Simon Says - Favourite Technique

Hi Everyone...welcome to another week on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog. Thank you for joining us for last week's challenge and we hope you can join us this week too because

It's the first challenge of the month and that means the Design Team are showcasing products from one particular company or brand and this month it's the turn of PaperArtsy. You don't have to use PaperArtsy products to join in the challenge but if you have some of their fabulous products in your stash, we would love to see how you use them.

We are also welcoming the lovely and very talented Makena Bennett at Avant Card into the Designer Spotlight, if you haven't visited Makena's blog before, you are in for a real treat.

and the theme for this week is...

FAVOURITE TECHNIQUE

It goes without saying that my favourite technique is creating backgrounds, so I looked out my PaperArtsy Infusions and Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Christmas stamps and had lots of fun creating backgrounds to make cards and gift tags. I've made many many backgrounds but I'm still amazed by the process of taking a sheet of plain white card and watching it transform before your eyes.

I began by trimming an A4 sheet of Distress Watercolor card in half, sprinkled on PaperArtsy Sunset Beach and The Sage Infusions (a little goes a long way) and spritzed with water. I tipped the card to let the colours run but not too much because red and green when mixed together make brown and that is definitely not the look I wanted. I dabbed at the card with a roll of kitchen towel to remove any puddles or areas of excess colour and dried.

I sprinkled little amounts of  powder in to certain areas, spritzed with water and dabbed with kitchen towel, repeating until I was happy with the background, always drying between layers.

I made sure the background was thoroughly dry before stamping the large sentiment from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Christmastime 3 and the large snowflake from Retro Flakes, inked with Versamark and heat embossed with Ranger Superfine White Embossing Powder.

To add a little bit of Christmas bling, I inked the starburst image from Christmastime 3 with Versamark, stamped randomly on the background and heat embossed with Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder.

I returned to the second background created in the same way as the previous one. I didn't want the embossed snowflakes to dominate the tags so I used the tag die from Tim Holtz/Sizzix Stacked Tag Thinlits as a template, marked inside the die with a pencil so that the snowflakes were just coming in from the edge of the tag, if you get my drift and ensuring there was white space on each tag too.

I die-cut the tags with holes from the embossed card, fixed to Distress Kraft HeavyStock and trimmed around the edge leaving a small border. I replaced the die to make the hole back into place on the embossed tag and die-cut the hole through the Kraft HeavyStock and also added the die-cut reinforcer.

I added Idea-ology Crinkle Ribbon (a discontinued product sadly, which I use sparingly and there will be tears on the day that my hoard runs out) to the tags held in place with twine bows.

I stamped the sentiments for the card and tags using Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Tiny Text Christmas, inked with Versamark and heat embossed on to Distress Kraft HeavyStock using Ranger Superfine White Embossing Powder.

I find trimming thin perfectly straight, with the text perfectly centred, sentiment strips a bit of a challenge even with my trusty, sharp Tim Holtz/Tonic Studios Guillotine so I've learned from experience and now always resort to my fail-safe Plan B, the Nested Banners dies from Simon Says Stamp.

I inked the edges of the sentiment strips with Walnut Stain Distress Ink and fixed to the card and tags using Distress Collage Medium.

As an afterthought and to tie in with the stamped starbursts on the card, I also stamped them on the tags but inked with Aged Mahogany Distress Oxide ink.

I trimmed the card panel down to 4.3/4" x 6.3/4", added shading around the edges with Brushed Corduroy and Walnut Stain Distress using a mini round blending tool and fixed to a 5" x 7" white card blank.

You can find all the products I used over at Simon Says Stamp, just click on the links below

Why don't you pop over to the Monday Challenge Blog and check out the amazing creations from my very talented Design Team mates and as always you have until Monday 8am Ohio time...1pm UK time...2 pm CET to join in with a chance to win a $25 voucher to spend online at Simon Says Stamp.

You can also follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram

and if you use Instagram...

please add #sssmchallenge to your entry uploads so we can see them on there too

I look forward to seeing what you create this week...

Have Fun and Happy Crafting

Hugs Kath xxx