Father's Day In The Garden

Anyone else feel like the year is rushing by? I can't believe we are coming up to Father's Day already!

My Dad is a keen gardener, and ever one to buck the system I decided to make a male card with butterflies on it. This card was a lot of fun to make as I took advantage of the flexible nature of photopolymer stamps and varied how it was shaped as I randomly stamped it in Always Artichoke and Garden Green. I even mixed my inks a little as I skipped cleaning the stamp between inking it up, when I wasn't just sponging a bit of the other colour on to give the fronds some colour variation. Cutting out the fronds wasn't quite so much fun, but it is funny how you can zone out and time flies when doing something like that. To create the little sign I simply trimmed down the cardstock after stamping and punching it out. To get the even notches at the top of my "fence" I lightly penciled a line across on the back of the cardstock at the desired distance from the edge, then used the Christmas tree punch cut the little wedge out between the pailings.

Here are the colours I used:

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Punch Art Letters

A few weeks ago I attended Stampin' Up!'s Partytime event in Sydney. Attendee's are encouraged to make a name badge, which I of course left to do like the day before. Not having any current alphabet stamps, or the alphabet thinlets, and not wanting to be as straight forward as write or print my name... I really was scratching my head about how I could make a creative name badge. Then it suddenly occured to me that I have a bit of a rep for my use of punches, so how about making my name by using punches. I got a number of comments about my badge so thought it would be a good idea to show how I made my letters.

My approach was pretty boring in a way - I started with the letter C because it's the first letter in my name...

From past experience I knew I needed to start from the inside and work out. This isn't always necessary but it often makes things much easier.

So I started with the 1 1/4" scallop circle on the edge of a piece of Wisteria Wonder.

I then lined up the 1 3/4" scallop circle around this...

...and punched it out. Looks like a mouth wanting to eat the frosting off a cupcake, hehehehe.

For the A I started by lining up the postage stamp punch from the Little Lables punch pack. The bottom notches of the punch edge are below the edge, but of course this really wouldn't have mattered since I wasn't using the square... might make it a little easier to ensure it's straight though.

Next I lined up the Tree punch around the stamp shape...

...and punched it out.

The R was probably the trickiest of the lot, I realised pretty quickly that I'd have to be piecing together multiple pieces. For the round part at the top of the R, I trimmed a piece of cardstock to a little under 1.9cm and put it into the 3/4" circle from the bottom of the punch so instead of a circle it will just be rounding one end. When doing this I find it easier to fit the cardstock in if it is just a little smaller than the width of the punch shape you are putting the cardstock into.

The diagonal leg of the R was a piece from the Chevron border punch, for the straight back I just trimmed a strip of cardstock to match the width of the chevron. I then fiddled around with the pieces till I figured out how big I wanted the round part and trimmed the pieces to size.

The O was an easy one. Could've gone for a smaller circle for the middle but liked the slightly different look of having the Small Oval on the inside and punching the 1 1/4" circle around it.

When re-doing my letters to take these photos I mistakenly used the 1 3/8" circle, oops!

Making an interesting L was probably the hardest letter of all. After a lot of thinking and a few failed attempts, I settled on punching the Artisan Label to create the inside shape of the L, then off-setting the Curly Label punch...

...and punching it out. I really loved the shape this gave to the ends of the L.

As you can see I tilted the Curly Label punch quite a bit to get the final shape.

Well I hope that has given you some ideas if you ever find yourself stumped with lettering! Also note that I some of these punches are the old "whale" design, any you buy from Stampin' Up! now will not look like this!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

TBT - Mother's Day Card-In-A-Box

For my second Throw-Back Thursday I thought I would share this card-in-a-box. I followed the instructions of Tanya Bell for a card that would fit into a standard Australian envelope. If you haven't tried your hand at a card-in-a-box, they are quite simple once you get your head around them, and have a great wow factor. The retired items used here are the patterned papers, from the Floral District and Sycamore Street packs. I have a bad habit of buying pretty papers and then being precious about using them... but they always look better when on display as part of a creation!

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Tangerine Tango, Island Indigo, Whisper White
Stamp sets: Mixed Bunch, Papillon Potpourri
Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Elegant Eggplant, Regal Rose, Rose Red, Calypso Coral, Tangerine Tango
Accessories: sponge dauber, Blossom punch, Elegant Butterfly punch, Bitty Butterfly punch, 3/4" circle punch, 1" circle punch, Bird Builder punch