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

Poppystamps Challenge #2 - Thankful

Poppystamps have just started holding a monthly challenge, so I thought I'd join in this time with this simple Thank You card. You can find all the challenge details here

The lovely Poppystamps Massa Leaf Frame die comes with this extra leaf spray inside the frame. I left the dies wired together and cut two from cream card and two from a textured gold card, which gave me the four square panels as well as the leaf sprays. I simply switched the leaves over to the contrasting squares and layered them onto gold and cream card, before adhering the panel to a square kraft card blank. I don't have any Poppystamps sentiment stamps, so this one from the Waltzingmouse "Join Us" stamp set fitted the bill. The finishing touch was a narrow cream ribbon and bow. 

This card would be really easy to mass produce and the sentiment could be varied to suit. 

Thanks for looking.

Lynn

Thank You Poppy Stamps!

Back in early October Poppy Stamps celebrated World Cardmaking Day with a special blog hop featuring their Design Team. There were lots of lovely cards on display there http://poppystamps.typepad.com/poppystamps/2013/10/happy-world-card-making-day.html and I commented on each designer's blog as I "hopped" along. I was delighted to find that I had won a large Poppystamps die for commenting and the lovely DT co-ordinator, Jeanne Jachna, was kind enough to allow me to choose which die I would like. I have always liked birds (hubby and I feed the wild ones in our garden), so I asked if I could have the lovely Birdie Wreath (no 970) and I was lucky enough to be sent the matching Birdie Wreath stamp too! They arrived from America in November and I immediately fell in love with them and decided to use them to make my Christmas cards this year.

 I normally make a selection of different cards and spend ages designing them, but I was running short of time and although I knew that these would not be Clean and Simple (CAS) cards to make, I decided that I would use the same basic design for all of them this year. I started by stamping the birdie wreath onto smooth white card using Memento Tuxedo Black ink, so that the ink would not bleed when coloured. With a bit of careful positioning I managed to get eleven wreaths onto each A4 sheet of card ... and so the production line began!



I used the coloured image on the die packet as a starting point and selected Copic Ciao markers in similar colours to the pears and assorted foliage. In the UK we don't have red Cardinals, but Robins are a very popular little bird and are a traditional image on Christmas cards, so I adapted my birdie to become a robin. I also decided to change the small pink bell shaped flowers into bluebells (although these are usually a spring flower) and I made the little blue and purple star shaped flowers a bright Christmas red colour so that they looked more festive.

I coloured all the wreaths using the ten Copic Ciao markers shown above, plus a blending pen. The pears and some of the leaves were multicoloured, so where the colours met I softened the edges with the blending pen to get a more natural look. I calculated that I needed a total of 90 Christmas cards this year so you can imagine how long it took me to colour all those wreaths! I also stamped and coloured an additional birdie for each card as I wanted to decoupage them to add a bit of dimension. So that was 180 Robins, 360 Pears, 2,250 bluebell flowers, 4,320 little red star flowers and 5,760 leaves (and a partridge in a pear tree)! No wonder it took me most of December to make them all! 



Once I had coloured them all, I used the two part die to cut out each wreath (first cutting the outside, then the inner piece). I kept the dies in place whilst I cut them by using a little low tack masking tape, which stopped the dies from moving about as I ran them through my Grand Calibur.

I started off using 6" square white card blanks and added layers cut from Green foiled card and red textured card using Spellbinders Marvellous Squares dies and a layer of waxed paper to make removing the die - cuts easier http://www.spellbinderspaperarts.com/products/p-811-marvelous-squares.aspx - these were then adhered to the card using double sided tape. The wreath and the extra robin were then added with foam pads for dimension.

I ran out of green foiled cardstock after I'd made 40 cards and had to switch to using a paler green card, which I chose to tone in with the lighter coloured leaves on the wreath. If you click on the photo below you can see the detail of the red textured card layer and the coloured wreath. 

Here are a couple of smaller (A6) cards which I made using gold patterned card as the backing layer.

I also ran out of white square card blanks after I'd made about 65 cards, so I then switched to using rectangular card blanks with scalloped edges. The gap at the bottom needed something extra, so I added this lovely stamped Christmas verse (from Waltzingmouse stamps).

I was really pleased with how all my cards turned out this year and I'd like to say a huge thank you to Poppy Stamps for making it all possible!