On Point Birthday

Whilst I had the Concord and 9th Stuck on You dies out for Friday's post, I thought I'd play with the stamps too whilst they were on my desk - I love how there are so many elements that you can mix and match together and I really wanted to play with a textured background for a change as its not something I do often.

I wanted a simple one layer card, but also wanted to have a water coloured look - so started with a nice thick base card that wouldn't warp too much with water.  I stamped and masked the pots, added the cacti, the flowers and sign to create my scene and kept all my masks to the side.  Using the elements to decorate the pots with blue ink finishes the scene.  I stamped all the cacti elements again onto masks for later.

I then used Altenew ink cubes on my block with the tiniest bit of water sprayed onto each colour to get my watercolour look.  I used 3 sets - Warm and Cozy, Sea Shore and Tropical Forest.

Then it's a case of covering it all up with your masks so you can stamp the dotted background for some textured fun  (I used morning frost - the palest grey from the Warn Gray set) and then stamping the x's across the bottom.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• Unfortunately, Mama Elephant had an issue with one item in this month's release so it shipped very late and we haven't actually received it yet so we won't be able to release it today.  It is due to arrive tomorrow but our deliveries now come late afternoon as we're further out from the depot (we used to get them around lunchtime) so it unlikely to be live until late tomorrow or early Tuesday.
• Our Concord and 9th delivery is on hold in US Customs.  We will try to get it cleared tomorrow but it will then still take time to get to us and clear UK customs.  Hopefully we'll get it before the end of the week.
• Our AlteNew delivery is in transit so should be here at some point this week.
• Both Newton's Nook and Sugar Pea Designs have new releases on Friday 20th.   We will have the Newton's Nook release on the day as it has already shipped to us.  Sugar Pea have not shipped, nor provided an estimated shipping date so I don't know when we will get that but it is on order.
• Lil' Inker Designs have a new release on the 23rd which we should have available on the day.
• Our massive Lawn Fawn restock order will hopefully ship this week and be here next week.

Don't forget we are now running our new monthly challenges in our customer only group on Facebook which is proving a bit hit with around 400 members already.  We hoped it would be a great place for customers to "meet" and share projects, hints and tips and ask questions in a friendly environment and it is proving to do exactly that.  Click the link to join but you have to be a current customer of our store so will need to provide either an order number or the full name you order under and agree to the rule so we can confirm your membership and let you in!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/shcvips/

Plants that will never die!

I love plants, but I am hopeless at remembering to water them, so I favour a succulent when it comes to house plants and I have lots of cacti and succulent themed things around my house too.  So when Concord and 9th brought out a cacti set, I had to play with it and I was really drawn to the idea of making paper cacti that could last forever without being watered at all so I've been making 3D versions this week using the die.

I started with the shorted cacti and die cut it 4 times from green card and folded each down the middle and glued them together.  To create the flower I used a fringe die and cut it from hot pink card and then rolled it quilling style to create a tight roll before opening up the fringe to make the "petals".  At that point I turned it over and added glue to the base to make the bottom of the roll solid.   Once dry I cut a slit across the base with a craft knife so I could slot it onto one side of the cacti (add a little glue to the slit to keep it in place)   I finished with a blob of liquid pearl in the centre.

For the pot I used the pot die but you need to chop off some bits to make it make a square pot.

You cut off the top tabs and the overhanging pot rim - basically just follow the diagonal line of the rest of the pot.  You can see here what I cut away.

You can either just die cut the pots of use the co-ordinating stamps to add shape and decoration (there are spots, stripes or crosses that fit the shape when stamped twice)  Then glue the tabs together, fill with shredded crepe paper or tissue and pop in your cacti.

For the classic "western movie" cacti, I cut two from dark green cardstock and then cut halfway down from the top of one and halfway up from the bottom of the other and then slotted them together to get the 3D shape.  (I used a line of glue to make them more ridged so the sides didn't flap and move)

I created the flower the same way but I cut the tops off the fringe before rolling to get a smaller flower - you can get lots of variation from the fringe - even make a multi-coloured flower by rolling different colours of fringe around as you go along.

I popped that one into a tiny terracotta pot and used the zigzag die from the set to add some decoration to it.

That's all from me today - I'll be back on Sunday with my usual blog post and round-up.

Tara