Whale Done 21st birthday card with blending brushes

It’s back to the Stampin' Up!® Annual Catalogue for today’s projects as I needed another 21st birthday card... this time for my “baby” boy. He seems to be creating some sort of Sealife centre in his room at the moment, with the arrival of a tropical fish tank plus a separate tank for Wallace the turtle. Wallace belongs to him and his girlfriend, but she can't take him/her (we’re not sure yet) with her to uni.

 

It’s hard to create cards for 21-year-old males but the Whale Done stamp set was perfect for the occasion. I suspect it’s the wrong sort of turtle but it’s close enough, I’m sure.

I began by using my Blending Brushes to create a background of Pacific Point and Coastal Cabana. On top of this I stamped some Night of Navy fish, a few Whisper White bubbles and some Evening Evergreen weeds. This part of the card was heavily inspired by this card by US demonstrator Michelle Zindorf but then I went my own way.

I cut out the layer using the Stitched So Sweetly Dies, then realised I had enough of this background left to create a second panel for another card, so I cut this out with one of the smaller dies.

 

Wallace the turtle is stamped in Evening Evergreen but I tackled this in reverse by “colouring” the image in advance. I stamped some speckles in Bumblebee repeatedly onto some white cardstock, then stamped the Evening Evergreen turtle on top. This is as close as I can get to real-life Wallace. I fussy cut the image and popped it up on Stampin’ Dimensionals. 

 

For the greeting, I inked the stamp first in Coastal Cabana, then added Pacific Point to the bottom section, blurring the hard edge slightly with a Sponge Dauber.

I stuck some Coastal Cabana cardstock to a Foam Adhesive Sheet and cut out the 21 using Playful Alphabet Dies. I KNEW there was a figure 1 in there but couldn’t find it for Robin’s card last week!

The front of the card has a panel embossed with the Seashells 3D embossing folder which is really designed to be used portrait I think but looks fine here as the image panel covers most of it.

Confession: I hated this card and thought it was really unbalanced until I added the finishing touch of some linen thread. It’s funny how something so simple can make all the difference, isn’t it?

 

For the second card – which I don’t immediately need but thought I may as well make while I had the supplies out – I used the whale stamp and Whale Builder Punch as my focal point on top of the mini sponged panel that was left over from the birthday card. 

 

 

Aside from the sponging, it’s a very simple card, with a swirl of linen thread behind the panel and a greeting stamped directly onto the Basic White Notecard.

It was fun to dig out a stamp set that hadn’t seen ink for many months and reminded me of how much I love the Whale Done stamps and punch. 

Do you have a sealife-loving person in your life? To order these or any other current Stampin’ Up!® products from my store, 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 

 

10 simple cards using the Whale of a Time Suite

How fabulous is the Whale of a Time Suite? I bought the whole suite collection, which is not something I’d done until this year. Now I’m all over it as a concept as it’s so easy!

Public service announcement

 If you’re shopping online and the suite is showing as unavailable or on backorder, do check the individual items. It may be that just one item is temporarily out of stock which puts the whole suite on backorder. But you can still order the individual items separately.

Ok, onto the projects! Above are all of the projects were are currently making in this month’s remote workshops. Guests have had the choice of attending every Tuesday at 1pm, or coming to the Saturday morning class which was this past weekend. They could even attend both if they wished – and one lady turned up “just to watch and heckle”. 😂

Each week the ladies make two simple cards using the Whale of a Time Designer Series Paper, adding their own greeting stamps or using the Whale Done stamp set if they chose it as an optional extra. For eight of the cards we used Whisper White Notecards and Envelopes, with two shaker cards on a standard Pool Party card base.

We began with a double whale week and, thanks Stampin’ Up!®'s fabulous co-ordination, you can punch out the large whales from the DSP. Those who hadn’t upgraded to include the Whale Punch could fussy cut them instead. We set aside one of the whale patterned pieces to use just for this purpose. 

I love this Pool Party Sheer Ribbon, too – it’s so soft and shimmery.

 Onto Week 2... which was turtle week and another opportunity to show off the gorgeous DSP...

To provide a cute focal point for the projects, we fussy cut the turtles from the DSP. Again, we set aside the piece with the turtles on to use for this. 

The Whale of a Time Sequins make great accents when stuck down with a Glue Dot. I love these tiny translucent shells. 

I had die-cut a series of labels using the Tasteful Labels Dies and Stitched Rectangles Dies. All different, so I could cut them all for each person in one go.

I did throw in a couple of shaker cards to mix things up a little, which meant some preparation time using the Snow Globes Scenes Dies but worth it I think as they look so fab with the sequins behind.

This was the first one; it’s hard to photograph a shaker card but you may just be able to see a cut-out turtle within the Snow Globe Shaker Dome.

This was accompanied by another turtle card; both show off the absolutely gorgeous Whale of a Time Designer Series Paper. 

This Tuesday we will be making another shaker card, this time with a sponged and embossed surround. Yes, more work for me die-cutting and embossing in advance but I really wanted to show off this gorgeous Seabed 3D Embossing Folder. 

We’ll also be making this fab little notecard. I LOVE this piece of Designer Series Paper, it's so lovely. Guests at this series of classes received a quarter of a pack of the DSP; of course, if you have a whole pack, you get four pieces of this, so can make lots of lovely projects. 

To finish off, we will be making these cards – I left these to the end because they can be adapted to suit any leftover scraps. This is a great way of using up scraps of any Designer Series paper.

So are you inspired by this Suite? My customers have been loving it. If you’re inspired enough to buy it and are in the UK, you can shop the Suite here.