stitched border die from Lawn Fawn), and then I added a ‘Its A Boy’ greeting below, using the Personal impressions Double Sayings stamp set. I wanted this greeting to be all in capital letters, so I had to mask two stamps to get the image I wanted. I used my MISTI tool to get a perfect stamped image.

Under the top panel, I used the Slide On Over dies from Lawn Fawn to cut a slider channel, and then used a magnet as the sliding mechanism, instead of a piece of foam tape. After the card was completed, I created a ‘Magic Wand’ using some paper die cut with a tag die which had a magnetic hidden inside. I also stamped a small heart on the tag (over the magnet) and on the inside of the card, just behind where the owl sits – this gives the recipient an idea of where to place their magic wand in order to make the owl run back and forth with his cute balloon!

Here is the full tutorial, walking you through exactly how I made the card. Enjoy!

And Congratulations to Andy & Maisie, Charlie and Andy, Ashley & Jessica, Amy & Mark and to all the other families out there that have been blessed with a new arrival recently!  <3

Thanks for stopping by!

Lesley