Dinosaur Cards Tutorial

Hello friends! It's a new Monday and the sun is shining. I hope you get some crafty time in during summer. I was hoping to have done more watercolor painting, but there is still time for that. 

This week at the  Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have an Animal Magic theme. We also have a special Tim Holtz feature this week, and as I am sure you already know, I love to craft with Tim's wonderful stamps, dies, stencils, embellishments, papers, inks and paints. You can find them all here. You don't have to use Tim's products to join, but it is always fun if you do. 

Tim Holtz is also the Brand of the Month at Simon Says Stamp during July, and don't miss all the inspiration and surprises.

I have one dinosaur crazy little boy at home and he loves Tim's Prehistoric set. I used the set to make three dinosaur cards. You will see the third one later in this post, I could only fit two into the photo. The dinos are such fun to die cut, color and assemble, and you can make them in lots of colors. 

Start by die cutting the T-Rex, Stegosaurus and Brachiosaurus from watercolor paper. Try to keep the pieces together.

Smear Distress Inks on a non-stick craft sheet, mist with water and watercolor the dinos. 

When dry, stamp the T-Rex and Stegosaurus with a crackle texture stamp, and the Brachiosaurus with a splatter stamp.

Assemble the dinos, using foam dots for some of the pieces, such as the legs. Use a pen to give each one an eye.

For the background, I used a piece of watercolor paper on which I had pressed down the Gradient Dot Stencil, after having used it with Distress Resist Spray on another project. You can see the process and that project here in my Mist Resist Tags post. The papers were colored by smearing Distress Inks on a craft sheet and misting with water, using similar inks as for the dinos.

I also embossed three pieces of brown kraft cardstock in the 3-D Lumber Texture Fade, and later sanded them.

 

I am not sure which of the dinos is my favorite. Here's the gentle Brachiosaurus, dreaming with her head among the treetops. The sentiment was die cut from gold paper and sanded a little bit. The main panel was layered on burlap, and then on the embossed paper.

The stamped texture adds a great element to the dinos. The darker color on the Brachiosaurus is Pine Needles, a Distress Ink color that I should use more often.

The second card features a brave Stegosaurus, with pretty red plates.

Fold the top plates out a bit and place small pieces of foam adhesive underneath, to add dimension.

I glued the inside pieces of the letters into the shape, since I have always preferred letters with the inside pieces, and not just an open space.

And finally, the friendly (?) T-Rex comes to say 'hello'. Distress the edges of the panels to add instant texture and to give a nice feel to the card.

Here you can see the different layers, embossed lumber paper, burlap, and the Distress Resist Spray paper. I just love the random distressed effect of this technique.

For a fiercer look, give her some sharp teeth.

I hope you will join us this week in our Animal Magic challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

At the seaside layout

Hello crafters! I hope you are enjoying summer. Our summer started in a strange way because of the sudden move. June just flew past and we didn't have time to enjoy it. 

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Life On The Ocean Waves theme. Perfect for the season. Don't miss the project by our July guest Kerstin F with her wonderful blog Scrapbook Dreams.

I used photos from our favorite beach, taken last summer. It is a calm beach, and the water is shallow for a long stretch. The sand is also great for building castles and moats. I used stamps and dies from the new SSS Rest and Refresh release, and created a resist background with anchors.

Start by stamping the Anchors Background with embossing ink and emboss with white or clear powder. Repeat until the entire background is covered. It is easy to line up the stamp, and if you make a mistake, it won't show in the end any way.

Splatter Distress Resist Spray on the background, for a great textured resist effect. I have been using the Distress Resist Spray a lot lately.

Smear blue Distress Inks on a non-stick craft sheet, mist with water and press the paper into the ink. The anchors and mist will resist the ink.

Die cut tags and labels with Tim's Gift Tags set and stamp images and sentiments from Your Light. I love this stamp set and it has so many great images and sentiments. For another project using the same set, check out my Ocean Art Journal Page.

To color the images, smear Distress Inks on a craft sheet, mist with water and pick up with a paint brush. The less water you use, the stronger the shade of color, and the other way around. I stamped words from the Your Light stamp set and from Tabbed Sentiments here and there on the background.

The anchors were die cut with the Anchor and the Anchor Tag dies, from kraft paper and stamped with the You Matter Background stamp. The Anchor die gives the slightly larger die to the left. There is a strip of Design Tape behind the main panel.

Happy was die cut from kraft and white cardstock. The second part of the title was die cut with the Archie Jr set.

Here are more of the little tags. Aren't these images cute? And they summed up our time at the sea so well. I wrote the journaling on the back of the layout.

I hope you will join us this week in our Life on the Ocean Waves challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

Nautical Tag Tutorial

Hi everyone! I have been a quiet lately, and the reason for that is that we had to do an unplanned, extremely unwanted and very sudden move. It has been a challenge to go from sitting happily in my studio one day, to having to find a new place, pack tons of boxes, do all practical arrangements, and move within a month's time. We still need to unpack most of the boxes, but at least the worst parts are now done. The boys are very sad to have had to leave what they saw as their home, with no time to prepare for it. Shame on those who caused this, completely unnecessarily.

We have a new Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for you, and since it is the first Monday of a new month, the team are showcasing products from a specific designer/company. This week the turn has come to Paper Artsy. You can find their wonderful range of stamps, media, paints, and more here. You don't have to use Paper Artsy products to join in the challenge, but it is always fun if you do. 

Our challenge theme is Make Your Own Background, and for July our guest designer is Kerstin F with her beautiful blog Scrapbook Dreams. If you have never visited her blog, I hope you will do so, she makes fantastic projects.

I love to make my own backgrounds using a whole lot of different techniques. Today, I decided to make a background with papers found in my scrap box. All of these papers were colored with Paper Artsy's Infusion Colored Stains, which I always enjoy crafting with. 

I took out some Infusions scraps. The larger sheet is a sheet where I tested a bunch of new Infusions powders some months ago. It was perfect for this project. They were all made by first misting the paper with water, then adding a tiny bit of Infusions powders and finally misting with more water to blend.

Cut the papers into strips and plan how to place them on a tag.

Distress the edges and glue the strips down.

Distress all the edges on the tag.

When the glue is dry, stitch on the tag, using a mix of messy zig zag and straight stitching.

Stamp the background with Hickory Smoke ink, for a softer look than black ink. The stamp is from Paper Artsy Ecletica3 Scrapcosy 11 set.

Emboss the compass also from Scrapcosy 11 with white embossing powder.

Add a tiny bit of Infusions powders to a small amount of water in a paint palette and paint the compass using a paint brush.

Die cut an anchor using the Simon Says Stamp Anchor die, from the new Rest and Refresh release. Apply embossing ink to the die cut and emboss with a three layers of Ranger's Gunmetal powder. Be very careful not to burn yourself. Do NOT touch the melted powder until it is completely cool.

I also distressed some ideaology metal pieces with paint.

I love this sentiment, and it looks great with a little bit of sanding. The black netting comes from a squeeze ball that one of the children had, which broke. The white netting is cheese cloth.

I added a gear and a game spinner to the compass.

And there is a Quote Token with a great sentiment.

Have fun mixing different colors of scrap papers.

I love the look of the metallic anchor.

I hope you will join us this week in our Make Your Own Background challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.