Stretching Your Dies w/Kara

Hey Guys! Recently married friends of ours bought their first new home together. We're heading over there tonight for dinner and I wanted to bring them something special as a housewarming gift and of course a handmade card to go with it.

This card features almost no stamping! The design is created mostly with die cuts. I knew I wanted to use this cute house from Holiday Houses. However, since this is not a holiday card I didn't want the house to have wreaths on it. I decided to use the die alone and then the design was built around that. I colored the house with Fairy Dust Dye Ink using a sponge dauber. I die cut the words New Home using the Whimsy Alpha Die. I thought it would look cute to replace the letter "O" with the house die. The letters were colored in the same way using Shell Pink Dye Ink.

The scale of the house is a little larger than the letters, but I thought that worked perfectly to put the focus on the house and bring the scene to the foreground. I chose the other elements in the scene from the Sunshine Layers Die. Color was added to them using Lake House and Falling Star Dye Inks. I used the Big Top Background stamp to create the subtle sunrays in the background stamped in Fairy Dust Dye Ink. Finally, I stamped "Congratulations" at the bottom using a stamp from the Big Bold Greetings stamp set.

I'm looking forward to dinner tonight and seeing our friends' new home.

Thanks so much for coming by today! Hopefully this gives you some ideas for looking at your companion dies in a little different way.

Featured Supplies

For your convenience, here is a list of the featured Wplus9 supplies used on today's project(s), along with links to purchase.

White Cardstock Shop at: WP9	PURE COLOR Black Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	PURE COLOR Lake House Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	Sunshine Layers Die Shop at: WP9
Big Top Background Stamp Set Shop at: WP9	Whimsy Alpha Die Shop at: WP9	Holiday Houses Die Shop at: WP9	Fairy Dust PURE COLOR Dye Ink Shop at: WP9
Shell Pink PURE COLOR Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	Falling Star PURE COLOR Dye Ink Shop at: WP9

Simple Stamped Floral Patterns with Yana

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

One of the things I love to use stamps most for is to stamp my own backgrounds. Today I have two cards to share featuring simple and quick to make floral patterns created using the Southern Summer Florals 1 and Southern Summer Florals 2 stamp sets.

I picked a floral, lavender-like image, from the Southern Summer Florals 2 set along with a leafy branch from the Southern Summer Florals 1 set to stamp this blue and green pattern. I went with Falling For Blue and Last Leaf ink colors and also incorporated a hint of Appletini.

I filled the spaces between the two main images using little dotted details from the Summer Citrus set.

To create a sentiment for this card I stamped “Thank You” from the Basic Labels set, trimmed it into a strip and foam mounted onto a vellum oval cut using a companion die from the Basic Labels set.

I also stamped and die-cut a few additional images and arranged them into a cluster above and below the sentiment strip. Finally, I added black dots using Nuvo Drops.

For my second card I added a few more colors to the previous blue and green mix and went with Bloomsberry, Cockleshell, Wild Mango, Pumpkin Spice and Lake House.

I opted to use much smaller images for this pattern and thus was able to fit more imagery and make this pattern very different from the previous one.

I used Basic Labels stamps and companion dies to create a “Congratulations” sentiment and after I had foam mounted it onto the card I added black and white flowers centers using Nuvo drops.

Thanks for stopping by today! 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 Southern Summer Florals 1 Stamp Set Shop at: SSS | WP9	WPlus9 Southern Summer Florals 1 Dies Shop at: SSS | WP9	WPlus9 Southern Summer Florals 2 Stamp Set Shop at: SSS | WP9	WPlus9 Southern Summer Florals 2 Dies Shop at: SSS | WP9	WPlus9 Basic Labels Stamp Set Shop at: SSS | WP9
WPlus9 Basic Labels Die Shop at: SSS | WP9	WPlus9 Summer Citrus Stamp Set Shop at: SSS | WP9	WPlus9 Lake House Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Falling For Blue Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Last Leaf Dye Ink Shop at: WP9
WPlus9 Appletini Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Wild Mango Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Bloomsberry Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Pumpkin Spice Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	Wplus9 Cockleshell Dye Ink Shop at: WP9
Spellbinders Platinum 6 Die Cutting Machine Shop at: SSS | SC | SPEL | AZ	Neenah 110 Lb Solar White Cardstock Shop at: SSS | AZ	Simon Says Stamp Vellum Shop at: SSS	Tonic Gloss White Nuvo Crystal Drops Shop at: SSS | SC | AZ	Tsukineko VersaFine Onyx Black Ink Shop at: SSS | AZ
Tonic Ebony Black Nuvo Crystal Drops Shop at: SSS	Be Creative Tape 3mm Sookwang Shop at: SSS	Scrapbook Adhesives White Foam Squares Shop at: SSS | SC | AZ

Heat Embossed Stardust Cards 3 Ways with Yana

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

Oftentimes simple cards are the best to give (and not that hard to make). For my today’s blog post I created 3 easy-to-produce almost flat projects using new Stardust stamp set as a focal point and also a few additional messages and images from the Little Dreamers set.

Inspiration for these projects came from the a photo I spotted on Pinterest - beautiful navy ceramic bowls with gorgeous gold specks.

I started working on my cards by finding the perfect cardstock shade. I didn’t have navy blue so I ended up making desired color of cardstock by blending PURE COLOR Dye Ink in Nautical Navy onto white cardstock. WPlus9 does carry beautiful Nautical Navy cardstock, but I didn’t have any in my stash, so I had to improvise.

After blending ink onto paper I used my heat tool and thoroughly dried paper panels that were cut to 4 x 5 ¼ “ to avoid having embossing powder stick to them (I knew I was going to do lots of heat embossing so I needed my paper to be bone dry).

With the help of a Mini MISTI stamp positioner I stamped and heat embossed stardust background onto my panels. I cut one of the stamps apart and ended up having 3 images instead of 2 for my cards. I also added sentiments to each panel. I went with different messages from the Stardust and Little Dreamers set. My messages ended up being: “Congrats. You’re A Super Star”, “Dream Big. Reach Reach For The Stars” and “I Love You To The Moon And Back”.

I also inked the edges of each panel with Versamark embossing ink and embossed them in gold to make the panels look a bit more finished.

I wanted to add some shimmer to my heat embossed backgrounds so I used Distress Mica Spray in Tarnished Brass and generously spritzed every panel. This particular color goes well with gold embossing powder.

While “Dream Big. Reach Reach For The Stars” card ended up being very simple, I stepped the other two cards up a bit. I added a heat embossed moon to my “I Love You To The Moon And Back” and colored it using FineTec watercolors from the Pearlescent Colors set (colored in gold).

My third project involved some die cutting. I used a circle die and die-cut an opening in my panel. I adhered a piece of black cardstock from the back (I sprayed it with same Distress Mica Spray before adhering) and foam mounted the die cut circle on top but offset it to create the look of a moon. Finally I heat embossed, sprayed and die-cut a star and foam mounted it onto my “Congrats. You’re A Super Star” project.

After foam mounting all of my panels onto A2 top folding black card bases I used a black pigment pen and added black dots in between the gold heat embossed stars.

As always, thanks for stopping by and 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 may contain some affiliate links.

WPlus9 Stardust Stamp Set Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Little Dreamers Stamp Set Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Little Dreamers Die Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Nautical Navy Dye Ink Shop at: WP9	WPlus9 Nautical Navy Cardstock Shop at: WP9
Simon Says Stamp Black Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Neenah 110 Lb Solar White Cardstock Shop at: SSS	Spellbinders Standard Circles LG Dies Shop at: SSS | SC | SB	Spellbinders Platinum Die Cutting Machine Shop at: SSS | SC | SB	Mini Misti Stamping Tool Shop at: SSS | SC
Hero Arts Heat Embossing Gun PW200 Shop at: SSS | SC | HA	Versamark Watermark Emboss Ink Pad Shop at: SSS | HA	Ranger Mini Round Ink Blending Tools Shop at: SSS | SC	Spellbinders Circle Replacement Foam Shop at: SSS | SC | SB	Hero Arts Gold Embossing Powder PW100 Shop at: SSS | SC | HA
ScraPerfect Crafting Pouch Shop at: SSS	Tim Holtz Distress Designer Mica Sprays Shop at: SSS | SC	Finetec Mica Watercolor Pearlescent Paint Shop at: SSS	Scrapbook Adhesives Black Foam Tape Shop at: SSS	Be Creative Tape 3mm Sookwang Shop at: SSS
Ranger Dylusions by Dyan Reaveley Designer Mica Sprays Shop at: SSS	White Fun Foam 12 Pack 9 x 12 Shop at: SSS