Dandy Garden Suite: Garden Wishes or Dragonfly Garden?

The Dandy Garden Suite is ‘my’ suite. I love everything about it. Many Suites are lovely but none has spoken to me like this one has. But which stamp set is best? 

 

Garden Wishes?

Or Dragonfly Garden? 

I couldn’t decide so had to have both. In fact, I think I ordered the entire Suite Collection. 

To justify my investment, I decided to hold a big event. Normally I would hold an all-day event at this time of year, hire a local hall and get together with customers for a fun day of crafting. We may not be able to meet in person but I wasn’t going to let lockdown stop me from holding my event. So, just as I have been doing since last spring, I held it on Zoom.

This was a day of choices. I realised that not everyone would want to spend an entire day Zooming so offered the opportunity to book just for the morning or the afternoon. Turns out everyone was quite happy to spend the whole day on Zoom after all!

I couldn’t decide whether to run it with the Dragonfly Garden or the Garden Wishes stamp set... so I gave the guests a choice. Of course, this meant I had to make double the samples but it did show off the versatility of the sets beautifully. 

Both sets feature a tall flower stamp. Both feature a beautiful insect. And both co-ordinate with the Dandy Garden Designer Series Paper. Everyone received half a pack of this, giving them lots of options – and it also meant everyone who chose the Dragonfly Garden stamp set could cut out bees from the DSP, and everyone who chose the Garden Wishes stamp set could cut out dragonflies, just as you can see in the cards above. The top card has a dragonfly cut from the Designer Series Paper, while the bottom one is stamped and lightly coloured in.

We made so many projects that I am going to split them across two blog posts. Please come back on Thursday to see the second batch.

 

Half of the day was spent making these four cards. This one is probably my favourite, using gorgeous Blackberry Bliss. I blended some ink around the bottom of the white cardstock using Blending Brushes. Those who don’t yet have these amazing brushes could use a sponge instead. 

To get the spatter effect, squeeze your ink pad to create a pool of ink in the lid. Using a wet (but not too wet) paintbrush, pick up some of this ink and splash this across the card. I do this by holding the paintbrush horizontally and tapping the top.
NB: The wetter your paint brush, the bigger and paler the spatters will be.

 

 

I made these Bumblebee cards deliberately different, to showcase the versatility of the DSP. They look so different with the bold designs on the right, or the subtle Bumblebee designs on the left, but which do you prefer? I can’t really decide. 

When attaching strips of DSP in a design like this, start with the two outer edge pieces, then finish off with the centre. That way you retain an even border around the outside edges of the card. 

 

This card again shows the versatility of the Dandy Garden Designer Series Paper. The card on the left uses a bumblebee cut out of the DSP, while the one on the right is stamped from the Garden Wishes stamp set. The images in the DSP meant nobody had to miss out, regardless of the stamp set they had chosen for their kit.

If you love these products as much as I do, I would urge you to act fast. No, they’re not going anywhere but if you order before the end of February, you can take advantage of Sale-a-Bration. 

 

Order both of the above and you can of course choose TWO Sale-a-Bration items or one Level 2 SAB item.  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

However, for the best value of all, I would recommend the Starter Kit, which gives you £130 of craft supplies of your choice, plus five packs of Designer Series Paper worth £53.75. It’s shipped to you free of charge and entitles you to discounts and sneak peeks. Please do message me via my website to find out more or click here to get started. 

Please message me via my website

 

Spring-themed blog hop with Dandy Wishes Dies

 

 

What’s your favourite season? Schitts Creek fans may channel their inner Moira Rose and answer ‘awards’ but for me it has to be spring. I love it when the days start to warm up and nature comes back to life, with daffodils and catkins and birds nesting and... you get the idea.

So I jumped at the opportunity to take part in a spring-themed blog hop with Stampin’ Up!® demonstrators around the world. I signed up ages ago but when it came to making the projects, for some reason I struggled.

I think it’s because my desire to play with new stamps clashed wildly with my pedantic nature. That ruled out Sweet Strawberry (late summer), Enjoy the Moment (autumn) and Garden Wishes (summer again).

Eventually I forced myself to cast pedantry aside and play with my Dandy Wishes Dies to create some non-specific flower/seed heads. I cunningly decided to meet the requirements of the theme by adding ‘Hello spring’ using the wonderful Playful Alphabet Dies and by masking off a sentiment stamp from Hey Birthday Chick. 

 

Here I have to give a massive shout out for the Foam Adhesive Sheets which are – and I don’t use these words lightly – a game changer. Use these on your small die-cuts and you won’t have to fiddle around cutting up pieces of Dimensionals and your projects will look neater, too.

Just as I’d reached the ‘it’ll do’ stage of project making, out of the craftermath of another project, this little chick crept onto the project and practically fell into place, fortifying my rather tenuous theme. So I let him stay. 

How I created the background

I created the background for this card using my Granny Apple Green ink pad and some Shimmery White cardstock. 

 

I’ll let you into a secret: I’m a pretty impatient crafter. I know, right? Who knew? 

 

So when I discovered that my Granny Apple Green ink pad needed re-inking but I didn’t have a refill, I lost patience with trying to squeeze the pad to get ink into the lid and simply swiped it across the bottom edge of my paper. This was pretty ugly, so I used a big paintbrush and some water to wash it upwards to create this background. Then I simply cut off the ugly bit! I love its vibrancy and the fact it was so quick!

Chickens now firmly on my mind, I created the second card using Hey Birthday Chick again. I’m so happy to see the return of this crazy-haired chick – and I know my customers are, too! I coloured the chicken using Stampin’ Blends in Pool Party (light and dark), Daffodil Delight (light and dark) and Pumpkin Pie (dark).

 

How I created the background

This time I used my new Blending Brushes to apply Coastal Cabana ink at the top and Granny Apple Green at the bottom. I avoided the sun area at the top, then added some Daffodil Delight in a circular motion, before popping up this ‘sun’ (it’s really part of a flower head from the Dandy Wishes Dies) which I’d die-cut from a rejected watercoloured piece from a few days before. Waste not, want not!

Finally, I completed my background effect by spattering some diluted Whisper White Craft Ink onto the top section using a small paintbrush. 

 

Again, I used the Dandy Garden Dies, this time in Basic Black for a silhouette effect.

‘Let’s celebrate spring’ is a mash-up of two sentiment stamps in the Hey Birthday Chick stamp set. I masked off the ‘YOU’ and stamped ‘Let’s celebrate’, then masked off all but ‘spring’ to stamp separately on a scrap of Granny Apple Green cardstock. 

You can get more mileage from your die-cut pieces by cutting them up. Here I’ve trimmed off the outer edges of the lower die-cut seed head to get a different look for contrast. And I’ve trimmed away the cake from the chicken image so it looks like it’s pecking at the words instead.

And now it’s time to see what everyone else has created. Please head to these blogs to see some spring-themed inspiration from around the world...

 

Hey Chick and Hey Birthday Chick

Who wants to see more chicken samples? I have lots to show you today, this time using both of the stamp sets in the Hey Chick promotion.

In an unprecedented move (honestly, who else is sick of that word? How about ‘remarkable’, ‘unheard of’ or ‘atypical’ instead?), Stampin’ Up!® have brought back Hey Chick, an old favourite stamp set from Sale-a-Bration 2017. And four years on, it remains as popular as ever. It’s a great opportunity to buy the Hey Chick stamp set if you don’t already have it – and this time you have the option of adding dies, too. 

The dies are fabulous – with lots of fun little extra touches such as a chicken coop, bag of grain, picket fence, tree stump and some really tiny ears of corn. What’s not to like?

 

 

As well as the return of Hey Chick, there is Hey Birthday Chick in the January-June Mini Catalogue, which also has coordinating dies. 

 

See the whole Hey Chick range of products here

 

Take a look at some of these great projects made by the SU design team. Aren’t they fabulously inspiring?

 

 

And if you’re wondering what I’ve been up to all week, it’s been preparing for a blog hop on Thursday and also for my Dandy Garden Day this coming Saturday – which has been fraught with challenges because I wasn’t sure if my parcel would arrive in time... and then it did... but then it was half empty.

In case you’re not in the UK, or have just not been ordering lately, we have been having major problems with orders taking weeks to arrive, then arriving tampered with... hence my missing items. This has been as a result of Brexit + pandemic but I’m pleased to say the problems are now almost ironed out; orders are taking a bit longer than usual but arriving in a more timely fashion and intact!

Thankfully, demonstrators helped me out again, and my hoarding tendencies came to the rescue too, so my class can go ahead after all!

 

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

 

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.

 

FREE tutorials: Paper Blooms birthday cards

Happy new month! To mark the end of possibly the longest January in history, I held a lovely relaxing craft class on Saturday. I called this my Birthday Bash event... which in retrospect was not the best name as several people have asked if I was my birthday (they didn’t send cake though, sadly).

But no, the idea was to create a set of six cards ready for all those birthdays that spring up on you in the new year.

It was also a great opportunity to use the Paper Blooms Designer Series Paper from the Sale-a-Bration brochure. Everyone received a quarter of a pack for their six projects, giving them lots of versatility and choice. 

We began with this fun fold card – although I’m not sure everyone found it as fun as I did! It's made from a full sheet of A4 cardstock; the piece you cut off can be trimmed down to use as the belly band – and in fact provided the belly band for the second card, too.

Download the FREE tutorial here (opens in new window)

 

This is what the card looks like when it’s opened out. Plenty of space to write. 

 

The second card was a simple Z-fold, where you just score the front at the halfway point and fold it back on itself. I set out to make this a masculine card but failed miserably. Never mind – we can always use more floral cards, can’t we?

Our third card utilised vellum to tone down this lovely but bold Designer Series Paper. By offsetting it a little, you can add interest. The front is decorated with flowers cut out from the Paper Blooms pack. 

 

 

When using vellum, you don't want your adhesive to show, so make sure you only apply glue or tape behind your elements. I quite like the way the vellum then sits loosely on the card but if you need more security, add a glue dot and cover it with another flower or rhinestone/pearl.

 

 

Our last three cards were from a three-in-one pattern, which is fun to make and really speeds things along. Basically, you cut three pieces of DSP to the same size, then cut them up in exactly the same pattern – I used a guillotine-style cutter so did them all in one go. Then you mix up the designs to create three different cards. You don't have to follow this pattern, you can do it with vertical or horizontal strips, or use your imagination!

If you would like to follow this pattern, however...

 

You can download a free tutorial here (opens in new window)

You can earn this gorgeous Designer Series Paper FREE during Sale-a-Bration, which runs to the end of February. This is one of your choices when you place a £45 order. 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 little 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.