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.
My first card is super simple to make, I used a small tree stamp from the Joyeux Noel set and on a white card base I stamped this repeatedly using six of the inks: Lemon Chiffon, Limelight, Summer Splash, Cotton Candy, Grape Jelly and Cement Gray.
I did this in three rows and then on top of this I stamped up ‘May your holiday be full of CHEER’ in Black Hybrid ink from Picket Fence.
Naturally, I couldn’t leave it simple, so I practically bedazzled the cards with gems from several gem mixes. Colour coordinated, of course.
For my second card, I used one of my fave stencils from Picket Fence: the Soar Butterfly stencil! I incidentally used the exact colours as on the first card, only this time I ink blended them using Life Changing Blender Brushes.
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.
No card is complete without a sentiment, and I used the ‘Friends make the world beautiful’ from the Fancy Friendship Sentiments set. To keep the card looking cohesive, I used Summer Splash ink and then used the coordinating diecut to cut it, as well as another two pieces out. These are layered up and adhered to the card, using Nuvo Deluxe adhesive.
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.
For the leaves I have used a mix of Key Lime Pie, Olive Branch and Evergreen. The little middle pieces for the flowers were done with Dan-D-Lion.
For the poinsettia leaves I did use Life Changing Blender Brushes, and I used Lipstick Jungle and Tickled Pink. I mixed and matched though, so that the layered pieces didn’t have the same colour on them. Hence why I cut out so many.
All the pieces were then layered up together using Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive.
While my flowers and leaves were drying, I cut out a panel of white card stock using the Diagonal Stitched Postage Frame Slimline dies, and this is my base for the card.
To finish it off I stamped up ‘Happy’ using Olive Branch ink on this panel, and I also cut out the word ‘fall’ using the Chloe Lowercase Alpha dies from a piece of card stock I dabbed Dan-D-Lion ink on.
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.
The background is done by heat embossing the new Luxurious Chocolate embossing powder from WOW! Embossing on strips of Superior Smooth card stock. This is WOW! Embossings own white card stock and it is, as the name says, ultra smooth and crisp white. It’s really great for heat embossing!
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.
Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica
CaCaCraft by Erica 