With spring on the horizon can summer gardens be far behind? We have used these hollyhocks from Impression Obsession in a number of cards. I like that the stamps and the die-set match. When you die cut from white paper, your colour range is any marker/marker blends that you choose. This garden gate will work well with any scenery elements behind it, including your die-cut trees, branches, other flowers.

 

The cloud-bank stamp in the background is from Magenta and can look like some intense storm-clouds depending on what colours you use with it. Unlike the other specific lined cloud stamps, I love the positive and negative space in this arrangement. Don't hesitate to overstamp this multiple times and try mixing some of your shades.

These papers are from the KaiserCraft Rustic Harmony collection. You will love that each side of this double sided paper has the same vintage feel and lovely shabby-chic softness. The lovely little folded pocket card is just the right vehicle for thes lovely prints. The Magenta collection of leaves, blossoms, and naturals works very well with so many prints including this one.

The tag is cut with Elizabeth Craft Tags and More 6 die. Like the bigger tags from the same manufacturer, this die is just the top of the tag so you can make your tag any length you want.

There are just so many looks to this paper, because of the double-sided print. The butterfly attached to the tag is cut directly from the paper. I know you'll have fun with this!

Having some fun with white embossing on watercolour paper. The floral background stamps are from Penny Black, and we've stamped them nice and close to create a scroll background.  The large flowers are from Impression Obsession, also embossed in white. The coloured background was done with Evergreen Bough Distress Ink and waterbrush. We used a smaller waterbrush to colour the background area around the flower so the colours wouldn't mix. If you do get some of the green into the floral area, it still looks quite natural.

 

The scroll die is from Memory Box, called Whimsical Flourish.

Although we tend to struggle with men's cards, the images below are just delightful. Whether your man is the golfer or the tool-man or backyard king, these images should fill the bill. These were samples sent from the company, but I really like their use of embossing folders and nice bold stripe paper. You'll want to keep these fun images in mind the next time you start your hunt for the perfect birthday/retirement card!

The stamp kits below are some more new releases from Art Impressions. With these trifold images, they will use a lot of watercolour techniques.

The link below will take you to their blog with some descriptions of the tryfold cards.

http://artimpressionsstamps.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2015-03-06T05:00:00-05:00&max-results=10

Elizabeth Dies have these neat 'stand-up helpers'. In the easel card below, you can see that the 'Best Wishes' becomes the stop for the front of the card when it is opened. In this card, Bev has cut the Best Wishes out of the original black card, and layered it with one cut out of the silver cardstock. She has framed both layers with the mirrored cardstock. The die-cut from Memory Box, Eva Stem, has been cut in the black layer with doubled sided tape underneath and foil leafing.

The butterfly sticker has been placed onto a piece of acetate and trimmed. This will allow the butterfly wings to stay lifted.

 

The Sue Wilson dies are absolutely lovely even though a bit large. We have used the Gemini Dies - Phoenix as a border edge in the card below. What you need to know about this die is that it is too wide for most of your pressure machines (Cuttlebug and BigShot). To compensate for this, Bev has cut the border by feeding it through the machine vertically, cutting the border piece to size and then layering the cut piece underneath the top of the card. The die shape is cut from Nellie's Straight Eastern Oval Set. I find this set of stacking dies a lovely unusual shape to play with. As you can see, the dies are very close in size so the framing is nice and tight.

 



Magenta has the best line of natural images. All of the branches, grasses and leaves provide lots of versatility. We have incorporated one of these images in the card above with a verse from Penny Black. When designing a general occasion card, you can always add your verse and/or sentiment at a later time.

Some customers have registered some concerns regarding the shade of the new Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink from Ranger. I would agree, at first look, that this green is rather minty and intense. What you need to know is that this shade creates a perfect blend with Pumice Stone and/or a number of the brown Distress Inks. The blending brings out a gorgeous 'patina' look. In the project below, we've used the Distress Stain to colour the seam binding, which then became our ribbon for the project. We used the Distress Marker on gloss cardstock to colour the children's images in one of Tim's 'found people' cards.

 





Although I have yet to finish this project, the present back page, shown below, is a good example of the blending that I'm talking about. The 'Typo' Stencil has been used on the tag with Texture Paste. The background was coloured with Cracked Pistachio and Pumice Stone and the alphabet has been highlighted with Vintage Photo. This is the look I love and you likely couldn't accomplish it without this particular shade of minty green. Another place I would use this colour is in my blue and green blends. It certainly is a colour that had been missing from his colour palette.