Mixed Up Saturday

 

Karen's AMAZING Card for Oscar

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

First thing today I would like to wish our lovely Janet a safe a straightforward journey to Marigny,  even if there are a few delays it will be so worth it when you arrive at your Happy Place,  you and Jim deserve a nice relaxing break, there is no better therapy than spending quality time with your loved ones somewhere beautiful.  If you have time I would love to see some photos if the garden, I remember some beautiful spring flower photos from a few years back.  We also have the Friday Cake run to look to, we all wait to see what delights you both decided on from the your Friday morning shopping trip.   XXX

Fingers, toes and eyes 👀 crossed I will test negative today and we can go out, we need a couple of large plant pots for the Rose cutting we took from Mum's garden, it has really grown and needs a bigger pot, I need one for the Anniversary rose my sister bought us last year, I did buy a pot for it from B&M garden centre last October, it wasn't cheap, said it was frost proof etc,  but the only thing it will be good for this year is the crocks we use to help drainage in our plant pots, it ended up as a pile of bits, I am so pleased we hadn't planted the rose in it.  Other than that we have no real plans apart from the garden, plenty of seeds to sow and Seedlings to pot on. 

What do you all have planned???

Karen allowed me to share the absolutely AMAZING Birthday card that she created for Oscar, using her Karen Burniston  Photo Collage die, that die has been so useful for creating cards that are special occasion,  enabling you to include so many photos that would look too busy or overcrowded on a flat card regardless of size, as well as having that surprise 'pop up' element, I can imagine him opening and closing it many times, the colours are so bright and vibrant too. A perfect card, you should be very proudof your design. Thank you for allowing me to share it today XXX

Today's quote made me smile, as I know it's something that we ALL do, one or two of us more than others!  We are always our own worst critic aren't we.

Die Cutting Essentials Issue 89

This month's issue of Diecutting Essentials Magazine comes with a Bee themed free gift.  You get a 2 layer circular die that has the Honeycomb effect that flowers and a bee included in the design. You also get a stamp set that has a couple of bees and some cheesy sentiments! 

This first feature shows some lovely cards made using a combinatikn of the stamps and die.  The designer has used a variety of techniques to create some lovely designs,  colouring through the die cut so that you can colour the flowers and bee in any colour.  There are also some extra bits to download,  including extra sentiments.  You can fussy cut the bee out and have it 3D on top of the card for extra dimension. 

I really like the idea of using dies that you already have in your stash in a different way,   this time we are using our flower dies to create shaped flaps on the front of our cards, look at these lovely designs, such a clever idea, die cut the shape then stamp the matching flower on the inside, it shows you have to achieve this below.....

It doesn't look too difficult and the results look fantastic!

This piece is another 'Stretch your stash' feature, this time we are looking at ways to extend the die cuts to make them more versatile  

This die looks similar to a striplet die, the diagram shows how to make it longer.

A similar idea hear, this time with a label style die.

I think that most of us know how to do these techniques already, we just need to be reminded of the different ways to use these things. ! 

A quick feature showcasing some fun ideas for using the free gifts to make stationery.  

Now I'm all for getting as much use as possible out of our stash but I don't think these 'Pyramage' designs are for me.  They are meant to inspire you into getting another use out of your Nesting dies but....... let me know your thoughts !!

Now this technique would work well with this weeks CHALLENGE,  Using your dies to create a 'spotlight ' where you pick an area that you want to highlight,  for the challenge you could have the whole card monochrome and then add a pop of colour to your 'spotlight ' area. 

Here they use letter dies to create the spotlight like an eclipse style card. A clever idea.

The last feature shows some great designs for clean & Simple cards, I really like the colours used on these cards, adding the grey with the blue and yellow is a great idea. I also love the idea of putting vellum behind the die cut, it highlights the detail of the die and softens the background. 

All in all a good Issue, some great ideas, especially new ways to use our existing stash.  

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I hope that you all have a lovely weekend however you are spending it, this time next week is the last day of April,  how crazy is that !!!!

Sending my love and hugs to all of you  

Sandra 

xxxxxx