Faux-corrugated card technique with Watermelon Wonder and Watercolor Wings!

I've been playing a lot with the Watercolor Wings stamp set recently - I love it! I've been experimenting with different colour-combinations and it is amazing to see just how different the butterflies look when stamped in different inks!

I have mostly been stamping them with soft colours so far,  but, decided to try out some bright and striking colours instead. Here is a card that I inked up with Stampin' Up!'s Watermelon Wonder, Memento Tuxedo Black and a little bit of Pumpkin Pie!

Here is the card I made:

I love how bold the Watermelon Wonder, Pumpkin Pie and Tuxedo Black look against the Whisper White cardstock. I slightly mis-aligned the layers of the butterfly and changed my mind about the orange Pumpkin Pie body, so over-stamped it with black ink - however, I think this all gives it a bit of a pop-art feel, don't you? However, it needed a little something extra, so I decided to score some lines with my Simply Scored Tool on the Watermelon Wonder card base - which I think looks a bit like some sort of ribbon behind the black butterfly panel... I still felt it needed something else, so decided to do a bit more scoring on the black layer.

Here it is in more detail:

I began with just a few score lines towards the bottom of the card, but then thought it needed even more detail - so I decided to score the whole of the black card layer to see what it would look like.

I was pleased with the result! I think it looks a bit like corrugated card and as I haven't yet got my mitts on Stampin' Up!'s brand new Corrugated Paper (in White and Kraft colours) I thought this makes a good faux alternative, don't you? It is a great way to add more interest without adding more layers or embellishments to a card...

Hope you like it?

That's all for today, but there will be more butterflies on Saturday, but in more subtle colours: Mint Macaron and Perfect Plum. Hope you return to take a look!

Don't forget that as it is Wednesday today, there is a brand new set of Weekly Deals on offer which are only available until next Tuesday (23rd June 2015). Here they are:

Click here to take a closer look at them.

I love the Arrows embossing folder - I use it on a lot of projects - it is great for all sorts of occasions - especially cards for kids and teenagers and for masculine cards too. The Decorative Dots embossing folder is probably my most-used embossing folder - I have used it on all sorts of things, from Christmas cards to animal-themed cards! The silver basic buttons are another "must have" item for me too - they are nicely weighted and so versatile as they go with everything being neutral in colour and style! Seam-binding ribbon is my all-time most-used ribbon - it ties beautifully, it can be crumpled, you can pull the threads and turn it into ruffled ribbon, it lies beautifully flat on cards and is easily stuck down with snail, glue dots or fast fuse glue. I haven't got any in Early Espresso though, so that will definitely be going on my order after my class on Thursday... and I think the two stamp sets might accidentally fall onto my order too as I have not got those yet and have been umm-ing and ahh-ing about them for a while now! Hmm... What will you choose?! Decisions, decisions, eh? :)

I shall be back on Saturday with more butterflies - this time in Perfect Plum and Mint Macaron, for a more subtly-coloured couple of projects! Hope you will like them...

Until next time, happy crafting everyone! 

Lucy x

STOP PRESS NEWS: I was utterly delighted to find out that my entry into the Always Playing With Paper Blog Colour Challenge last week was chosen as one of the design team's Top Picks - How exciting! I am thrilled - what an honour! Thank you Nance from APWP, you made my whole week! :)

Cherry On Top cookie pouch

Today I have a quick post for a quick-to-make cookie packet treat pouch using the fabulous new Cherry On Top Designer Series Paper (DSP) Stack.

The paper comes in several designs all in a really useful 6x6" (15.2x15.2cm) sheet size. There are a bumper 48 sheets in each stack - with four each of 12 double-sided designs in fabby, bright and cheery, Summery colours and gorgeous patterns. Stampin' Up! have had the simply genius idea of offering coordinating packs of matching A4 cardstock colours to go with each of the paper stacks and other packs of DSP in the new Annual Catalogue. The Cherry On Top Cardstock pack has 8 sheets each of Bermuda Bay, Cucumber Crush and Watermelon Wonder cardstock for a great price of £6.50. No more struggling to find enough sheets of matching cardstock when you are on a roll and making multiple projects with your DSP! Yey!

Here are the papers in action:

I chose the fun cup cake, ice creams and cherries sheet and the multi-coloured nibbled doughnuts designs to make these pouches which hold a cute two-pack of double-chocolate Oreo cookies which I bought from my local corner shop. I am sure that you could easily adapt the design and measurements to fit a treat of your choice though if you can't find these exact ones... 

I put a line of Fast Fuse glue along the bottom edge and along one side edge of the DSP and wrapped the paper around the snack pack, pressing down the seams gently, making sure that I kept the edges of the papers straight and also allowing enough room for the packs to slide in and out of the pouch easily. I used a small (3/4") circle punch to cut a half-moon thumb-grip hole out of the front of the pouch.

I punched two Decorative Label Punch shapes out - one in Crushed Cucumber and one in Watermelon Wonder - to make the pull tabs. I then stapled a narrow "faux-ribbon" to the top, made from strip of one of the other cute paper designs in the Cherry On Top DSP, and "flagged" on the ends using the same circle punch as the thumb-grip hole (to make a change from the usual fish-tail flags I would normally do!). I decorated the labels with punched out hearts which were left over from my recent Telford Swaps  and raised them up on half a dimensional each. (The heart stamp is from the Something To Say stamp set, punched out using the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack.)  The top half of the label tabs were glued together with Tombow and then the lower halves were attached to the cookie packs using glue dots. 

In the photographs above and below you can see that I  scored a series of lines at the bottom of each treat pouch to make it look like the sealed ends of the cookie packaging. To do this I used my Simply Scored Scoring Tool and the smaller end of the Stylus to create four score lines at 1/8th of an inch intervals. You can also see how neatly the tab top fits inside the pouch under the thumb-grip hole. There is plenty of space left on the punched labels for any message you might like to write on them for the recipient of the cookie treat pouch. If these were to be a table gift at a party, then you could maybe attach another label on the front of the pouch with each guest's name and use them for place-settings too, perhaps?

There was just enough room to glue-dot an individually-wrapped peppermint teabag onto the cookie pack, below the label, so that I could slide the cookies and the attached teabag together into the pouch, meaning that the people I sent these to, could sit down with their feet up and have a soothing cuppa and a couple of biccies on me, whilst they flicked through their lovely brand new copy of the Stampin' Up! catalogue that I sent to them!

Not got a copy of the catalogue yet? Would you like me to send you a paper copy? Then contact me and I will be very happy to send you one if you don't already have your own demonstrator... The first five people to request a catalogue, will get one of my Cherry On Top "cookie and cuppa" treat pouches, plus, an In Color bookmark sampler with their catalogue too. 

(Thanks go to my fellow Pinkie, Katy, for the inspiration for the sampler.)

Until next time, happy crafting everyone!

Lucy x

Click on the above image for more information on how to get two FREE stamp sets in June!