I’m back on the blog today with some LDRS Creative inspiration! I have been having some fuuuuuuuun with the amazing addition to the flower layering dies: Peony Layering Dies. Oh boy, it’s such a stunner and peonies also happen to be one of my favorite flowers so I went to town!
I have a big stash of this lovely linen textured coloured card stock and I got cutting, and cutting, and cutting and eventually ended up with enough bits and pieces for seven or eight peonies. Yeah, I was on a roll. Get it? LOL. I do love a good pun too!
After assembling the flowers and the buds with the leaves, it was time to actually make a card! For a nice little touch I like using the A2 Diagonal Stitched Layered Card Topper die set, it cuts out the A2 front and adds some lovely stitched detail in one go.
Puzzling the flower pieces took some time, and I ended up trimming a few of the buds and leaves to fit behind the two peonies I wanted to use. When I was happy with the layout, I used some Press’n’Seal to pick up the pieces in exactly the same spot as there were on the card base. This is such a neat and handy trick, but if you can not get ahold of Press’n’Seal you can use very low-tack wide washi to get the same result.
On the back, I used both Nuvo Deluxe liquid glue and foam tape, to add dimension and to adhered the whole shebang to the card base.
I also had a load of ready made sentiments done, as I had stamped and cut up the You’re Simply The Best wave stack sentiments.This set is so clever in that you stamp it up once and get all the sentiments done, and it has a coordinating diecut that cuts out all in one go. One stamp session + one turn through the diecutting machine = TWELVE sentiment banners done! How cool is that??
I picked out the one that says You are truly wonderful in every way, and adhered that to the card. Now, I could have stopped there, but did I? Of course not.. I’m not an over-blinger by name only, oh no.
I added a VERY generous smattering of these Iridescent Bubble Drops embellishments from Studio Katia. Sort of like big water droplets after rain, you know? Finally, after adding at least eight too many, I stopped and stepped back. I have the embellishment wand from Studio Katia too, and it’s fab, as are the Triangle Trays to keep your embellishments tidy while you pick out which ones to use.
I, personally, love the bling, but if you don’t, you can leave them out. Or go less. That’s always an option for some. Not me, apparently but oh well, what can you do?
Thank you so much for stopping by today, I really hope you enjoyed this post and will try these gorgeous Peony Layering dies for yourself. With the code ERICAC15 you can also take 15% off your order until April 11th!!
Hi guys, how are you today? All good, I hope. I’ve got lots to cover today, so let’s dive right in!
First of all, let’s talk about a fun collaboration between Picket Fence Studios and MFT Stamps! As part of this collaboration MFT Stamps generously sent me some inks to play with, and I mixed these with some fun Picket Fence goodies for a couple of colourful cards.
On the first card you can see how vibrant the colours are, and on the second you can see how easily they blend, for a soft look.
To make the butterfly stand out better, I cut out a mask and ink blended Cement Gray around this. The mask is done by tracing the outline of the stencil on paper, and fussy cutting this out. It was done on cheap copy paper, rather than masking paper. Once cut out, you place the stencil back over the colourful ink blending, making sure it’s in the right spot, then place the mask on top of this and ink blend around.
I have used a white gel pen to add in the antennas, because they did not stay in place. This panel was then trimmed down to 4″x5.25″ and adhered to a white card base with the help of foam tape. On top of this I have splattered some gold water colour, which you can get by mixing a small amount of Golden Rose paper glaze with water until you have a very liquid consistency.
The final touch, because it wasn’t shimmery enough *cough, cough, I have an embellishment problem* I added some gems from the Sands Of Time mix. I love this one!
In other news, it’s also Day 2 of Feature Day for LDRS! The theme is Fall Favorites but as I don’t have much stuff from LDRS yet, I winged it a bit and made a floral card and then plonked ‘Happy Fall’ on it to make it autumn-esque. Typically, I have a package coming next week with the new October Release stuff!! I can’t wait to try out the Perfect Petals layering dies!
In fairness to me, I’m still having summer vibes in my neck of the woods. It’s regularly +25C and glorious sunshine here, and lots of flowers are still blooming so it’s hard to get into ‘fall mode’. Plus I’m a summer gal through and through…
I used the Layered Poinsettia diecut and cut out LOADS of bits, in Bristol Vellum paper as I planned on doing lots of ink blending, with a splash of water colouring/ink smooshing. I wanted to try an idea to add colour to the bits, and that was to basically smoosh the pieces into the ink pads to get them covered with colour. It worked much better than ink smooshing actually, and left the colour much more vivid.
So yeah…. it’s got Spanish autumn vibes, but I did have to use lots to creative discretion here to get it to work with the theme. Maybe it was a bit of a cop-out but hey, it sure made a pretty card!
For Feature Day 1 I made another floral card, only this time I used the Potted Poinsettia stamp set and coloured it in with Copics.
Thankfully this stamp set has a coordinating diecut too, so I used that to cut the image out and on the back of this I used LOTS of foam squares to pop it up.
On the pre-cut strips I dabbed my Embossing ink really well to make sure they were coated, then I sprinkled the Luxurious Chocolate embossing powder over them, tapped off the excess and then used the heat tool to set them.
These were then adhered to a trimmed down piece of card stock, with the help of my grid mat to make sure the spacing was even. This piece was then adhered to an actual card base, and then the Poinsettias were added on top.
The final touch was to stamp up Happy Holidays, from the Potted Poinsettias stamp set, in black ink on a skinny white banner. This was trimmed down to be even smaller than the background piece and then adhered on top of the flowers.
The last thing I’ve got to share today is a fab promotion from Pinkfresh Studio!
From today until the 4th of Nov you can take 15% off standalone slimline stencils using the code SLIMST15. It’s only valid on in-stock products, while supplies last. Don’t forget to use the code at checkout.
You can see how I have used some of the stencils in the photo below, stencils really are one of my favorite things to work with. They are versatile, great value for money and so much fun to play with!
Well, I think that’s it for today. What do you think? Is this format preferred over separate blog post showing each card on it’s own? I’d love to hear what you think and what you want to see from me so I can provide content that you will enjoy.
Today is the last day for my term on the Butterfly Reflections Ink design team and I have made a pop-up box card for my final blog post. I made a few mistakes along the way and decided to make another one, with the mistakes in mind, to try and improve on the design.
Before I get to that one, let’s have a quick look at the first one: I went with a blue colour scheme, for no other reason than that I love blue.
To take out all the guess work out of dimension for the box card itself, I used the Scalloped Pop-up Box card Lawn Cut. I’m rubbish with numbers and calculations so this is a life-saver for me. Two quick cuts and you have your standard box! Easy peasy! I decided to use patterned paper to make it a bit festive, and got out Hearts & Stripes from MFT Stamps. I added four dividers in the box, but this might have been a bit ambitious in hindsight. I also cut out rectangles in the same colour card stock as the outside of the box, to add to the inside flaps of it. I was in a very coordinating mood, lol! The patterned paper packs give you so much choice when it comes to colours and patterns, you can pick and choose to suit the occasion or the recipient favourite colour.
To keep the colours cohesive and to match the patterned paper, I decided to use some of the many balloons I had already coloured up from the Simply Celebrate stamp set, which were all done in blues with some grey added to a few. This was a set I wanted from the moment I first laid eyes on it! All the balloons are cut out with the coordinating diecut too.
In order to keep the balloons stable, I cut out lots of the ‘sticks’ from the box diecut and layered them two and two. These I adhered to the dividers and stacked the balloons to make them all show.
Sentiment-wise I have used a combination of Happy Happy Happy stamp set plus coordinating diecut as well as another Lawn Fawn stamp set called Home Sweet Home I stamped up the banner from the Home Sweet Home set and added ‘Birthday’ to it from the Happy Happy Happy set. The Happy bit is coloured in with Copics.
To add sparkle, I cut out lots of stars and glued these onto “paper sticks” which I then added to the box. A couple of them also got added to the banner to frame the ‘birthday’.
As I had gone a bit mad with the dividers inside the box I actually ended up with an empty one as the balloons in the back are adhered to the box itself. To cover this front divider up, I stamped up the candles from the Simply Celebrate stamp set and coloured them in with Copics too. I had to trim off two candles to make it fit inside the box and not cover up the ‘Happy’ bit and I did this by fussy cutting before glueing it down.
Well, all in all, it’s not too shabby but you know when you just know it’s not perfect and it bugs you? Yeah, that’s how I feel about this one… So, to combat that, I decided to make another one and hopefully learn from my mistakes on this one.
For the second box I decided to go for rainbow colours! Another MFT Stamps patterned paper stack came out: Party Patterns. At the time of writing this blog post, it’s sold out everywhere (no wonder actually as it’s gorgeous!) However, if you can’t wait to get something similar, MFT Stamps has a fabulous selection of patterned paper packs. As does Scrapbook.com, their selection of patterned paper deserves a ‘wow’, there is a dizzying amount of choice there, Doodlebug Designs amongst others. I have a bit of a patterned paper hoarding problem myself but I know for a fact I’m not alone with this “problem”, lol!
Right, I kind of lost the red thread there for a moment, ogling all the pretty papers. The Lawn Fawn Scalloped Box Card cut came out again and two times through my BigShot later, I had my box pieces.
The paper I picked out for the second box is a lovey bright, rainbow striped pattern. Just gorgeous. If I could get a pack with just these stripes, I’d probably get like 5 packs right away. I love it!
So the box itself came together quite quickly and I added four dividers to this one too, which you might think was a bit mad seeing how I thought it was too many for the first one. Well, there is an explanation for sure: I wanted to make it almost identical, just fix my mistakes from the first one i.e. better placing of the balloons and sentiments.
I stamped up another three sets of balloons, as well as the candles, from the Simply Celebrate stamp set and got my Copic markers out again. These I coloured in with rainbow colours too and then cut them out using the coordinating Lawn Cut. The ‘Happy’ image from the Happy Happy Happy set was also coloured in with a rainbow colour scheme and cut out with its coordinating Lawn cut.
Assembly isn’t that time consuming when you already know where most of the images are going to go and you have all your bits and pieces done. After cutting out gold glitter stars for this one (with one of the little dies that comes with the Box die), and making my ‘paper sticks’ as well as cutting out the ones meant to lift up the balloons it was just glue-add-glue-add job and it should have been done. You’d think anyway… well, it is I, Erica the Crafting Drama Queen, lover of a good crafty twist so no. That is not how it went *facepalm*
After deciding in which order the balloons were going to go, I added the balloons in the back to the first divider rather than the back of the box. OH! Twist no1!

Twist no2 came when it was time to place the candles in the box. Instead of trimming these down and tucking them in, I added it in full-size and covered up the “holding sticks” with gold glitter stars.

Twist no3 came soon after that. The ‘Happy‘ bit was adhered to the back of the candles rather than behind them, as on the first card.
I’m not sure that adding loads more gold glitter stars will qualify as a twist as I’m not known for holding back on the bling? Nah, let’s just say that I added… a fair few… more to this box than the first one. Eh, what can I say?

Anyway, with that, I’m done for the day but I would like to wish my dear friend Pernille a very happy birthday! We used to go for a birthday brunch in between her birthday, today, and mine, on the 11th of May, whilst I lived in Denmark but sadly that’s not going to happen this year. Next year, I might need to plan ahead and make it happen.

I have used compensated affiliate links where possible in this post, to Scrapbook.com where there is a huge selection of Lawn Fawn and MFT Stamps amongst others, thank you in advance if you use these to purchase anything. I get a small commission from the company directly if you do this, at NO extra cost to you whatsoever. Every time you use someone’s affiliate links, you help them along on their crafting journey so please do make sure you use them when you can. It really means the world to us all!
CaCaCraft by Erica 