Merry Christmas! I hope you all are enjoying a fun and relaxing holiday with your loved ones today. This week our team will be transitioning from Christmas to Spring, featuring a new mini stamp set called Love Birds that is perfect for Valentine's Day, however as I think my cards will illustrate this set doesn't have to be limited to a single holiday. Let's jump right in!
Card No.1: For my first card featuring the Love Birds Stamps, I started by creating my pastel rainbow cloud background by inking on alternating distress inks together with masks I had cut from our Fluffy Cloud Border Dies. I then trimmed down my panel to 3.5" wide and added the stitching and scalloped trim to the edges with our Slimline Basic Border Dies.
The love bird set comes with a bare tree branch and individual leaves making it easy to customize for both winter and spring scenes and to best position the leaves to suit your card. In this case, I was able to use the same tree branch three times, but by rotating it and placing the leaves in different spots for each of them, I was able to give my card a bit more personality. Finally, I heat-embossed a punny greeting from the set onto our Brilliant Banner 1 Dies which I had inked with a coordinating shade of Picked Raspberry distress ink to tie in with the pink cloud below.
Card No.2: Next up I paired two of those same adorable birds from the new Love Birds Stamps with our new Tree Branch Dies and the birdhouses from our A Bird's Life Stamps and Little Birdie Stamps. To create my cloud background, I used the coordinating cloud dies from our Plane Awesome Die set which I cut from masking material and then inked over using my favorite Jumbo Dauber. I then added the stitched edge along the bottom of my panel using that same Slimline Basic Border die.
To give my birdhouses the appearance they were hanging from the tree, I poked holes in my background panel and used a fat needle with some embroidery floss to string them on, taping the ends of the floss to the back of my panel before adhering the panel to my card base. I then was able to adhere my birdhouses onto my card and hide any holes. Before doing this though, I first adhered a 1" thick strip of red gingham patterned paper to the bottom of my card from our Classic Gingham Paper pack and layered a lacy scalloped edge from our Eyelet Lace Border Dies.
Card No.3: For my next card featuring the adorable Love Birds, I paired them with a greeting from our new My Heart Stamps (which won't be fully unveiled or available to purchase until next week). This greeting was designed to perfectly fit within our Stitched Heart 2 Dies and Scalloped Heart Dies.
In this case, I stamped the greeting first with dye ink, and then while it was still in my MISTI tool, I stamped it again with VersaMark Ink so I could sprinkle the greeting with a little bit of clear embossing powder. In this case, my dye ink wasn't matching my cardstock as well as I would have liked, and heat embossing it warmed up the tones just enough to make them match better. It also has the added bonus of lending a bit of shine and sparkle to my card in person.
To complete my card, I pierced my background using our Dotted Diamond Landscape Die, added the new Tree Branch Die for my birdie to perch on, and our Pink Spinel Jewels to the center of each stamped flower blossom. It was a fairly quick and simple card to create, but I love how adding the little flowers with the jewels gave it just the touch of oomph it was missing.
Card No.4: For my last Love Birds card of the day, I paired them with our larger Out On A Limb tree branch die which I thought was a better scale to match the new free Cherry Blossom die that will automatically come with all retail orders placed in our store starting today! I repeatedly cut the blossoms from white cardstock, inked them with Spun Sugar Distress Ink, and then accentuated the veining detail using my Copic Marker before adding the little center portion which I had also colored with my Copics over a piece of scratch paper. For my background, I inked it up using the same masks I had cut from our Fluffy Clouds Border Dies for my first card.
Here's a closer look at the new Love Birds Stamps, Love Bird Dies, and Tree Branch Dies. While these are available in our store now, the rest of our Spring Release will be shared with our Sneak Peek Week starting on January 1st and available to purchase on January 5th.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and will continue to check back each day this week to see more fun ideas using this cute set by the rest of the team. :)
Other Sunny Studio Supplies Used:
