Thank you for taking the time to come and look at my blog, I really do appreciate it. I would love you to leave me a comment, even if it’s just to say Hi. It means I can come visit you!
All my designs are original, so copyrighted to me. If I have been inspired by someone elses work, I have named them in the post, and where able, I have provided a link.
Please feel free to use my designs for inspiration, I just ask you to credit me, and provide a link back to my blog.
Thanks, Shaz XX
Showing posts with label Hobby Art Stamps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobby Art Stamps. Show all posts
Late this week, but I'm finally here. This fortnights Challenge was set by Rita, and she wanted to see Santa on our cards.
I've made a total of a dozen cards, in three different colours, and two designs.
Not the most fantastic photos, sorry, but the silver EP and the Sparkly one do not play nicely with the camera lens!
There are three green, three blue and 3 red.
In each case I stamped then die cut with a tag die the Santa image, then die cut three more white tags and embossed each with a Christmas Embossing Folder.
I found it's better to die cut the tags, then emboss, rather than the other way round, as the embossing gets flattened going through the machine to die cut.
Made a small hit on my eyelet stash, to add one to hold each pair of tags together.
Added the tags to the card front with foam pads.
Two shades of Distress Oxides were blended over the edges.
I added Christmas Vellum to the card front, and found that if you use double sided adhesive sheet over the whole of the back of the vellum, it doesn't show. The drawback is- don't use textured card! You can see the problem you get with the red card, which was a hammer finish.
For the second design I used a stitched oblong die to cut out the stamped image and also an embossed piece the same size, then just adhered to the card. The embossed piece with DST, the image with foam tabs, just offsetting them slightly.
This Santa stamp is a really old one, it used to be wood mounted, so must be 15+ years old. I believe it was by Rubber Stampede.
This one, called St Nick, was also a rubber wood mounted stamp,so is also quite old, but it is available now as a clear stamp, part of a set from Butterfly Kisses, which can be bought from Hobby Art Stamps.
I'd originally added Vintage Photo DI around the edges on top of the colour, but it dulled it too far, so I ended up going over it with a second darker shade of the colour used.
On a side note, we see Santa in a Red suit these days, but pre-1930's, Tan or Green were the traditional colours. Thomas Nast, actually the artist who developed the Santa image we all know and love, then changed to painting him in a Red suit. This was spotted by an artist called Haddon Sundblom, who was commissioned to do a Christmas advert for Coca Cola, and he used Red as it tied in with that theme. And the rest is history!
Well, here we are at the last Challenge for this year, and it's been
chosen by Sylvie, who wants to see Cute. I actually seem to have quite a
number of stamps that fall into this category, and I admit they don't
get enough use.
Mainly because most of them need to be coloured, and until I discovered how enjoyable Prismacolor pencils were to work with, I avoided colouring like the plague. So we have 5 Christmas cards, and 4 more gift tags to the collection.
These two penguin images are by Whimsy Stamps. I've added Glossy Accents to the Candy Canes, and also used Inkylicious Fluffy Puffy Stuff for the fur on the hats. I'll share how I found it worked best further on.
This is another Whimsy stamps image, and Beloved Hubby bought me all three last year for Christmas. He couldn't find them in the UK, so got stung for Import Duty ordering from the USA, but when we visited the Papercrafts Show at the Motorcycle Museum recently, we discovered Dies to Die For, a UK company who stock many of the well known US brands of stamps and dies, such as Altenew, Lawn Fawn,Mama Elephant, Pretty Pink Posh, and Whimsy.
I used the Fluffy Stuff on these too.
This is a Hobby Art stamp, bought at Happy Stampers a couple of months ago. Called Archie & 5 Pals.
Another Hobby Art stamp, Paws for Thought.
Both of these are Rubber stamps.
These Penguin tags are also using a Hobby Art set, clear stamps this time, called Round Penguins.
The Polar bear tags use stamps from Inkylicious, on the left, and a very old Woodware set on the right. Laughing right now, as I just did a Google search to see if it was still available. The only two images that showed up are both from my blog, so I guess not!
So, I said I'd tell you about the Puffy stuff.
It says on the
bottle to apply a line of it, then heat with a heat gun. That works
fine, especially if you are trying to line hills or trees for instance,
but I found didn't produce the look I wanted for the fur.
So what I did was to add a thickish line of it onto the fur trim, then used a cotton bud to dab it all over.
I bought these cotton buds in Primark recently, you can find them in their make up/beauty section. They are great for crafting, as you have a thin pointy end, and the other end is flat. I used the pointy end to dab the Fluffy stuff over the fur areas, then heat set. You want a fairly even level, not too thick or it will puff up too far, but not too thin either, otherwise it doesn't puff at all. However, it's pretty forgiving- if you haven't got enough on, or have bare patches, you can just add some more and reheat.
If some areas puff up too far, you can flatten it down- the flat end of the cotton buds was perfect for that!
It's a really great little product for adding some dimension and texture to your Christmas creations.
And so we are done for another year, and I'd like to thank everyone for making this such a fun challenge. You've all provided so much inspiration, and often, reminded me of stamps I have that I'd forgotten about!
It's been great for taking the stress out of Christmas Card making, and made it something to enjoy through the year instead. As I wrote out and sent almost 70 cards earlier in the week, then another 30+ for work colleagues, and 20+ for family, I realised why in previous years-when I didn't start till November- I'd got heartily sick of the sight of them long before I was finished. So thank you ladies, and I hope you all have a quiet, peaceful and Happy Christmas, and thank you all for the lovely Christmas cards that have arrived!
Sorry ladies, completely lost track of what week it was. This fortnights challenge is set by Carol, and she chose the theme 'All Wrapped Up'. I've taken a bit of a liberty with the interpretation here, as I think I'm overflowing with Christmas cards this year, so I've made a bunch of gift tags!
I ended up making 7 designs, in a pretty random number for each. The tags are more or less 3" square. I used a lot of off cuts to make these, so there is a little variation.
This one uses a Holly stamp from Lavinia Stamps, stamped in Versafine Clair Rainforest, then I added Stampendous Crystal Embossing Powder over them and heat set. Then Liquid Pearls in Garnet for the berries.
The sentiment comes from a Hobby Art set, Winter Wishes. That was stamped in the same green ink, but not heat embossed.
The Bells come from a Card-io set called Merrily on High.
I stamped the first bell in Gold Encore Pigment ink, masked it, then stamped the second. Heat embossed both then with the same Crystal EP.
The sentiment is from a Crafters Companion set.
Afterwards I added the holly sprigs using an old Rubber Stamp Tapestry set.
I used the Garnet Liquid Pearls for the berries again too.
Quite a lot of Card-io stamps used for the tags, this one is called Christmas Greenery. Stamped in Versafine Spanish Moss, heat embossed with the Crystal EP, and then the sentiment stamped in Versafine Majestic Green. I added White Opal Liquid Pearls to the Mistletoe Berries.
Another Mistletoe design, this time using a Lavinia Stamps Mistletoe Branch. I stamped this one in Olympia Green, added the Crystal EP, then stamped the greeting in the same colour. The same Opal White Liquid Pearls used for the berries too.
Christmas Trees next, and these are from a Visible Image set, and I used the medium one once, then the small one was stamped in both first & second generation images, using Versafine Olympia Green.
For these I used a Stampendous EP called Rainbow Sparkle, and although it doesn't show in the photo's, it makes it look like the trees are covered in lights.
I added a tiny acrylic star to the top of each tree. The sentiment here is from a Phill Martin set,Scribbled Christmas Petite.
This was the biggest batch I made. All Card-io/Majestix stamps, the branch is a partial stamping of a tree from the Christmas Breeze Collection. I stamped in Clair Rainforest, first and second generation images. I added a mix of baubles from the two sets,Zendangles and Bells & Baubles, using Versafine Majestic Blue and Deep Lagoon. The strings were drawn in with a very fine Micron pen.Sentiment again from the Crafters Companion set.The branch and baubles were heat set with the Crystal EP.
Last set used two Card-io/Majestix snowflake sets, Winters Kiss and Winter Flurry.Stamped in Encore Metallic Blue, and heat set with WOW! EP in Glacier. Sentiment again from the Hobby Art set, and stamped in Versafine Majestic Blue.
These Wednesdays seem to get here faster every week! Back to leaving our link at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, for this weeks Desk Fest.
Had a great time at Happy Stampers, as always so much to buy, lol. This was my desk on Sunday, ready to start the mammoth task of cataloguing in One Note, then putting it all away. Love One Note, as I have it on my PC and on my phone, so can check whether I have something before I end up buying it again. Yeah, that's a thing.
Favourite purchases of the day?
Has to be these three stamps from Crafty Individuals.
Love that fluffy, scruffy Raven on the end.
A few more Lavinia stamps.
And some fab ones from Hobby Art. Love the Round Penguins, far left, and the super cute Polar Bears.
There's a great Indigo Blu stamp called Batty, and a cool Fairy Castle, a steampunk Dragonfly and a couple of Halloween stamps.
A great Halloween die cut, and a small Poinsettia die too, something I've been on the look out for. Another Fairy House stamp, and some snowflake dies, reduced. You can never have too many snowflakes!
Good job, as I found a set at The Works this morning, too.
Along with some small wood shapes, angels & Trees, great bargain at 32 for a Quid.
These were on my desk on Tuesday morning, fussy cutting some stamped flowers from Honey Doo to go on the stamped bases. Had to shift them for now, as I needed to make an Anniversary card for Hubby. Married 9 years today, but I can't share it yet as he's on earlies this week, so he won't have it till this afternoon.
I'll blog it later in the week.
Along with the flower cards when I get back to them.
And I'm all done, apart from.........
.......................... and Finally
Right then, the last of my recent run of Triple Stamped cards,and I used the technique to create myself a dozen Christmas cards. Despite what it may seem, this is actually a good way of batch making cards that appear a little more work than they really are.
The Snowflake one is the card made in the You Tube video.
Just so you know, this is quite a photo heavy post, lol.
First part was cutting all the layers, and choosing stamps.
I'll put the measurements used at the end of the post.
The first stamps I chose came from Chocolate Baroque sets, Holly Script & Mistletoe Script sets, both still available.
To the Holly, I added a couple of Card-io stamps, from a set called Festive Fircones, and also from a Rubber Stamp Tapestry peg stamp set called Cardinal in Holly.
I used Versafine Clair in Rain Forest for the stamping.
Before stamping the image stamps, I stamped and heat embossed in Gold detail powder, a sentiment on each one. I used 4 different sentiments.
The top two are from Hobby Art, the set is called Winter Wishes.
Bottom left is a very old stamp from Denami, which used to be wood mounted. Bottom right is from a Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous set called Scribbled Woodland.
My four pieces, all stamped and ready for matting. Word of advice, separate and layer each set individually. If you mix them up it will take forever to sort them out again into the correct order!
I used a dark green cardstock for the matt layers for these.
All layered up, and the one has a piece of ribbon over one corner. It actually makes a nice way to add something a little extra, but was really there to cover a bit of the stamping that blurred a little!
I added some red acrylic jewels to the Holly berries, but if you want to keep them as flat as possible for posting, you could colour them with markers, or use Stickles or Pearls for this.
Next we move on to the Mistletoe ones, I used the same sentiments, this time in Silver ink and Detail Powder.
The stamping was done using Versafine Spanish Moss.
I didn't have any cardstock in a similar colour for the matts, so used some white pearl cardstock that I coloured the edges of with the Versafine to match.
It seemed like a good idea at the time! But I don't recommend using Versafine on Pearl cardstock.
It seems to take forever to dry, even with heat setting.
I'd inked the edges, and left overnight. It was a good 15-18 hours before I got back to them, but it was still wet. So I heat set, but that only improved it slightly.
I had originally tried Promarkers, but even though the colour was great,
I couldn't get one even coat all the way round, and any overlaps left a
darker area.
The Versafine did give me a problem with inky smudges, so i took to wiping my fingers with a baby wipe every time I handled one. Even though I couldn't see any ink on my fingers, there clearly was!
However, I did have a fix for getting rid of the smudges.
A while ago I mentioned Tombow Mono Sand erasers, as being recommended for removing stray specks of embossing powder that had been heat set. Which it works extremely well for, I might add. I've discovered it's also very good at removing ink.
Hopefully you can see the ink smudges on the bottom layer.
Here is what it looks like after I've used the eraser on it.
So that eraser is a really useful bit of kit to have in your arsenal. Available HERE on Amazon.
The 'open' Mistletoe is the Chocolate Baroque one, the 'closed' one is from Card-io, a set called Christmas Greenery.
I've added two sizes of half pearls for the Mistletoe berries on these.
Final set of cards uses a selection of Snowflake stamps, mainly from a Clarity set called Snowflakes, with the addition of some random tiny snowflake stamps to fill gaps.
Still using the same sentiments, and again silver heat embossed.
The snowflakes were stamped using Versafine Majestic Blue, and I added some WOW! Embossing powder in Arctic Blue, which just gives the snowflakes a little sparkle.
The Snowflake embellishment is a box of wooden snowflake embellishments from Kaisercraft, picked up at my local craft store. They were coated in Oxide Broken China, then clear embossing ink. Sprinkled with the Arctic Blue EP and heat set. I then added another layer of clear embossing ink, and a layer of clear UTEE, then finally another layer of the Arctic blue while the UTEE was still hot. You could replace the UTEE with a clear powder, just maybe using two coats. Don't do too many layers though, or you will lose the detail.
I stuck them to the front with a little Glossy Accents.
To keep them flat, you could either skip the embellishment, or die cut a snowflake or two from glitter card/paper.
The
measurements for these cards are as follows: the card base is 4⅛x 5⅞.
This was created by cutting an A4 sheet of card in half lengthways,
which then gives you a 'landscape' card base, 2 from each sheet of card. The card base itself is the first matt layer.
So, your matt layers need to be:
4⅛ x 5⅞ ( card base)
3⅛ x 4⅞, and
2⅛ x 3⅞.
Your stamping layers are:
3⅞ x 5⅝
2⅞ x 4⅝ and
1⅞ x 3⅝.
It is better to use a thinner cardstock for your stamping layers than for the matt layers.
Late this week, but I'm finally here. This fortnights Challenge was set by Rita, and she wanted to see Santa on our cards.
