Happy Birthday to You - celebrate with a product-heavy card

Simple stamping? Not today! Heavily inspired by Stesha Bloodhart and Lauren Alarid, this is technique and product-heavy card featuring white embossing, dry embossing, paint splattering, two stamp sets, dies and a punch. Well if you've got it, why not use it?

I used Artisan Textures to stamp Balmy Blue splatters on my Whisper White cardstock before running it through the Tin Tile embossing folder (LOVE this folder!) and splattering with Champagne Mist Shimmer Paint.

The main image is from Happy Birthday to You from the Sale-a-Bration collection and the exciting news is that there will be dies to match this set available from 4th February, while supplies last.

My cake was stamped and embossed in white and coloured with Blueberry Bushel and Balmy Blue inks using Blender Pens. In the absence of dies (which as a demonstrator I can order now but haven't done yet), I fussy cut it, along with another couple of flowers which I popped up to add dimension.

The filigree die is from the Painted Labels dies from the Peaceful Poppies Suite and the punch is that old favourite, the Sprig Punch – not just for Christmas!

Embossing the image makes colouring it in really easy. You just colour in circles over the top, and the embossed areas will resist the ink. Just make sure you use a water-based colouring medium, rather than our alcohol-based Stampin’ Blends, as alcohol ink will stick to the shiny embossing and you’ll lose the white.

Snow Front ornament

Snow front is my stamp set of choice for my November classes so I’ve been exploring different projects and techniques with this versatile set.

It has lots of fun elements which appeal to me – not least... TREES! I love trees and am always drawn to tree stamp sets in the catalogue. With the Autumn/Winter catalogue, this means I’m spoilt for choice and inevitably cave in and buy all of my favourites. This one is gorgeous - the watercoloured look of the stamps means it’s really difficult to go wrong and you can create some fun, festive scenes in minutes.

But why stop at cardstock? I stamped on this MDF circle to make a Christmas ornament to go on my tree. Or you could use it as an extra special gift tag, the choice is yours. We’ll be making this at my Crafty Friday class this morning and I’m confident they’ll love it.

After stamping my images, I used a fine paintbrush to add some Frost White Shimmer paint to the cottage roof and the trees, then spritzed the whole lot with a mix of Champagne Mist Shimmer Paint and alcohol to give it a fantastic shimmer. Not sure this comes across in the photo but it is extremely shimmery!

PS: I’ve just noticed one of my rhinestones has fallen off! I think Glue Dots would help to keep them on the MDF surface. 

The MDF circle was a little dark so I swiped it with Whisper White craft ink before I began stamping. Bonus tip: stamp your scene onto a circle of scrap cardstock or paper before you commit to the project!