Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Something Old, Something New


Playing along with the new challenge at Less is More, "Bring Something Back." I thought this was a great opportunity to use the very first stamp set I ever bought, "Long Stemmed" from Stampin' Up! 


When my daughter, Bridget was planning her wedding back in 2003, my daughter-in-law, Kristen was a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. I was crafty, my daughter was pinching pennies, and Kristen offered a family discount, so I volunteered to make the place cards for the reception. I had never stamped before, but hey, I was crafty so I knew it all, right? I bought the only stamp set that featured a calla lily small enough for the place cards. The only problem was the sentiment "Calla Lily" written along the stems and would not fit with my place card design. 

It pains me to say that no, I did not know everything, particularly the trick of masking, so I did the unthinkable while thinking I was using common sense: I took a razor knife to the sentiment. Ouch! As you can see, the cut wasn't perfect and as a result the stems did not stamp perfectly either.

But I managed to hide my rookie error, can't really remember how. I think I had the guests names cutting across the injured stem. For today's card, though I used a few of my new dies, and some of my increased stamping knowledge to frame just the top parts of the flowers, disguising the fact that they had been ruthlessly slashed!




One of the new techniques I've discovered is stacking die cuts to make them pop out. This is really effective with sentiments, like the one above. The most challenging part of this technique, though, can be lining up the die cuts so they stack evenly. I use a cool trick that works every time. 

Once a die cut has adhesive applied, I stack it on top of the previous cut and use my Tweezer Bee on one or two of the largest letters to align them. The cool thing about this kind of tweezer is that you pinch it to open, place it on a letter, then let it close by itself. It pulls both layers together. Result? Perfectly aligned, stacked die cuts!


Supplies used:




4 comments:

  1. We all make our journey from rookie status and well done on covering your "rookie mistake" on this fabulous and elegant card, perfect for the LIM challenge

    Kathyk

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  2. Bold and beautiful... the gold against the dark cardstock is striking. I love the look of stacked die cuts too. Will have to give that aligning tip a try. Thank you for joining us at Less is More. x

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  3. What a truly beautiful design and card Kathy. Those wooden stamps are such elegant images of flowers I think I'd have to keep them handy all the time!
    Thanks so much for sharing this with us,
    Sharon
    Less is More xx

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    Replies
    1. Yes, very hard to give away floral stamps!. Thanks, Sharon.

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