How adorable is this little Giraffe from Heffy Doodle's Two by two safari animals stamp set? As soon as I saw it I knew I needed to make it into a baby card.
As the finishing touch I added in some of the yellow enamel dots from the Summer Holiday set. I love how easy these dots are to use and that there is no drying time.
I am going to enter this card for the following challenges:
I am so happy to be able to say that I have been given the final challenge for the Altenew Educator Certification Program (AECP) and it is a challenge of 2 parts so this is my first of two posts about it. You can find my second post HERE
**** Warning this is a long post but I think you will like it 😊 ****
The first part of the challenge tackles something that I know a lot of crafters struggle with.....making masculine cards!
The challenge is to create 4 masculine cards with the following themes:
- Birthday
- Love/ Thinking of you
- Anniversary
- Encouragement
For the second part of the challenge I have to create an Altered item or upcycle project so if you would like to see that then please be sure to check my next post 😁
I could select any 3 components from the classes I have done for either level 1 or 2 of the AECP as my inspiration.
I need to submit my projects to Altenew by the 16th of June 2022.
I had a lot of fun making this set of cards so I hope you like them and are inspired.
One of my top tips for getting your creativity flowing is to limit yourself with the stock that you are working with. So for these cards I decided that I wanted to limit my self to 3 colours and use the geometric theme so I made the decision to focus all my cards around the Trigonometry stamp and die set.
Once I knew what I wanted my focus to be I stamped and die cut a whole load of the great fun triangles out so that I could then play with them and work out what layouts I might want to use.
For these cards I have used things from various classes but my main inspiration is from the following classes:
For the Guys - Using Geometric patterns/shapes and bright colours
Polychromatic - Use white space to let the colours pop
I love the way that when you are making cards you can play around laying all of the elements out to work out how you want it to look before you stamp it out. This video shows the steps I took to put this card together.
Here is the finished birthday card. I like that it is clean and simple with lots of white space to make those colours really pop.
2. Love/ Thinking of you card
I decided to focus on love for this card as that was more of a challenge for me personally. The Trigonometry stamp set does not really have any love sentiments in it. I wanted a font that was not too curly to fit for the masculine look and looking through my stamp sets I found there were two stamps in the Handmade tags stamp set that I could use to get the look and love themed sentiment I wanted.
In a similar way to the video for the first card I played around with my stamped and cut triangles on my card blank seeing what way I liked them laid out before I stuck this card together.
I used 5 triangles to go across this C6 size card about a third of the way up the card.
I lined them all up using my ruler and the grid on my glass mat to make sure they are straight.
For the sentiment I cut a 5cm x 5cm square in white card to stamp the sentiment on then cut a 5.5cm x 5.5cm square of the same white card and used the Jet Black crisp dye ink to ink the paper and colour it black. I fixed the sentiment square onto the black square with foam pads so it was popped up a bit.
Before sticking anything down I drew a border around my card base with the Altenew fine liner 02 and then filled it around the edge with the Altenew brush marker to give a thick black line around the edge of the card. You can get both of these pens plus 2 more in the fine liner pen set.
Next I stuck the triangles I had chosen down in the line across my card and trimming the edges where they over hung the card, before taking some of the smaller triangles and placing the un-inked stamps around the top part of the card as I felt it looked just a bit too empty. I wanted to see what they might look like to add interest to the white space. I liked the way they were looking so added some in black and a few in yellow because I realised I had covered most of the yellow larger triangles so wanted to balance the card out a bit more.
Finally after doing all my stamping I fixed the sentiment onto the card using liquid glue so that I had a bit of wiggle time to make sure I was happy with the placement of it. I am so happy with the way this card turned out.
3. Anniversary Card
I mixed and matched supplies a bit again for this card. The "happy" sentiment die is from Heffy Doodle and so is the stamped anniversary sentiment. Again I wanted the text to be in a font that was not to curly to really fit with the masculine feel I was going for and these seemed the perfect choice from my supplies. The stamped anniversary is from the classic sentiments stamp set and I masked part of the stamp as it actually says "happy anniversary" however I wanted to make the Happy with the die cut to add some more interests and dimension to my card. In fact I cut the happy out 3 times in white card and once in the same white card but I inked the white card first withJet Black crisp dye ink. Then I layered them all on top of each other so it became nice and chunky.
TOP tips:
You can do so much more with your sentiment stamps than just ink and stamp them. Look at all the individual words and you can use them all separately to create your own sentiments that say exactly what you want. For this card I used a bit of tape over the word I did not want when I applied the ink and then removed the tape before stamping the stamp. This meant there was only ink on the word I needed. However if you are really brave you could also carefully cut your sentiment stamp to be individual words.
For my layout again I played around working out a new way to arrange all of those triangles until I found a way that I really liked the look of. For all of these cards I am trying to keep the patterns looking quite random which can be a challenge for me. By that I mean I didn't want to have all of just one colour way on a card or all of the spotty ones. Does anyone else struggle with making things look random rather than planned? 😂
Once I had the triangles all lined as I wanted I stuck them to the card with liquid glue and trimmed off any triangles that over hung the edges of the card. I cut a strip of white card which I stamped the anniversary sentiment onto and then cut an angle across the end of the strip.
Taking the Altenew fine liner 02 again and my ruler I drew a frame around the outside edge of my card going across all those triangles as well and then also edged the white anniversary sentiment strip the same way.
Here is a very quick video with my step by step process for this card
4. Encouragement card
This card used the most of those fun triangles of all of the cards I made for this set. I have put together a little video of my process putting this card together. In this card the sentiment is also from the Trigonometry stamp set so you can recreate this card in any colour way you like with 1 stamp and die set.
I am happy with this card and I think putting the triangles on an angle across the card leads your eye along the sentiment. With life the way it is at the moment I think I will be making a few of these in different colours to send out to my friends.
I think the whole set looks really nice together and it shows just how far you can stretch one stamp set. I feel like although it is masculine this set would be nice for anyone. Plus by just changing up the colours it would have a completely different look. This was a challenge for me but I am so happy with how this set looks and it has made me thing about doing the same thing with more of my stamp sets. By limiting myself in the supplies I used I really got inventive with how I was using this stamp set and I loved playing with it. I also have lots of other ideas for it now and I love getting the most from my stash. I hope this has inspired you and given you some ideas for making masculine projects and to get some ink on your stamps 😀
That is my 4 cards for the first part of my challenge and I am so excited to show you what I have done for the second part. I decided to use the same sort of colour way but change it up to be less masculine. If you would like to see what I did keep following my blog and I will have the post up for it soon.
I am going to enter these cards for the following challenges:
I can not tell you how excited I am to have been asked to be GDT for the incredible Sweet November for the release this week. I have had so much fun with the 2 new little mer tots. For this first card I have used the adorable June Mertot.
I decided to decoupage her as that is something I have not done with an image in ages and I love the way it make her look more 3D. I coloured her with my copics using the following colours:
I had so, so much fun creating this little fold out card for my adorable Nephew Rory who was 2 recently. I can't resist using Lions for my creations for him but I felt like I wanted to mix it up so used a few different stamp set from the brilliant Create a Smile range. The lions are from the "Fur real" set, the Lemur is from "Little Lemur" and the armadillo is from the "On a roll" set.
For the base of this card I used some craft card from Crafters Companion and first cut it at 4 inches before then scoring it at every 4 inches so it was a little concertina of 4' x 4' squares. I stuck the two strips I got from the one piece of A4 card together and then cut one more 4' x 4' square of the craft card to cover where I stuck the two pieces together. I knew I wanted to have a square for each leter of his name and a further one for the number 2 but you could just use more or less card to fit for any name.
The card that I used for the matting and layering are all craft
perfect card in various colours. I really like this card as it is not
only a good thickness but also has a bit of texture to it and a great
colour. I have to say that I have only just discovered this card
properly and I am going to be getting it and stocking it in my store for
sure so watch this space if you want to get your hands on it. For the
layers I cut a range of 3 and 3/4 inch squares, 3 and 1/2 inch squares
and the smallest squares are 3 and 1/4 inch. I then layered them all on
angles for the inside panels and stacked for the front one.
The letters are just die cut out of the same tonic carft perfect card so the colours all matched perfectly. The happy sentiment die is from Heffy Doodle as is the little birthday stamped sentiment (from the "super dudes" set). The "you're amazing fur real" sentiment is from the "Fur real" set.
Wow! the weather here in the UK is amazing today. I can't believe it is a bank holiday weekend and there is actually sun :D
I hope you are all having a good weekend.
I got some time to craft and have been playing with some of the newest Heffy Doodle release. I am loving this "Hello" die. I couldn't resist the "You're weird" stamp set when I saw it and the moon and this little cutie were just calling out to be coloured. I coloured the moon and the little space critter with Spectrum Noir tri-blend markers. I have to say they are a lot easier to carry a set of around than the spectrum noir illustrators.
I used the following markers for this make:
Moon - Brown Grey
Critter - Ice Grey and blue turquoise.
For the background I used 3 distress oxides, Tumbled glass, Peacock feathers and Chipped sapphire. I spritzed them and then added some dots of sparkle with a wink of stella brush pen. Then I mounted that on some navy blue card. The Hello I cut twice, once in white and then in the navy blue. The white die cut I added some more distress oxides to. I used Squeezed lemonade and fosilized amber to give it some colour, and then layered the inked one on top of the navy one slightly off center so that it looks like a shadow. I also added a touch of wink of stella to it for that bit more sparkle. For the finishing touch I put the little space critter on an action wobble so he moves around :D
I am entering this card for the following challenges:
I was going to throw the left overs from the navy blue Hello die away when I got inspired by the weather to make this next card. I used some white card that I again added some sqeezed lemonade distress oxide to just so it isn't such a bright white and has a bit of texture. Then I stuck the negative image of the Hello to it. Using a white pen I added some dots around the word and a frame. The back ground I went for 3 distress oxides ( squeezed lemonade, mustard seed and spiced marmalade) to ink through the "rays the roof" stencil. I finished the sentiment by using part of one of the sentiment in the "Quack me up" stamp set stamped in chipped sapphire distress oxide. The Hello sentiment I put on with foam pads so it stands out a bit from the rest of the card.
I hope you like both my creations and follow my little blog.
I am entering this card for the following challenges:
The "congrats" is a die by Heffy Doodle. I cut it out once in navy blue and then again in silver card and layered them up together to give a kind of shadow effect.
The little jelly fish was just too cute for me to ignore so I decided to show it off by using it to create a background as well as being the main star of the card. For the back ground jellyfish I stamped them in the mermaid lagoon distress ink then outlined them with a light blue spectrum noir marker just to make them look a little less flat.
Today I want to tell you all how I have bots of love for you all :D
Aren't these just the most adorable little robots that you have ever seen? I can not wait to get them onto more projects. They are a super sweet stamp set called Bots of Love by Heffy Doodle. Now if you have seen much of my blog you will realise how much of a huge Heffy Doodle fan I am, so you can just imagine how excited I am to tell you......
Yes that is right we can all try out to be part of the super talented team who show off these awesome products. There are different roles available so make sure you look to see which one could fit for you and then get over there and apply. As they say "you have got to be in it, to win it!"
So now onto some of my Heffy Doodle creations. For this card I used the "Bots of love" stamps for the main robot images and also for all of the cogs that I scattered across the background. I heat embossed the cogs using superfine silver Wow! embossing powder so that have a real metallic finish to them.
I wanted to play with the negative image from the Heffy Doodle "Hey" die cut as I do like to use up my scraps when I can and so have layers the grey card over the black to make the negative of the word really stand out. The grass at the bottom of the card is another Heffy Doodle die called "Grassy lass". I love that die set as it makes creating a grassy hill or scene so easy.
I could not resist also trying out these adorable stamps with some fabric paint. They just shouted out to me to try something a bit different and these baby grows were all the inspiration I needed.
The stamps worked a dream and the sentiments are so perfect for this kind of project. After a bit of trial and error I found I needed to be a lighter with my stamping than normal but otherwise it was quite easy to do. I love it when you can use one item for different kinds of projects :D
I am entering these baby grows for the following challenges:
Thi adorable little pumkin is from the veggie patch stamp set from Heffy Doodle. I have teamed it with another Heffy Doodle product, the "Hey" sentiment die. I love the way the negative of the die looks here. To add some more colour I used some Stampin' up! washi tape.
