Author

Betsy

TGIF – Winter Blue Birds with Angelica

by Betsy January 10, 2020

written by Betsy

It’s finally Friday! TGIF time!

Angela is here this week and she’s going to knock your socks off with the gorgeous project she’s sharing with you today! I have to tell you, I was the lucky recipient of this card and it is even prettier in real life (if that’s possible)! If you like hearing all of the supply details you’re in for a treat as well. Angela has it all for you today…

**Edited to add: The Winter Sketches set Angelica used in her project today was restocked this morning in case you’re on the look-out for it! 🙂

Hi friends! We are almost halfway into January, and I finally finished my post-Christmas Thank you cards. The last card went out into the mail today, but not before I took a couple pictures to share with you today.

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I started with stamping a Winter Sketches branch. I used Gathered Twigs, Evergreen, Saphire, and Stargazer Pinkfresh Studio inks as my colors. Then I pulled out my Copic Markers to really enhance the branch. I added a dark shadow to with limb with E79, contrasting greens to the needles and leaves with G29 and YG05, and shaded the blue berries with B26 and B28. I die-cut the branch with the coordinating die, and finished by adding Ranger Distress Rock Candy Glitter, using Multi Media Matte as my adhesive. I set the branch aside to dry, and set up my MISTI to stamp two matching blue Robins from the Robin an d W ren stamp set.

I stamped the birds with Slumber, Sapphire, and Stargazer PF inks, and Antique Linen and Weathered Wood Distress Oxide inks for their bellies. Gathered Twigs PF ink was used for beaks and feet. I used the coordinating dies to die-cut them.

I made a quick watercolored background, using Mijello watercolors. I let the panel dry, then splattered watered-down acrylic paint and shimmer water all over the panel. I die-cut the panel with the middle rectangle from Nordic Frame Dies, and attached it to Blueberry card stock, die-cut with the large Nordic Frame Die. I mounted the panel onto a white card base, and attached the branch and birds with foam squares. I finished the card with a Sentiment Suite: Thank you Sentiment in the upper corner.

Aren’t Angela’s colors (and her coloring) amazing? Such a pretty project.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! And just a reminder…next week will be busy here on the blog as we introduce our newest collection. I hope you’ll join us for sneak peeks, product reveals, projects, and giveaways! I’ve already seen just a few bits and pieces of what the Inspiration Team has been working on and it’s just beautiful. I can’t wait to show you!

January 10, 2020 40 comments

Make & Tell – Oopsie Daisy Bouquets + Colored Pencil Shading

by Betsy January 7, 2020

written by Betsy

Is your work table still covered in holiday goodies? I’m not sure I’m ready to put away all of the Christmas and winter stamps and dies, but I know that I am ready for a little spring!

For today’s Make & Tell video, I’ll be giving some wintery items from our November collection a fresh spring look by combining them with the Oopsie Daisy set.

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I used one of my current favorite techniques – using colored pencils to add shading to stamped images. It’s like half the work of coloring is done before you even start! Plus the solid stamped images, especially those that have some layers like the Oopsie Daisies, usually have some shading already built in that you can just enhance a little further using the colored pencils.

Here is this week’s video…

I had some bits and pieces left after making the video, so I created this second card as well. Which one is your favorite – the blue or the pink? I love the big blue daisy on this one and the fuller bouquet. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by for today’s Make & Tell Tuesday! I hope these projects brought a bit of springy sunshine to your day!

January 7, 2020 29 comments

All TGIF

TGIF – Cozy Cup Thank Yous by Dawn

by Betsy January 3, 2020

written by Betsy

You’re in for a treat once again with today’s TGIF projects! Dawn is sharing some gorgeous wintery thank yous using our Cozy Cup set paired with lots of florals from our recent releases. They’re done in Dawn’s classic vibrant colors – just the thing to warm up these dreary winter days. Let’s read on and see what Dawn has to say about today’s projects…

So, this time of year, I always like to make a stack of thank you notes to send out after Christmas, and I love to have them feel a bit holiday-ish or at least a bit wintery. I still had quite a big pile of leftover Christmas floral die cuts from previous card making sessions, so they were perfect to use on my post-Christmas thank you notes.

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I wanted to make a cohesive set of cards though, and my die cuts weren’t all totally coordinated. To tie all of my random leftovers together, I stamped a new pile of common denominators! I stamped several coffee cups in coordinating colors, and those helped to tie in the randomness from the florals, and make it all look like it goes together!!

I further unified the card set, by using the same color card base, same dark green die cut mats and similar white frames on each card.

Now you’d never know all of these pieces started out as a random pile! They look like they were made to go together! Such a fun way to use up some after Christmas leftovers!”

Don’t you just love Dawn’s cheery projects today? I can’t stop looking at all of the details, and of course her photography and vintage touches are so inspiring!

Before I close today’s post, I have just a couple of updates. We did a large die restock earlier this week, so if you’ve been waiting on dies, most of them are now in stock. We’re still having some issues with our Back in Stock email notifications, unfortunately. They are going out, but at a snail’s pace I’m afraid. We will be switching to a different service provider once these have been completed that will hopefully fix the issue and we’ll be back to real-time updates.

You may also notice if you’re looking to purchase the Cozy Cup set Dawn used in today’s post, that it is out of stock. We’re expecting that back next week, along with a few other sets that are out of stock, so it won’t be a long wait.

Thanks for stopping by, everyone! I hope your 2020 is off to a terrific start!

January 3, 2020 10 comments

All January 2020 Sneak Peeks

A New Year’s wish + Save the Date

by Betsy December 31, 2019

written by Betsy

It’s the last day of 2019 and what a year it’s been. My heart and mind are full of gratitude for everything this year has brought! It’s really been a year like none other – filled with learning and challenges, and so very many good things. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since we started all of the behind the scenes planning and dreaming for this crazy venture. We want to thank you for your support and encouragement through our first year, and we wish you abundant blessings in the coming year!

I’m taking a bit of a break from Make & Tell Tuesdays with all of the holiday busyness, but I”m hoping some fun news might make up for it!

Our next release will take place the week of January 13-17. We’ll be having two days of sneak peeks, followed by two days of projects and product reveals. Our new Love Letters collection will go up in the shop on January 17. We hope you’ll join us for the fun!

Happy New Year, everyone! Celebrate, enjoy, and stay safe! 🙂

December 31, 2019 39 comments

All TGIF

TGIF – Winter Sketches Watercolor with Norine

by Betsy December 27, 2019

written by Betsy

It’s TGIF time! What a crazy week. It kind of felt like we had two Mondays this week, didn’t it? But it’s Friday for real this time. I hope you all had a very merry Christmas!

Norine is here today with a gorgeous TGIF project using the Winter Sketches set. Let’s hear all about it…

Hello Greetery Friends! Have you finally got your feet up? The wrapping paper picked up? Hopefully, Christmas dinner leftovers will take care of everyone for a little while longer and you can schedule some creative time for yourself! This week’s project is a thank you card that will serve perfectly for the current season, but translates well to other occasions, even a sympathy card.

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I’m drawn to muted colors with the Winter Sketches stamp set so for today’s card I indulged that by creating a watercolored background of blues, greens and browns. Because I used a lot of water, the colors blended to the point where you can hardly distinguish what colors were used. Getting color mixes like that is easy when you never clean the lid of your watercolor paint palette. It used to be a matter of laziness, until I realized that was where the most beautiful “non-colors” were born.

After a few attempts to stamp first and watercolor second, I decided that that order of the process dulled the ink lines more than I liked. So using the stamp panel discards as a guide I painted the color to approximately fill the background of my stamped design. Once the paint was dry, I stamped two of the pine needle outline images from the Winter Sketches set using shade of blue ink and the rough sketchy tree limb with a combination of kraft and dark grey inks.

Using more of the leftover blue, green and brown paints on my palette, I painted in the pods on the pine needle images, connected the branch limbs where I wasn’t stamping the additional layers to the branch, extended some branches and very lightly added the suggestion of more leaves to the ends of the branches. After allowing that to dry, I splattered the card panel with more blue paint as well as some white gouache paint, thinned with water to splattering consistency. Then I added a sentiment from the Sentiment Suite Thank You stamp set, stamping with Versamark ink and heat embossing with platinum embossing powder.

I paired the stamped and painted part of the card panel with a strip of plaid patterned paper from my stash along the bottom. I wrapped the card panel with a strand each of brown fiber cord and shiny platinum floss, opted for a knot over a bow so it wouldn’t distract too much from the stamped design, and adhered everything to a cream colored cardstock card base. This card went together really fast (except for the time waiting for paint to dry, when I picked up my current felt appliqué project to stitch on), and was super simple and easy to create!

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you get a chance to play over the next few days!

December 27, 2019 22 comments

All TGIF

TGIF – Pastel Winter Wonderland with Keeway

by Betsy December 20, 2019

written by Betsy

It’s TGIF time and Keeway has created a gorgeous wintery wonderland card! I loved reading about the ink colors she used to create this beautifully soft color scheme. She’s here with all of the details…

We are just days away from Christmas and it’s been a flurry getting our shopping done and wrapping them up in time. While I’m still finishing some last minute holiday cards, I’m also beginning to work on Valentine and Spring projects, so I was inspired to split down the middle to create a holiday card with non-traditional soft violet and pink colors.

I love working with stencils and ink blending, so one of my favorite products this season was the Frosty Flakes Stencil. I started by layering the stencil over a piece of white card stock to set it up for ink blending. You can use washi tape to hold it down, or even more securely, you can use Pixie Spray, a low tack, repositional adhesive, to keep it in place as you work on the ink blending.

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When working with stencils, I like to use blending brushes as the bristles get closer into the corners of the stencil pattern better to give you a more crisp design. From each corner of the paper, I ink blended Victorian Velvet, Blueprint Sketch, Antique Linen distress oxide inks. Make sure you use Victorian Velvet first before adding the Blueprint Sketch to get that deep mauve color in those corners. I then sized down the panel to 4” by 5.25” with a paper trimmer.

I layered on some more snowflakes with white die cuts using the Frosty Corners Die. To get clean cuts, I used the metal adapter plate with my die cutting machine. I added the frosty corners about ¼” from the edge and adhered them down to liquid adhesive. I also die cut a small snow flake in white using the Frosty Corners Die and adhered it to the center of the card.

I couldn’t find a color card stock that I liked to match my color scheme, so I ink blended a piece of white card stock with Victorian Velvet and Blueprint Sketch to get the soft mauve color I wanted. I heat embossed my ‘merry christmas’ sentiment from Sentiment Suite: Christmas stamp set in white, then die cut the fishtail banner using the Sentiment Suite Basics Die.

I added some gold EMC thread down the center and held it down with my sentiment banner and foam adhesive. I added a few iridescent gems around it for a little extra bling to complete the card.

This card was designed to be versatile during the winter season! With just a change of the sentiment, it would also be great for all occasions like weddings, birthdays, sympathy, thank you, and just a friendly hello!

December 20, 2019 12 comments

All Make & Tell Tuesdays

Make & Tell Tuesday – Cotton + Pine Warm Hello

by Betsy December 17, 2019

written by Betsy

It’s time for a Tuesday evening Make & Tell! I took my own advice (from yesterday’s Instagram post) and snuck in a little crafting time this morning.

I’ve been wanting to create a card that combines some of my favorite trends from this season – cotton, buffalo plaid, and pine. I’ve used a lot of these elements in my holiday home decor this year and I’ve really wanted to try creating a card with this combo.

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So for today’s Make & Tell, I pulled out the Cotton Comforts set, the BotaniCuts Pine Bough die, and the Cozy Cup Coaster die, which is perfect for adding a touch of buffalo plaid by doing some simple masking.

Here’s this week’s video – I hope you can sneak in some time to watch it, and better yet, make something inspired by it!

December 17, 2019 22 comments

All TGIF

TGIF – Knit Wits Thank Yous by Lizzie

by Betsy December 13, 2019

written by Betsy

It’s TGIF time! I hope you all made it through what is usually one of the busiest weeks of the year, at least for our family! Holiday concerts and programs, bake sales, and parties. Whew! I’d love to sneak in a little stamping time this weekend, I’ve got some ideas still left to explore before I’m ready to think about putting away the Christmas stamps!

If you’re looking for some quick projects, Lizzie has the perfect inspiration for you today with her simple and classy holiday thank you cards. Let’s see what Lizzie has to say about her projects today…

“Expressing gratitude is very important to me, but I know I have a tendency to fall behind if I don’t have notes prepared ahead of the holiday season. So I thought today I would share a few styles of simple notes that will make sending messages of appreciation easier.
I chose to pair the Knit Wits stencil collection with Sentiment Suite: Thank You and the Drifting Die to create a batch of quick and easy notes.

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The Drifting Die worked beautifully to cut a unique, peek-a-boo border that showcases the knit pattern from the stencil collection. It’s a small detail, but it makes a big impact!
I love that the Sentiment Suite: Thank You set has so many options for conveying my gratitude. This time of year, I often need notes for people who have gone out of their way to be helpful in addition to the folks who are generous with their gifting. This set can cover all of those needs and more!

I also like to keep my notes seasonal with a color scheme that relates to the holiday we’ve just celebrated. It serves as a reminder without having to incorporate trees and baubles and all of the other seasonal trimmings.

Keeping my color palette simple also makes it easy to buy one color of contrasting envelope that will help my note stand out in the mail. A nice pop of red in someone’s mailbox is a fun surprise on a dreary January day.

Thank you notes don’t have to be overly complicated; it’s the expression of gratitude inside that truly matters! But taking a little time to prepare now can make things much easier after the holiday season. Thank you so much for joining me today! I hope I’ve inspired you to get ahead on your post-holiday notes this year!”

December 13, 2019 9 comments

All Sales

Restock Update + Shipping Special!

by Betsy December 9, 2019

written by Betsy

Hey all! I like to try and keep you all in the loop with stock updates, so I thought I’d pop in with an update this evening. We just finished prepping a huge shipment of dies and added them to the shop. You should find most dies back in stock as of right now.

We have a shipment of stamps scheduled to arrive at the end of the week and we’ll get those put up in the shop just as soon as we possibly can! I thought it might be helpful to post a list of what we’re expecting to come in at the end of the week. Here is a list of the stamp sets that will be restocked in a few days:

Summer Sketches
Budding Beauties Autumn
Budding Beauties Winter
Bottled Up
With Love at Christmas
Winter Sketches
Pine Blossom

As for other stamp sets that went out of stock with our Black Friday sale, we have those coming in as well, but unfortunately it’s looking like they won’t be here until just a day or two before Christmas. Included in that shipment are the following sets:

Sentiment Suite Thinking of You
Fir & Foliage No. 1
Comforting Commands
Simple Things
Just Mason Around
Oopsie Daisy
Blooming Branch
Robin & Wren
Pot-Pourri
Autumn Sketches
Sentiment Suite: Thank You
Fir & Foliage No. 2

I hope this helps with your list-making and planning! As always, if there’s something you’re wondering about that I didn’t post here about, feel free to send an email to customer service.

We’re also offering a shipping special now through December 24! Free U.S. shipping on orders of $50 or more, vs our usual $75 free shipping threshold.

I hope you’re finding some time to relax and enjoy the Christmas season!

ETA: I was just reminded I never posted the winners of our November sticker giveaway! Sorry about that! The randomly selected commenters with the correct answer of Pine Blossom flowers were Tracy S. and Lori B. They’ve already been notified via email and their stickers are on the way!

December 9, 2019 1 comment

All TGIF

TGIF – Frozen Inspiration from Kelly

by Betsy December 6, 2019

written by Betsy

Happy Friday! Ready to get crafty this weekend? Kelly’s here to provide a little TGIF inspiration. I loved reading about her inspiration for the projects she’s sharing today. Inspiration is everywhere!

Hello Friends, it’s Kelly here! I’m thrilled to be here today sharing two cards for this week’s TGIF feature! My family went to see Frozen II this weekend (with the rest of America) and I just loved it! It was a visual treat and while yes, I was watching the movie, I was also designing cards in my head at the same time! Ha ha! These two cards are directly inspired by Elsa and one of her outfits in particular.

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I knew that the Nordic Frames paired with some of my favorites from the new release as well as the Frosty Flakes Stencil from the previous release would be the perfect combination to recreate the look and feel of her beautiful dresses. I used a combination of silver embossing and Moonstone Glimmer paste with the stencils to give these cards that icy feeling that I was hoping to achieve! I added some coarse Crystal glitter as well, even sprinkling it over the Nuvo Drops to give them a frozen appearance! By switching up the colors in the Pine Blossom cluster, It really gives the bouquet a completely different feeling than what I used during the release! I love when a stamp set is versatile like that so I can get extra mileage from it all season long! I decided to use the Flappable Stecils to create some coordinating envelopes to complete the presentation!

I can’t wait to use these in the depths of winter when some may have lost their hope for spring. I personally try to embrace the beauty of every season, and these cards hopefully will do the same when they make their appearance in someone’s mailbox to brighten their day! Thanks for joining me today and I hope you all get some crafty time this weekend to work on some projects of your own!

December 6, 2019 38 comments