Hello, Crafters.
Today I’m hosting my first team Zoom meeting and I’m so excited! I can’t believe I’ve mastered Zoom; with a lot of help from hubby, of course! We think he has sorted out an easy way of changing the camera from facing front to facing down to see me crafting! I’m not planning to do any crafting on Zoom – yet – but I’ll be asking my team of Super Stars what it looks like from where they are and if the quality is good enough for a demonstration!
When I was thinking about a card for today, I decided I couldn’t resist using our new Blending Brushes that will be available in the new Spring/Summer Mini Catalogue. They are the same/similar to those I’ve seen being used by non-Stampin’ Up! crafters and have often wished we sold them! When I used them for today’s card, they worked as beautifully as I always imagined they would! Although I enjoy blending, I’ve often finished up with circles caused by my dauber that I’ve had to go over several times to try and disguise it!
I decided to go for a basic off-centre panel. Using a Whisper White Cardstock (CS) top layer, I laid Post It Notes as masks to expose just the area I wanted to blend. I chose Shaded Spruce Ink and gently inked my first brush – they come in a pack of three – and brushed in a circular motion on my scrap paper, gradually working my way onto my top layer. The difference was amazing. There was no hint or suggestion of what had been used to create the perfect shading! I continued on both sides making them darker than the centre.
I left the masks in place and stamped the first image three times using Shaded Spruce Ink. To fill in the gaps I chose a big leafy stamp and stamped twice using Just Jade Ink. I removed the masks and the blending looked lovely, but there were three things I wasn’t happy with. First was that the left-hand edge wasn’t straight and second, there were gaps in the stamping where the images went over the edge of the masks. I sorted both these problems out by adhering a one-eighth of an inch wide strip of Shaded Spruce CS down each outside edge. The third fault was some poor stamping at the top which has been covered by the bird!
At this point, I should have used the spotty stamp from the Forever Fern Stamp Set to add interest to the two outside panels. Instead, I left it until I had finished my card so I had to work around the sentiment and be careful not to get spots on the card base. I failed! I used Mint Macaroon Ink stamped off once for the spots. The sentiment is from Itty Bitty Birthday and was die-cut and layered using the same die and measurements as yesterday’s card. Like the birds, I popped the sentiment up on Dimensionals aka Adhesive Foam Sheet!
For the inside of the card, I stamped the main image from the front of the card in the bottom right-hand corner of my Whisper White CS top layer. I also stamped the spotty stamp nearby a couple of times using Mint Macaroon Ink stamped off once. After adhering this layer on to a middle layer of Shaded Spruce CS, I adhered it onto the Whisper White CS card base. Another pleasing card! I certainly plan to do more blending now we have these fabulous brushes!
That’s it from me today. I look forward to being back with you tomorrow and in the meantime, please take very good care and stay safe. Happy crafting.
JanB. xx
Products used for this project: please click on any of the links to be taken to my 24/7 online Stampin’ Up! shop. The Hostess Code for DECEMBER 2020 is SNBSKN44. Thank you. xx
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Cardstock Layer Sizes: A4
Card base 8¼” x 5¾” scored and folded at 4 1/8”
Middle layer: 2 pieces 3 7/8” x 5½”
Top layer: 2 pieces 3¾” x 5 3/8”
Cardstock Layer Sizes: Letter-size
Card base 8½” x 5½” scored and folded at 4¼”
Middle layer: 2 pieces 4” x 5¼”
Top layer: 2 pieces 3 7/8” x 5 1/8”
Very pretty. Love all the details. The birds and splatters are a great addition. TFS
Happy New Year.
Many thanks, JoAnn. You, too! xx