Hey Foxy Lady

Good afternoon - sorry I'm a bit late posting today but I had to revise my plans on what I was posting today.  I had planned an extensive demonstration of all the exciting things you can do with our new foils from Thermoweb but I hit a few snags (they are new to me too!) and rather than post something which won't help you understand what they can do or help you avoid the pitfalls I found (and therefore waste foil - better that I do that so it doesn't cost you!) I thought I'd postpone it until I try some tips I found.  My issues were related to the printing and foiling with a laminator - it seems that because I have a colour laser rather than a black and white one, it can cause some issues so I want to try a black and white one to compare before I show you what to do.   I am also trying to video it, not something I have ever done before so bear with me (and don't laugh when you see and here me!) and I will try and have it sorted for next week.

So, for today I decided to do a little bit of foil but also to show off my favourite new stamp and die set that has just arrived from Lil' Inker Designs.

I adore this fox - it is such a versatile set as the stamps that match the die have different sets of eyes so you can do girls, boys and different experssions.    I die cut her from orange and white card and simply used 3 pencils to add a little shading a furry texture.  Stamp the face and stick him together (I added stick-it to the back of the card before I started to make it super quick and easy!)

I wanted to sit her on a little hill so I die cut a blue back ground using the rectangle dies.  For the green hill I wanted to add foil so I covered a strip of green card with Stick-it and then simply pressed the lime foil onto the sticky surface and it you get super shiny foiled card -yummy!  To make it hill shaped I die cut with the rectangle to get the stitched edge and then rather than using the standard grassy border die I used the grassy cupcake die and sat the bottom edge just inside so it wouldn't cut the bottom but cut a slightly curved top to make a hill shape.

The sentiment comes as two lines but I did a little stamp surgery and cut in between the lines with very sharp scissors so I could stamp it as one long banner across the card.  This isn't as scary as it sounds and it just goes back together as originally intended but gives you more scope from your stamps.

NEWS FROM THE STORE:

• Lil Inker Designs are live in store
• Thermoweb ICraft foils are in store and some colours are already selling out
• Altenew have FINALLY shipped the order I placed around 10 weeks ago and I hope it will be in store by Tuesday.
• Mama Elephant's latest release and massive restocks will also be here this week

 Catch you next week

The Easter Bunny Came Early

I've been having lots of fun this week Avery Elle's Easter Blessings stamp set.  It is such fun to colour and much more versatile than you might first think!  Here's a little collection of what I've made with it ready for Easter.

First of all I made Easter decorations using some papier-mâché products I found on Amazon - an egg and a little egg shaped bud vase.   To stamp onto a curved object can be a bit tricky so I got around it by stamping on white tissue instead.  I simply gave the papier-mâché products a couple of coats of white acrylic paint and then applied my images onto them when dry.   The images were stamped and embossed in gold powder and coloured with pencils (make sure you give the tissue a good coat with a dust buddy first and stamp onto the non-shiny side of the tissue as that way the pencil blends better)  Once coloured trim around the image leaving just a thin margin and carefully apply a thin layer of pva type glue and stick the centre of the image down first and work out the edges taking care not to tear the tissue as you go.   The bud vase is flat but I used the same process for ease of colouring.  You can find eggs which split and can therefore be filled with chocolate or you could make lots of eggs and hang from a branch - you could even just select individual flowers or the bunnies to add to smaller eggs ;-)

In fact selecting the bunnies was just what I did to decorate the little basket full of eggs which was inspired by the video Lawn Fawn shared on their blog a few days ago, but I wanted to do a version too in case you'd missed it as its such a cute idea for Easter.

The major difference I made to the one they made is that I wanted mine to be stronger as my little eggs were too heavy for a paper version with very little glue holding it together so here is what I did differently....

Once I'd die cut my cupcake using the grassy cupcake die from green cardstock, I placed the die on top of the card and moved it up a couple of mm to get a curved line following the bottom of the shape and ran around the bottom of the die with an embossing tool to give me a fold line.  I then used sharp pointed scissors to trim up to the line every few mm to cut little tabs all the way along.  Once folded these give you much more surface to adhere your base to giving strength to the basket.

For a clean finish and also to add more strength I added a circle inside as well as outside - the stitched circle dies fit perfectly!

Add some fussy cut bunnies (or whatever takes your fancy - flowers for Mother's Day?) around the outside to decorate and a strip of card for a handle and you've got a pretty nifty little basket.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Lawn Fawn restocks have finally shipped - they will be in store by Tuesday afternoon.
• Mama Elephant's latest release has been delayed - I hope it will ship on the 20th if they get the stock they are hoping for by then (I got my order in on the 1st March but they are now very slow at turning orders around)
• I am hopeful that Altenew will finally ship the order I've been waiting for almost 2 months for this week too.
• Lil' Inker Designs will ship on Monday so should be in store by the end of the week.
• We have a tiny amount of Hero Arts restocks coming this week - we managed to get another 3 of each of the ombre ink pads - I tried to order MANY more but Hero Arts didn't produce enough - they are expecting more stock at the end of March so I will get them back again in bigger quantities in April.  Sorry but that's the best I can do!
• Neat and Tangled is en route.
• Sugar Pea Designs, Waffle Flower Designs and Reverse Confetti will ship soon with new releases and restocks.

Catch you next week

Tara