Fun Fold Friday Rooted in Nature

 wow what a week it's been! It started with my birthday and is ending with the amazing #SULeadersSummit !! Leaders Summit is an amazing gathering of Stampin' Up! demonstrators from around the world to share, connect and learn from each other. Gill and I are both honoured and excited to be a part of this fantastic gathering . The most amazing part of this experience for ne is being able to connect with others . Stampin' Up!  Is a family and we have branches that spread wide and riits that are deep just like  the beautiful oak tree in the Rooted in Nature stamp set so for today's fun fold card I had to incorporate the stunning oak tree stamp and send a message to all our fellow demonstrators You are Wonderful 🧡

The fun fold is called a side stepper card and I found a template online  and adapted it to suit me 😉 The card base is made from a piece of card measuring 14 85cm x 10.5cm. 

I then marked lightly from the right hand side 7cm in and 7cm down along the long side. This is the point at which you start a cut line that will finish at the 18cm mark. (See photo below)

Now to create the folds. On the left hand side of the cut line score at 10.5cm to the line. Now on the right hand side score to the line at 7cm, 13cm, 14 5cm, 16cm and 18cm ( see photo below)

Fold the 10.5cm scoreline as a mountain fold gently. The 18cm score line is also a mountain fold. The 16cm is a valley,  the 14.5cm is a mountain the 14cm a valley and finally the 7cm score line is a mountain fold. (The photo below show it better than I can describe it 😉)

I've used some of the gorgeous Plaid Tidings paper from the winter mini catalogue from Stampin' Up! To create a background for my stamped and die cut trees. I fussy cut the sentiment and log cut added a little gingham ribbon and voilà my card to celebrate all ou fellow demonstrators was done 😀

Now Gill and I will be having  a busy weekend with a few late nights at #SULeadersSummit . I hope you have a fab weekend too and will join me here next week to see what lovely inspiration Gill will be sharing with us all.

Have Fun

Cary xxx

Watercolour Wednesday Rooted in Nature

 For today's samples I've again gone for the unexpected colour combo for the Rooted in Nature  stamp set...as you may have guessed I'm a bit of a colour rebel  😜 So combining bright colours and messy watercolour techniques is right up my street 🤣🤣🤣

For the background I created one of my favourite wet watercolour backgrounds using royal purple, bright blue and strong sea blue/green  colours. The technique is simple useing watercolour paper spritz well with water over the entire surface. Now drop reinker onto a silicon sheet or piece of plastic and with a water painter add a few drops of water. Now the fun begins! Take you water painter and pick up some of the ink and gently drop it onto the wet watercolour paper and watch it spread and as you add other colours merge to create unique backgrounds 😃 I would advise leaving the piece to dry naturally as you want the colours to saturate and stay because if you use a heat tool the water will get blown around on the surface. 

Once I had my background made I decided I wanted lots of texture so I pulled out my embossing folders, dies  and embossing paste. First I die cut a mask from a piece of vellum and used this with embossing paste onto one piece of my background.

Popping this aside I took out my embossing folders and embossed a piece of vellum to place over the second background. 

I then heat embossed the tree image in clear embossing power and die cut it out twice. I then used white heat embossing powder to stamp 2 sentiments and cut these out.

A small splash of silver mesh ribbon and both cards came together. Now my photos don't do the cards justice 😒  they are very textural and look much better in real life !

I hope you like my adventures into colour and texture because they sure were fun to create 😄 

Make it simple Monday Rooted in Nature

 Welcome to the first of this week's samples featuring the oh so elegant Rooted in Nature stamp set. Rooted in Nature has been around for a couple of years but is not one that I have played a lot with. So I thought it was about time I had a go 😊

Today's inspiration shows that you don't have to be restricted to "natural " colours, although they do look lovely 😊, when using a nature set. 

I have created 2 identical #simplestamping cards one in shades of  green and a touch a rich coppery tone. And the other in funky bright pink, purple and a sea blue/green colour combo. Both very different in feel but identical in design.

To create the card I stamped the sentiment in black. Then I cut a scrap of copier paper to fit over it. 

With the copier paper covering the sentiment I stamped 3 of the different  leaves from the Rooted in Nature set. To create a feeling of depth to the piece I stamped with out reinking the stamp several times. This is called generational stamping. It's perfect for beginners as it helps extend the colours of ink you have available . See the photo below for an example. Between each stamping instead of reinking I huffed over the stamp to reactive the colour. 

Once happy with the stamping I removed the copier paper mask. Now I take a black pen and draw a frame around the edges of the leaves framing the sentiment. 

Well that's all for today. Thank you for joining me and I hope you'll pop by tomorrow .