Bee Happy

Happy Sunday friends. I hope this finds you all well and keeping safe and most importantly staying at home.  This is a testing time for all of us, but it has given us time to stop and share time with distant friends via the internet. Last night we connected with friends in the USA who we had planned to see this summer, but often don't connect in between times. It was good to Zoom with them and get all the news about kids and life and how we are dealing with the pressures of what is happening to us all.  It reminded me that we all need to 'BE Happy' and this card that I promised and forgot to share following one I made with some ladies at a Stampin' Up! party.  That card used the  Flowering Foils papers with the Painted Poppies.   Whilst the promotion is over the papers I'm sure for many of you live on and so it's still good to see what you can do with them.  

For today's share I used the offcuts from the Painted Poppies cards to colour them with Stampin' Write Markers and use them as a rainbow of hope style card.  Again I used a stamp from Painted Poppies to add ink splatter in the same colours from the brights collection before adding the strips of coloured foil paper.  

I stamped the small bee from Stampin' Up! Honey Bee and die cut it out to create the 'Be' for my sentiment.  The happy is part of the Merry Christmas die set in the Stampin' Up! annual catalogue.
If you didn't get the Flowering Foils papers then you could as an alternative heat emboss strips of white card and colour them with markers or indeed you might want to look at the new Ornate Garden Specialty Papers which include some foiled papers that you could create the same effect with.

Stampin' Up! Ornate Garden Specialty Papers 152488

 

Keep well lovely people and stay home safe.

Hugs Zoe xx


You can buy all the supplies from my Stampin' Up! Online Shop or contact me for a copy of our latest catalogue if you don't have a demonstrator already.

Have you heard the BUZZ?

The buzz is new month, new challenge and a new card for the Moving Along With The Times monthly challenge.  Diamante is the theme and I love a bit of bling so I've added Noble Peacock rhinestones to my mixed media Honey Bee card.  

I started with watercolour paper and added different colours in a wash to create a background.  On top of this I sponged clouds using a mask and created my own mask with die cut vellum using the honeycomb die from the Detailed Bee dies which coordinate with the Stampin' Up! Honey Bee stamp set.

I added a gesso circle layer then also used the same home made stencil to add embossing paste and the leftover colour on the stencil/mask blended with the paste to give a shimmer of colour.

Using Stampin' markers I added flowers and ink splatter to the piece.  I white heat embossed the beehive onto watercolour paper then colour washed it to blend it with the background but deepened the colour to the edge to make it stand out too!  The bee is heated embossed with silver and then I carefully added colour with an alcohol marker.

I also added some clear Wink of Stella to the clouds, because every cloud has a silver lining, even though it's not so easy to see on my card or in real life right now.

Simple white embossing on black card for just as simple a sentiment.

Come and join us with the MAWTT challenge .  It's on all month so you have time to make a Diamante card.  You can also check out the new Ornate Garden Suite on the new Stampin' Up! UK website.  This suite includes it's own bling in the form of foiled papers and gilded gems. 

Thanks for stopping by. Zoe x

Save the bees and we'll save the flowers

Did you see my Peaceful Poppies flower vase?  Well pop back to the post and you'll see the inspiration for my card today.  Like many of you I'm loving the Painted Poppies and Honey Bee stamp sets from the Stampin' Up! Spring mini.

We really need to support the bees as they are so important to our ecosystems and ultimately life as we know it.  Did you know in the UK alone we have over 270 species of bee.

I like improving my colouring skills with our Stampin' Blends too and this is a great design for blending shades together and also mixing some lighter colours with a darker one over the top.  Be sure with blends to take into account that they are alcohol markers and therefore bleed through your paper and so it is best to use something like the Stampin' Up! thick white card stock and also to consider having a matt layer behind them and not colouring directly onto the front of your card or you will be disappointed with the inside of the card.

You need to stamp in Memento ink as this is perfect for alcohol markers and for this design I also used a tiny little stamp from the Happy Birthday to You stamp set from the saleabration offering to blend ink pad colours for the area above the flowers and around the bee.  I used Mint Macaron and Pool party second and third generation ink to create a type of sky background.

I created thin paper masks of the poppy shapes so that I could overlap the flowers and also stamped a couple to colour and fussy cut to add dimension to my design.  Pop them on with stampin dimensional to add some depth.

My bee was stamped directly onto the card and also coloured with the Daffodil Delight blends and I added a set of vellum wings this time stamped with StazOn ink and then fussy cut also.  If you stamp on vellum be careful not to move your stamp at all once on the vellum, until you lift it off to avoid smudging the ink until it dries.  You can speed up the drying with careful heating using a heat tool.

Although not visible in my photo i also used some clear Wink of Stella to further develop the light spots on my flowers and leaves.

The sentiment is from the Honey Bee set and is a curved stamp which means you can loop it around images like I have here.

Here's hoping that spring will bring us more sunshine and flowers soon.

Happy crafting

Zoe x

Honey Bee Beauty

Things have changed at Moving Along With The Times for 2020.  We're now having one big design team and are having one challenge a month so it's even easier to join in.

Our challenge this month is to not use any images.  Mine is possibly a little bit of a contradiction as it has die cuts, but arguably they are not stamped images and sentiments don't count I believe!!!

Once again I've used the fabulous Detailed Bee Dies from the Stampin' Up! Spring mini catalogue.  They are amazing.  I love them and you can see more of my designs using them in Craft Stamper magazine from early March in what will be the April issue.

I've used some of the extremely strokable Golden Honey free Saleabration papers. Yes a free gift when you spend £45 on Stampin' Up! product until the end of March while supplies last.  I cut a piece to cover my card base and then used my Stamparatus to position the die cut bees and stamp the sentiments in line.  Colours used are Granny Apple Green, Bermuda Bay and Daffodil Delight for the bee die cuts.  I used some double sided adhesive sheet on the card before passing it through my die cutting machine to make the actual sticking much easier.

I stamped the sentiments in Tuxedo Black Memento ink and they are taken from Well Said and Colourful Seasons.  The beautiful was part of a larger sentiment and so I used washi tape to mask off the parts of the stamp I didn't want, added ink and then removed the washi tape before actually stamping.

I'm a fan of a bit of bling so the rhinestones sort that out as well as the mini smudge under one of them.  Hey every cloud and all that.

The detailed Bee dies coordinate with a stamp set called Honey Bee and you can see that in action on my previous Stampin Up Honey Bee post and if you buy them together you save 10% on the bundle price.  Add a pack of rhinestones and card and you'll get to choose either the Golden Honey papers or another free gift from a fabulous selection.

Come join us at MAWTT for our February challenge.

Happy crafting
Zoe x

SHOP NOW

#simplestamping - simple technique for all

It's the first outing for the Totally Techniques Design Team of 2020 and we're starting the new year with a very simple, but effective one that anyone can try - #simplestamping

I've used the Honey Bee stamp set from the Spring mini which is proving to be a popular set especially when you can get a set of Golden Honey designer series papers for free when you spend £45.  However today I have used black and white card stock with white craft ink or Basic Grey respectively.  

The above card was an afterthought having made the white card version below first. I'm thinking that I prefer the above version but they both work. 

On both cards I've added some Noble Peacock rhinestones and a matting layer of the same colour as the base card.   This bee stamp is part of the distINKtive range of stamps that Stampin' Up! has been sharing in the last couple of years which means it creates texture and fine detail by just stamping with one of the stamps from the set. I love this stamp it is a real WOW all on it's own. The sentiment is from the same set.  I also added a whisper white matt layer inside and added a bee stamped in Tuxedo Black Memento ink. 

You'll find lots of inspiration from all our design team members so please do visit by clicking around the links at the bottom of this post.  

In the mean time don't forget it is Saleabration at Stampin' Up! until 31 March and you'll get a free gift with purchase for every £45 spent (excl. P&P).  You can see all the gifts and shop for products in my online shop. 

SHOP NOW

Thanks for visiting and please come back tomorrow for the Moving Along with the Times challenge as I'll be sharing more inspiration for the Honey Bee stamp set.  

Happy Stamping 

Zoe x

Happy Little Stampers - CAS challenge - Positive

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter