card making class – Inky & Stampy

I had a brilliant day back in the classroom at Scrapbook Central today! 10 people came along to learn ink blending techniques and together, we made a cute set of Christmas Gift Tags.

ALERT: We will offer this class a second time on 14 November 2020 if you or a friend missed this! Please let Philippa at Scrapbook Central know, as we will only run this additional class if there is genuine interest. Contact Philippa directly here.

We used a small palette of Distress Oxides to ink up four different night skies, plus we added extra features to our skies with splatter, and also by lifting colour.

All products used today were from Lawn Fawn – the Everyday Gift Tag, Say What Christmas Critters, Stitched Hillside borders, the Little Town Border, and the Mini Snowflakes die set.

Check out some of the photos of the day below!

Along with the Distress Ink Combos, the class had a quick introduction to masking and colour lifting, and their blending onto the tiny spaces was stepped up for each tag – they had to blend FOUR colours onto the top half of their last tag – a challenge they all stepped up to!

After the ink blending part of the class, there was stamping, die cutting, colouring and heat embossing to be done. Even fluffy hats were made!

Check out the gorgeous tags made by all participants – everyone did an amazing job with their ink blending and even though we used the same colours, everyone had beautifully different results. Plus the added fun of splattering pigment, and revealing crisp white moons!

There were borders and images to be added for finishing, plus glittery snowflakes – aren’t they cool??

I was absolutely impressed with everyone that came along today – such enthusiasm and lovely results with their ink blends.

Promised Links

As discussed today, here are some of the links we talked about:

Ranger Ink labels – they do have a range of different ink organisation products you can download, including for Distress Inks and Oxides. Click here to visit the page.

Kristina Werner is a pro at Distress Oxide Blending, and she has a BUNCH of colour combinations for you to try out. Click here to visit her blog post for Combo Set 6 (you can search her blog for all 7 different combination blog posts, well worth the visit.

Last year’s Gift Tag Class held at Scrapbook Central, where we used Shimmer Powders and cute dies to create a set of gift tags. Plus, the Bonus blog post with further tags.

Visit my Christmas Gift Tag Pinterest Board to see other tags I have made over the past few years – there will be a bunch more added in the weeks to come as I share this year’s collection.

Bonus Projects

I also created a couple of extra projects using the same Lawn Fawn products used in class today, and here they are:

Snowy Hillside Card

I used the same blending techniques we went over in class to ink up this sky.

I stepped up the technique by adding subtle rays of light in the sky and created a full sized card to fit all the cute critters from the stamp set.

I created the rays by cutting masks from full sticky backed Post-its and arranged them to splay upwards. I carefully inked over them with the same colour blend we used in class today. I removed the masks, and repeated my inking over the top. This leaves a subtle change in colour over the sky, lighter where we had the masks, giving the impression of extra light.

I completed the card by cutting stitched hillside borders and arranged them to suit. I lifted the top two with foam tape for extra dimension.

I heat embossed the sentiment both at the top and along the bottom with gold embossing powder.

The critters are stamped, coloured and cut and placed within the hills.

I added some Nuvo Blizzard along the top edges of the hillsides and directly beneath the critters to ground them and add extra sparkle and dimension. Finally, a little fluff added to the penguin’s hat, sparkle pen to the critter’s accessories and tiny snowflakes scattered around the top half of the card.

Snowflake Circle

This time, I inked up another sky, but rather than filling the entire card front, I focused the imagery on a central circle.

I inked in stripes to try and mimic the Northern Lights, although this time I used Distress Ink rather than Oxides. You can see a difference in colour even though I used the same colour palette as we used in class.

The Mini Snowflakes set is a brilliant set where just one or two passes through the die cutting machine gets a whole bunch of snowflakes to place. I arranged the snowflakes over my circular inky piece, and trimmed the edges with scissors.

I cut the hillside border from another white circle to fit in the lowest part of the inky sky.

I wanted a few trees, and this little tree featured here is from the Lawn Fawn Home for the Holidays set – a teeny little set that has matching dies and a brilliant price point. I heat embossed the trees in gold and arranged them on the hillside.

The critters are stamped, coloured, cut and placed on the hillside – added fluff to the penguin’s hat again. Can’t resist that Neon Amplify!

To finish, the sentiment is the Lawn Fawn Happy Add-on, and I stacked the ‘Merry’ four times to bring it up to the same depth as the circular piece, also popped up with foam. The ‘christmas’ sentiment is white heat embossed on black cardstock and I added tiny dots of the Neon Amplify within the snowflakes to fill in the gaps (but did not heat them).

Say What? Tag

When the Say What Christmas Critters were released last year, this cute little tag set was also part of the release.

It cuts the tag itself, and a frame, along with speech bubble and a couple of other handy elements for your gift tag creations – all perfectly sized to match the little critters.

I simply inked the tag, added a sentiment to the speech bubble and stacked a couple of frames to give the tag a bit of depth. The penguin and his cute fluffy hat sit atop.

Shaker Tag

Now of course, with that frame option, you can create a shaker!

Shaker tags are super special and easy to make. I chose to use some bright rainbow paper I had in my stash for this one, as I have a small daughter who utterly adores Unicorns, and the associated rainbows!

Attach a piece of acetate to the back of the frame. Use foam adhesive strips on the tag around the entire edge, ensuring there are no gaps. Pop a little spoonful of confetti, sequins, seed beads, even tiny buttons can be effective shaker elements. I coloured the unicorn to match the rainbow paper, and have him/her sitting on a Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud border inside the shaker. The possibilities are endless with Shaker Christmas Tags!

Thank you to all class participants today – it was a great day spent with you all. If you are interested in any of the products featured today, you can visit Scrapbook Central to place an order.

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For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series. Plus, you can Tour My Craft Room!

Hello

1/4 inch score line at the top of the circle for the back of the card. Adhered to the front with thin double sided tape.

I cut two circles, just slightly larger than the Memory Box frame. You could choose larger circles if preferred.

I scored a .25″ flap at the top of one of the circles and used strong double sided adhesive tape to secure it to the back of the second circle. This creates the card base. See photo 2 for close up.

I cut the Memory Box frame three times from white cardstock and stacked them together. I did the same for the ‘hello’.

For the background, I looked through my box of previously created backgrounds, and chose this green alcohol inked example. I cut a circle to fit the back of the frame. A die cut inlay would work well on this card too. A white heat embossed sentiment on a black strip plus a few little gold gems in the flower centres completes this cute little card.

Butterfly Shaker

You can see the different coloured confetti in each of the butterfly openings.

I used the intricate butterfly die to cut three butterfly shaped openings on a landscape piece of cardstock. I used a stitched rectangle to give it a tidy edge, and cut a piece of rainbow striped patterned paper just a little larger to give a slim frame around the outer edge.

I decided where the birthday die cut was going to sit and stamped the extra sentiments on either side. This is the time to heat emboss if you want a finished look to the stamping, before the acetate is added.

The shaker part was created by adding acetate to the back of the butterfly panel and strips of foam adhesive in circles around each butterfly opening. You could simply have strips of foam creating one large rectangle, but I wanted certain colours of sequin/confetti in my openings like a rainbow. Further foam strips are added around the edge of the white panel. I am generous with adding foam, as I want my card to feel solid and stable.

The rainbow panel is added to the back, like a lid. To make this part a little easier, I lined up the white panel with the confetti sitting in their circles up with the grid on my glass mat, so I knew which grid lines to match the rainbow piece to get an even frame.

The card front is added to a card base, and a few silver gems added for sparkle. I did add black glitter cardstock bodies to the butterflies to give them definition.

Rainbow Vellum Shaker

Distress inks used: Candied Apple, Carved Pumpkin, Squeezed Lemonade, Mowed Lawn, Salty Ocean and Wilted Violet.

A rainbow butterfly – you can use any colouring medium for this.

I had a rainbow distress inked panel which I wanted to use, so I cut it down using a scalloped rectangle die from a Tonic background die set (incidentally, this die set will feature in my next technique class coming up in May). The rectangle panel is adhered directly to the card base.

I cut the circle frame out a number of times and stacked them instead of using foam. I also used vellum instead of acetate, for a different look.

I coloured the butterfly with a rainbow of colours to match, and the top intricate layer is cut from gold mirror cardstock.

I stacked the ‘happy’ to match the height of the frame and added the sentiments and gems.

Off the Card Shaker

This type of shaker is not bulky at all, and perfect for sending in the mail.

The purple layer is slightly offset with the white to give an illusion of extra colour and dimension to the butterfly. The body is dipped in gold embossing powder and heated to melt. Little extra dots of gold are added to the wings by using dots of glue and heat embossing with gold powder.

The inside of the card, back of the see through shaker.

A fun variation of the shaker is to have it off the side of the card. This is easily achieved by using packaging from a stamp or die set, using the corner of the bag where it is already perfectly folded and sealed.

I temporarily taped the card front (inked with Shaded Lilac and gold sparkle heat embossed) to the base and cut the Memory Box frame to create the opening.

I filled the packaging bag with confetti and used thin double sided tape to close the remaining two sides, ensuring the bag is a little larger than the opening. I lined up the edge of the bag with the edge of the card base, hiding the adhesive edges in between the two layers of card base and card front.

I cut two further frames and glued one to the front, and one to the back matching them up. The edges are trimmed off to match the edge of the card base.

You can also see I turned the frame a little to suit, so the flowers and leaves were not sitting at the bottom, rather climbing upwards.

I added a ‘Thanks’ by Tonic Studios across the bottom, and sentiment on the inside of the card. The butterfly is built with a vellum bottom layer, white intricate layer and inked layer adhered slightly offset. I heat embossed the butterfly body in gold.

Thank you for getting this far in my blog post! I had a great time teaching this Technique Workshop, and hope you enjoy the extra examples featured here, and have some new ideas to try out for yourself.

For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series.