2021 Topic 9: Baubles & Bling with NEW ZA {by Tracey Springer}

 2021 Topic 9: Baubles & Bling

With vivacious colours and humorous sentiments, Tracey has embraced the whole bling theme and run wild with it. The sausage dogs are busy partying hard and with the addition of pom-poms this is a fabulously vibrant Christmas collection.
~ Keren.

Hi everyone, it's Tracey Springer with you today. I have been having so much fun playing with Elena Zinski’s new stamps (ZA 65, 66, 67). Sausage dogs! They are so incredibly cute! Who doesn’t love a sausage dog? I let my crazy style out for a run! Christmas in July … why not? 

I started by thinking about what colours I wanted to use, and pinks and greens really stood out to me. (Pink is not your traditional Xmas colour but I love it!). I then brayered some backgrounds with my gel press (I usually do 15-20 at a time) and I also did some solid 12x12 pages using Fresco Finish ‘Cerise', ‘Eggshell’ and my favourite ‘Sargasso’. I loved the distressed look that brayering straight onto the paper achieves. 

I then stamped out a lot of the images and started colouring (I love my Copic Sketch pens for blending). I formulate my ideas as I’m colouring; scenes start coming together in my head and cheeky sayings seemed to fix themselves to certain dogs.

I cut some card size backgrounds and stamped the little song (I can still hear Elena singing it LOL!) then decided I needed some more solid colour panels to mix and match, so I brayered ‘Sargasso’ and ‘Coral’ onto the edges of some white strips.

Then I play around for days sometimes, trying various coloured images on different backgrounds until I’m happy and it matches the picture in my mind.

I love layering and 3D foam taping for various heights and depths (it’s very hard to photograph but just play around with layering). I always seem to finish my pieces with black inked pen lines and a heavy layer of Gesso to frame. 

I also added a lot of ‘bling’ in the form of glittery sparkles, diamantes and silver metallic twine but that really didn’t want to show up in the pics!

I then decided to finish my project off with a cute little gift bag/box to hold the cards – using up a sheet of 12x12 which I had earlier brayered in ‘Cerise’ paint. No measurements or instructions, I just folded and glued until it looked right! Glittery handles, funky pink pom-pom trim and a cute little tag finished it off. 

I really hope you enjoy playing with these delightful sausages as much as I have, and Yay for a head start on Xmas cards!

Take care,

Tracey

Instagram: @tracey_springer

2021 Topic 9: Baubles & Bling with EKC {by Kay Carley}

  2021 Topic 9: Baubles & Bling

With a non-traditional colour scheme, using gorgeous pinks and purples that Kay is well known for, she's created some wonderful hanging bauble cards which, at first glance seem like CAS cards, but if you look carefully she's created subtle layers with such a gentle sparkle.
~ Keren.

Hi everyone, it's Kay with you today, and I'm here to share with you some simple Christmas card makes.

For this project I wanted to show you why I designed my bauble stamp set (EKC22) with plain baubles. This was to give you scope to have lots of different decorated baubles. You can simply stamp them onto patterned paper if you want really quick and easy decorated baubles or you can use stamps/stencils to add decoration to them. Another option is to doodle into them!

For this project I have used stamps that are contained on (EKC22) to decorate my baubles.

To begin I pulled out the stamp set and stencil that I wanted to use for this project - namely (EKC22) and (PS070) and then made a decision as to what colours of Fresco Chalk Acrylic paints I wanted to use for the baubles. I also had in mind for my 'bling' element to use a twinkly embossing powder so I reached for my WOW! Twinkling Lights EP.

My first step was to begin creating a background onto panels of 340gsm Smoothy card stock. For this, I used stencil (PS070) with Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Snowflake). 

 

I had toyed with the idea of using (Metallic Glaze) for my background but in the end as I knew there would be lots of twinkle being added to the card later on I thought it best to go with subtle interest at this stage! 

 

To be able to stamp different elements into the baubles I needed to create some masks.

The masks were achieved by stamping each of the baubles into the middle of an A4 piece of paper. 

 

 

I used a craft knife to cut out the middle of each bauble. (I keep these masks [both the aperture and the solid bauble] so that they can be used time and time again.)

Next I painted a panel of 240gsm Smoothy card stock with Fresco Chalk Acrylic (Snowflake) before stamping and painting the background of the baubles within a stamping platform.

As I was going to be cutting out the baubles and adding them onto my cards I wasn't careful with my painting. The photo below shows what they looked like before I re-stamped them.

For these baubles I used (Caribbean Sea) and (Globe Thistle) for my base layers and then added a watered down mix of (South Pacific) for the turquoise bauble and (Purple Wine) for the purple bauble. The hanging element was painted with (Gold). Once the baubles were re-stamped I then added my decoration using the WOW! Twinkling Lights embossing powder along with some doodles using a white gel pen. (These particular baubles didn't require those paper masks but all my other baubles did!).

The next photo shows how the baubles were stamped and embossed with the small holly element contained on the stamp set along with some doodled white pen. The colours of Fresco Chalk Acrylics I used were (Globe Thistle), (Purple Wine), (Caribbean Sea), (South Pacific), (Bubble Gum), (Bougainvillea) and (Gold).

These baubles were decorated using the little background stamp contained on the stamp set instead of the holly.

Next I needed to stamp and emboss my different sized card panels.

As I was working with a glittery embossing powder I made sure to dust my panels first with an anti-static bag. Without dusting first I knew I would struggle to get nice clear twinkly imagery as my large holly stamp is quite intricate!

As you can see I just adapted my stamping and embossing to suit each of the different sizes of card panels. The panel sizes I used were DL, 6" x 6" and 7" x 5".

 

To finish I adhered my card panels to card blanks and curled the baubles a little by bending them over my fingers before adding them to the cards with 3D pads.

I used a gold glitter glue for the string to hang my baubles. To give me a guide to follow I first drew the 'string' very lightly with pencil and then traced over with the glitter glue.

Crystal glitter glue was used onto the holly leaves and dotted around randomly onto the card blanks to finish off.

As you can see, having baubles that you can decorate yourself gives you a lot of scope on creating a variety of Christmas cards. As I mentioned at the very start, one of the quickest and easiest things you can do is to stamp the baubles onto pre-printed patterned paper or onto any background pieces that you have created yourself and may have left over from other projects.  

I chose a modern colour scheme for my baubles but you can easily give them a more traditional feel by choosing a red and green colour scheme. Plus if you have a lot of cards to make you can omit the stamping and embossing of the background panels and go for a very clean and simple look. Or you may have a pine branch stamp in your collection that you could 'hang' the baubles from instead and of course you can stamp the baubles directly onto your card blank if you don't want them to look 'dimensional'. Lastly, being that the baubles are all separate stamps easily enables you to adapt your layout depending on the size of project/card you are creating. Lots of possibilities!

Love Kay x

Blog: Kays Crafty Corner
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At this current time, all of my teaching is being done online. You can find details of all of my past and current online workshops over on my Crafting with Kay Carley Facebook Group.