Just For You - Holiday Stamps Card After The Holidays!

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a Happy New Year and a happy Thursday!

I've barely gotten over the fact that Christmas has been and gone [sob]. That magical time of year always seems to be over so quickly! Apart from all the yummy food and fabulous presents and pretty decorations and wonderful traditions, I also just love creating Christmas cards. Something about all those holiday supplies really brings out my festive spirit! So, with my mourning of Christmas having passed, I thought it only fair I don't put away my Christmas stamps just yet!

I love it when themed stamps can do double duty. I decided to use the Altenew Holiday Bow stamp set, the Altenew Starry Night stamp set, and the Concord & 9th Happy Plaids stamp set and give them a post-holiday workout:

Gorgeous, right?! I love how this turned out!

I used a couple of shades of dusky pink to stamp my bow then fussy cut it out. I used the reverse of one of the plaid stripes stamps to create my 'ribbon' on my card - inking up the colours and dabbing/stamping the ink unevenly really gives a realistic crushed velvet appearance!

I decided my 'gift' needed a bit more pizzazz on the 'wrapping', so I heat embossed the tree stamp from the Starry Night stamp set all over the card front then blended some ink lightly over it to bring the detail out!

I fashioned my own gift tag by trimming the shape by hand and punching a hole in it. The sentiment from the Neat & Tangled Just For You stamp set was the perfect finishing touch, along with some sparkly ribbon of course! I adhered the tag and the bow with dimensional glue fell to give everything some custom dimension!

I'd love to hear what you think of this card. Is there someone you know who'd love to receive it? Thanks for stopping by!

Sparkly Happy Holidays Card

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a happy Thursday!

I've definitely caught the Christmas bug now. I'm even itching to put my tree up already, when it doesn't usually go up until right before Christmas!

I don't know what's wrong with me.

No matter though, if catching the Christmas bug early means I can play with gorgeous Christmas stamp sets already then it's all good. Case in point: the beautiful Altenew Starry Night stamp set. Last week I used just a sentiment from it, but this week I wanted to give that sparkly border a turn:

Stunning, right?! I love how this turned out!

I stamped the border twice and that was all it took to create it! I wanted to give a more frosted 'messy' look though, so I swiped my Versamark inkpad around the edges before sprinkling all my embossing powder on.

I stamped the sentiment then heat embossed that too, before using some Distress Inks to build up the deep rich red colour that is beautifully intense at the edges and lightening/brightening towards the centre.

Some splatters of water and glimmer mist and I was all done!

I'd love to hear what you think of this card. Is there someone you know who'd love to receive it? Thanks for stopping by!

Shoji Lantern

I've got a little Christmas decoration project to share today in an east meets west vibe as I've created a Christmas lantern based on a Japanese Shoji Screen.

It may look complex but it actually only took an hour to make and is pretty simple.  You just need thick card in your chosen colour (I went blue as it will be used in my dining room this Christmas), a rectangle die, a sheet of vellum, stamp of your choice, embossing powder in your choice of colour and strong glue.   If you want to light it, you will also need some battery operated lights that do not get hot - DO NOT USE A CANDLE WITH A REAL FLAME.   I used a small set of leds wired on copper  (£10 for 8 sets on Amazon)

I forgot to take step by step photos as I went, but I have drawn up some plans for you instead so you have the exact measurements of mine if you want to replicate it, but you can scale it up or down to suit your stamp or die cut design.

I started with 2 sheets of A4 navy card and scored along the longest side at 10cm and 20cm and then trimmed at 20.5cm to give me a small folded edge to glue my two pieces together.   I then turned the card and scored at 13.5cm along the height, leaving the remaining card stock to fold in to form the bottom of the lantern.  (trim off the extra 0.5cm from that edge as it will get in the way.  To create the holes for the vellum panels I used the 5th largest die in the Hero Arts Rectangle Infinity set.

To create the legs I used another sheet of navy card trimmed to the same width (20.5cm) but this time with 2 5cm deep strips scored at 10cm and 20cm and at 1cm down to create a folded area to glue to the underneath of the base - this creates your feet and adds that oriental feel to the shape.  I used the dies to ensure I got the gaps the same as the panels - just line them up and let them hang over the edge as in the image below.

Put those aside and create your panels - either use a die 2 sizes larger than your holes or trim 4 pieces of vellum to size so it covers the panels but stays inside the frame.

Dust each vellum sheet with an embossing powder tool as vellum will hold every bit of loose powder without it.  Stamp your chosen image - I used the gorgeous sparkly tree from AlteNew's Starry Night Stamp set, topping it with a star from the same set and embossing it with Silver Sparkle powder from Hero Arts.  I added a few dots of teal glitter glue to some of the elements just to make it fit my decor better but it really doesn't need it - here's the silver version.

If you didn't want to go down the embossing route - you could add a delicate die cut like the Captivating Mandala or a Christmas sentiment like Li'l Inker Designs Peace on Earth.

Once your panels are decorated - glue them behind your frame - using a strong wet glue like Lawn Fawn's Glue Tube makes it easier to align the panels as you have a little wiggle-time with wet glue.   That glue was also my choice to glue all the elements together as it really is very strong.  Add glue to the narrow tabs and glue to two panels of the lantern together and then glue the base so the folded in tabs hold.

Turn the lantern upside down and use more glue to adhere the legs to the underneath of the base and glue the narrow tabs to hold the legs together.

Add lights and celebrate your achievements with a small sherry (well it is nearly Christmas!)

NEWS FROM THE STORE

It's going to be another busy week.

We were inundated with orders on our day off and over the following couple of days thanks to the freepost code we gave out in our newsletter - if you missed it then make sure you sign up for our  newsletter here so you don't miss future offers.   https://sevenhillscrafts.co.uk/community-links/newsletter.html   So it will be Tuesday before we catch up on packing orders.

Otherwise we expect the follow items to be added to store this week:

• Reverse Confetti's latest release
• Neat and Tangled's latest release
• Ranger Alcohol inks and some other Tim Holtz bits and pieces
• Mama Elephant's latest release will be live in store on the 15th
• Concord and 9th as soon as we get it after it ships (we hope that will be Monday so we should have it by the end of the week customs willin)

That's all for now folks.

Catch you later

Tara

Sparkle Dot Card

Hi everyone, Taheerah here wishing you a happy Thursday!

As we head towards the festive season things are definitely starting to get a bit more sparkly.

This time of year always conjures up images of fairy lights for me! I just love how they cheer up any setting! So that's just what I wanted to capture with today's card:

Stunning, right?! I love how this turned out!

I wanted to create a random dot pattern to mimic the lights but I decided to recreate a festive feel but with a twist on the traditional light colours! Who says fairy lights have to be white?!

I used the Ranger Detail Ink Blending Tools to create my background. All I did was ink up the tip with some Versamark ink and use that to stamp my pattern - so easy! I then heat embossed most of the dots with a metallic platinum embossing powder and some of my dots with sparkly copper embossing powder!

The sentiment from the Altenew Starry Night stamp set works so well with this card, don't you think? I heat embossed it with black embossing powder and I was all done!


I'd love to hear what you think of this card. Is there someone you know who'd love to receive it? Thanks for stopping by!