Shaker card

Happy Saturday!

Its Ria here today.

Shaker cards seems to be on-trend now and I'm sharing today my take in doing one. My first attempt to make one can be found here.

My process:

• I die cut my paper with the rectangle shape, then a square die cut for my window.
• I then stamped the flamingos and leaves that will go inside the window including the hill shaped die cut. For the 2 flamingos? I fussy cut them after stamping, then adhere them direct to the background base paper
• I put the clear acetate in the window, then flip them over to put the beads in there
• I put the dimensional foam, securing all the 4 sides to keep the beads from falling. Then adhere the stamped background to seal the window
• I added the birthday sentiment and gem stones for some more embellishment 

 I got the beads from my local store but you can also use sequins as you wish.

Great way to add more fun to a birthday card

And the full card

Until then! Enjoy the rest of the weekend :)


Supplies used:
Special Edition stamps: Cupcake by Jaine Drake
A Few of my Favourite Things paper
Memento Texedo Black Inkpad
Rectangle & Square Dies
Colored Beads
Embossing folder

Scrappy Fun!

Hi All,

Nicole here with you again toady!

So this month I already created a card using the Sarah Hurley wood grain background texture stamp which you can find here, and the Sarah Hurley sentiment stamp set that you can find here. When I sat down to create this card I thought it would be fun to use the same two sets but to try and get a totally different look!

To start with I used the wood grain stamp to cover the background of a kraft card base.

I then used a Lawn Fawn die set to die cut lots of speech bubbles from scraps of Sarah Hurley papers. I picked out really fun and bold papers and paid them on the kraft as I cut them so I could make sure they all contrasted nicely.

I stamped lots of the baby related sentiments from the sentiment set onto the speech bubbles. This set is really great as there is a sentiment for everything and in this case sentiments plural! The sentiments look great stamped in bold black ink on the coloured paper too.

I arranged all of these onto the card along with some die cut hearts and the die cut birds from the lawn fawn coordinating stamp set. I love how simple yet fun this card is. I hope you enjoy it too!

Make your cards pop!

I'm not a huge fan of 3D layered cards I will admit that but occasionally I will use it just to give an image a little bit of a lift.

This particular card I made for someone special and I really wanted the image to 'stand out' as it were so I applied a few tricks to help it do just that.

I used my own stamp set "How's the weather" (who had one of those umbrella's?) and layered it up.

 I stamped the image once onto white card then again onto some coloured and patterned card. I think the secret here is to get in as many details as possible so I stamped and cut out a pocket and the gloved hand. They're tiny but worth the trouble.

 I rolled the pieces around my tube of Pritt glue to get a nice curve on them and coloured in the legs and puddle before layering everything up.

I made good use of my grey alcohol marker and coloured in the shadows. I think the grey is my favourite as it's so versatile.

Here you can see the dimension once everything was layered together.  I also added some glossy accents to the wellies and umbrella handle.

 I hope you like it.

Jaine x

An Adventurous Layout

Good morning, folks, it's Susie here today and I have a 12" layout to show you.  It's been a wee while since I've done this size of layout, but I decided that I had too many photos to include to make a smaller layout!

So, I started with a 12" piece of green card and gathered all of the green card and journalling bits from Sarah's A Few of My Favourite Things Kits.  (Outdoors and nature seemed to demand green backgrounds!!)  I loved the "Life is a Wonderful Adventure" card and wanted that to be my centre piece.  I cut out the ends of the banner with a craft knife so that I could layer my photos behind the banner, like so:

There is also a strip of the green leaf card and some of the Snip and Stick leaves added to my layout.   Also included in the kit was this fantastic checklist banner:

I decided to secure it with a couple of eyelets as I thought that it suited the theme.  But, if you decide to curl the banner to add dimension, like I did, its best to wait until your ink has actually dried, otherwise you leave smudges, doh!!!!!

I added a little journalling to complete the memories but refrained from adding any other items to my already rather busy page.

Have a lovely day, folks.

Susie x 

Super quick Valentines Day Card!

Hello, and Happy Saturday! It's Carol here today and a wee while ago Sarah asked us to have a wee think about things we could do on the blog, one of my ideas is "10 Minute Makes" and the other will be revealed on the 1st of February!

This is a super busy birthday weekend for me, but I thought I would share a very Clean & Simple Valentines Day Card with you all. Though it can be used for any occasion to be honest. I will take you through the various steps I used to make the finished card. 

1 here is my assortment of pretties that I used. I find it easier to look things out first once you have an idea.

2  Wipe your piece of white card with your anti static bag, stamp your Zendoodle Heart from the Zendoodle Fashion Stamps with Perfect Medium Ink or whichever embossing ink you have. Stamp them onto your card, cover with embossing powder, tap off the excess and heat.

3  Measure a piece of red card as a banner across the card, roughly place your hearts where you would like them and add some bakers twine to make them "dangle" from the big heart. Place some foam squares behind the hearts to give you some depth and dimension.

4 Stamp the "Me & You" sentiment from the Sentiments Stamp Set using black ink and there you go.

Ingredients.

Zendoodle Heart from the Zendoodle Fashion Set

Perfect Medium Ink Pad

Sentiment Stamps Set

Card Blank, red card and bakers twine from stash.

Thanks for popping by today and I hope this inspires you to try heat embossing, a 10 minute make, a clean and simple card or all three.

Have a great weekend,

Carol x

You Are My Sunshine

Hi and welcome to the Sarah Hurley inspiration blog.

It's my (Clare) turn today to post where I'll be sharing a journal page which is part of my 'try something new' this year. And wait for it, I have only gone a dug out my Smash book which has been in hiding for the last 4 or 5 years, eeeeep....think I need a lie down!

 

Here's how I created my page.

1 - Using black ink stamp the (Rainy Day) Charm Street girl directly onto your page.

2 - Create a mask and place it over the image.

3 - Now colour the entire page using Distress Ink. Here I used mowed lawn and broken china.

4 - Still leaving the mask in place, stamp random images around the page. Here I used clouds and rain      from from the Rainy Day Charm Street stamp set, circle from a previous 'AFOMFT' monthly kit. I      also used a text stamp from the mini background stamp set. 

     

    A little tip, if you don't want a hard edge when stamping don't use an acrylic block. Here I wrapped

    the stamp around my finger then pressed down on the paper.

5 - I now wanted to ground my image so I used the border stamp from my Ronnie The Robot stamp        set (Special Editions).

6 - Next I created some lines, I've seen people use old credit cards, store cards etc but I don't have one      so I used the edge of a piece of plastic that was lying around my craftroom lol.

7 - Using a stencil from a previous 'AFOMFT' kit and my broken china distress ink pad I created              some triangles.

8 - Now it's time to add some detailing with the mowed lawn distress ink (inside the circles), a black        fine liner pen and a white gel pen. I love how this makes the stamped images pop!

9 - Every page needs some form of journalling. Stamp the text from the Rainy Day Charm Street

     stamp set onto white card then doodle a border using the black fine liner pen. Fix in place using          double sided tape.

10 - Finally colour in the main image using pens or pencils of your choice.

Let's go shopping!

Ronnie The Robot (Special Editions- Clare Brown) stamp set

Charm Street Cuties - Rainy Day stamp set

Mini backgrounds stamp set

A Few Of My Favourite Things - kit

Acrylic block - small

Acryllic block - medium

white pen - Ranger

black pen - Memento

black ink pad - memento

Ta da!!

Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you again soon!

Clare c

February Calendar page - Jaine

It's my turn again to show my calendar page and this one is for February.

Two of my girls have a birthday in February so I wanted to create February's page using a photo in a scrapbook style. I turned to some of my pocket page supplies to put it together and I'm pleased with how it looks.

I'll be mixing photo pages and journal pages as I go along depending on what the month means to me.

Here's the photo half.

Happy creating,

Jaine x

Birthday card

Happy Saturday!

Its Ria here today sharing a quick birthday card using new stamps from Sarah and Jaine.

For today's project, I used a combination of three different stamps sets from Sarah.

How I did this card:

• I first stamped the card base background with a leaf from Be Amazing stamp set.  
• I then die cut my pattern papers from Sarah, cutting some printed elements like the heart from the Snip N Stick embellishment sheet
• For the birthday sentiment, I white embossed over the gray shaped paper
• I also stamped hearts and added some sequins randomly. I also stamped the banner and colored them with colored pencils. The Robin is also stamped and I added some colors into the stamped image using colored pencils

And here's the full card

Supplies used
Charm Street Cuties Thinking of You stamp set
Special Edition stamp - Robins by Jaine Drake
Be Amazing Girl stamp 
Patterned papers from A Few of my Favorite Things
Shaped Dies, Sequins
Colored pencils

Until next time!

Create a Calendar - February (Claire N)

Morning, thank you for joining me (Claire N) today as I share with you my next page in this mini series where we are creating a calendar.

February, traditionally is portrayed as the month of Valentines Day, but I wanted to do something a bit different. 

As I stand at my kitchen window, seeing what I can see out in the garden, I find myself watching our resident Robin bravely defending his territory from the fencing panels around our oil tank. They are fabulous feisty little birds either that sit alert ready to chase off intruders, or plump and fluffed up against the cold. Our little character sits atop his fence panels alongside the evergreen Ceanothus plant (that unusually already has a couple of blue flowers in bloom....in January!).

So it is that scene that I wanted to create, using Jaine's Robin's stamps, originally designed for Christmas, so I was conscience not to make this piece look festive.

This month again I have prepared this page for February for 2016, so that when I have made Decembers page, I have a full calendar ready for the following year, hope you will continue to join us all the way too.

Materials used

Calendar template

Calender component stamps

A4 white stamping card

Special Editions Stamps - Robins by Jaine Drake

Memento Ink & Marker Pen

Distress Ink Markers - Vintage Photo, Barn Door, Peeled Paint

Home Sweet Home

Morning all!

It's my (Clare) turn today where I'll be sharing a card tutorial using Sarah's Doodle Home stamp set and the negative part of a metal die.

Here's the finished card....

And here's how it was created.....

1 -  Cut a piece of gingham designer paper 5mm shorter than your card blank. I used a 15cm x 15cm         square blank card so I cut the paper to 14.5 x 14.5cm.

      

     Sarah has some FREE dotty paper in her shop  as an alternative. Stick in place using double              sided tape or the glue of your choice.

2 - Cut a piece of white card 11cm x 9cm.

3 - Draw a line where the top of your scallop border will be. You will use this as a guide when                  stamping.

4 - I was uncertain where I wanted my houses and trees so I stamped some using brown ink, then cut        them out. I could then move them around until I was happy with the layout. Once satisfied I                stamped two houses and one tree directly onto the white card stock. 

5 - Place some metal die clouds onto the top of the white card stock remembering to go partly off the      card.

6 - You can now stick this down on top of the gingham paper.

7 - Die cut a scallop border, I used a Tim Holtz one.

8 - Using one of the cut out trees, add some foam pads on the back and place beside the stamped tree      and house. This gives your card a little depth.

9 - Stamp the home sweet home sentiment using black ink. Add some foam pads and stick down at          the bottom right of the card.

 Here's a little close up....

 Here's a picture of the card from a different angle....

Let's go shopping in Sarah's Shop.

Doodle Home stamp set

Dotty papers (FREE)

Black Memento ink

Rich cocoa Memento ink

Slim rectangle clear acrylic stamping block

Medium rectangle clear acrylic stamping block

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial today and thanks for stopping by

Clare x

Birthday Affirmations!

Hi all, It is Nicole here with you today!

Christmas has been and gone and so has New Years so it is back in to the swing of regular crafting for me!

I wanted to make a birthday card with a bit of a difference. I used one of Sarah's journalling cards as my patterned paper base to make a card with a bit more of a message than just happy birthday.

I started with the Sarah Hurley wood grain background texture stamp which you can find here. I used this to add a surround to the edge of a card blank so that it was not plain around the edges of my journalling card.

I die cut a ticket from some Sarah Hurley note paper and stamped a stamp from the Sarah Hurley sentiment stamp set that you can find here. I masked off the sentiment so that I just had the happy birthday part. I just used some washi tape for this.

I cut out some affirming and empowering words from one of Sara's kits and inked up the edges of these and the ticked with walnut stain distress ink.

I adhered the journaling card down and then glued all the words and tickets down. I added some stars down also.

 This card is perfect for the person who got it  - someone who does a lot of documenting and loves typewriters, as well as it being their birthday. I really love getting to use up supplies in lots of different ways!

Dream A Little Dream

I hope you are all well and haven't been blown away in this wild weather! Today, it is my (Susie) turn to show you a little something and I decided that I fancied stamping one of the lovely Doodle Dolls. This one is called Dream a Little Dream and is lovely and easy to colour. I stamped her onto Kraft card (aka the inside of my Christmas wrapping paper!) and coloured her with my Polychromo pencils. After shading and colouring her face, I stamped her beautiful big eyes and added a little more shading for her nose and her eyebrows. After that, I decided I would give her a little smile.....must have been feeling brave, huh?!

As is pretty normal for me, I kept the layout really simple to show off the gorgeous teal/turquoise paper and image. (Have I ever told you that my favourite colour is teal/turquoise?!!). The papers, heart and turquoise gems are from various A Few of My Favourite Things kits. I decided to add a little doodling and Stardust Stickles to finish off my card.

And here is a wee close up of Doodle Doll Dream a Little Dream Girl:

 

 

 

New Year, new stamps, new journal page.

Oh my goodness there is nothing nicer than starting a brand new year with a brand new journal and I have a few lined up and ready but I've still a few pages in my big Moleskin which is very precious to me, so even though cracking open a new one is very tempting I've gone back to the old faithful.

A big reason for doing this was I wanted to test out my new background stamp on a large area. This is the stamp I wanted to try out, It's called Pebbles and I adore it

I did use it already on the calendar page for January but I wanted to test it out in repeating across the page.

After colouring my background with a grungy grey colour, I stamped the pebbles with black Versafine ink to cover the page. To stop it looking too much like a pattern I turned it upside down and stamped in landscape mode once too. There are a few gaps and if I'd thought about it I could have taken a black fine liner pen and drawn a few rough stones in to fill the gaps.

With that done, to turn it into a journal page, I decided to turn to an all time favourite technique of mine, silhouetting. All you need is a handful of images cut from fashion magazines.

I chose which one I wanted and roughly cut her out whilst also taking a piece of inky paper from a previous play session. I glued her onto the reverse of this inky piece of paper and then cut around her.

It's best here to use small scissors and cut as much detail as possible, go in after with a craft knife to get into the really tricky bits. The more detail you can cut out the better the silhouette.

Here she is on my background. The pebbles have created places to add some words and journaling.

I cut the title out again because I didn't like the way the black sat on the grey page so I just did it again and placed it over the top slightly away so the black would become a shaddow.

Have a good crafty year everyone.

Jaine x