Spring Bird (by Pat)

Hello everyone, Pat is sharing her second post of the month, a lovely card incorporating one of our Spring Bird stamp sets. 

Pat writes:

Hi everyone.

This is my second card this month and as Spring is now well and truly here I decided to use one of the Spring Bird sets, Spring Bird Crocus, which includes this sweet little bird with a nest full of eggs and fresh green leaves on the branches which really sums up this time of year. I also used two of the leaf stamps from the Autumn Poppy set.

I started the scene using my gelli plate and six different Distress Inks; two blues, two yellow tones and two greens. I covered the plate placing the inks roughly where I wanted them, and spritzed with water, before laying a piece of Velvet card over and getting this nice loose watercolour background. This card is lovely and smooth and takes the water really well. I then stamped the bird, nest and leaves making a frame around the edges, and coloured them using the same colour palette as for the background, apart from a couple of orange toned inks on the bird's head. I then added the sentiment towards the centre using the two blue inks.

I finished by cutting the piece back a little, and mounted it onto white and then blue card before adding this to the 6" square white card.

Thank you for joining me today, and I'll see you again next week.

Best Wishes,

Pat.

Vintage Birdie Spring Card (by Anne)

WOW, the shows with the Babushka and Russian stamps this week were simply FAB. So many lovely samples from my Teamies and great demos from Lesley.

This morning I am sharing a Spring themed card with you – a Vintage styled project using the Spring Bird Crocus set. I hope that you like it x
 
Materials:

• Spring Birds Crocus and Breath of Spring stamp sets
• 8 X 8 inch card blank, 6 X 6 inch background paper from Crafty Individuals (Shades of Summer), white stamping card, green card and pink glitter card
• Inkpads: Versafine (Vintage Sepia), Versamark, Distress Ink (Broken China, Tattered Rose)
• Heat embossing powders (clear and gold sparkle)
• Watercolour, sparkle and glitter pens (yellows, blues, pinks, greens)
• Alcohol marker (pale blue-grey) and metallic marker (gold)
• Glitter glue (gold)
• Trellis die (to cut glitter card border – a paper doily would also work well)
• Metallic thread (gold) and acrylic gems (gold)

How it was done:

1. The bird scene, sentiment and border were stamped onto the patterned paper with Versafine and embossed with clear powder. Water based pens were used to colour. To bring out the scene a little more from the background I used a grey marker to add a drop shadow.
2. The scene was stamped a second time onto white card, coloured and cut out for decoupage.
3. Broken China Distress Ink was blended in from around the edges. The topper edges were then embossed with a little gold sparkle powder. Decoupage elements were glued down with 3D glue gel.
4. The topper was matted onto green card. I used an offcut from a Trellis die cut (pink glitter card) to layer behind the topper left hand side. Gold thread was added for extra sparkle and texture. A square paper doily tinted with Distress Ink would also work really well if you don’t have dies.
5. The background card blank was stamped using Tattered Rose Distress Ink. Broken China Ink was used to blend in from the edges, and the gold pen used to edge the card.
6. I finished with gold glitter glue and gems (I cannot resist a bit of bling).

Spring Time Pastels (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I have a couple of projects from last month's TV shows to share with you today. My projects feature a selection of the Spring stamps, using a mixture of techniques, so hopefully I can give you lots of inspiration in just a few minutes!

For my first project, I created a background using Pan Pastels on a piece of smooth white card. I used  shades of yellow and orange and added a hint of Plum Pan Pastel around the edges. Using Versamark Ink, I stamped the butterfly flourish image randomly over the background, and dusted Pan Pastels over the top to complete the background.

I die cut a rectangular panel and stamped the two butterflies from the butterfly flourish image onto the panel before masking them. I then stamped the lovely large flower image from the Breath of Spring stamp set, and also masked this image. I added Pan Pastels, using a selection of yellow and orange colours to create an ombre background, starting with the lightest colour at the top, graduating down to the darkest colour at the bottom. I removed the masks, and coloured the images with pencils, before adhering both panels to a large white card blank.

To create my second project, I covered a large Tando Tag with a piece of watercolour paper that I had coloured myself with Distress Ink, using pale pink and green inks. I stamped some foliage over the background to give a feeling of depth using the same pale green ink, using an image from the Spring Foliage stamp set. I edged the tag with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink, and stamped the pretty bird image from the Spring Bird Crocus stamp set onto the tag. I added a sentiment from the Glorious Spring stamp set. I coloured the images with pencils, as before. To get my ribbon to match perfectly, I took some pale cream ribbon, and ran it through some Victorian Velvet Distress Ink and water that I had placed onto my craft mat. I simply dried the ribbon with my heat gun, and ironed it on a low setting.

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx