Happy Birds with Yana

Hello friends! This is Yana and I hope you are having a fabulous weekend!

I love to create my own patterns using stamps and I’ve been wanting to stamp a pattern using the images from the Happy Birds stamp set. I finally have stamped one and I love the way it turned out.

I mounted 3 of the 4 birds (I didn’t use one with the spread out wings) onto a long clear block and stamped repeatedly onto a white cardstock panel using black ink. You can stamp these one by one, but it saves a lot of time when stamping multiples at a time.

This stamp set has additional dashed and dotted details that can be stamped onto the birds bellies, so I stamped those onto some of my images. At this point my pattern was looking black and white and, truth be told, rather boring.

I didn’t want to do a lot of Copic coloring, so I looked for a simpler and faster way to color the bodies of these birds. Most of them have a perfectly round body, so using a circle stamp to add color did the trick. After looking through my stash I came across a ball from the Big Deal stamp set and used the back side (the flat side) to add ink onto most of my birds. I went with Last Leaf, Falling For Blue and Ocean Drive ink colors. To add color to the non-round bird I made a mask and stamped just the belly using Wild Mango.

I still had a lot of white left on my pattern, so I used Copic markers to color in bird’s tails and feathers on their heads. I didn’t do any shading, just added a flat layer of color. I also used Copics to add shading around my images and create the illusion of dimension. I outlined each bird with C3 and blended it out using C1 and the Colorless Blender markers.

I adhered my panel onto an A2 top folding card base and added a sentiment that reads “I Hope This Puts A Big Smile On Your Face”. At this point I also adhered googly eyes onto some images (this is how I envisioned these birds right from the start) and used Nuvo Drops in white and a white gel pen to color some of the black stamped dots on bird’s bellies white.

Have fun stamping!

Featured Supplies

For your convenience, here is a list of the featured supplies used on today's project(s), along with links to purchase. Please note: this list contains affiliate links.

WPlus9 Happy Birds Stamp Set Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Big Deal Stamp Set Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Falling For Blue Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Last Leaf Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Wild Mango Dye Ink Pad Shop at: WP9
WPlus9 Ocean Drive Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	Simon Says Stamp Intense Black Ink Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Self-adhesive Googly Eyes Shop at: SSS | SC | HA | AZ	Neenah 80LB Solar White Cardstock Shop at: SSS | AZ	Neenah 110 Lb Solar White Cardstock Shop at: SSS | AZ
Simon Says Stamp Black Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Simon Says Stamp Masking Paper Shop at: SSS	Hero Arts Heat Embossing Gun PW200 Shop at: SSS | SC | HA | AZ	Hero Arts White Embossing Powder PW110 Shop at: SSS | SC | HA | AZ	ScraPerfect Crafting Pouch Shop at: SSS | AZ
Tonic Gloss White Nuvo Crystal Drops Shop at: SSS | SC | AZ	Uni-ball Pen Signo Gel White Two Pack Shop at: SSS	Copic Colorless Blender Marker Shop at: SSS | AZ	Copic Sketch Marker C1 Cool Gray Shop at: SSS | AZ	Copic Sketch Marker C3 Cool Gray Grey Shop at: SSS | AZ
Scrapbook Adhesives Black Foam Tape Shop at: SSS | AZ

JUNE 2016 RELEASE: Friends for All Seasons: Summer with Maureen

Hi there, it's Maureen here for day two of the WPlus9 June release. Today I'm sharing a card using the adorable new set - Friends For All Seasons: Summer. This is the next installment in the Friends For All Seasons series, illustrated by Stephany Zerbe. And it is so cute!

AVAILABLE JUNE 5, 2016

Friends For All Seasons: Summer
4x6" Clear Stamp Set
$15 USD

FFS: Summer Companion Die
Steel Rule Die
$14 USD

This set is filled with adorable images and sentiments, and although that little dog may be the "star" of this set, I couldn't resist using the kites to make a super CAS card. Notice that the kite has the outline image and a solid image. This made it quick and easy to add some bright pops of color!

I paired the kite from the set with a couple of oldie but goodies. I used Happy Birds to add in some stylized clouds, and a little border action from Borders & Backgrounds 2 compliments the other images perfectly.

Repeatedly stamping accessory images in a stamp set is a great way to stretch your stash. While the kite is meant to be an accent, here it becomes the focal image. And the beautiful rainbow of WPlus9 PURE COLOR ink pops against the black and white.

There are a lot of great products to introduce this week. I can't wait to see what the rest of the team has created!

Giveaway Alert

Would you like to win a $25 store credit to wplus9.com? Just leave a comment below by 9:00 a.m. EST on 06/03/16 to enter and we will select one random winner from all comments. What do you think the next character in the Friends For All Seasons series will be? Winner will be posted on our Winners page by noon on 06/04/16.

Featured Supplies

For your convenience, here is a list of all of the supplies (or equivalents) used on today's project(s), along with links to purchase. Please note: this list does contain some affiliate links.

WPlus9 Happy Birds	WPlus9 PURE COLOR Sweet Gelato Dye Ink	WPlus9 PURE COLOR Dye Ink - Pumpkin Spice	PURE COLOR Wild Mango Dye Ink	WPlus9 PURE COLOR Last Leaf Dye Ink
WPlus9 PURE COLOR Falling for Blue Dye Ink	WPlus9 PURE COLOR Cockleshell Dye Ink	WPlus9 PURE COLOR Black Dye Ink	Versamark Ink Pad	WPlus9 White Cardstock
WPlus9 Black Cardstock	Ranger White Embossing Powder

InLinkz.com

GUEST ARTIST FEATURE: Kathy Racoosin

A little birdie told me... that today I wanted to create a beautiful floral background with ease. I decided to pair up the Happy Birds and Beautiful Bouquet: Ranunculus stamp sets. And why stop at one?

For the first card, I decided to do a little more detailed coloring with blending. I started by stamping everything onto Tim Holtz Watercolor Paper. I watercolored the sweet little bird and banner with markers and die cut a few panels to layer using dies from Lawn Fawn.

Coloring the Background

1. For a quick background I added a base layer of my Spectrum Noir shimmer marker.
2. Adding a darker shade in the corners was pretty quick and easy. Smooth them out with the lighter color.
3. I did the same thing on some of the leaves just two colors with some quick highlights.
4. I completed the rest of the bouquet and then filled in the background using Copic markers. Holy shimmers, Batman!

Now I do love shimmer, but let's be honest, this is calling for some vellum. Vellum is a girls best friend when we've gone a little overboard and need to diffuse our love of color and/or shimmer. ;o)

My second card had brighter colors and zero blending on the flowers. I did add just some basic blending on the leaves though because it was so quick and easy with my shimmer markers.

Most of the cute tail was covered by the banner so I snipped it and repositioned it on the side of the bird.

I also wanted to bring some of the shimmer back into the foreground. So I added some to both the bird and the banner.

Thanks for letting me share! It's always so exciting!

Kathy Racoosin
thedailymarker.com

Softening Graphic Images with Joni Andaya

Hi everyone, Joni here sharing my take on the newly released Happy Birds stamp set and Happy Birds Companion Die. Aren't these birds so unique and cute?

The images in this set are very graphic and look amazing with simple and bold coloring. But, I wanted to soften them up a bit with my signature style.

To begin, I first die cut the white card front panel with the small circle from the Love Mom Layers die. Next, I used die cut front panel as a guide on where to distress the white card base of the card. Once the distressing was done, I adhered the front panel with foam tape for dimension.

Next, I stamped the birds from the Happy Birds stamp set onto watercolor paper and watercolored each image using Windsor & Newton watercolor paints. Once the watercolored images dried, I die-cut each one. I stamped the sentiment, from the same set onto Kraft cardstock and adhered with foam tape. To finish, I splattered some diluted watercolor paints and added a few Pretty Pink Posh Sparkling Clear sequins.

Wplus9 Supplies:
Stamps: Happy Birds // Inks: Coconut Husk Dye Ink // Dies: Happy Birds Coordinating dies  // Cardstock: White, Kraft

Thank you so much for stopping by! I hope your week is off to a great start!