WOYWW #570- Just a little Enabling Edition.

Well, despite us all being in lockdown, the weeks still seem to be flying past. Time to pop your link over at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, and bare your desk to the world! MIA last week, only because my shoulder has been giving me a lot of trouble over the last few weeks, and I've found that alternately resting it, and occasionally having it in a sling is gradually helping to improve it. So, no crafting as yet, although I do have cards for The Christmas Card Club due this weekend, so I'll have to get my ass in gear. One little bit of enabling- just a set of dotted Oval dies from Crealies. I do have a couple of sets, but they don't go up very large, and these ones are from the XXL range.

The box on the image gives you the sizes- the smallest is 2.5x6.5, the largest 12.5 x 16.5.( equates to about 1½ x2½, and 5 x 6½ inches). I struggled a little when I was cutting out those Gorjuss Girls a few weeks ago, I had to draw around the outside of my largest oval and hand cut it for a matt. By the way, have you ever noticed just how much ovals vary? There are long and narrow ones, and shorter, wider ones, so you can't ever mix and match between sets.

Actually, I got carried away with the enabling, and haven't put the desk pic in yet! And this week you get a twofer- my desk, showing zero stuff happening, and Hubbys desk, as he's working from home. Since he was made redundant last year, he's been retraining in IT, so having done a number of courses, he feels he'd really like to get into the tutoring/training side of IT, so he's currently volunteering as a tutor with the place he did his training, as to get a qualification, a number of tutoring hours have to be completed.
 All mine contains is the pile still waiting for inserts, and a reflection of the sunlight! Thats actually the one thing I don't like about the glass mat, it's way too reflective for my liking.



Hubbys desk- two screens,a laptop, a microphone & camera, and an assortment of other 'stuff'.




Which brings us to ......And Finally..............

Hope everyone is keeping safe, and anyone who's been ill is well on the way to recovery.😍

Card strips, and getting more mileage from your dies.

Six cards made using strips of off cuts, sorry if the image looks a little blurred in places, Glitter & camera lenses do not play nicely together!

I'd started off making up some panels- I haven't used the rainbow ones yet.

I had a thought the other day about a design, I'd recalled the Tim Holtz Umbrella Man die, and realised I could chop off the umbrella, and add a bunch of balloons instead.
So, I cut 3 men from the striped panels, and 3 from plain card. I also cut 3 sets of balloons from the striped panels, and a whole bunch from some pearl paper off cuts. The balloon die is semi cut through around the balloons, so I could easily separate parts and paper piece them.
 I cut balloon sets also from plain card, so I could do the piecing onto a firm base.
 I *think* the balloon set came from Aliexpress.

For the first set I made, I used the Umbrella man cut from the strip panels, and matched that up with paper pieced balloons,and a strip of glitter card/paper, die cut with a curved line die, at the bottom.

The sentiment is a Crealies die, cut from 3 layers of black card, and one layer of glitter card, and stacked up for dimension.

I  cut away the Umbrella from each one, and then re-shaped the arm a little to look more realistic.
 As the balloons are part cut, I used a double layer of foam pads behind the Heart balloon at the front, and a single layer under the others.

This black card base is a top fold card, as is the black and white one. C5 size.

Put together exactly the same as the first.


The brown version has a sheet of backing paper added, from an old paper pad by Prima.

The next set of three use the plain card Umbrella man, and strip panel balloons.
 The all also have a paper backing, The grey one on the right from an old Papermania pad set with a Steampunk theme, the other two from the Prima pad.


They are all created the same as above. One Umbrella man facing the other way, I put the cardstock on the die upside down, lol.

 The Birthday Wishes sentiment is made from two Crealies dies, Happy Birthday and Best Wishes. Again, another way to stretch your dies a little.

 You can make these more feminine or masculine, depending on the colour choices you use.

Snowflake Christmas Cards

Putting all of those snowflakes to good use, and this is the first 3 cards made using them. They were inspired by a card I spotted on Pinterest back last week.

 This is the card that I saw, and it was mainly the embossing folder that caught my eye, as I have that one.  It's by Darice, called Snowflake Swirl.

The cardmakers name is Carol, and her blog is Our Little Inspirations.











I think my card is made larger than hers was, as I needed to add some embossing to the lower part of the piece of cardstock I was using. Mine is based on an A4 sheet of cardstock scored and folded.
 A few weeks ago I did some stencilled sheets using the Tim Holtz Merry Christmas stencil with silver embossing paste and sprinkling it with Crystal Glamour Dust, but they weren't long enough for this so I needed to do some new ones.

I found this stencil best to work with upside down, as the tiny parts of some letters- notably the 'R' and 'M', can easily get caught as you spread the paste. This also applies when cleaning them, you do need to be very gentle to avoid bending them.





I also had to do each one in two sittings, as the stencil wasn't long enough for my card front, but they only take about an hour to dry.I tried with the first one doing the whole strip, but it's impossible to do without smudging the paste you've already laid down.
 As you can see, epic fail!

While I was waiting for the paste to dry, I made a start on layering up the snowflakes. They're not all for these cards, I have another set planned. There are 3 or 4 snowflakes used in each one.

 I trimmed the strip down to roughly one third of the card width, then trimmed the embossed panel down to fill the front.


Both were attached with DST. I added a very narrow strip of silver ribbon to cover the join. For that I cut some narrow dst roughly down the centre, and added that over the join, then wrapped the ribbon around the card front, siting the join where I intended to place the large snowflake at the top.

The card base and the embossed panel are both Pearl White cardstock.

The sentiment is a Crealies die, and I cut it 3 times from white cardstock, and once from silver glitter and layered them up for a dimensional sentiment. I added a tiny acrylic jewel as the dot on the 'i'.






I also did a couple of stencilled sheets using Glossy White stencil paste- both this and the silver are by Sweet Poppy- and again sprinkled with Crystal Glamour Dust.

 So I changed it up for the third card, using the white sheet, and swapping the sides round too. In each case the ribbon join is under the large snowflake.

A small acrylic gem in the centre of each snowflake finished them off nicely.

Mixed Media & Stencil Paste Baby & Wedding cards

Been having a play with some stencil paste and Tim Holtz Layering stencils today. I thought this flourish design lends itself to so many useful cards, it all depends on the colour paste you use. I coloured white paste with pink and blue  Memento inks to make the baby cards, and left it white for the two wedding ones.In all cases, I gave the wet paste a very light sprinkling of Glamour dust, just to add a gentle sparkle.




 Useful things to know about this technique:
  When colouring your paste- and you can colour white or Translucent- you can use a variety of mediums. Inkpads, reinkers and acrylic paints all work fine, and subtler shades can be achieved with mica powders. You can also add mica powders along with your inks/paints, for a pearly sheen. You can also add glitter, for sparkle that doesn't shed!

One thing to remember when using liquid colours to colour your paste is that the liquid will alter the consistency of the paste, so this is one case where you do not want to start with a little, and add till you've got the colour required. Acrylic paint will not be too bad, as it's not so liquid as ink, but with reinkers especially, go for a fairly dark colour, just adding a drop or two. You can always add a little more paste if you want to lighten it.Remember also, when adding to white paste it will lighten the colour anyway, and it will usually dry slightly lighter as well. Also, don't skimp on mixing up your custom colours. If you run out before finishing, you'll never mix exactly the same shade!Any leftover paste can be stored in small screwtop pots, and will last for a few months. If there is not enough to make that worthwhile, you can spread the excess onto a scrap of cardstock, using that to add all your waste paste to. Then, when dry, just cover with a sheet of hot foil, run through your laminator or foiling machine-you can even just iron it on- and you have a sheet of foiled card you can die cut sentiments from.
Use a fairly good thick cardstock to work on, as the moisture from the paste will cause thinner cardstock to buckle.
Here are some I've done in the past.

 Also, Mylar stencils such as these are not going to lay as totally flat on your cardstock as metal ones, so more care needs to be taken when adding paste, so that it doesn't  start to seep under the edges of the design. Try to add enough paste, and use a wide enough spreader to cover the design in one sweep.  Too many spreading motions will increase the likelihood of the paste going under the lines. Sweet Poppy have a fab wide spreader for this, and Lucy Ellis of Sweet Poppy has some cool videos on You Tube showing how to get the best results.
 Finally- cleaning your stencils. You want to do this as quickly as possible, and I take a sandwich box with warm soapy water  in up to my craft room to drop them in, to save going up and downstairs to a sink every time I've used a stencil. Make sure you have a bowl/tub large enough to lay the stencils flat in. Keeping them flat while washing & drying is really critical to keeping them in good condition. The paste comes off easily if you do it straight away. I have found that the Cosmic Shimmer glitter pastes are really difficult to remove if they start to dry on your stencil,so speedily dropping into water is important. I have an old towel on a work surface, and stand the tub on that. A small nailbrush is ideal for removing the paste, then I lay it onto the towel, and PAT dry. That's important, especially if the stencil has unattached parts, like the Flourish one does. If you bend parts through rubbing, they will always let paste/ink etc seep under the design. This applies to metal ones with unattached parts too, not just Mylar.
So, back to the cards. The card bases are topfold, half A4 sheets, which end up as 5¾ x 4⅛. The cardstock I used for the stencilling was 6 x 4 so I had a little to trim down to tidy it up. I finally trimmed the panels to 5¾ x 3⅜.
 As the panels were narrower than my base card, I decided to die cut some borders, you could also use border punches, of course.
 I made some choices from this set by Spellbinders, called Shapeabilities On The Edge. They are just a hair longer than my panels,but these dies are fully repeatable, so you can make a border as long as you need.

I chose pearl papers and cut the edges twice for each card, then split down the middle. The pink one, which was the second up from the bottom in the dies, actually gives you two for one- you could easily use the offcut as a border too.
The pearl papers came from some paper blocks I bought years ago at the NEC, from a company called Craftwork Cards, who sadly no longer exist.They are really useful for borders, or for punching from.




The strips were attached to the back of each panel, along the edges, with dst, then trimmed down to fit.

All four done.
 Now they just need mounting onto the card fronts, and again I used DST for this. Remember to add tape to all 4 sides, as there will always be a little warping of the cardstock from the paste. If you are a wet glue user, I'd recommend laying them down with a weight on top for half an hour or so.






Now to add a sentiment, and I chose to use these Crealies Text dies for the baby cards. They are a small die, but the perfect size for these cards. there is quite a selection of sentiments available too. The 'A New Baby' sentiment is one die, but the three words are all separate, which I love as that gives you freedom of placement. I cut  the die 4 times from white scrap card, then once each from the pink & blue pearl paper I used for the borders. This was so I could layer up the white die cuts twice, then add the

colour on top, for a little dimension.












 I have some stitched banner dies, from Aliexpress, and used the smallest size from the long set for this. It was actually a little longer than I wanted, but the bottom set was a little too short. I sorted that by just replacing the banner in the die, matching up the stitched lines, then trimming it shorter.

A simple fix. You may notice than I am cutting down into my bottom plate in my 'Bug. I saw a few crafters switching the order of their plates, putting the 'B' plate on the bottom, and the 'C' plate on the top. This is great, as you can see exactly what you are cutting, so makes precise placing easy. I'd lain my words on the banner first to decide how much shorter it needed to be.

A ZIG glue pen- in fact any glue pen- is ideal for layering up the words, and for attaching to the banner. Again, laying them down under a couple of acrylic blocks for  a few minutes helps them set.

To add them to the card front, I used a few foam pads. Because the surface is uneven, and glittery, both of which can cause problems with adhering stuff, I added a small dab of Pinflair Glue Gel to the top of each foam pad. This helps to make sure it will stick to the awkward surface, and also gives you a little wriggle room to position it straight.

I decided the banners needed a little something else, so added an acrylic heart to each. I used a clear one for the blue card, as the only blue hearts I had were not close enough in colour to the blue used in the card.

For the wedding cards, I used the same banner die, but added the sentiment with peel offs, as there currently isn't a wedding die in the Crealies line. I have emailed to ask her about the possibility,though. 😀 A small white half pearl was added with some Glossy Accents.

Transfer Foil with DST

Right, I saw this technique last week in a You Tube Video by GinaK Designs, from Stamp TV. If you've not seen any of her videos, do give them a look. She makes some really beautiful cards- using her own products, but  can be made by substituting what you have to hand.
 Anyway, she was promoting her own line of Transfer Foils, and made a card like this, using Double Sided Tape, instead of heat transfer with a laminator.

 You need a panel of cardstock cut to fit your base card, and in hindsight I'd recommend leaving it slightly larger than you want, so you can trim it down after adding the foil, to give you nice crisp edges.
 You can probably also see here that I started off with a scrap piece of linen effect card. Again, in hindsight- and I did swap to plain card part way through- use a smooth cardstock, as the foil doesn't transfer very smoothly onto a textured cardstock.



 I started adding my DST in the centre, diagonally across the card, then working out to the edges, alternating the tape between a very narrow one, and one slightly wider.
 You do need to make sure you burnish the tape down really well. Especially at the ends. Trim off the excess when you get to this stage.

When you're done, it will look like this. I didn't measure a specific gap between the tapes, just eyeballed it.



This blue one is what I started with, but it wasn't working great due to the surface texture.

 Starting in one corner, peel off the backing to one strip of tape, and press your chosen colour of foil down firmly, and again, burnish well, a bone folder/ spoon works well for this.

It's better to work a line at a time, as that will produce less waste on the foil, as what is left on the sheet probably won't be wide enough to use anywhere else.

 Working your way across the cardstock, you will end up with this.
 You may need to trim the edges slightly to neaten them up afterwards.

Something else I'd done a while back was to laminate some scrap card with Stencil Paste, just swiped across with a palette knife, then covered in foil sheets and laminated, to give me something I could die cut sentiments from.
 Here I die cut a Crealies Happy Birthday die, and hand cut a small banner from scrap black card to mount it on.

  I added the banner with a little DST & a Copper Brad to match the foil. The whole panel was then matted onto a piece of black cardstock before mounting onto the A5 card front.


 You can see how the foil reacts to different light, the Copper foil  showing Purples & Greens from this angle.

 Photo from a slightly different angle again.


So, tips to help with this:

1.  Burnish the DST down really well. 
2. Burnish the Foil well too- but take care not to catch the previous rows of foil.
3. Leave your panel slightly oversize, and trim when you're finished.
4. Use Smooth cardstock!
5.  Make sure you go off the edges with the DST then trim off the excess- if you rip the tape too short, any join will make a bump in the foil.

Mixed Media cards- Part 2

Ok, following on from yesterdays post are a few more die cuts made up into cards.
This die cut is from the Mixed Media set #2, and it does need glue on the back of the design, as it won't lay flat otherwise.

 The card base is an A4 sheet of Pearl white card, folded, and with embossed scoring either side of the panel.










 The paper it's backed with is a shimmery one bought a few years ago, and I have it in a few colourways. rarely used it, but it was perfect for this.

I used a Crealies die to cut the sentiment, once from the shimmer paper, and twice more from white card so I could stack them up for a dimensional look.




 A few small flowers were punched from the same paper, and doubled up, then some Stickles in dark blue added to the centres.

 A similar design for this one, but it's backed with an alcohol inked sheet.
 The sentiment is another Phill Martin one, from Mini Baroque Occasions.
 Two small butterflies punched from some shimmer paper, and very tiny acrylic gems added to the bodies.

A different die for this one, from Mixed Media set #3, and cut from an ivory base.The backing sheet is an alcohol ink one, in blues with Gold Mixative.
 It was matted onto dull gold card, then onto a 6" square card base.
 The sentiment is again from Mini Baroque Occasions, and was stamped in Archival Cobalt.  A couple of dark blue half pearls added as well.

A 7" square base for this card, and the die is from Mixed Media set # 1. It was cut from a linen cardstock, and then trimmed with a deckle edged blade.
 The backing is an oil pastel sheet, and I found some pale purpley-grey cardstock to matt it on to.
 Heartfelt Creations Spellbinders die called Delicate Aster was used for the flower, and the centre is filled with Glossy Accents and seed beads.
 The sentiment is from Chic Floral Occasions Borders, Phill Martin. I matted the sentiment strip onto an offcut of the backing card before sticking it down.

 This one is 5"x7", the die from Mixed Media #3. The backing is a rainbow piece made with oil pastels, and the sentiment is from Mini Baroque Occasions. I repeated what I did previously, and stamped and heat embossed onto an offcut, which I then die cut with a Spellbinders Labels 8 die and mounted with foam tabs. I also added a couple of acrylic gems again.











Another 7" square card, this time the Mixed Media die was cut from black cardstock. It's backed with a different colour of the shimmer paper, and  at first glance it almost looks like glitter embossing onto the card.
I backed it again with a dull gold matt.
 The sentiment is stamped onto a black heart, and then matted onto a gold heart. Die set is by Nellie Snellen. The sentiment is from Butterfly Elegance Sentiments by Phill Martin, heat embossed in gold.
 Some small flowers in black and gold completed the front.


And that's the end of the second batch. More to follow later in the week, I've still got a few to put together.