Fun with Hey Birthday Chick stamps and dies

I am totally hen-amoured with our Hey Chick and Hey Birthday Chick bundles. I loved Hey Chick back in 2017 when it was our most popular Sale-a-Bration stamp set, and I still love it today. Everyone who has kept their Hey Chick Sale-a-Bration stamp set since then will be delighted with the fun dies which are now available. 

 

I love Hey Birthday Chick in the new Stampin’ Up!® January-June Mini Catalogue, too, and that also now has dies available. What fun bundles they both are!

 

 

In this rather busy card, I’ve attempted to hen-capsulate the sheer joy and silliness of Hey Birthday Chick. But once you’ve stamped and die-cut these hen-gaging hens, you just can’t stop colouring them. And once they’re coloured in, you may as well use them, which is how I ended up with this totally bonkers birthday card. 

How to avoid die-cutting fatigue

 

As is so often the case, the Stamparatus is your friend here. 

Here’s how you can die-cut multiple chickens (or any shape) quickly and accurately:

• Place your cardstock in the corner of the Stamparatus and position all your chickens on the plate with some space around them to allow for the dies. 
  
• Stamp all your chickens in one go.
• Leave the cardstock and stamps in the same position on the Stamparatus (that’s really important!).
• Die-cut the chickens as normal, being extra careful to do so accurately.
• Now you can die-cut a pile of chickens from blank cardstock which means a) you don't have to worry about positioning and b) you can maximise use of cardstock as you don’t have to leave space around them.
• Now just slot the chickens into your cardstock template and stamp for perfect positioning every time.

Can you use the template again? Yes... but only for as long as you leave the stamps on the Stamparatus plate. If you remove the stamps from the plate, you can try placing the stamps into the template and picking them up with the plate and you might get away with it. This would be easier with photopolymer stamps but with red rubber you may find you have start the process again and create a new one.

That was a long tip, wasn't it? Back to more Hey Birthday Chick cards... 

 

I made a batch of these for my customer thank yous for their January orders – chickens are for life, not just for birthdays! 

 

I used the sentiment “Good things are worth waiting for” from Enjoy the Moment to acknowledge the fact that their January orders have taken so long to arrive due to Brexit-related customs delays. I share their pain and have been tracking their parcels with them.

I did something really rash with my brand new Enjoy the Moment stamp set. I actually cut this stamp up so I could stamp it on two lines easily. The joy of unmounted stamps is that you can put them back together on the block if you want to. The rash bit was doing this AFTER I’d added the label... and my label positioning wasn’t perfect so now it just looks like a dog’s dinner. A fully functional dog’s dinner but it’s still a little galling.

I used Shimmery White cardstock for the main panel here and watercoloured the background with a big brush and some Granny Apple Green and Coastal Cabana ink picked it up from the lid in the time-honoured fashion. I find Shimmery White is a bit more tolerant of watercolouring than Whisper White. I haven’t had chance to try it on our new Basic White just yet because, you know, Customs...

I had fun colouring these cheeky chickens with my Stampin’ Blends and experimented with a few colours. Which one do you like the best?

 

How I coloured the chickens

 

 

This one is simply done in Daffodil Delight, light and dark, with a Pumpkin Pie beak and a Poppy Parade comb. The chick is the same, but with an Ivory eggshell. 

For this chicken I used Granny Apple Green, light and dark, with some Daffodil Delight light and dark for the belly, wings and tail. Do you like the little picket fence? I love it. The new Birthday Chick Dies have lots of fun little elements like this, as do the Hey Chick Dies, as you can see above. 

This one is a bit more high maintenance. I began with a strip of dark Rich Razzleberry around the base and up towards the tail, then switched to light Rich Razzleberry to start blending upwards and a little all the way round. Then, as I don't have any paler purples or dark pinks, I switched to light Calypso Coral for the paler areas, finishing off with a light Petal Pink towards the belly. Yes, four markers for one chicken... six if you count the Poppy Parade comb and Pumpkin Pie beak!

Chick out the whole Hey Chick range in my store here (opens in new window)

 

The Hey Chick promotion runs until the end of June, although bear in mind products will switch to ‘while supplies last’ towards the ened of this period.  If you are in the UK and would like to order, please visit my store and, if you use the February host code D6PKN76U, I’ll send you a thank you gift in March!

To make it easy for you, please shop using this link

Does your wish list come to more than £99? Please get in touch and I will help you get more for your money and unlock discounts all year round.  

 

Please message me via my website.

NB: Please note orders are currently taking quite a bit longer than usual to arrive, due to a combination of extra paperwork required following Brexit, lower staffing levels due to the pandemic, and an influx of orders as a result of both lockdown and Sale-a-Bration. Please ask if you require more information.