Dies and Punches at Stamping Sensations

For our April Challenge at Stamping Sensations we would like you to show us what you can do with your

***** DIES AND PUNCHES *****

Your project can be anything you like as long as it uses punched and/or diecut elements. And some stamping, of course!

Our fab sponsor this month is once again PDA Card & Craft, who have very generously donated a whopping £40 voucher to be spent either online or in their shop in Langley Mill, which is on the Notts/Derbyshire border.

PDA are well known for their quality cardstock, which they supply in just about every shade and type you could possibly want, but they also sell a huge variety of craft materials, so the winner of this fantastic prize will be spoilt for choice!

Anyway, on to my project. I've called it "Spring Triptych", and have used both dies and punches.

I began by cutting an A4 sheet of card into three equal pieces and trimming one end of each with the Britannia Dies Small Lattice Edge. While looking through my patterned paper stash, I came across some that I've had for so long I'd forgotten all about it! If I remember correctly it came from Lakeland, when they had a craft section, in a pack with some glittered butterfly and flower stickers. I thought it would be perfect for a Spring project, with its tulips and butterflies, and pretty Spring colours. I traced around the edge of the lattice die to hand cut the paper to fit the top of each panel. (The die only cuts the outer edge.) I didn't want to cover up the paper too much, so I just added some diecut shapes (Spellbinders Labels 4) and some tiny punched butterflies. On the two outer panels I stamped a tulip (Stampin' Up)  and the centre one has some punched flowers and leaves and a sentiment (Inkylicious).

   

Once each panel was complete, I inserted some eyelets and joined the panels together with narrow ribbon. A spot of glitter glue on the punched butterflies and flower centres provided the finishing touch.

A little aside here! When the trend for diecutting first started, I wasn't interested. I certainly didn't intend to spend a lot of money on something that I might use once or twice and then stick in a cupboard, never again to see the light of day. At the time, I was running a card making class, and some of the members had bought Cuttlebugs. They were soon raving about them, and wanting to use them in the classes. I resisted for a while, but then I discovered Spellbinders dies and was impressed by the effects you could get with them. I gave in and got a 'bug of my own. And promptly fell in love with it! Of course, since then the variety of types and styles of dies has just grown and grown, not to mention that of machines, both manual and electronic. I remain faithful to my 'bug, though. I don't feel any need for larger dies, or electronic cutting. I can do everything I want to with the Cuttlebug, and a great many of my projects contain at least one element produced by it. It has never let me down. I can't see why on earth I would want to trade it in for a smarter model .....

My creative teamies have a gorgeously eclectic selection of samples for you over on the Challenge Blog, so do go over and be inspired. Last month's Pink theme was very popular, and I reckon this one is going to be equally so. I'm really looking forward to seeing lots of entries, so dig out those dies and punches and get cracking! Thanks for looking.

PS. Just realised this also fits the Butterfly Challenge (No. 4), so I'm going to enter it there.

Happy Birthday Stampalot Challenge!

It's a rather special month at Stampalot Challenge. It might be April Fools day, but we're not joking -  you really are going to be spoilt rotten this month! There are absolutely loads of prizes to be won, because it's our Second Birthday! Naturally the challenge theme is

Happy Birthday

You can make absolutely anything you want as long as it's to celebrate a Birthday and as usual there's a fantastic prize from the lovely people at Sir Stampalot for this month's lucky challenge winner:

But it does not stop there, as in time honoured tradition we are having a Blog Hop and what fab prizes Sir Stampalot are offering in addition to the challenge prize above: one at each of the DT's blogs and another for the winner of the correct blog hop answer. I know lots of you are familiar with what you need to do, but as we are seeing so many new crafters joining our challenge, here are the details:

Visit each of the DT's blogs listed below.

Leave each one a comment to be sure you are in the draw for the prizes on each of the DT's blogs.

Pick up a letteR fRom each DT blog you visit. (You might have to look foR a clue to the letteRs!)  My letteR should be faiRly obvious!

Assemble those letteRs into two words - each word has four letteRs, and there's a clue in the prize! - and send youR answers to brenda@ibas.co.uk by noon GMT on 30th ApRil.

All correct answers will go into the draw for this super prize, some rather yummy Hero Arts goodies!

Here's the list of names you need to follow, each one will tell you where you should have arrived from and where you need to go next, but if you get lost you can always go back to the Challenge Blog and start again and don't forget you need to leave a comment at each blog, otherwise you won't be in the draw for all those prizes.


Sally

Pinky

Clare

Brenda

Ruth

Tracy

Lynne - You are here!

Francesca

To get here you should have come from the very talented Tracy and your next and final port of call will be the fabulous Francesca. Then you will have collected your eight letters and rearranged them into the two words to send off to Brenda.
This is the prize you can win on my blog:

And there are yet more prizes, because as this is a special month for us, this month Top 3 challenge entrants will also receive a little prize rather like this which Brenda has put together...........

Amidst all the excitement, I almost forgot to show you my card for our birthday challenge!

I've been making Mothers' Day and Easter cards with some of my classes at school, and they were mostly based on punched flowers. Being in a punch mood, I thought I'd do something with them for my challenge card. I've also just learned how to make crochet flowers (thanks for the lesson, Mairi!) and this one seemed to be the perfect embellishment for the card.

The background paper is from Crafty Individuals, and the flowers are punched from the same paper. The little butterfly is a Nellie Snellen punch. Not sure what all the others are, but they and the Nestie (Blossom 3) I've mounted them on are all available from Sir Stampalot.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Don't forget to go and have a look at the DT's gorgeous samples on the Challenge Blog, where you will also find all the details of the challenge and blog hop, and I look forward to seeing your entries.

Normal service is resumed!

Back to my more usual style for this card. I love the look of the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals dies, but they are too big for the sort of things I'd want them for, so I decided to make my own distressed flowers using the EK Success retro flower punches. I wanted them to look as though they were made from old book pages. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time. However, I couldn't bring myself to tear the pages out of a book! A friend of mine even gave me an old book which she'd got specially for me to use, but it was a book of wild flowers with some lovely old pictures in, and I just couldn't do it! I thought I would scan them instead. Then I found a website where you can download copyright free books, so I printed some pages from that and made them look old with Distress Inks (Tumbled Glass and Antique Linen, which I also used on the butterfly and sentiment). Having punched out the flowers I just tore the edges of the petals a bit & then inked around them. Not quite the same as Tim's, but near enough to the look I wanted.

The background paper is a digital download from Two Peas in a Bucket, one of the "Art Papers III" digital kit by Vinnie Pearce. The text-printed leaves on it went perfectly with my flowers. It's such a pretty paper that I kept the embellishments to a minimum so as not to hide it. The photo doesn't do it justice. The punched butterfly is overstamped with Hero Arts "Delicate Vine", and the sentiment is by Darkroom Door. The lace and ribbon came from my late mother's stash. She was a crafter, though her speciality was in fabrics and dried flower arranging. She was also a hoarder and loved a bargain, with the result that she had more materials stashed away than she was ever likely to use. I think I've inherited the tendency! But if that's the price of also inheriting her love of arts and crafts and making things, it's one I'm happy to pay!

Sir Stampalot June Challenge

I've been busy lately dealing with my late father's affairs & effects, and clearing out his house, not to mention having had some sort of cold or virus which has left me feeling quite washed out, so I'm afraid blogging has had to take a back seat. When I did have some time to craft, I didn't have the inclination, but now I've been inspired once again by Sir Stampalot's Challenge. For June the theme is "Punch it", so I decided to make a screen card.

I started it off with the punched flower panel, the idea for which came from Julie Hickey's lovely book "Flower Power Papercrafts" (published by David & Charles), where she shows a beautiful wedding card with a flower panel, all in cream. I wanted mine to look summery, so I used multicoloured flowers.The flowers are not stuck on to acetate, as one might suppose, but only to each other, which adds to the lacy effect and allows the light to come through naturally.

The background papers are by Papermania, and the stamps and printed pictures by Crafty Individuals. I finished off the screen with some more punched flowers, a punched butterfly and some computer generated text. Other punches used were a Dovecraft corner rounder and the border at the top, the make of which unfortunately I don't know. 

Sally and I are very much looking forward to the Blog Girl Get-Together at Sir Stampalot this Saturday, when we will get to meet some of our blog friends, play and generally have a good old natter, just what I need after the last few months. Oh, and I should mention we also get to shop afterwards!

I'm also entering this card for the Charisma Cardz Challenge #22, which is "Flowers".