Bright and bold mini mice shakers.

Hi everybody,

Hope you're well.

I've got some bright and bold watercoloured shakers to share with you today...

Which I brought, slightly, back down to earth with the help of some vellum.

And, just for a change, (she jokes), I used all Mama Elephant goodies...I can't help it, I just look at them and I need to play with them!

I started by die cutting three circles from my panel.  I then took the uber cute little mice from the 'Tandem Rides' set, and stamped them out on my leftover circles.  I coloured them using the Zig Clean Colour Pens with water - such vibrant colours!  

I then used the 'Zenith Borders' set;  repeatedly stamping out one of the borders and clear heat embossing, to create my background, ready for some smooshing and washing across with various Distress Inks, (Mermaid Lagoon, Mustard Seed, and Picked Raspberry).  Now I love me some bright and bold colour - but my background ended up resembling a ker-azy tie-dye t-shirt..a bit much, even for me, so I muted it slightly by covering in vellum.

I adhered some acetate behind my windows, surrounded in shaker tape, added all the delicious sequins and glitters I wanted to use, and covered the back with a piece of acetate - it's such an easier way of sealing everything in so you can then line your background up without needing an extra 3 hands!  I cut the 'Friends' die a few times and covered the front in Black Sparkle embossing powder.  I then stamped out the 'Happy Birthday' from the 'Woodland Gifts' set, (love, love, love this font!), and, again, heat embossed in Black Sparkle.  I added the little speech bubble from the 'Tandem Extras' set for a bit of extra fun and lined up my little critters along the back, adhering them to a piece of card, and then putting the whole thing together.  There was quite a lot going on already (understatement of the year!), so I skipped on embellishments!

Oh, I also added a little trim of die cut grass behind each little window - but it kind of got swallowed up by all the mayhem haha. 

As always, everything is linked below, so go check out the cuteness.

See you next week where, I promise, I'll 'step away from the Mama Elpehant'...maybe ;)

Jillx

                                                                                                         

The Boys are back in town

Hi everyone,

So, this week, it's all about the boys. boys, boys!

I know it's a bit of a 'thing' that we as crafter's all share a dreaded fear of 'men's cards', but honestly, I think that's only because it conjures up visions involving generic images of golfing, fishing, cars, and gardening!  It doesn't have to be that way surely!  

I'm a massive fan of graphic cards, and love nothing more than a cool background with a bold sentiment - so that's what I went for.

I started with one of the cool designs from Mama Elephant's 'Zennith Borders' set, stamped it out three times, and heat embossed it in white powder to use as a resit.  I then washed over using various blue toned Distress Inks - Tumbled Glass, Broken China, and Salty Ocean - and set aside to dry.  I cut a panel of vellum, slightly thinner than my background, and, built up and stamped out this huge, awesome sentiment from Mama Elephant's 'Happy Everything' set, (still one of my favourite sets...EVER!), and heat embossed in Platinum Sparkle (...even boys deserve a little sparkle in their world!).

The Zennith Borders set includes a bunch of little geometric shapes that work alongside the different borders, so I took the little triangle from the set, stamped it out a load of times, and heat embossed them all, again, in Platinum sparkle.  I then cut the shapes out, and used them to build up the graphic design of the card.  I fixed my vellum panel to my background by adding tiny dots of glue behind each little triangle, so that nothing would show through the front.  

Now granted, this isn't exactly a 'butch/blokey' card, but that's kind of my point - does it really need to be?  I don't think so, and I know that any of the chaps in my life would be happy as Larry to receive a less stereotypical card!

I hope you like it.  As always, all the products I used are linked below, so be sure to go check them out.

See you next week.

Jillx