Sunday 28 June 2015

Sweet Smiles and Umbrellas!

I have a couple of cards to share today both of which feature Lawn Fawn's Sweet Smiles stamp set but the first one is probably not quite what you'd expect from that set!    I have a card I saw on the Mama Elephant blog on Friday to thank for my inspiration for this card, which I would credit, but it seems to have been removed.  [edited - the post is back again now so click here to see the card that inspired mine] It was a card filled with a rainbow of umbrellas and when I saw it I immediately thought of my favourite Pixar "short" - The Blue Umbrella where two "different" umbrellas meet and fall in love.  So I recreated a scene from the movie to make an anniversary card for my husband who is a huge Pixar fan.


Here's a still from the movie in case you haven't seen it so you can see where I got the idea to add the faces to the umbrella's from Mama Elephant's Chance of Rain set (it's only 6 minutes long so google it and watch it, its such a sweet story)   To make it into an anniversary card I needed an appropriately mushy sentiment - that came from Sunday Sentiments - I just didn't ink up the second line of this one as I'll pop that on the inside!   The background is a simple watercolour technique using the new hickory smoke distress ink and wide brush to get deliberate downward strokes to look like rain falling.


For my second card I used the gumball machine and ignored the faces this time!  I wanted to concentrate on the machine and make it realistic with a clear dome and a back that could be seen inside the card.


You don't need anything fancy to do this - just a piece of acetate and some stazon ink.  Stamp it twice (taking care to not stamp the gumballs on one image - only ink up the outline) and cut it out taking care to cut outside the lines on the glass dome, but just inside the lines on the parts you want to cover up with cardstock at the top and bottom so that the acetate edges don't show.

Now stamp once more on card stock with copic friendly ink - this will be your front so it is a "full" stamp.

To stamp the back I inked up the whole machine again but then used a cotton bud to wipe away the ink from the mechanism that would only be on the front.  This leaves you with a gap in the bottom of the machine so just use a multi-liner to join the lines back up again and you've got the back of your machine!

You need one more stamping process to get the back view of the gumballs - some mirror stamping.   You can do this several ways - stamp onto acetate (or even your acrylic block) and then press that onto your card, stamp onto the back of another stamp and use that to transfer your image or use a roller to take the image from your stamp and roll it onto the paper.   As this is a pretty simple image, I just used my acrylic block and then a multi liner to make the lines more solid to match the front as mirror stamping gives you a second generation style line.

Colour everything with copics and cut out all the pieces you need.  Stick the gumball images together so the colour is showing on the outsides and then using a clear glue like glossy accents stick it to the front acetate making sure to line it up with the black circles.  Sandwich the two acetate sheets together.  Glue on the backs and fronts of the machine pieces and set it aside to dry.

To make the card itself, set a stitched circle die just off the edge of your card to cut your aperture and use the next size up die to emboss a second circle around it.  Stamp the "HAVE A BALL!" sentiment which comes in the set underneath it.  The other sentiment is from "Year 3" also from Lawn Fawn is stamped onto a strip of paper from their Beachside pad.




NEWS FROM THE STORE:

  • We will be getting our first shipment from My Favorite Things this week - we are starting small and got all that was available from the last couple of releases along with a few other bits and pieces that caught my eye.  Some items were out of stock so I will try again to get those with the next release which will be available in early July.
  • WaffleFlower Crafts latest release will be here shortly as well along with their ink pads which several of you asked for last time.
  • We will be restocking Paper Smooches this week and getting their latest couple of releases.

Have a great week - catch you on the flipside ;-)


2 comments:

Holly Saveur said...

Such a great idea!
when will the restock from Wplus9 come again..the flower set..and Altenew and Winie & Walter?
Any idea..within July or later?

Tara Cardwell said...

No restock dates for any of those as yet Holly - I'll let you know as soon as I know!