Garden Theme

 Over at We Love Stamping the theme this month is **anything stamped with a garden option**.and I've come up with this garden gate scene where the wording and all of the floral sprays have been stamped.  Flowers and foliage were coloured with watercolour pencils and then die cut.  The wall was embossed using a 3D embossing folder and then touched lightly with a white ink pad to give a little accent to the bricks.

Brick Wall - embossing folder from Stampin' Up
Sky background - printed paper using download from a magazine offer
Scene - built up using stamps and dies from Graces Garden  Stampin' Up (retired)
Colouring - Inktense pencils with water brush

Snippets Challenge #454

 It is said that great minds think alike and it so happens that the inspiration card for the Snippets Playground challenge this time has been made using strips  die cut from snippets of patterned paper.  There is also a fabulous prize of two very snippet friendly dies which will help the lucky winner to make good use of their snippets..  My card has also used strips of paper but mine were left-overs of various widths all from the same paper pad.  I keep any snippets with their matching paper pads as they often come in useful and I know where I can find them if needed.  The strips were simply glued onto a snippet of red card, leaving varying gaps between them and once the glue was dry I used a die to cut out a heart, using another snippet of the same red card for the larger scalloped heart.I then took a fresh sheet of paper from the pad (has to be done) to cut a square slightly smaller than the card blank - popping the offcuts back into the pad for future use of course 😉.  I was undecided about a sentiment and settled for 'congratulations' which could cover anniversaries or maybe an engagement - more snippets used here and the backing layer was made by drawing around the die and then fussy cutting because this one was just a stand-alone word with no matching background.

Heart dies - from Tonic and also Papermania
Sentiment - Crafter's Companion
Paper Pad - an old one with a variety of texts pages in black and white from Papermania

You Have to Try These Things, Don't You??

 Quite a few variations of this 'lattice'  technique seem to be going the rounds and it seems to be a case of combining suitable images with cutting dies, quite possibly involving adding a new die (or more) to the stash.  I was determined not to fall into that particular trap until I was sure I'd want to make sufficient cards in this style to warrant a purchase and my first efforts weren't particularly successful and ended up in the bin 🙄.  I've finally found a reasonable combination by stamping a fairly large image onto two matching pieces of card and combined them  using a die which I've had for many years (probably no longer available).    If you want to try this technique you can find a link to the video here giving detailed instructions.  It was fun giving this a try but I don't think it will become a favourite with me.

Image - stamp from Lavinia
Lattice Die - Couture Creations Tied Together (probably no longer available)
Sentiment - Crafter's Companion

Rabbit is Back!

 It's almost a week since my last post - not at all sure where this week has gone really, it just seems to have whizzed by.  Anyway as the title suggests the rabbit is back.  I found him in the 'oddments' pot which sits on my desk so I combined him with a few little flowers which were also left from previous projects.  I die cut a piece of cream card and a kraft frame to fit before embossing the bricks using a die - the bricks were carefully coloured using Distress Oxide ink and a fine brush.  A basket was cut and coloured using alcohol pens and the flowers added.- the rabbit was perched onto the bottom of the frame.  I trimmed a suitable piece of design paper to fit a kraft card blank and stamped a sentiment which was popped onto a shape cut from the smallest die in the rectangle set.

Background DSP - from a Prima pad which I've had a long time
Rectangle dies (frame and sentiment) - set from Crafts Too
Other Dies - Unknown, Gummiapan and magazine freebies
Bricks - die from The Greetery used to emboss

Snippets Challenge #453

 Time to visit the Snippets Playground for another challenge with a lovely prize to be won by one lucky person.  I started with a white card snippet trimmed to fit onto a square card blank and stamped the coastal scene.  More, smaller white snippers were used to die cut the seagulls and the 'Hello'.  The wooden posts on which one seagull is perched were some scraps of stamped strips left over from a recent project. The word and the seagulls were all cut twice so that they could be layered up to give them a bit of substance.  Stamping and colouring done using Distress Oxide inkpads.

Scene - stamps from Ocean Front set Stampin' Up
Seagulls - dies from Gummiapan

Floral Card

 I have a floral card to share today which was  made using various bits and pieces which were lying around .  The floral image was mix of stamping, fussy cutting (the flowers) and decoupage.  The backgrounds were from my larger snippets box and the sentiment produced on the computer was die cut.  Quite an easy card to make once I'd decided what to do with the odd bits and pieces.

Dotty Paper - piece left from a sheet printed using a Paper Pantry USB
Circle - die cut from a snippet of floral DSP from Stampin' Up
Flower Image - Stampin' Up Petal Park stamp set

Trying Techniques

 If I see different techniques incorporating items which I have in my stash I like to have a go and this time I've been playing with a 3D embossing folder using black card, Pixie powders and some gilding polish.  This card is a CASE of one spotted HERE but using a different embossing folder.  In the original inspiration the technique was shown using white card partially coloured by applying black to one side of the E/F but none of the pigment powders I have seem to show up differently when used on black as opposed to white and I don't particularly need to buy any more so this is a slight variation using black card.  The video explains this more clearly 😉

Embossing Folder - from Crafter's Companion