STAMPlorations Birthday - Birthday Cover Plate Dies

Happy Friday! It's been quite a week, I have had so much fun celebrating six years of STAMPlorations. Happy (slightly belated) birthday STAMPlorations, here's to many more! Congrats to Shery and David for making your business a success. Your products are the best, and I'm glad to see your hard work pay off and wish you all the best for the future. I'm so honoured to be part of your STAMPfamily. 

Today it's the last day of new festive product releases and I'm joining fellow design team members over on the STAMPlorations blog to showcase two new Zen Doodles birthday dies. And you still have plenty of time to celebrate with us to win great prizes. You can comment on the blog posts and the designer's blogs, you can link up to the Wishlist Linky Party or share your birthday- or celebration themed creations in the Birthday Linky Party. The linky parties are open until November 5th so you still have a few weeks to play along!

 

My first card is a Christmas card I created using Zen Doodled Birthday Gifts Cover Plate die. I die cut the plate three times - once in brown, once in red and once in green. I attached the brown outline onto white card, and paper pieced some of the areas in green, red and brown. I added a sentiment using the new Joy Christmas sentiment stamp set.

For my second card I went, as my dear sister put it, 'a bit psychedelic'. I die cut the plate twice, once in a shimmery grey card and once in a watercolour card. I watercoloured the latter before taking it apart, and paper pieced the whole card into the grey frame. Depending on your personality type, you will either find this completely infuriating or very mediative. I am, as you can guess, of the latter type. I die cut the sentiment using the Celebrate word die in black, attached it to a scrap of vellum and added stickles for that little bit of extra bling.

For my last card, I used a die cut of the plate as a stencil. I inked throuhg it using Distrss Oxides and added a sticker from Birthday Word Art for the sentiment. Last, I added some rainbow washi tape to frame the main image.

That's it, that's the end of the STAMPlorations Sixth Birthday Bash. I feel like it's the morning after the party - the kitchen is full of dirty dishes and various leftovers, and there are a few strange stains on the carpet. It's time to put the dishes in the washer, take out the stain remover and think back of all the fun while clearing out the mess. I need to take a breather for a few days, clear out my craft room and re-set my brain for new projects but there are already lots of fun ideas which are bubbling under the surface.

Stamps: STAMPlorations Joy

Dies: CUTplorations Zen Doodled Birthday Gifts Cover Plate die, Celebrate word die

Stickers: STAMPlorations Birthday Word Art Clear Stickers

Rainbow Congrats

I've been making up for lost time in the craft room lately. And as I made a few cards over the last few days which were not rainbow coloured, of course I had to make up that too, inspired by the image over at Just Us Girls. I also wanted to play along with Time Out where the theme is Celebrations with the Optional Twist of One Layer. I'm assuming inlaid die cutting counts as one layer! Last, but not least I was also inspired by the Words Have Power theme over at AAA Cards. 

The inlaid die cut technique is an easy and quick way of creating fun designs. Here, I started by stamping the gorgeous new Blossom Sprays #1 stamp from STAMPlorations in Versafine. Then, I die cut the sentiment using Congrats Word Die and sponged Distress Ink onto the die cut. The only thing you need to be careful about is to make sure you don't lose the tiny little bits from the die cut so you can glue them all back into the correct places. I added a few colourful rhinestones as a finishing touch. This would be a great design if you needed to mass produce cards, you could do a whole set with different flower stamps and different sentiments. 

Card: 250 gsm white card, Neenah Solar White Card
Stamps: STAMPlorations Blossom Sprays #1
Dies: CUTplorations Congrats Word Die
Ink: Tsukineko Versafine Onyx Black, Tim Holtz Distress Ink Mustard Seed, Worn Lipstick, Wilted Violet, Mermaid Lagoon, Twisted Citron
Other: Adhesive gems from my stash

Don't forget the STAMPlorations 4th Birthday Hop and Wishlist Linky Party is in full swing with lots of opportunities to win great prizes. Also, don't forget you can get 20% off when shopping at the STAMPlorations store by using the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. Together with the 15% birthday discount (which is applied automatically without any code) that adds up to a whopping 35% off your order!