Birthdays are like hairballs….

I made this card with a special friend in mind, actually I bought the stamp set with her in mind! I know I’ll get plenty of use out of it, actually, I have already used another one of the stamps for a Thank you card.

Stampin' Up! Giggle Greetings

I need to work out the white balance on my camera when trying to photograph Watermelon Wonder, for some reason it turned everything else pink! However, you get the picture!

I love this stamp set, its only a set of four stamps, but they are such cute images and great sentiments, I couldn’t help myself, and I’m so glad it’s still in the Annual Catalogue. Have you got your copy of the latest Annual Catalogue yet by the way? If not (and you’re in the UK) I’m still sending them out, so just leave your details HERE!

I stamped in Stazon Black ink onto shimmery White Card Stock, and then remembered I wanted to heat emboss this ready for water-colouring, so I pulled out my Stamp-a-ma-jig to ensure correct alignment and stamped over it again in Versamark, and heat embossed in Clear Stampin’ Emboss powder. I added water to the cat, and dropped Tip Top Taupe into the water with a paintbrush. I did a little bit of blending, but really not very much.

The layers are matted off set towards the top, something I think just makes this card just a little different, cute huh!


 

Stampin' Up! UK July Technique Class 2015 An Open Heart

 



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

Freshly Made Sketches #191 – It’s Your Birthday

Stampin' Up! UK Freshly Made Sketches Endless Birthday Wishes

Oh yes, It’s that time again! Playing along with Freshly Made Sketches again this week with #191!

Freshly Made Sketches 191

This sketch scared the pants off me! So much white space! I love white space, I really do, and most of my cards feature expanses of white space, but to see a sketch with so much white was just frightening!

Stampin' Up! UK Freshly Made Sketches Endless Birthday Wishes

I’ve had a stack of card stock sat out on my shelf this week, and the Real Red piece shouted at me for this card. As soon as I saw the two little strips on the sketch I knew I wanted to use some Designer Series Paper, so I pulled Typeset – I love this paper, its so pretty but I hadn’t used it on a card before! I know, its shocking, but putting DSP on cards is something I struggle with – I am a total stamper at heart.

Initially I grabbed Guy Greetings for my sentiment, but I quickly changed my mind to the lovely new Endless Birthday Wishes. I uses a ruler and pencil to draw a line across the piece of Very Vanilla card stock, and I stamped the sentiment in Real Red on the line. Sometimes I find this way to get a straight line quicker than pulling out my Stamp-a-ma-jig!

I almost thought the card was finished, but it just felt a little too clean! I’ve been playing with the Birthday Blossoms preparing for my Stamp-a-Stack for July, so pulled it again for these awesome flowers punched with the Pansy Punch.

Thanks for stopping by today, see you again soon

x



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

I Think You’re Great!

Stampin' Up! UK I think your great ink smooshing

I have been playing with ink a lot recently, making a great big mess, but having loads of fun too! I get a lot of inspiration from watching some of the wonderful card makers on YouTube (Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner are two of my all time favourites!) and I recently spotted this super cool technique, Ink Smooshing (I haven’t done a tutorial for this one, but check out this great video from Kristina)Stampin' Up! UK I think your great ink smooshingTo create this card I first heat embossed that great sentiment from I Think You’re Great using Clear embossing powder.

I used three colours of ink; Bermuda Bay, Crushed Curry, and Melon Mambo. I use either my ink pads or re-inkers to put ink onto a large clear block or the glass of my desk top, an add water using an water spritzer. One colour at a time I make my ink / water mixture and pick up the mix using the clear sheet that comes with our Photopolymer stamps – you could just as easily using a piece of window sheet or other packaging – and smoosh the ink onto the watercolour paper. I added the Crushed Curry first, then repeated the process with Melon Mambo, and finally Bermuda Bay.

One of the great things about Stmapin’ Up! inks is how they work with water. Not only can you water colour with them, but also once your ink has dried you can drop water onto the ink, and wick away some of the colour – creating this great effect.

What’s your favourite technique at the moment?



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

June Online Workshop! Butterfly Basics…and a fancy fold!

Stampin' Up! UK Butterfly Basics Corner fold card

Hello!

Welcome to another Free Online Workshop! I am loving doing these, and am hopefully going to do one every couple of months. Let me know what you think and what you would like to see featured in these longer tutorials using the comments section at the end of the post

Stampin' Up! UK Free workshop

This time I have focused on the Butterfly Basics stamp set, I was so please to find it had carried over into the brand new Annual Catalogue! You can find it in the Artistic Expression section, page 124, where it is featured with the Butterflies Thinlits dies in a great bundle that saves you 15%!

Both the cards and the tag here use the brand new In-Colours; Mint Macaron, Delightful Dijon, Watermelon Wonder, Cucumber Crush, and Tip Top Taupe. These new colours are great additions, to the current range of colours, filling in gaps in Bright colours, and adding a wonderful new neutral. In-Colours change every year, and run for 2 years, adding 10 wonderful colours to our line, and giving your more options for projects.  In Colours are available on a great deal too! You can purchase all the ink pads and a multi-pack of card stock for the price of just the ink pads – that’s free card stock folks! Awesome!

Stampin' Up! UK Corner Fold Fancy Fold card butterfly basics free workshop class

Before you get to the workshop, I just wanted to mention the great joining offer this month from Stampin’ Up! Get 2 free stamp sets with your starter kit, just for signing up! Have I mentioned the great deal that is the starter kit – If you have a wish list of over £100 I urge you to think about becoming a demonstrator, there is no pressure to sell anything, you are more than welcome to be a hobby demonstrator and just get the 20% off! But if you have a wish list of over £100, you can pay just £99 and get to pick £130 worth of great products (anything from the current catalogue!), and those two free stamp sets of your choice! how cool is that!

Fancy Fold How To:

I love this corner fold card, I have to give credit to Dawn Griffiths, I have resized the card to fit A4 card stock 🙂

Cut a piece of A4 card stock in half, and fold in half to create your card base

Unfold your card base and insert, long side at the top, into your Stampin’ Trimmer. Cut at 13 cm from 2 to 8 cm using the trimmer attachment as a guide

Turn your card base so the short side is down at the top, and cut at 8 cm from 2 to 8 cm

Fold down the corner of the card, leaving the cut corner flat.

Inside pieces:

Watermelon Wonder – 14.2 x 10 cm

Whisper White – 13.8 x 9.5 cm

Outside pieces:

Watermelon Wonder – 6 x 6 cm

Whisper White – 5.5 x 5.5 cm

Stampin' Up! UK Butterfly Basics Corner fold card


As I mentioned in the tutorial, any order placed using the Hostess Code will receive a card kit with all the card stock pieces ready for you to make these 3 projects

4REM7CHQ

Thank you for supporting StampinByHannah

Please note this is a different code to my Code Club Code! Chose your code carefully!



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

Ink and Embossing

Stampin' Up! UK letterpress ink Embossing folders

I have been loving playing with lots of techniques recently, and you may remember a few weeks ago I shared a great stamping technique using your embossing folders. Well, I’ve been doing it again, but this time I’ve added my Big Shot!

Stampin' Up! UK letterpress ink Embossing folders

 

This card uses the Large Polka Dot Embossing Folder, along with the Crazy About You stamp set. I am so pleased this set has carried over into our Annual Catalogue, It has a great collection of words and phrases to create some great sentiments, and it will be featuring on my Father’s Day cards this year (Nope, I still haven’t made them yet! Eeeek!). That Crazy About You set also includes  that lovely flower image, which coordinates with the Flower Medallion Punch (another carry over item!)

Instructions:

Cut your card base and Whisper White (Or Very Vanilla) matt layer.

Grab your chosen Embossing folder, and ink up the side which presses down into the card stock when you run it through your Big Shot – in this case, I inked up the Polka Dots side of the folder. Run your ink pad carefully across the embossing folder as not to get ink on the sunken areas

Insert your card stock layer into the embossing folder, closing the folder carefully so not to move the card stock inside

Run this through your Big Shot using your normal Embossing Folder sandwich

Stampin' Up! UK embossing folders decorative dotsThe ‘Thanks’ was stamped on Whisper White, and punched out using the 1 1/4″ circle punch, and layered with the Flower Medallion with dimensionals.



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

Watercolour Thoughts

Stampin' Up! UK Best Thoughts Watercolour

Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing with Stampin’ Up! inks and using them as watercolours. I love our colour palette, and the effects you can create when you add water. I will be the first to admit I am no expert watercolour artist, but I enjoy creating, I’m a card-maker, I only use stamps (my drawing is generally pretty rubbish), but I love the final result.

Stampin' Up! UK Best Thoughts WatercolourI used the brand new In-Colours to watercolour this lovely floral stamp. Its another one of the Hostess Exclusives for this years Annual Catalogue, and comes with a butterfly stamp and two lovely sentiments; ‘You’re in my thoughts’ and ‘The best is yet to come’.

This time I stamped in Momento Black ink, and added clear embossing powder. I prefer to heat emboss my images for watercolour, the raised edge helps me stay in the lines of the image, although I could have just stamped in Stazon and water-coloured without issue. I have been trying out a few different methods of water colouring, and I think this technique was my favourite, adding clean water to a section, like a singe leaf or petal, then dropping the colour in, and allowing it to move through the water.

Stampin' Up! UK Best Thoughts Hostess Code ClubOnce I had the whole image water-coloured I went back and added darker areas by using less water and more ink. The inks for this card are Watermelon Wonder and Cucumber Crush. I finished the card by added some ink splats, by loading my paintbrush with an ink and water mix and tapping the handle of the brush off of my index finger of my other hand, causing the ink to splatter the page. Lovely.

Don’t forget about my Code Club, add the code shown in the Top right hand corner of my blog to the Hostess Code box at check out to receive one of our brand new Hostess Stamp sets for FREE! This months stamp set is Floral Wings, which I used on a card last week.

Thanks for stopping by today, and I’ll see you again tomorrow!



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

Inlay Die Cutting

Stampin' Up! UK Crazy about you Hello You diecutting

I do love a great technique, and I have been playing with this one for a few weeks (and covering myself and my desk in the process!) but the results are fabulous!

Stampin' Up! UK Inlay die cutting

I have to admit that the picture here looks better than the card does in person, I have the card in front of me and I’m looking at gluey finger prints! but it’s still a cool technique – but keep that baby wipe on hand to keep yours hands free of glue (because you WILL make a gluey mess!)

See what I mean, gluey mess! I don’t edit my videos very often, only if I’ve had an interruption like the doorbell going or my phone ringing, and so you will always get ‘live’ bloppers! I hope you enjoy them!

The original ‘Hello’ card uses our brand new 2015-2017 In-Colours in Watermelon Wonder and Mint Macaron, while the video version is in Marina Mist (I’m still a little obsessed with this colour!). I’m loving the new In-Colours; took me a while to get used to the super bright Watermelon and Cucumber though! what great additions to our colour collection.

Stampin' Up! UK Crazy about you Hello You diecutting

How to Inlay die cut:

Using the Hello You thinlits dies die cut your chosen word in coloured card stock.

Using your Magnetic platform to ensure correct die placement, die cut the same word out of your Whisper White layering piece – remember that this is your card front to carefully place the die where you want the word to be at the end!

Make sure you keep the little pieces from the die cut, keep them safe! you will need them in a moment.

Apply your glue of choice (I use Snail) to the back of your Whisper White layering piece and attach it to your card front.

Using a 2-way Glue Pen apply glue to the back of the coloured die cut, slotting it into the space on the front of your card. I did try this with Tombow glue and made a huge mess!

Using your 2-way glue pen again apply glue into the holes in the die cut, slotting the Whisper White die pieces back into the die cut.

This gives you a completely flat card, great for posting! Awesome!



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

Ronald McDonald House Charities – Sprinkles of Life

Every year Stampin’ Up! creates a special charity stamp set for Ronald McDonald House Charities, donating over $1 million to the charities across the world. This years stamp set is awesome! but I fear you might not have spotted it in the catalogue, its right on the very back cover! page 189!

Stampin' Up! UK Sprinkles of Life

It’s it adorable! and if gets even better, there is a coordinating punch available too! Allowing you to create trees, cupcakes, clouds, ice creams, flower baskets, and much much more!

Stampin' Up! UK Sprinkles of Life Cupcake

This card was so quick and easy to stamp, and punch. The centre cupcake is raised on dimensionals, but only after being curled with a bone folder to create that round effect. The sprinkles on the same cupcake are Designer Series Paper – Cherry on Top – and they are actually tiny little hearts, but look so good as sprinkles!

For each stamp set purchased Stampin’ Up! will donate £2 to Ronald McDonald House Charities. Have I mentioned what they do? I don’t think I have! Ooops! They are an amazing children’s charity providing homes for families of sick children near to the hospital, keeping families together at the most difficult times of their lives, Awesome right!

What are you going to create with this great stamp set?



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

Cardmaking 101 – how to cut a card-base

cardmaking 101

Cardmaking class UK free

Today marks the start of my completely free weekly card-making class here at StampinByHannah. This class has been in the planning for ages and I am so pleased I am finally ready to share it with you.

Each week, on a Sunday, a new tutorial will be released focusing on card making basics; hints and tips, tools, techniques and useful information to help you to make amazing projects. I am so excited! shall we begin?

cardmaking 101 - how to cut a card base

This week I thought we would start at the beginning; how to cut yourself a card base. I know that not everyone will cut there own card bases, but I think its a useful thing to know, particularly as then your not stuck with white or cream cards all the time – lets get some colour in here!

How to:

I use A4 card stock, I know that these measurements will not be useful for everyone, particularly those who use 8.5×11″ however, I live in the UK and A4 is all we have

There are two ways to cut a card base, depending on the style of card you wish to create. I frequently use tent fold cards and so cut my A4 length ways at 10.5 cm to create two long skinny pieces of card stock, I don’t tend to score in the middle for these and find that folding them in half and burnishing with my bone folder is enough

The other common card base is a ‘book style’ card, and for these I cut my A4 width-ways at 14.8 cm, scoring them in half at 10.5 cm and folding to create my card

These two methods create the same size card; 14.8 x 10.5 cm

To create a layer for the front of your card, take an A4 piece of Whisper White and cut at 10 cm, and 14.2 cm to create a slightly smaller piece that will fit beautifully on the front of the card base you have already created.

To create further layers reduce the size of your card stock by 0.5 cm each time, the next layer would therefore be 9.5 x 13.8 cm, the next 9 x 13.2 cm, and the next 8.5 x 12.8

 

I hope this has been useful, if you have any card making questions or queries please let me know and I will endeavour to answer your questions in later editions of Cardmaking 101



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

Swatch Book

Stampin' Up! UK swatch book

If you have been following me for a while you may remember last year, when I shared my Customised Colour Coach. Well, can you imagine my sadness, when the colour coach was retired this week! I know, I don’t really know how I am going to cope! well, better now I have made this;

My Swatch Book!

Stampin' Up! UK swatch book

I just love a good swatch! I use them often when I’m choosing colours for projects (an even more often when I’m creating items for customer orders!) And when I spotted the Layered Letters Alphabet in the latest catalogue, I just knew I had the perfect swatch stamp too!

So, I have created 3 PDF’s for you to download and make your own Stampin’ Up! swatch book. The first file contains swatch cards for all 4 colour families, that’s 36 ink pad colours, while the 2nd is for the current In-Colours (2014-2016 and 2015-2017), and the 3rd download contains the swatch spots for the previous two sets of In-Colours!

Colour Swatches – Colour Families

Colour Swatches – In Colours

Colour Swatches – In Colours – previous

To create my swatch book:

First print the PDF files onto Whisper White card stock

Using the Layered Letters Alphabet stamp set, and the rectangular stamp, swatch each ink colour in the coordinating swatch spot.

Cut the swatches into 2″ squares by cutting along the lines of the template.

Make a hole in the top left hand corner of each swatch using the 1/4″ handheld punch and keep the swatches together with an O ring (I used these ones from Amazon)#

 

As mentioned in the video, Stampin’ Up! are currently running a great joining offer. Sign up between now and the 30th June 2015, and Stampin’ Up! will add an additional two stamp sets of your choosing into your Starter Kit for FREE! Awesome! For each person who joins my team during this promotion I will not only be sending you my usual new demo goodies, but I will also add a completed swatch book!



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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator