Technique Tuesday #10. Emboss resist, gradient, negative die-cut shaker

Hello!

I'm running a little late with my Technique Tuesday today as work has been a bit mad this week, but to make up for it this card uses several techniques.

Firstly we have some emboss resist going on, with white embossing on some watercolour card.

Then I did some soft gradient ink blending with distress inks. I used a combination of purple shades here.

After wiping my embossed and blended piece with a paper towel to really make that white pop, I ran it through my die cutting maching with this large Hugs word die, (I'm a little in love with this and word dies in general lately), for some negative die cutting. Then I added a little acetate, foam tape and sequins to turn it into a shaker card. I finished the card with a chipboard word from Make it Crafty, coloured up with some inks to match my theme.

Here's the finished card, and I've listed all my items, along with links where I have them.

Smooth White Cardstock
Tim Holtz Watercolour Card
Versamark Ink
High Detail White Embossing Powder
Distress Inks
MFT Floral Fantasy Background Stamp
MFT Die-namics Big Hugs
Make it Crafty Chipboard Word - Birthday

Before I go I just have to say that I was totally chuffed that yesterdays card was featured today on My Favourite Things blog in their You've Been Spotted feature.

You can see it here. How exciting is that?!

Right, I'm off to make dinner, the other half is on nights today, so it's just me tonight getting some crafty on.

Thanks for dropping by!

Technique Tuesday #4 - Negative Die Cuts

Hello!

Dashing in with a Technique Tuesday and this one is super simple and something I've had a brief play with before.

Negative Die Cuts.

Now last week I mentioned getting more use out of your dies by using them to deboss, this is another way to really get more value from your dies. Not every die you have will work for this, you'll want something that has a reasonable amount of detail in the outline, but isn't too detailed on the inside as all that will just be lost. However, some detailed or filigree dies can also work well as negative die cuts even though you lose the interior detail, because they have a good shape anyway.

Basically you will want something with a clear outline where it's obvious from the outline what it is.

For this example I used a Christmas tree. Other good dies for Christmas cards like this might include snowflakes, stars, baubles, crackers, deer etc.

I used an old Magnolia die as this is actually the only Christmas tree die I own, hmm I guess I should correct that soon. But anyway it worked very well for this.  This was actually a super quick and easy card to put together. Normally I would have embossed the stars and sentiment, but I could not find my gold embossing powder, (a hint to tidy my craft space perhaps?), so I just went with some lovely metallic gold ink instead.

The paper is from a Lemoncraft Christmas pad but almost any seasonal, (and many non seasonal), patterned paper would work well with this I think.

The sentiment is from the Mama Elephant Jingle Greetings set, the ribbon is from The Ribbon Girl and the small chipboard stars are from Make it Crafty

I hand cut the panel of white card, but would probably use a stitched rectangle die next time.

This would be a great card for quickly batch producing for your Christmas needs, you can change up the papers, ribbon and sentiment to make them a little different.

That's all from me today, but I have a fair few Christmas cards to share before the 25th so I'll be back with you soon.

Lee Holland - Teddy Best Friends

Hi everyone! I have a super quick make to share with you today. As you know I usually shy away from CAS, and by shy away I mean run screaming lol, and well animals have not been my forte either. But lately I've been having fun colouring up animals and I decided to have a bit of a play with CAS as well.

I'm pretty happy with this, I think it's starting to make sense to me. It still makes me twitch a little, and I would never abandon my fussy cards, but sometimes it's just nice to make something in an hour or so and be able to send it flat in an envelope.  I used the following:

Langton Hot Pressed Watercolour Paper

Distress Ink Markers

Teddy Best Friends Rubber Stamp

Thanks Large Word Die

Heavy White Cardstock

A scrap of deep aqua cardstock.

In the UK you can get your Whimsy stamps and dies from Dies to Die for

You get 3 bears in the pack plus sentiments, so I will certainly be making some more cards with these.

That's all from me today, I said it was a super quick share lol!

See you soon! :) xx