Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Surprise Baby Shower

Hi friends! This morning I woke up to one of my best surprises ever. The wonderful Eileen Hull Inspiration Team is throwing a surprise virtual baby shower for Leo, from many corners of the world.

The team members made absolutely wonderful gifts for Leo using Eileen's dies. I've spent a long time looking at their posts and I am so moved. What a sweet and special thing to do! I will remember it always and will tell Leo about his international baby shower when he is bigger. 

Don't miss all the inspiration posted by my wonderful team mates in this very special 'shower' hop.



Leo is doing very well and his cheeks are starting to get chubby.

A big thank you to the Eileen Hull Inspiration team from me and Leo! We loved our virtual baby shower!

Happy crafting!!

Anna-Karin

Monday, March 30, 2015

Pastel Tutorial

Hello everyone! I hope you got some time to craft this weekend. It is Monday again and a new Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge. This week we are all about pastels. 

It was time to make Leo's very first scrapbooking layout and pastel colours work well for a baby. On this photo he could still wear the tiny baby clothing, which he has managed to outgrow now and his cheeks are now rounder. I also used pastels for the background, namely the great Pearlescent Pan Pastels. The background would work great on a card of art journal too. I took a few step photos as I was making this.

Working on Specialty Stamping Paper, stamp Tim Holtz pretty Floral background stamp with Versamark ink. Sponge with Pan Pastels, using Sofft tools. The design will magically appear since the colour goes on much darker on the areas where there is ink. Indeed, on the Specialty Stamping paper, the remaining areas will stay pretty much white. Other papers might grab onto more of the pastels.

Stamp the dot stamp from the same set here and there on the rest of the background and sponge with yellow Pearlescent Pan Pastels. It is kind of hard to see the effect on this photo.

I wanted to use Tim Holtz Butterfly Duo die and texture fade combo again. Check out this tutorial for another look of these butterflies. Die cut from vellum and sticky back canvas, which had first been adhered to cardstock. Emboss in the coordinating folder.

Apply Ranger's Emboss It Dabber around the edges of the vellum butterflies and sprinkle with white embossing powder. Melt with a heat gun. I love this effect and the remaining speckles here and there.

Layer the vellum butterflies on top of the canvas ones and staple at the body only, so that you can shape the wings a little to give them dimension.

Die cut two tags from cardstock using one of the dies from the Tag Collection. Tie with a linen ribbon and write your journaling on the tags. You can of course use more tags if you need too.
 
Emboss three pieces of white cardstock to use as a photo mat and make a pocket behind them, so that you can tuck the tags in there. I love this Sketch Heart die by Simon Says Stamp. White paint was rubbed into the word on the Typed Token.

I die cut three flags from white paper and stamped Hashtag words on them. Shape the flags to give them dimension.

Tim's Correspondence set is a new favourite of mine and it consists of a lot of stamps. The stamps have a postage theme, and many of them work really well as sentiments on different types of projects. 

I've used the idea-ology Heart Charms a lot, and the Shield Charms are just as sweet. You can pick a sticker to fit with your project and then add the coordinating epoxy sticker on top. 

The Flash card was softened with some white paint. 

The stamping was done with various Archival Inks. I love this adventure sentiment stamp, and it fit perfectly here. The small tags also come from the Tag Collection set, die cut from patterned paper.

It is very hard to capture the pearlescent shine of the pastels on a photo, maybe you can spot it a little better here. The word was die cut with the Handwritten Love die.

I hope you will join us this week in our pastel challenge! If you do, you might be the one who wins a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp, drawn randomly.

Thank you for visiting today!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

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