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.
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 