Today I’m hopping along with Hero Arts creative team, global team and friends, to celebrate the September My Monthly Hero Kit release! You can find the whole lineup of the hop HERE, and as I’m the last stop on the hop it takes you back to the first Hero Arts blog post.
The September My Monthly Hero kit is an ode to fall and elegance. Just look at this!
The kit contains :
• Clear Stamp Set, 4” x 6” • 6 Coordinating Frame Cuts • Rub-On Transfer Sheet • Cling Background Stamp, 6“ x 6” • 2 Sheets Each of Cardstock in Sand & Antique Ivory, 5.5” x 8.5” • Rose Gold Metallic Floss, 5 yds
You can also pick and chose from the amazing My Monthly Hero Add-Ons. Including new hot foil plates!! Eeeeep! I’m firmly onboard the Hot Foil Crazy Train and do not plan on getting off anytime soon.
The kit description says: Autumn is a whisper in the air, with hints of cooler weather, falling leaves, and rich colors. Our September My Monthly Hero release takes an elegant path into fall, featuring a gorgeous vase of fall blooms as the focal point for your cards and projects. There’s also a fun new element this month – rub-ons! Use them for quick and easy cards; the coordinating die in the kit perfectly cuts out the rub-on floral arrangement as well as the stamped images. Or try the rub-ons on any smooth surface. The kit is rounded out with a gorgeous new cling stamp, metallic floss and the perfect neutral cardstocks for stamping your autumn-inspired creations.
Pre-order your kit today! Hero Arts estimate kit shipping will begin Friday, September 9th and continue throughout the following week. You can also subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the kits, as once they are sold out, that’s it.
I’m super excited about the hot foil plates, and I don’t think it should come as a surprise that I had to use these for my first card.
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I forgot to add a sentiment to this card but the gold hot foiling and heat embossing steal the show, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
I have also used the lovely rub-ons and I was blown away how gorgeous they looked once on paper.
I need more of these for sure! The first one I did on the Antique Ivory and I did this directly on one of the two card bases that come in the kit. This one was finished off with a simple sentiment from the kit stamp set, in Root Beer ink.
The second one I did on the Sand card stock, the second colour card stock that comes in the kit, and it looked beautiful too!
The sentiments on this card is also stamped with Root Beer ink, with the help of a MINI MISTI.
These are super simple cards to make, but that image is so gorgeous they don’t really need much else.
Now for the fun stuff! There is a giveaway to celebrate. Hero Arts will give away a $50 gift card, drawn from the comments left across the hop. Enter by Sunday, September 11th at 11:59pm Pacific, and the winner will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week.
Thank you so much for stopping by today, I hope you enjoyed this post and the rest of the hop!
Today I’m excited to be blog hopping with Pinkfresh and friends! We are celebrating the July release and as usual, there is a load of gorgeous and versatile products coming out.
You should have come from the fabulous Emily Midgett and the next stop is the incomparable Heather Hoffman. If you get lost along the way you can find the entire lineup on the Pinkfresh blog post, as well as via the InLinkz link.
I have mixed and matched some older goodies with the new release. The Stitched Scallop Rectangle diecut is one of my all-time faves from Pinkfresh, it’s so pretty, so versatile and in my opinion it really elevates a simple card design without taking the focus away from the focal point on the card. I also love the Dotted Scalloped cover plate. It’s such a gorgeous pattern and was the perfect thing for this card.
The Go For It suite is new for July, and it’s such a lovely and dainty image, yet packs a punch. How is that for awesomeness? For this card I have used all but the stamp itself, and soft spring colours, despite it being a heat wave right now. I should have gone for fiery colours perhaps but I’m really drawn to yellow on cards.
After foiling the Go For It image with Matte Gold, I used the layering stencils over it to add colour. Don’t try and diecut first and then ink blend, always ink blend first and then cut it out.
I am so happy to have a coordinating diecut for this image as I’d never manage to cut this all out without chopping off a stem or leaf.
To put the card together I have layered up a lot of the pieces for that lovely dimensional look. The background is propped up, the sentiments are stacked, the frame is layered with a white one under the yellow, and the flower heads are raised up with foam tape. The final touch were some dainty clear crystals, for a morning dew or raindrop look.
The pattern in created with the Fall Leaf Border stencils, and bright happy ink colours. Once I had ink blended the pattern, I fussy cut along the border of them to cut off the excess white space.
I picked another sentiment from the set, Thank you, this time and used yellows and apricot colours to create the look before cutting them out with the coordinating diecut. These are also raised, but with foam tape this time.
To keep with the colour scheme I used Sunshine Jewels for this card, and quite a restrained amount, for me.
That is it from me for today, but I hope you have found some inspiration here with me and along the hop. The next stop is Heather Hoffman, and you can also find the entire hop list via the InLinkz list here.
As it’s a blog hop, there are of course giveaways and prizes!
GIVEAWAYS: -You can win the full release on the Pinkfresh blog & YouTube channel! All you have to do is leave comments on both new release posts, and that’s it! -There are also a total of TEN $25 gift cards to be won along the hop. Winners are drawn randomly from all the comments left on the blogs, so the more you hop and comment, the better your chances to win!
Winners will be announced on August 5, 2022 on the Pinkfresh GIVEAWAY PAGE. Please note that you must check that page and claim your prize within 2 weeks, so mark your calendars and check back!
For transparency, I have used compensated affiliate links all throughout this post, for your convenience, and at no extra cost to you. If you shop via these links I get a small commission from Pinkfresh directly as a thank you for directing you to them. Everything I earn from these links are currently going to the ‘Forever Craft Room Renovation Fund’ as I have a lot of work to be done on the room that will be my craft room in the house we bought a couple of months ago.
Here is a photo of it, and I will be making sure to share lot of updates as it comes to life. Thank you so much if you chose to support me by shopping with these links, I appreciate it a lot!!
Thanks again for stopping by, lots of love and happy crafting from Erica
Today is a great day because the Pinkfresh design team, and friends, are blog hopping to celebrate the April release! If you have arrived here from the insanely talented Emily Midgett’s blog, you are in the right place. The next stop is the one and only Heather Hoffman!
It’s another fabulous release (duh, what else, right??) and I am crazy excited about the Peony Print suite. Peonies are one of my fave flowers ever, and I have used this suite for an array of cards.
The panel is so pretty as it was, so I trimmed it down a little, added it to a white card base. A frame was added using the Stitched Scallop Rectangle die, which has been layered up a little.
I have made other cards with the same Peony Print suite, but I will share those on social media later instead, and move on to some other new goodies.
For this card I have used two new products: the Floral Diamonds cover plate, as seen below. It’s really lovely, and quickly became my favourite out of the new cover plates.
This is propped up with foam tape and then I used a few colour coordinating jewels to add to the middle of the flowers.
That’s it from me for today, and now it’s time to hop along. You can find the whole line-up for the hop via the InLinkz link here, if you want to just hop on to the next stop on the hop that’s the fabulous and inspiring Heather Hoffman.
Don’t forget that there are TEN $25 gift vouchers to be won, and all you have to do is leave comments along the blog hop.
The more you comment, the better your chance of winning. Winner will be drawn from the comments, randomly, and will be announced on the Pinkfresh giveaway winner page on May 10th. Please note that you need to check this page and get in touch within two weeks to claim your prize, if you are a winner.
You can also win the ENTIRE RELEASE by commenting on the Pinkfresh release blog post, as well as their release YouTube video, so make sure to comment on those too!
I have made a YouTube video too, and you can find that via THIS LINK HERE. Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, hit that notification button and the thumbs up button! I look forward to seeing you there.
There are compensated affiliate links in this post, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me by using these links, I really appreciate it!
Eeeep! It’s absolutely thrilling to be asked! Especially as the challenge graphic is so lovely too. Just look at that pastel yumminess.
This card making hobby has turned into such a big part of my life and I am so grateful for having found a huge community online, especially on Instagram, and made so many friends along the way.
Among those friends are Tasha, Jo and Verity. With the recent crisis in the Ukraine, we put our heads together to do something positive in a terrible situation. We decided to hold a card auction and asked some friends to join in, who also asked some friends, and so on. All of a sudden we had over 200 cards to auction off!!
The response has been so fantastic and overwhelming, it’s just mind-blowing! So far we have raised over nine thousand dollars for various charities working in the Ukraine, and on their borders. If you want to check out that Instagram account, that’s Ukraine Card Drive. There is a third part of the auction coming up, but we are going to take a short break to recover from the whirlwind of the first two, before we go forward with the next one.
For my card today, I really wanted to use the Sunflower washi suite from Pinkfresh Studio. This set is not only fabulous, for the month of March 100% of the net profits from this will go to Save The Children Organization, one of the charities helping children affected by the war. Every little helps, and why not treat yourself to some fun crafting goodies, while also knowing that you are helping?
With the war in Ukraine, we all need to show our support and even if it’s just a card, that can make a small difference for someone feeling lonely. If you post on social media, use the hashtag #cardsforukraine. I have heard from Ukrainian friends that their family and friends there are uplifted by the support.
I decided to use the Sunflower washi tape, and after adhering this to sturdy card stock, I used Neenah #110 Solar White, I also ran a mixed media scraper over it to make sure it was really flat. After cutting out the flowers, I started to work on my background.
The chevron pattern itself was east to get, using the Essentials Nested Chevron cover plate, also from Pinkfresh. I used the cover plate on two different pieces of card stock. On a card panel I glued down the negative pieces and on another card panel, the positive ones. Over these I have ink blended the inks mentioned above, and the reason for ink blending after diecutting and not before, is to add extra colour to edges, to make the pattern pop a bit more.
When I was happy with the colour added, I simply glued in the Chevron diecut pieces to make a whole background again, another reason for doing it this way was to create clean white lines and give me choices. I ended up with two lovely backgrounds but picked the one with more colour on it for my card.
After trimming down the background a little, I adhered it to a card base which gives that lovely white border. On top of this I have adhered the Sunflower washi pieces and finished it off with a diecut ‘you’ and a stamped sentiment to say ‘you make me try better’. Which I am now thinking doesn’t make sense, but I am a foreigner so I will claim language barrier, LOL! I am rather fluent in gibberish after all.
I am also a self-confessed over-sequinizer, so I couldn’t not use some lovely Jewels from Pinkfresh. These are colour coordinated to the area where they are added. Using an Embellishment Wand makes this super easy too.
Using a coverplate to add texture and help you divide up colour areas is a great way to stretch your supplies! Washi tapes are also a fab addition to your craft room, especially if you like the look of water colouring but don’t have the time or the patience to practice.
Well, with that, the card is done and I hope you like it! Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today, and thank you to SCT Magazine for inviting me. Don’t forget to enter the challenge too and if you want to comment on their post, you can use THIS LINK HERE.
I have used some compensated affiliate links in this post, but bear in mind that the Sunflower Washi suite isn’t affiliate links as the profits from that is going to Save The Children. Which in itself is a great reason to treat yourself to that gorgeous set.
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!!
Hello, hello, and welcome to one of the stops on the Pinkfresh February release blog hop! If you have come here from the amazing Emily Mydlowski, you are in the right spot, and the next stop on the hop is the awesome Heather Hoffman!
I have been really sick with shingles, for the second time in two years!!, for most of February so I haven’t had the energy to make a boat load of cards, like I usually do. However, the cards I have made I really like, and I hope you will too. I did manage a YouTube video too, but just a heads-up, I do look rather sickly still.
Now, let’s get to it! Clean and Simple, or CAS cards, are not something that comes easy to me. I love the look, but yeah, I usually end up over embellishing them to make up for the white space. It was, surprisingly, the look that I ended up with, for both of my first two cards though. Maybe the shingles took pity on my frazzled brain, and I didn’t over-think it even half as much like I normally do. Or maybe I just ran out of steam? Either way, TWO CAS cards coming up!
I started out by heat embossing the lovely Spark Of Goodness Floral Frame stamp on two card panels, one with Opaque Bright White powder from WOW! Embossing powder.
The second one was done with Rich Gold powder, also from WOW! Embossing. The gold definitely stood out more, for obvious reason.
The white embossing one I coloured in with green and fuchsia coloured Copics, and then used the coordinating diecut to cut out the middle. On the back I built it up with spare card stock to create some dimension.
For a bit of extra interest and texture, I used the Color Block Diagonal Stripes diecut on white card stock, and added the pieces to a card base. Probably as zero surprise to anyone, I also added some bling in the form of clear crystals, as well as a straight to the point sentiment.
The second card was also coloured in with Copics, but in peachy/orange tones, and greens. This was also cut out with the coordinating diecut and I did a similar thing to add texture and interest to the background. On this one I used the new Heart and Stars Coverplate, and it’s so sweet!
I also have a little sneaky peek of one of the cards I will be sharing for tomorrow’s Instagram hop, with the absolutely stunning Chrysanthemum Slimline stamp, coordinating diecut and coordinating layering stencils set!
Now for the fun stuff!!
Pinkfresh is giving away the entire release on their blog post and their YouTube post, so don’t forget to comment there! There are also TEN $25 gift vouchers up for grabs along the blog hop, all you have to do is leave a comment to be in with a chance to win, so the more you comment, the bigger chance to win!
Winners will be announced on March 8th, 2022 on the Pinkfresh GIVEAWAY PAGE. Remember that you must check that page and claim your prize within two weeks.
Thank you so much for stopping by today! Lots of love and happy crafting!
I’m back with some more Pinkfresh flowery cards today. For these cards I have used the colour scheme from the December challenge but mixed it with the Blooming Branch set. I’m slightly in denial about Christmas being so close so any excuse to use flowers and blooms, I’m in.
The idea was to get a softer look on the white and more vivid on the gold. The opacity of the ink blending is actually about the same, but it does make the colours pop or soften up, with the different colours. My fave is the Rich Gold.
All of these have been ink blended with blending brushes, because that is the blending tool that works best for me to get a smooth blend.
I wanted a bit of a rainbow look still (surprise, surprise, I know… ) so I started with the Sunshine in the middle, and then went pink and red towards the top and the teal and turquoise towards the bottom.
You don’t actually need that many colours to get a rainbow look, as by blending the colours together you get more than the actual numbers of inks you use. For example, yellow and red/pink, will make orange and yellow and blue makes green, and so forth.
To get this look, you add the colours in the same areas on each layer of stencil. Think in terms of lines across your stencil, if you will. You just keep building it up as you go through your stencils, and eventually you end up with this fun rainbow look.
With the colours all added, I cut them both out with the coordinating diecut and on the back of these, I added foam tape to raise them up on the card. However, I had to make my backgrounds first and the sentiments too, of course.
Luckily for me, it was foiled to the paper, but the Opal hot foil is very subtle. It looks more like an embossing folder, than hot foiling. Which is another use for your hot foil plates! You can actually use them to add dry embossing, and add pattern to your card stock as well as use them for hot foiling.
The background pieces were trimmed down a little and then directly adhered to a card base each. On top of these I added the Blooming Branch pieces, the sentiments and then I just had to add some Jewels to add even more pizzazz! I can’t help myself, I love these Jewels and they are such a perfect finishing touch.
That’s it from me for today, but I hope you found some inspiration here and don’t forget that you can still take part in the December challenge. You can win a $50 gift card to the Pinkfresh Studio shop just by taking part, so what are you waiting for? Go on, have some fun and play along. The deadline is December 28th, so plenty to of time and you can enter 5 projects!
Right, I will stop jibber-jabbering now and let you go. Thank you so much for stopping by, lots of love and happy crafting from Erica
Hi guys! Today I am super excited to celebrate the last release of 2021 from Pinkfresh Studio with a blog hop! The rest of the design team and friends of Pinkfresh have really knocked this release out of the park!
It’s such a gorgeous washi, and once I got on a roll with it, I couldn’t stop. Get it? On a roll? *snickers at my own pun* I also made a YOUTUBE VIDEO, showing the entire release and all the projects I made!
I rolled out the washi tape onto wide strips of sturdy card stock, I used 110lb Neenah card stock for this, and then used the coordinating diecut to cut out all the pieces. The coordinating diecut is absolutely genius as it’s all one piece, all you have to do is line it up and it cuts out everything in one go. Same with the coordinating stamp set, so freaking genius!
Once you have your pieces cut out, and why not do a big bunch while you are on a roll? *snickers again, it’s a solid pun* Keep the rest of the pieces in a little storage pocket, either from Avery Elle or the slimline pouches from Picket Fence Studios, and pop that into your Extra Large storage pocket that works a treat for keeping all your coordinating goodies together.
On this slimline card I have used another new fun goodie: The Blanket Stitch Slimline and Mini Slimline Rectangles diecuts. You get the Pinkfresh regular slimline AND mini slimline diecuts in one, and they both have that lovely blanket stitched detail around the edges.
The In The Meadow flowers are then arranged around the sentiment, and with that this mini slimline card was done. It really is so quick and easy to make a beautiful card fast with these washi tapes!
Next up, I made a couple of A2/5.5″x4.25″ cards, because I had to make all the sizes, basically.
For this card I used only the big pieces, but one of them I trimmed down to fill out the flower meadow. These pieces are arranged on a slightly smaller piece of white card stock, which is then adhered to the card base with foam tape for some dimension.
I used them on my second A2 card as well, because well, I couldn’t put them away. On this card I adhered the In The Meadow pieces from the top, for another look.
This card is done in a similar way, only I didn’t use foam tape for the background piece. On this one I used the foam tape behind the flower pieces instead. I also used the new Heart Grid Hot Foil plate, again with Rose Gold foil.
The sentiment is from the In The Meadow stamp set, and I stamped it up with Black Hybrid ink on a banner that I cut out with the Essentials Slim Stripe diecuts.
As I had so many flower bits left over, I decided to make a little tag too!
This is the Foldable Shaker Tag, and it’s so clever as you can get two tags out of one diecut. I added a little bit of Key Lime ink by blending it super softly, and then placing the flowers onto the tag.
That’s it from me for today, but don’t forget to hop along with the rest of the design team and the guests, as there is so much inspiration! Unfortunately I can’t get the InLinkz thingy to work, but the next stop is the amazing Heather Hoffman.
-We will be giving away a total of TEN $25 gift cards along the hop. As per usual with blog hops – the winners will be picked from the comments, so the more you hop and comment, the better your chances of winning!
Winners will be posted on December 14, 2021 on the Pinkfresh GIVEAWAY PAGE. You have to check this page yourself, and get in touch if you are one of the winners. Do not forget, but you have two weeks to claim your winnings if you are on the list!
PS I have used compensated affiliate links in this post, at no extra cost to you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart if you chose to support me by using my links, I really appreciate the support!
As mentioned, there is also a YouTube video for the release and all the projects I made. You can CLICK HERE to watch it.
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.
As a summer loving gal, I’m all about the florals and sunshine. Even with it being October. Luckily for me I live in a sunny and warm place, and lots of flowers are still blooming here.
With these fun layering stencils I had an idea of doing a cascading rainbow for one, and more natural looking colours on the other one. Purely for research purposes of course, lol.
Before I did anything else though, I swatched the inks I have. I like my swatches as it’s not always easy to tell what the inks will look like on paper, from what they look like as an ink pad.
Another little quirk I have is that I like to keep brands together, so I used one of the pieces from the Diagonal Stitched Postage Frames Slimline dies to cut out the swatch pieces. On these I then dragged the ink pads to get lots of colour on it, marked it with a label and then punched a hole in it.
So my first card is done with the more natural colours, and I went for Soft Kisses for the bigger flowers, Dan-D-Lion for the smaller and Olive Branch for both layers for the layers. I have only used the layering stencils for these, not the outline stamp.
As I wanted to go more mini slimline for these cards, rather than full-size slimline I did some creative diecutting using the Diagonal Stitched Postage Frames Slimline dies as I wanted some pattern around the edges.
On the back of the flowers, once I had used the coordinating diecut on them, I covered them with foam tape to prop them up and create dimension. Dimension and layers are life, if you ask me.
The last thing needed was sentiments, and I have used the same one from the Garden Grandeur stamp set, stamped up with Raven ink on white card stock. Both of these are trimmed down in different ways, and then adhered to the cards.
Ok, so I might have said the last thing was sentiments, but I did go a bit big on the bling on the rainbow flowers but hey, I had the perfect gems to do it so I had to. HAD to. I couldn’t not do it.
The pink flowers were kept bling free to show that I can go clean and simple too. Occasionally. Mostly with my Inner Crafty Drama Queen kicking and screaming, but still.
I did make a video for these cards too. You can find that over on my YouTube channel, if you want to see more of the process, but if not, thanks for stopping by today. I hope you enjoyed these cards and the summer vibes coming through your screen.
Until next time, lots of love and happy crafting from Erica
CaCaCraft by Erica 