I know that Labour Day was only yesterday, but we also know that Christmas is going to be in our face before we get turned around. These cute stacked mittens die is just the right size for an adorable winter card centerpiece. The silver Mirri panel has been embossed with the Frosted Stripes folder. (What you're seeing in the picture is my reflection in the silver Miri while taking the picture.) The mittens can be die cut from any colour and you can always fit in an underlay of a different colour in the openings. In this sample we have used a silver metallic pen to quickly colour in the open spaces left in the die cut. The "Merry Christmas" sticker is lovely and tiny to fit into tight spaces in any card design.  Even though Christmas is only one day out of 365, winter lasts 89 days! This card would be perfect as a winter birthday card, etc. 

There are just a few elements at play in this Happy card. The Balloon Die set from Richard Garay has a wonderful selection of five different sized balloons. The largest balloon is approx. 3" tall and the smallest approx. 3/4" tall. The Happy Die cut has come from the Hero Arts Stamp and Cut set. I love the mixed fonts in this set. This is also where the small "birthday" stamp came from. 

The splatters shown in the card sample is done with the new Distress Oxide inks mixed with some water. The balloon strings were made with a Micron Pigment pen at a .005 nib size. The balloon dies would be a great way to use up your leftover card scraps. The colour combinations are endless. 

Time for Tea

The card has been designed using the tea pot set from Joy Crafts. As an added dimension the die cuts have been embossed to invoke a Victorian feel. Although the background is hard to see, we have used Pearl embossing powder and a Swirl Lace background stamp from Impression Obsession. The background panel was cut into three pieces and affixed to a brown cardstock layer. 

The Tea Party Dies from First Edition is a set of ten pieces including a two tiered dessert stand as well as cupcakes, a slice of cake and a sweet little pennant border which you are not seeing in the photograph. A cup of tea is a perfect way to end your day!

This little garden stamp from Impression Obsession can easily by lined up to make an entire garden if you are looking for a wider image. In this card we have used it as a single stamp and die cut it to a fancy shape. When you are trying to frame a die cut and the border created when you use the next size up is too heavy, you can always use the same size and cut it in half creating a side shadow both left and right.  To create the embossed image on the white layer we used six nesting dies ridge side down to the card and we used a tan embossing mat.  Refer to Jennifer McGuire's Youtube video. Click Here.
The "Get Well Soon" die from Impression Obsession is a lovely size to fit into most of your card designs. We coloured the flowers with Tombow markers and added some glitter for effect. The finishing touches are tiny butterfly stickers from Starform

This is a fun technique card. We used the new Distress Oxide Inks in Picked Raspberry, Salty Ocean, Cracked Pistachio and Wilted Violet. Using a finger dauber we added areas of colour on the underneath layer. When you cut your die, you will save the waste piece to fit back into the puzzle. This protects all the excess colouring from showing through. White emboss the Magenta Wildflowers on a bright blue layer and add this layer to the right of the card. 

Daisy Delight

We have a lovely blue sky, warm summer day outside which brings to mind summer flowers.  Leane Creatief  is the manufacturer of this sweet die set and matching embossing folder. In the card sample we have embossed the front of the card with the daisy embossing folder.  There is a strip of printed paper just wider than the white raised panel.  The flourish die is from Cheery Lynn Designs ($13.95), and I consider it a staple in my die assortment.  The daises have been die cut from white and distressed with picked raspberry.  Don't forget to die cut an extra daisy to decorate your inside verse panel.

June 29, 2017

There is something very magical about this lovely foil embossed Penny Black background paper. The Tim Holtz flowers were inked with Wendy Vecchi's mini archival pads and stamped directly to the paper. I choice the archival inks because these oil based dies remain more vibrant on the printed paper than the markers would.  The flowers will appear as if they are under the gold foil script.  To continue, I die cut some of the wild flowers from the set shown out of white cardstock and used Tombow markers to colour.  The final touches were a bit of chunky clear glitter on the die cut flower heads and a "Happy Birthday" sticker from Starform.

June 22, 2017

Although there have been a number of dragonfly dies previous to this one, I love the size and shape of this new die from Impression Obsession.  The background paper is double sided from Magenta. We added Stick-It tape to the top of white card stock before we cut the dragonfly.  Once cut, you can peel off the backing and simply dip the dragonfly into the Seahorse glitter from WOW. The rounded rectangle pierced label is from a set of nesting dies from Nellie.  I think you'll have a lot of fun with tape and glitter technique.  It lends itself to so many varied die cuts; there are no limits.  This technique makes for quick and snazzy cards.

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

I know it's been a while, but we're going to get back at it.  Things have been going very well at the store; at times too well. When you own a small business, wearing so many different hats can allow for time restraints.  We are presently working a new web page and hope to have that up and running soon. Also, check out our facebook posts at stampart london.

The die set featured is a fun grouping of flowers, stems and a mason jar from Ken Oliver.  Using your Ken Oliver Color Bursts or Magenta's Nuances, you are going to add bright colours to your water colour paper. This colourful background allows for great colour combinations when you die-cut the flower heads.  In this card sample, the white layer has been lifted with foam tape to create a shaker opening in the mason jar.  There is a piece of acetate attached behind the mason jar cut out to hold the glitter, sequins or micro-beads.  If you find that the die-cut stems are too difficult to work with, you might want to just stamp some stem lines in your mason jar instead.

Sizzix has a new product called Paper Leather Sheets. You can use this product to emboss, stamp on, add shape to die cuts and stitch. In the project below, we've used the leather paper as a book-binding. The grey leather paper was embossed with Tailored embossing folder from Tim Holtz. The folder gave us our 1 inch cuts and a centre line to follow for folding. Each page in the book was made by die-cutting Sizzix tag die 660280. The pockets were made by scoring each tag at 2 1/2 inches from the bottom and folding up and gluing the pocket.

All of the papers used for the book came from Sizzix paper pad Fox Tales.

Each of the pockets holds a small note which is folded to 3 x 5 inches. The front and back cover were also cut with the tag dies out of a heavier mat board. The bottom 2 and 1/2 inches was cut off of each heavy tag to match up with the pages. The front and back cover were covered inside by another tag, and outside with printed paper.

Some of the papers are printed in black and white, so you can colour them yourself! Consider this your adult colouring book!

Now that spring is finally here, I am sure we can be looking forward to a number of muddy days. These cute boots from Impression Obsession at least bring some colour and flowers to the season! In the sample below, the printed paper is from Magenta, and the boots were coloured with Tombow markers. The slit underneath the boot layer was made with an exacto knife. The bracket on the right hand side was made with a stitched bracket edger die from Frantic Stamper.

Sometimes it's nice to have a different closure on a card. This one is not difficult to accomplish and yet I feel it really adds to the finished look of the card. The stamp used on the bottom right is also from Impression Obsession. Happy Spring!

Sometimes it is handy to have some cards made up ahead of time! This technique is so easy and lends itself toward cards for differnt occasions. First you want to lay down some low-tack tape at the top and bottom of what will be your colour band to mask off the area. Distress this area with your favourite colour or colours of Distress Inks. In the samples below, you may not be able to see that other images have been stamped tone-on-tone on the colour band. This just adds a bit more interest to that area.

When you are ready to stamp your main image, you will need to pull off the top or the bottom piece of tape, depending on the direction your main stamp is going. In the cards above, the bottom piece of tape has been removed. Stamp your main image in black, and add your salutation in the bottom right-hand corner. These cards would be nice to make as a quick hostess gift. These are also great cards for mailing because there are no embellishments. If you had a number of cards started with the colour band and the image stamped, you could always add the salutation as needed.

We borrowed this card design from Jennifer McGuire's blog. A white panel has been covered with Blueprint Sketch Distress Ink. Then the hydrangea flower from Impression Obsession was white embossed on the panel. The blue colour was removed with water, and some of the Picked Raspberry Distress Ink was added to create the purple shade.

Because of the water reactive nature of Distress Inks, you'll be surprised how much ink you can remove with the water. The leaf has been white embossed and coloured in the same manner.

Creative Medium Metallic and Iridescent are creamy pastes that can be stenciled, spread, or dabbed on for gorgeous texture and colour. The iridescent colours are an interference colour that shows up best on dark backgrounds. A light background colour will leave you with a pearl looking finish and very little colour. You can add drops of pigment reinker to create a two-tone effect, as well as many other options for changing the available colours.

In this page below, we used the Iridescent medium to add tissue paper (which had been coloured with Stazon Inks) to white cardstock.

Here we used the Iridescent Paste coloured with reinker to stencil a busy image. More colour was added with Stazon Inks and Delicata Metallic Inks and some Pico Embellisher for splatter.

Again using a stencil, and some Iridescent Paste, we created the look below. Stazon Ink has been added to the surface as well as Copper Delicata on the black background.

In the design below, we have used one folded card at 4 3/4" x 6 1/2", and a layer that is 4 1/4" x 6". Then we started with low tack tape one inch wide on either side of the layer. Abandoned Coral Distress Ink was used to colour the centre of the panel in varying intensities from dark to light. Stamp the carnation at the bottom of the layer and colour with Abandoned Coral Distress Marker and Peeled Paint Distress Marker. Remove the low-tack tape and use a decorative border die to cut the panel into three pieces as shown. Some decorative clear gems were addded to the layer. Each of the three panel pieces has been lifted with foam tape.

The florals on this set from Friskars are lovely botanical images. You have a poppy, a peony, a carnation, and some differnt buds to choose from. Stamping some flowers this time of year will hopefully get our spirits up looking forward to spring!

Let's get away from Christmas cards for a moment. With the weather the way it's been, we might as well think about fall grapevines. The background in the card below was done with watercolour paper, and Nuances from Magenta. We then used the negative of the die-cut as a stencil, to create the green leaves in the background. We then layered the actual cut-out on top of the other two layers.

The printed paper is from Hot Off the Press. I feel that this paper complemented our watercolour background very nicely. Both the Nuances and the Color Bursts pigmented powders are such fun just on a watercolour bacground. Once you start playing with them, you'll find all kinds of reasons and card designs to incorporate the papers you have produced.

The artwork in this winter-berries stamp even shows you where the berries are frosted! The stamp was stamped in VersaFine Sepia onto white cardstock. We did also stamp a second Majenta stamp of finer branches for more detail and colour. The berries and leaves were coloured with Tombow Markers. We added a bit of Broken China Distress Ink towards the top of the white panel to look like sky.  We then used a glue-pen and Stampendous Chunky White glitter to create the lovely snow-clusters. This stamp is a very practical winter stamp and as it can take you from December thru February, it is not just a Christmas stamp. To finish this card off, we die-cut an Interlace border from Nellie's.

The colour combination of turquoise and red is always one of my favourites. It is retro and modern all the same time!

This card was inspired by a card on Pinterest by Birgit Edblom. I love these pine forest dies. I know you have six million trees, however these are still a very different look than all of our other collections. It is both the size and the clustering that is appealing. The background colouring was achieved by working with Distress Stains. The moon has been coloured with Ranger's Perfect Pearls in Biscotti. Both of the top and bottom white panels have been cut with the Stitched Snowdrifts dies and both pieces have been raised with foam tape. Before any of the white layers were added to the card, the sky was splattered with Biscotti Perfect Pearls.

Any salutation would work for the front of this card. You might want to consider it as a winter birthday card! This would be one of those cards to mass produce if time were of the essence!

I love this playful kitten from Stampendous. In the card below, we have stamped him on brown velvet paper with black Versafine ink and clear embossed. We have touched up his eyes with some green chalk, and his nose with a Black Glaze pen. When you're working on velvet paper, it's very hard to colour with an ink source. This is the reasoning behind the chalk and the Glaze pen. The leaf panel was made using two maple leaves stamps from Frog's Whiskers, both positive and negative. The stamps were inked with VersaMark ink and stamped onto manila tag cardstock. We then clear embossed the images. Next, we distressed the panel with some fall coloured Distress Inks.

The banner was made by cutting a 5 1/2 inch strip of manila. After having stamped the 'Thinking of You' in the centre, we added two score lines about 1/4 inch apart on either side of the wording for the fold. A trick for cutting a v-notch in a strip is to simply put a pencil dot halfway in the width of the band, and cut into that dot. Without that dot, your eye doesn't see precisely mid-point and your cut will be off center. We added a die-cut distressed leaf to the top of the banner just to tie things together.

A number of the companies are designing beautiful treelines and forest images. This is a stamp from Impression Obsession. Bev has used watercolour paper and lightly coloured with shades of Pumice Stone, Ice-Spruce, Pine Needles and Scattered Straw Distressed Inks. A white cardstock snowbank was shadowed at the top, and glued to the top of the stamped image. Then the image was die-cut with a circle, and a bit of Pumice Stone was added at the edges for shadow. The die-cut circle was then raised with foam tape, and adhered back in place.

The card was finished with a Merry Christmas stamp, a tight frame of grey cardstock, and then to a mottled grey and white card. It is a very easy twist on a standard Christmas card.