Word Dies and Heat Shrink Craft Foam.

I am currently taking part in the Online Card Class "Stretch Your Dies" which is run by Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner. The lessons are spread over seven days and there are loads of useful tips and galleries full of inspiration. I was late to the party, due to ongoing problems with our broadband connection and not being able to view the video classes until recently - but I plan to work my way through all of them and post my cards here as I get time.

The very first lesson was a video by the very talented Jennifer McGuire, showing how to use word dies to create a tone on tone background and how to make fun little embellishments out of die cut Craft Foam. Here is my finished card. It was very time consuming to make (I was fiddling with it for about three days), but I am so pleased with the finished result!
I started with a black C6 card blank and used WOW opaque white embossing powder to heat emboss the long border stamp from Waltzingmouse Stamps "My Heart" set down the left hand side. The white background panel was made using several die cuts from a Papertrey Ink Birthday die (I used Stick It on the back of my card before cutting each word out, so that they would be easier to adhere to my card). I added a strip of gold foil and mounted the panel onto a rectangle of white craft foam, before adding it to the card.

Then I got rather carried away die cutting all these individual small flowers and leaves from Craft Foam! I used a selection of dies from Papertrey Ink, Waltzingmouse, Impression Obsession, Magnolia, Poppystamps, X-cut and Simon Says Stamp.

Next came the fun part! I used my heat gun to heat shrink the flowers and leaves until they were much smaller. The Birthday word was cut from black foam and shrunk in the same way. The photo below shows the foam before it was shrunk on the top row, with the smaller heat shrunk versions below.

I stuck everything to the card front using Ranger's multi - medium matte and added pearls as a finishing touch. 

Thanks for looking!

Lynn

Catching up!

It is such a long time since I last blogged - so sorry that I've been AWOL for so long! December saw me frantically making several birthday and thank you cards, together with over 100 Christmas cards - which then had to be written and posted, so there was no time to write blog posts at all. Over the Christmas and New Year period we were busy entertaining our family and friends, then we came down with the dreaded lurgey and were forced to retreat to bed to hibernate until we felt better.

Anyway, now that things are getting back to normal, I thought that I would share a few photos of some of the cards that I made over the last couple of months.

The first one is a thank you card made with a Lili of the Valley cute image stamp and papers, Spellbinders dies and sentiments by Waltzingmouse Stamps. We took this to the Stroke Unit at Fairfield Hospital, Bury to thank the staff there for looking after my husband David when he first had his stroke last year.

My second card was for my Brother-in-law Les' 80th birthday. He loves the countryside and there are squirrels in the trees behind their house, so I decided to go with a woodland themed card. I used a Spellbinders embossing folder for the green background panel which I added to a 5" x 7" white card blank. I embossed the Papertrey Ink tree cover plate onto Bockingford watercolour paper, watercoloured the tree trunk and leaves, then stamped the trunk with the co-ordinating PTI stamp to get the bark effect. The tree panel was matted onto chocolate brown card, which I also used to cut some branches and an assortment of small birds with a selection of Memory Box and Poppystamps dies. The squirrels and acorns were cut with Impression Obsession dies, then I highlighted the acorns and the squirrels' eyes with a tiny amount of glossy accents. I was really pleased with how this turned out.

The next card was made for my Sister-in-law Alison for her birthday. I used a similar technique to the previous card, this time using a Papertrey floral coverplate and watercolouring as before. The small stitched flag was cut using a Li'l Inker die and stamped with a Waltzingmouse stamps sentiment. Lime green and pink card layers and some co-ordinating ribbons were all that were needed to complete my design.

Below you can see a similar version of the card above, this time using Papertrey Bitty Dot background paper and matching ribbon, with an orange and lime green colour scheme.

My next card was designed to be produced en mass and was based upon a card that had been featured on the Less is More challenge blog. The stitched rectangle die is from a set of Lawn Fawn dies, the sentiment is a Magenta stamp, the snowflakes are by Waltzingmouse stamps and the legs are part of a Prima Valentine doll stamp. I used Memento dye inks and Copic Ciao markers to colour the legs and shoes, adding a touch of clear Wink of Stella pen to the shoes to make them sparkle. The snowflakes were stamped with Versamark ink and heat embossed with WOW sparkling embossing powder. I made a total of 65 of these C6 sized cards - which took me ages!

Finally we have my other batch Christmas card for 2014. I made about 35 of these 6" square green cards and stamped the backgrounds using red Memento dye ink and a candy stamp from Waltzingmouse. Then came a red linen card layer and a square of mottled green card embossed with a Cuttlebug candy cane embossing folder. The striped candy canes, bow and gingerbread man were all Waltzingmouse stamps, cut with their matching dies and coloured with Copic Ciao markers. A touch of red and white bakers twine completed the look.

Apologies for the long post and thanks for reading this far!

Lynn

Indigo Blu Challenge no 9 - Chocolate Orange.

This is my entry for the ninth challenge over at the Indigo Blu Challenge Blog  http://indigoblublogchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/challenge-9-chocolate-orange.html .
This month's challenge was "Chocolate Orange" and I used the "Bare Forest 1" stamp (Code:BF 1) and the "Little Voice" stamp set (Code: LV) to stamp the Get Well Soon sentiment. I had to use separate words and letters from two of the sentiment stamps as I didn't have an Indigo Blu stamp with the message that I wanted!

 

 

The embossed panel on the right was a piece of Core'dinations Chocolate Box card stock which I embossed with one of the Tim Holtz Textured Leaves embossing folders from the Alterations Texture Fades collection by Sizzix, before sanding to reveal the orange core beneath.

 

The panel on the left was a piece of Indigo Blue perfect pastel smooth card stock which I coloured using Yellow Ochre Tint, Orange Tint and Orange Pan Pastels. I then stamped the lovely Bare Forest trees over the top with Memento Rich Cocoa ink. Both panels were layered onto Orange Zest and Chocolate Brown card stock, and an orange grosgrain ribbon was added before mounting onto a white card blank.

 

The collection of autumn leaves were die cut from the leftover card scraps using Impression Obsession leaf dies. The tiny leaves were cut using a Memory Box die. The leaves were all stuck on with foam pads of varying thickness to give a more dimensional look.

 

Not content with making just one card, I came up with a similar version for our nephew's birthday next week. The sentiment was stamped using Waltzingmouse "Compact Sentiments" and "Compact Family" stamps as I didn't have the appropriate Indigo Blu sentiment stamps.

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed using my Pan Pastels and the Bare Forest stamp is gorgeous, so I shall definitely be trying this again (maybe wintery colours would look nice - possibly with a touch of snow).

 

 

EDITED to add that I had problems linking up my blog to the Indigo Blu Challenge blog (my stupid laptop decided to install some updates and then freeze just as I was using the inklinkz widget) - so I'm not sure if  I've actually managed to enter the challenge or not! Never mind - at least I have made two cards that I needed!