Life in the Forest thank you cards with Birthday Bash washi sheets

Time is running out to enjoy the benefits of Sale-a-Bration! You have until 10pm tomorrow (Tuesday) to order, so the best way for you do this is to order online, via my online store. You could order by contacting me, but I’ll need the order by 5pm please. Shipping is £4.95 and it will come directly to a UK address of your choice.

It‘s also your last chance to sign up during Sale-a-Bration. If you do this before 10pm Tuesday, you’ll get a choice of freebies, as outlined in this post.  You can sign up in minutes, by clicking here... and it will only cost you £99!

Now, a little puzzle for you... apart from the sentiment, can you spot where I used a SAB stamp set on this card? You’ll find the answer if you scroll down.

While you ’re thinking, let me tell you about the washi sheets. They’re quite exciting. They are literally what they say on the packet... big (about 6"x12" but don’t quote me on that) sheets of washi “tape’. You get two each of four designs, so eight sheets in total, and they work just like washi tape, because that’s what they are! You can punch it, cut it, tear it or die-cut it, as I’ve done here. It’s cool to see what happens to the patterns when you overlay them.

I made these little cards for my Virtual Hostess Club members, to thank them for their latest orders. The mouse is coloured with blender pens and a smidge of Coastal Cabana ink. The speech bubble for the Thank You is flipped over, so that it faces the right way (well, the right way to me!).

Finally, the answer to the puzzle... the mouse is standing on some “grass” I made using the stem from Lotus Blossom. But, as it’s a photopolymer stamp set and very long and thin, it was easy to manipulate it on the block so that the ground became a wavy line, instead of a relatively straight one. I stamped it repeatedly, stamping off to get various shades, too.

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com

Caturday: Licquorice

At the time of writing this, I was frantically packing for a crafty weekend away with some of my stamping buddies. My friend/downline Donna was doing the same, but she was being hampered by Licquorice, her gorgeous black cat!

Sheltering Tree sympathy card

This project is at the other end of the stamping spectrum, using minimal products and keeping things very, very simple. Despite this, and despite CASEing the project (from Eva Bussom) it was the hardest card I have ever had to make. It’s a sympathy card for a friend across The Pond who has suffered the most unbearable loss.  My card is a measly offering in the circumstances but at least she will know I am thinking of her and her family.

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com

Mixed Media flower garden with THREE Sale-a-Bration items

It’s a long one today, and a surprisingly complicated project. No, you haven’t come to the wrong blog, I just fancied a change!

For a while now, I’ve been intrigued by mixed media techniques, but I wasn’t sure how to blend it with Stampin’ Up!® products. My dabbling began with my foray into texture paste but it wasn’t until this week that I had chance to have a proper play. 

But where to begin? Of course, Pinterest came to the rescue. Pinterest has really opened my eyes to a lot of new techniques. Sometimes I just click the search button and then “DIY and Crafts”… it’s amazing what you discover this way! 

This time, I simply searched “mixed media” and after browsing a few blogs, this is my first attempt, which takes inspiration (pinspiration!) from this blog post. Despite normally leaning towards the clean and simple style, I really enjoyed creating this project and it turns out I had almost everything I needed in my SU stash, as you’ll see from the supplies list below. I even managed to include, count ’em, THREE Sale-a-Bration items - can you spot them without reading the list below?

The great thing about this sort of project is that it’s very difficult to go wrong. Well, I say that, but Sunday’s attempt ended up on the fire! 

Happily, today’s project was a little more successful, so here’s a step-by-step guide to creating this project. No pictures, I’m afraid, I was having way too much fun!

1. Cut a piece of watercolour paper to 12.5cm square and wet it
2. Using Coastal Cabana and Wild Wasabi re-inkers diluted with a tiny amount of water, paint rough horizontal stripes across the paper. You can add more to strengthen the colour if you wish. Allow to dry, or speed it up with a heat gun
3. Take some bubble wrap and ink it up with Coastal Cabana at the top right. Repeat with Old Olive at the bottom. 
4. Stamp the solid stem from Lotus Blossom (SAB) in Garden Green. Stamp a few more with the less solid stem, stamping off as required. I also sponged a little Garden Green in the bottom two corners to fill in some gaps. 
5. Punch out six bird wings from Flowerpot DSP, and one 3/4” circle. Doodle around the inside edge of the circle. Arrange the wings to resemble a flower and stick them down. Doodle around the edges. Put the circle of DSP to one side for now. 
6. On Very Vanilla cardstock, Stamp “Our friendship is a very happy thing” from the A Happy Thing stamp set (SAB) in black ink. Cut out the words and adhere them to the project. 
7. To get the newsprint effect, you will need real newspaper. Tear into small pieces, then apply smears of Mod Podge (Tombow might work, too – I didn’t try it) roughly to the background. Put the paper, face down, to the Mod Podge and rub it with your bone folder to transfer the ink. Gently peel back the paper to leave the ink behind. You may end up peeling away some of the colour but this doesn’t matter. 
8. I found that I had some shiny patches around the newsprint so decided to Mod Podge over the whole surface. This takes some time to dry and gives the whole background a slightly glossy effect. 
9. Apply sequins (I simply pressed these into the Mod Podge).
10. With the Chalk Marker, doodle around the sequins and words.
11. To make the frame, I glued some Typeset DSP to some Very Vanilla cardstock (using the glue stick) and used the two largest dies from the Square Framelits set to cut out a frame. Ink it with Baked Brown sugar and then press the whole lot into a Versamark pad so it can be embossed with clear embossing powder. 
12. Cut some grass from Old Olive cardstock using the Fringe Scissors, then taper the ends with your Stampin’ Snips. Stick this behind the frame (I used washi tape).
13. Attach the frame to the front of the project using Stampin’ Dimensionals, cut in half (Ha! Like I don’t do that all the time!).
14. Using the In Color Accessory pack (SAB), separate some of the threads from the Hello Honey twine and thread through a Tangelo Twist button. Attach to the DSP circle and then to the project. 
15. Mount your finished piece on a 5 1/4” square card base of Kraft cardstock.
16. Make a cup of tea and have a sit down before having a go at another one!

tams# 2911

Product List

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com

Butterfly Mother’s Day card

A week ago, it was Mother’s Day here (or Mothering Sunday, if I don’t want to get told off!) My Mum loves butterflies, so I made her this card. I don’t have a Mother ing Sunday stamp but I thought this sentiment from Sheltering Tree was perfect.

My Mum is quite the phenomenon. A couple of years ago, at the age of 79, she completed a sky dive, because she didn’t want her grandchildren to remember as an old lady who knits (!) and lately she’s become something of a radio star. If you fancy a laugh, have a listen to this clip of her reviewing a certain popular film with her friend... I think we can safely say she won’t be remembered for her knitting!

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com