Lori's Garden & Elegant Edges Combined

I rarely make duplicate cards, but having made a set of 9 handmade cards to give as a gift to a neighbour I included childrens cards that I was so pleased with, I felt I should remake them.

They were all made using the same dimensions from different elements on the regular Cricut cartridge Elegant Edges, and printed using papers from the Cricut Imagine Lori's Garden cartridge. The stamped images coloured with watercolour pencils and embellished with either stickles clear glitter or Rangers Glossy accents.

The card bases were cut from 12x12 cardstock, having welded 2 of the 'book' layers from the Elegant edges cartridge together. The shaped theme of each card was continued in each of the corresponding layers.

Recipe

Elegant edges <Ivy> (page 22)

Card base - Book shift (welded together on gyspy) cut at 5.25"

Printed layers - Book shift cut at 4.8", Frame and frame shift cut at 4.5", Ivy base shape cut at 4.5"

Recipe

Elegant edges <Flower3> (page 65)

Card base - Book shift (welded together on gyspy) cut at 5.25"

Printed layers - Book shift cut at 4.8", Frame and frame shift cut at 4.5", Flower3 base shape cut at 4.5"

Recipe

Elegant edges <Circle3> (page 58)

Card base - Book shift (welded together on gyspy) cut at 5.25"

Printed layers - Book shift cut at 4.8", Frame and frame shift cut at 4.5", Circle3 base shape cut at 4.5"

Recipe

Elegant edges <Design2> (page 70)

Card base - Book shift (welded together on gyspy) cut at 5.25"

Printed layers - Book shift cut at 4.8", Frame and frame shift cut at 4.5", Design2 base shape cut at 4.5"

 

Happy House Mouse - Stamping Tips

• This post is for my niece Elena who is new to stamping, and those who need a few pointers to get the best from their stamps.
• 
• The house mouse is stamped onto a flower design cut from the accent essential cartridge on my Cricut expression, and layered onto a second slightly larger identical shape cut from grey cardstock.
• The flower stamped border is also from the same house mouse stamp set.
• All images were watercoloured, and the central flower covered in glossy accents as a highlight.
• Milled lavender distress ink was used to soften around the edge of the whole topper before 'Old paper' distress stickeles were added for a bit of sparkle.

This short video shows you better than reading a paragraph, the simple yet effective technique of inking a stamp effectively to get perfectly crisp clear images each time you want to stamp.

Unmounted stamps are the way forward these days, whether they are made from the red rubber or the clear material, they both need to be temporarily mounted onto a solid block to allow the image to be stamped. However there are also plenty of wood mounted stamps available too - the main thing in deciding which stamp to choose is of course the image. Those of you who already have caught this addictive crafting bug will know that you are drawn to a stamp instantly the moment you see it, and regardless of how it is mounted if you have fallen for the image you just want to have it !!

I think the main thing I would stress when inking a stamp, with whatever ink you have chosen, is to be patient and apply the ink lightly and carefully, with soft gentle tapping because this way the stamp will not gather ink in 'blobs' and it will only ink the image and not the surplus rubber around it.

To stamp ideally it should be a fairly solid worktop, and it is best you position yourself above the stamp to ensure even pressure (more important for those stamps that are larger than your hand). Be confident as to where you are going to place the stamp, and as soon as it has made contact with the paper keep applying the firm (but not too hard) downward pressure always keeping one hand on the stamp to prevent it slipping. Pressing the stamp too hard to the paper will effectively squash it too much and you will probably have a blurred image.

To remove lift the stamp directly up, again this ensures there is no blurring. With practice this will become second nature.