Bear Hugs And Lake Fish

I have a few family members who are keen fishers, so I am always happy to see a fishing related stamp set.

We have a lake nearby, so this sentiment was also very fitting for the recipient of this card. I created a bit of a lake scene, and got what I thought was a brilliant idea for waves on the lake made using a die from the Cups & Kettles framelits die set. Both the bear & the fish were stamped on watercolour paper and watercoloured using the aquapainter and ink from the inkpads. The fish was done with very diluted Night Of Navy ink, and the light areas on the bear are Tip Top Taupe, with Early Espresso for the darker areas.

Bear Hugs clear-mount stamp set & Bear Hugs framelits dies bundle 140823, Night Of Navy A4 cardstock 106577, Very Vanilla A4 cardstock 106550, Island Indigo A4 cardstock 124390, Tip Top Taupe A4 cardstock 138343, watercolour paper 122959, Basic Black archival stamp pad, Night Of Navy stamp pad 126970, Tip Top Taupe stamp pad 138325, Early Espresso stamp pad 126974, Cups & Kettles framelits dies 140624, Large Numbers framelits dies 140622, Aquapainter 103954, dimensionals 104430

Honey You're So Sweet

Hello again! I've been a bit quiet again of late, but I'm sure many of you can related... kids off on school holidays, others on holiday from work. Sudden plan changes have really messed with my mojo these holidays, but I've finally managed to finish a card, once again using the Bear Hugs stamp set.

One of the very first ideas I got for this set was putting it with Hello Honey and a honeycomb pattern - there is the embossing folder, pie and punch for a variety of options. What I ended up going for was the embossing folder, I felt the die might have made things a bit too visually busy when I wanted the focus to be on the bear. One of the nifty things the Bear Hugs stamp set and matching dies allow you to do is to stamp on the back of the cardstock so when you fold the arms around you can still see the design. I love that they thought to design the sramps and dies with this in mind.

I think most of this card is straight forward, but you may be wondering how I got the shape the sentiment is stamped on. Well, this is where the hexagon punch came in:

By inserting the cardstock in the back of the punch you can vary how much of the cardstock gets punched. It's a little trick I have used for years and have mentioned before but it's always worth mentioning these things every now and then to jog the memory, let alone for new people who haven't see this before.

Here are the colours I used...

Bear Hugs clear-mount stamp set & framelits bundle 140823, Soft Suede A4 cardstock 119982, Hello Honey A4 cardstock 133685, Very Vanilla A4 cardstock 106550, Basic Black archival stamp pad, Soft Suede stamp pad 126978, Hello Honey stamp pad 133643, Honeycomb embossing folder 129378, Hexagon punch 130919, Aqua painter 103954, linen thread 104199, gold metallic thread 138401, dimensionals 104430

One Two Red Blue

Happy New Catalogue Day! Today the teasing stops and you can finally order some of the fab goodies in the Occasions and Sale-a-bration catalogues for yourself!

One of my must-have sets from the Occasions catalogue was the Bear Hugs set and the matching dies (gotta love those 15% off bundles!). While I do have a whole bunch of bear related card ideas going through my head (warning: many puns may be involved), once this little idea came to me I thought I really must make it straight away...

I contemplated adding text to make the One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish book connection more obvious, but I knew the font of the ABC Rotary Stamp wasn't a close style to that used on the book cover. It would also lead to much time being spent on contemplating the card design while I debated where to put the text, so I took the easy way out and left it off. The red stripes are a nod at the Cat In The Hat, and for those I put 1cm wide stripes of Whisper White into the Stylish Stripes embossing folder, and then went over the raised stripes with a marker just like I did with the Bombers Christmas card. I've also put as strip of the red stripes on the inside of the card.

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