A Girls Best Friend - Pink, Beads and Party Dresses

Hi All, welcome to June, and International Childrens Day!

I'm Claire N, and I'm stepping into Carols shoes, just for the day. Today I have made a card using one of Sarah's Charm  Street Cuties, and a cute notebook that would be a perfect gift for a little girl to give to friend. I will show close up photo's a little further on, but I have taken the idea of an interactive shaker card and adapted it to suit this particular stamp.

To Make the Card

1) To begin, stamp the Cutie onto white stamping card, and colour with Promarker alcohol markers, and cut her out keeping very close to the stamped edge for the majority of the image. To prepare for the interactive, shaker area, increase  the border area around the skirt and legs,to hide the 3D foam and then use a craft knife to cut the skirt from the image.

2) On the reverse of the image, fix a piece of acetate to where the skirt was. Attach 3D foam across the reverse of the image, making sure that there is a completely sealed ring of foam around the skirt area of the image. This is where the small beads (glitter, sequins etc) will be  enclosed. Put the image and the cut out skirt to one side.

3) Prepare the background, by firstly creating a mask of the image, and placing it onto a piece of  13 x 9.5 cm white card. Using the banner stamp from the same set, stamp randomly across the background. Remove the mask of the character and colour the banner and background using alcohol marker pens.

 4) To construct the card,

• Firstly use double sided tape to fix the skirt in position on the coloured background.
• Remove the backing strips from the 3D foam from the top half of the Cutie and fix in place, aligning it over the skirt. making sure at this stage the skirt section does not stick.
• Turn the background over and gently (so as not to crease) reveal the enclosed area and carefully fill the chamber with glitter, seed beads or sequins. 
• Carefully remove the remaining backing strips from the 3D foam and lower the background into place. Ensure a tight deal has been made before turning over.
• Mat the entire image onto silver mirri card, before attaching to the front of a pink card blank (11 x 15 cm).
• Lastly add a sentiment.

To make the Notebook

1)  Cut two 7.5 x 9.5cm pieces of pink card, and two pieces of white card. Attach a pink piece and white piece together , and punch holes evenly along one of the shorter edges. These will form the covers.

2) Cut a 6x8 cm piece of white card, and stamp the Charm Street Cutie off the centre. Using the same mask as before cover the image and stamp the cloud from the same stamp set as a background. Colour the images with alcohol marker pens, and mat onto a layer of blue card. Fix onto one of the covers, and this will be the front of the notebook.

3) Take four sheets of A4 copy paper, and measure out nine notebook pages per sheet, as shown below, the pages are 7 x 9cm each. Using the same method as before, punch holes evenly along one of the short edges of the pages. 

 4) Sandwich the pages with the pink covers, and bind the notebook by lacing a length of ribbon through the punched holes. Tie a double knot at each end of the ribbon to secure. It would be best not to bind the ribbon too tight, so as to allow the pages to turn freely.

I hope you have enjoyed my little tutorial today, we would love your feedback and welcome any feedback and suggestions of what you would like to see us make and blog about for you.

See you all again soon x

 Products Used
Charm Street Cutie Flower Girl Stamp Set
Memento Black Ink (perfect for use with alcohol marker pens)

Rainy Day Fun

Good morning, Susie here and I've had some fun creating a scrap page using photos from our Easter school hols.  We had an amazing time on the rare rainy day we had: splashing in the water fountains, geocaching, playing in the play area and generally enjoying ourselves!  

I started by choosing this 12x12 card from one of Sarah's previous All My Favourite Things Kits and looked through all my scraps, journal cards, stamps and bits 'n' bobs and chose these as a starting point:

I stamped my Charm Street Cuties Rainy Day directly to my bottom left card corner and again onto white card.  The white card cutie was coloured with promarkers, fussy cut and added to my base. 

My many photos were sized to 4cm or 8cm squares (roughly!) and trimmed, before laying out on my base.  (I just printed them onto normal paper.) I started with my favourite large photo and placed it in the centre and layered the other photos from that one, keeping each theme together: geocaching, play area and fountain.  

I had alot of fun adding numerous clouds to the layout.  Some clouds were stamped and fussy cut using the clouds from the Rainy Day set, the Doodle Home set and some felt clouds from a Mini Embellishments pack.  Some clouds and raindrops were also stamped directly to the page and photos:

 This cute banner checklist (from All My Favourite Things kit) was a perfect addition to the page and echoed the pink jacket of one of the girls.

To add a bit of interest to the clear space on the lower part of the layout, I used the pattern block from Clare Brown's Ronnie the Robot set and stamped it following the lower line of my photos.  I drew some letters for the title (attempting to copy my journal writing on the checklist) and had a bit of fun doodling on them.  The scalloped underline is from the Doodle Home set.  I finished the page with my favourite Stardust stickles on all of the raindrops, around some clouds and on some of the letters in my title.  And I have a lovely keepsake of a fantastically fun day!!

A Bright and Rainy Day Scene

Welcome and Happy Good Friday to you!  It's Susie here today and I have the ever so cute Charm Street Cuties Rainy Day to show you.

I love this bright fushia pink card (from one of the A Few of My Favourite Things Kits) and thought that it would provide a great contrast for the Rainy Day stamp.  (It also proves that I am not completely addicted to using turquoise, or various shades of it!!)

I used promarkers in Cool Grey 1, 2 and 3 to create the background for my girl, just with random wavy-ish lines and used a blender pen to blend the lightest grey into the white card.

I then stamped Rainy Day onto the background and onto a post-it note.

The post-it note mask was cut and placed over the card, so that I could stamp the cloud and make it look as if it is behind the girl.  The cloud was also stamped onto another post-it note to use THAT as a mask too.

The cloud was cut out enough to mask the cloud for layering another cloud behind it.

The cloud mask was removed so that some more clouds could be added to the scene and lots of rain drops were also added.

Then the colouring was added, using my promarkers.  I did consider keeping the whole image monochrome, but my love of colour won through and some pink was added to go with the card.

I then decided that I would risk cutting around the clouds, in order to show off more of the fushia card........and removed the top cloud too as I liked the overall shape better without it.  I added some Stardust Stickles to the clouds, rain and puddles and strengthened the shading of the coat and wellies......and was finally happy with the result!  Loving this sentiment from the Rainy Day set too.

Have a wonderfully bright and, hopefully, not too rainy an Easter, folks.

Watercolor play

Happy Saturday! Its Ria here today.

Watercolor has been on trend for a while in card making. Its only lately however that I've been playing with watercolor and this card is one of them.

Today's card is simply a watercolor play using Sarah's Charm Street Cuties stamp.

Here's a quick look of the supplies I used, stamps and watercolor mainly are used.

First off is to stamp the main image in a watercolor paper.

I then placed the stamped paper into a wooden board and adhere them temporarily with washi tapes. This will hold the paper well and support the curling of paper while its all wet during the process.

 

Then I started coloring the face, I diluted the brown color with lots of water to have this very light brown color for the skin

I then moved to color the hair with yellow, red and brown.

The clothes and background were the last to color.

While my watercolor piece is drying, I later move to stamp my sentiment using the Alpha stamp sets. One good thing about these alpha set is you can customized the sentiment as you wish.

I colored the outlined stamped sentiment using the block stamp, this time coloring it off-set

  
And here it is after coloring using the block stamps

I then went back to add some hearts in the colored image, I find the lower left area to miss something so I added these two hearts using second generation stamping using distress inks.

And the final card detail..

and the full card, clean and simple.

That's it for today and happy weekend everyone!


Supplies used
Charm Street Cuties Thinking of You Clear Stamp Set
Block Alpha Stamps
Outline Alpha Stamps
Ink pads
Watercolor
Watercolor paper & brush

Bookmark - what's a bookmark?

It sounds rather dramatic but soon these little things will become totally redundant. Bookmarks, that's what I'm referring to. As more and more of us read everything from books to the newspaper on our e-readers and tablets, the humble bookmard will become a thing of the past. Just think a whole new generation of people growing up having never used one.

Well I want to put that right and as this new trend for filofaxes and agenda's is taking off, why not make book marks for them?

I stamped the girly from Charm Street Cuties Flower Girl stamp set onto watercolour card with a waterproof ink.

I stamped her a second time on a post-it note and just cut around the head so I could stamp the bunting behind her.

Not content to stop there, I stamped the bunting on a post-it and cut around the right hand end stamping the cloud.

Then guess what? Yes I stamped that too on a post-it and masked it off so I could stamp a second cloud.

With all the masks taken away this is what she looked like.

Now for the colour. I chose to add watercolour paints to her just because I love the look so much.

I trimmed it into a bookmark size and added the word Smile with alpha stickers.

To finish off, I backed it with a piece of card to neaten the back and add a border then ran it through a laminating machine. I rounded the corners to make them a bit more friendly and less sharp and added a grommet and ribbon at the top.

I love it in my agenda and it's guaranteed to make me smile each time I open my page.

Take care and keep the bookmark alive,

Jaine x

Butterfly Birthday card

Hello there! Its Ria here today.

 I’m sharing today a quick birthday card using double stamping. 

I have this Large size butterfly stamp from Sarah that has been calling my name for some time to use up. Rather than stamping only in one color, I double stamped the same butterfly with 2-3 different ink colors to give some color variation.

After stamping the base color (lighter shade), I stamped another darker color on top of it to give different color look. I then fussy cut them and made another stamping that went beneath the other butterfly. This adds dimension and another color underneath the top butterfly.  

I added Wink of Stella clear glitter pen on the butterflies for subtle shine.

For the card base, I used three (3) different patterned papers from Sarah. I also have a yellow satin ribbon that I added in the strip to make cleaner division between the patterned papers.

Some red, pink and white sequins were added for some finishing touches. And the white embossed sentiment of course to complete the card.   

That’s it for now and I hope you can experiment with double stamping. It’s fun!  J

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Supplies used:

• Large Tiger Butterfly Stamp
• Sentiment from Charm Street Cuties Thinking of You stamps set
• Satin Ribbon
• Sequins

Birthday card

Happy Saturday!

Its Ria here today sharing a quick birthday card using new stamps from Sarah and Jaine.

For today's project, I used a combination of three different stamps sets from Sarah.

How I did this card:

• I first stamped the card base background with a leaf from Be Amazing stamp set.  
• I then die cut my pattern papers from Sarah, cutting some printed elements like the heart from the Snip N Stick embellishment sheet
• For the birthday sentiment, I white embossed over the gray shaped paper
• I also stamped hearts and added some sequins randomly. I also stamped the banner and colored them with colored pencils. The Robin is also stamped and I added some colors into the stamped image using colored pencils

And here's the full card

Supplies used
Charm Street Cuties Thinking of You stamp set
Special Edition stamp - Robins by Jaine Drake
Be Amazing Girl stamp 
Patterned papers from A Few of my Favorite Things
Shaped Dies, Sequins
Colored pencils

Until next time!

Christmas Gift Tags

Hello there! Ria here again today.

Christmas is just few days away so these holiday tag projects I’m sharing is just right in time.

I have three different tags that can be done in no time. I used a combination of Christmas stamp sets from Sarah and each are very easy to make.

I have a lot of ribbons in my stash that are waiting to be used for a project and this is one of those times to make use of them. I also used a combination of ribbons by layering them together and added some twine too for an accent color.

First up is the tag using the Charm Street Cuties  Christmas Girl stamp set. I stamped the sweet girl partially from the right of the tag and colored her with promarkers. I then added some shine using the Wink of Stella clear glitter. I also stamped the sentiment in a cut banner shaped strip.

Noticed the white strips and dots in the gift boxes? I did that using white gel pen for some design.

For this second tag, I die-cut a document page insert (the ones that you use for scrapbook page layout) then stamps the mini ornaments using the same Charm Street Cuties  Christmas Girl stamp set. I also did additional stamping using the Christmas Labels Stamps. The white embossed stamping pops right up against the dark paper.

This third tag is very simple. I stamped the ornament from the traditional Christmas Ornaments set by Jaine Drake. I colored it with markers and added some shine again using the Wink of Stella glitter pen.  I also stamped some stars around the ornament.

 

For all the tags, I added blue gems and small inexpensive ornament in the twine for some added décor. 

Here are the three tags altogether..

That’s it for now and we’ll catch up again soon.

Supplies used

Charm Street Cuties  Christmas Girl stamp

traditional Christmas Ornaments set was created by Jaine Drake

Journaling card from Sarah Hurley