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Rainbow Class – For Kids!

I had the pleasure of opening up my craft room these school holidays for a group of four young girls, aged 8, to spend an afternoon learning about the basics of card making. I thought I would share here how I curated the class and how it all went on the day, so you might feel inspired to invite kids to your craft space too.

I have taught classes for adults at my local store for the past couple of years which has been a huge learning curve. Those adult classes are heavily technique based, so the class attendees can take the skill and apply it in their own craft space. Teaching kids is a whole new proposition I noticed however! The kids want to have the fun of learning a new skill, not necessarily to go home and make more, because for them this is considered simply a fun activity. However, hopefully they would want to come back and make more with me again some time.

I think one of the most appealing things about making cards from a beginner’s perspective is that splash of colour, the ease in which you can have beautifully cut shapes and letters, stamping cute images, adding sparkle and pretty finishing touches. That’s all before you realise you can share the fun by sending your creation along to a friend or loved one!

The two cards and the sweet treat candy pop we made in class.

Having thought about what might appeal to young girls to make up as cards, I settled on a rainbow with pink tones, a card with an embossed background together with a simple coloured image, and the most appealing thing of all – sweets! What kid can say no to candy? In fact, there was MUCH debate during the class about who they’d give their cards to, but they were unanimous in the intention of sending the candy treats to themselves!

Basic skills covered in class were die cutting, stencilling with glitter paste, stamping with both black and coloured inks, watercolour painting die cuts, copic colouring a simple image and a die cut, and embossing a card panel. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? You are right.

Prep, Prep, Preparation is Key

I wanted the girls to actually experience the ‘doing’ of certain skills, so I chose components of the cards that I thought they would enjoy seeing come to fruition, that were important steps in the process. I really wanted them to have the satisfaction of creating art and seeing their work come together in their finished projects.

At the age of 8, the girls are more than capable of achieving most steps of the card creation. Preparation of their kit did include die cutting many components, trimming cardstock to the correct size, pre-stamping some things where I could, simply because of time constraint and trying to ensure the pace of the class didn’t make them feel overwhelmed or (worse!) bored.

Here’s a photo of what was contained in their kits. The larger pieces include two Neenah Classic Crest Solar White #110 card bases, two card fronts in Bazzill Icy Mint (one was trimmed down to 5 3/8 x 4 1/8″, the other was a standard 5 1/2 x 4 1/4″), a Bazzill Sour Lemon piece large enough for The Greetery candy top, a white candy bottom including the ripper circle and a Lawn Fawn stitched cloud edge panel.

The smaller components include Taylored Expressions rainbow pieces, The Greetery candy spiral and candy ends in watercolour paper, a second candy spiral in white sparkle glitter paper, three Happy Birthday circle die cuts and a stamped Narwhal image from My Favorite Things, a white circle to fit onto the Happy Birthday circle, and holographic circle cut slightly smaller. Finally, a plastic bubble for their candy pop was included – they are 1/2″ deep, 2″ in diameter, purchased from either The Greetery, Simon Says Stamp, or Papertrey Ink.

Craft Room Set Up

My craft room is my dining room generally – handily close to the kitchen for snacks lol, and clean up (tour it here for a better view and even some storage inspiration). I often have friends over to ‘play’ and we have craft dates, plus my own daughter Amélie loves to join in with crafting sometimes.

You can kinda see I have my table generally in the centre of the room (pushed a little towards one corner today to allow more space for me to get around the occupants at the table). I use my TV for Youtube (i.e. Jennifer McGuire!) and having movies/TV shows on in the background whilst creating. I did cast a photo via Google Photos of the cards we were doing so the girls could see them clearly without risking the actual cards amongst the mess.

Before it all started – Amélie at the back, Journey at the front, my cards on the telly!

There is enough space at my table for four participants. I ended up with four paying participants, so Amélie had to step aside and become an official helper on the day (which she happily did). She is just 7, and a very keen cardmaker, so we did a special session the night before where she created the cards for herself, and therefore knew how to help on the day.

Actually it was great we did that, because based on that session, there was a step in the process I decided to skip entirely (heat embossing – thought I’d save that for another day), and I realised if some of the more fiddly glueing was done, that would save A LOT of frustration (and glue I imagined) at the end, without taking away from their learning. (I like to stack die cuts on my cards, so pre-glueing a few components definitely saved some time).

Each station has a tray with a kit, paint palette, cup of water, glue and a glass mat

Each girl had a wee tray with their kit (I use these little square trays in my adult classes too and they are invaluable for keeping small pieces contained and saves mixing kit bits up with their neighbours.

They also had a little plastic paint palette with a dab of each of the four colours of Nuvo Shimmer powders, a cup of water and a paintbrush.

I also had a box of selected Copic markers and a pack of baby wipes in the centre of the table – we certainly went through those!

Stamp platforms all lined up!

I placed stamps into various stamp platforms lined up on my cabinets ready for them to stamp. I felt that using acrylic blocks would result in mistakes and frustration for young beginners (for adults I always get them to stamp with an acrylic block first before introducing them to a stamp platform).

I had pairs of stamps set up for the Happy Birthday on the rainbow card, the sentiment and stars for the candy pop, and decorative stamps for the Rainbow pieces. We ended up not stamping the rainbow decorations in the end, mainly because the girls painted their rainbows in various colours rather than simply copying mine (which was awesome, but didn’t match my stamping ink! ).

The Projects

For the Rainbow Card, I thought the girls would really enjoy stencilling with glitter paste (like, who wouldn’t??). I pre-taped the stencil with painter’s tape, so all they had to do was line it up over their light blue piece of cardstock, press it down onto their mat and gave them the spatula. They really did quite well, and I simply swiped up the excess paste with the Stencil pal, giving them the smooth final finish and returning excess paste to the jar. They lifted the stencil and passed it on to their neighbour. I actually had two very similar MFT stencils, so this process went reasonably quickly. Stencils and spatulas were dumped into the kitchen sink for clean up.

They then painted the pre-cut pieces from watercolour paper (the rainbow, plus the candy pop swirl and ends).

We used Nuvo Shimmer Powders to paint with – something different from the standard kids’ paint palettes they may have been used to in their own art collection. Nuvo Shimmer Powders are great because the colours are bright and vivid with immediate results, they are shimmery, a little powder goes a long way and they can learn to darken or lighten the colour with water as they desired. They even got bold and mixed colours, resulting in some fun rainbows.

After they had fun stencilling and painting and all those pieces were set aside to dry, we moved on to adding colour with markers. I chose a simple image and a pair of light and dark copic pens for them to learn to add a little basic shading. Narwhals of various colours emerged here too.

I had pre-glued the fiddly Happy Birthday circles together to create a stacked element. They just had to add colour to the letters in whatever palette/pattern they wanted – some very pretty pastel rainbows came out!

They die cut the Narwal image with the matching die – those who got a bit carried away with their colouring were relieved they still had a cute image once cut, and one girl was particularly happy hers still had that white edge, just like my sample.

They had a yellow piece of cardstock in their kits, and they die cut the top half of the candy piece – I had the two dies taped together to cut the main shape and the circle window at the same time.

They then stamped the sentiment with black ink, and some stars with Delicata silver shimmer ink with stamps already set up in the two stamp platforms.

They also stamped the Happy and Birthday onto the cloud panel for the rainbow card set up in the other two platforms. (Be prepared for a bit of a clean up of stamps later!)

Lastly, I had the Big Shot set up so they could send their second (slightly smaller) pale blue piece of cardstock through with the Memory Box Waves Embossing folder – they were thrilled with the ease and amazing result they got!

The main rush of ‘doing’ was over, we had pretty much completed all major components and they were able to settle in and glue things together. All of the above had taken around an hour and fifteen minutes, so I was feeling pretty confident that we were going to complete everything within the 2 hour window I was aiming for – despite various visits from my two nosey dogs distracting the girls who wanted to cuddle them desperately! Motivation was retained by reminding them about the Skittles Smoothies I had to fill their candy bubbles!

I let the girls loose with my Art Glitter Glue (I would recommend decanting your glue into four smaller bottles with fine tips, I just happen to have a ridiculous amount of this glue as it is a fave, and used in my adult classes all the time). They quickly learned they didn’t need much, and that they could control the flow with the fine tip quite well. I gave them the option of not stacking their rainbow die cuts to save a step, but they saw the difference having that stacked dimension gave, and all four chose to do that extra little bit of work for an improved final result.

Journey with her finished cards and sweet treat! Didn’t she do well?

I didn’t really need to have much input apart from encouragement after that – they happily referred to the photograph of the cards and candy pop on my TV screen so they could all see what the finished product should look like. In the end, all their projects were almost exact replicas apart from some small colour choices of their own that they had made at the start.

We were all done comfortably within the allotted 2 hour time slot, and the girls went home with their finished projects – still talking about who’s birthday was next coming up and when they’d eat the treats!

Argh, I didn’t manage to get a photo of the final results of the other girls’ projects in the excitement of finishing, tying of strings, hugging of dogs and the arrival of mums and aunties – but rest assured, they were amazing!

OK, a summary of advice:

  • keep the projects reasonably simple but not too basic;
  • stick to a simple, vibrant colour palette;
  • some of the ‘wow factor’ elements really are the simplest – embossing, die cutting and using quality products to get quality results;
  • pre-cut, pre stamp, pre-glue things that are time consuming where possible – let their time be spent doing the fun stuff;
  • allow for individuality – colour or layout choices for example – and a little experimentation (kids love trying things out!);
  • a two hour class is probably the absolute maximum time you’ll keep their attention.

Thank you for taking the time to visit! I hope this post inspires you to encourage young people to craft too.

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.

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A Foxy Christmas Tag

You can find more of my Christmas Gift Tags from over the years by checking out #inkyandstampytags on Instagram, or my dedicated Pinterest board

OK, I definitely went out of my usual comfort zone for this tag – not only are there no foxes here in New Zealand, I also strayed away from my favourite traditional Christmas colours by using the Burnt Orange. Luckily gold goes with practically everything!

This tag really is a simple one – mostly die cutting using products from Honey Bee Stamps, Taylored Expressions and Lawn Fawn.

I chose to use watercolour cardstock, even though I didn’t paint anything, because I like the natural texture.

I have listed all products used at the end for your reference.

The Taylored Expressions Little Fox has two dies – one for the fox body and the other for the white accents – it cuts the two cheeks, nose and tip of the tail at once. I went through my scrap folder (click here to see how I organise my cardstocks and coloured scraps) and chose some burnt orange and cream cardstock. I did not worry about trying to colour those teeny weeny eye pieces, rather filled those tiny gaps with black Nuvo drops. I did colour the nose with a black copic marker.

I wanted my gift tag to have a little bit of a difference to all my others, and decided the Honey Bee Stamps tag set with a vellum centre layer would be just the thing. I realised two things through trial and error. One, best to stamp and heat emboss any images first, so I put his wee gift a little to the left, plus the To/From and my logo on the back. Two, liquid glue was difficult to get a smooth finish on the vellum, but Gina K’s adhesive dot roller worked best to adhere both white circles on either side of the vellum.

Lawn Fawn Winter Gifts

The little gift is from a discontinued Lawn Fawn gift tag stamp set – but search your stash for a suitable little gift image.

FYI: the tag die is still available, and was used in my Christmas Gift Tag Class – Night Skies Ink Blending.

I used the Large Lawn Fawn Wreath to cut the greenery sprigs from scraps of green cardstock found in my stash, and placed them leading out to the right. The little fox is adhered on top using little foam squares and liquid adhesive. I cut the bow from the Lawn Fawn Wreath set out of Gold Vellum and put it together using Glue Dots. A Glue Dot secures the bow to the top of the tag nicely.

I searched through my Christmas sentiment stamps – I do have all my Christmas stamps stamped out into a binder, making this easy to flick pages to find the perfect sentiment to fit. You can view my stamp storage and binders here.

I white heat embossed the sentiment onto black cardstock and cut them as thin as I dared! The sentiment strip was placed with a foam adhesive strip directly beneath the fox and the gift.

I finished the tag off with Lawn Fawn Gold trimmings.

This completes my cute little gift tag today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.

https://linkdeli.com/widget.js?id=f5e8378456858c916708

You can find more of my Christmas Gift Tags from over the years by checking out #inkyandstampytags on Instagram, or my dedicated Pinterest board

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.

Tour my Craft Room

You can check out how I store my stamps and dies, inks and cardstocks.

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Just BEE Cause

A nice bright cheery card to send to someone, Just Because. It’s always nice to receive a surprise in the mailbox, especially when it isn’t expected!

Today’s card has a small colour palette – I have used just two colour families, Cool Greys and Yellows on top of a ‘white on white’ background.

If you are considering jumping into using Copic Markers, these two colour families would be a great start. Of course, you can use any colouring medium you are comfortable with to achieve a similar result.

I started off with the Honey Bee Stamps Hexagon cover plates – I used just the top two today (the very bottom layer is on a future shopping list).

I cut them from 80lb white cardstock and glued the two layers together. The card front is then adhered to my base – I prefer Neenah 110lb for my card bases, but you can use whichever you prefer.

I stamped and die cut my images, plus I die cut the letters for BEE four times each and stacked them together. This alphabet die set is a brilliant size, and beautiful font, I find I reach for it a lot.

The Busy Bees set includes dies for flower stems, I simply cut these without stamping the matching image and coloured them in green (YG09).

You can use any combinations of greys and yellows you have in your stash. For this project, I used C9, C7, C5 and Black on the buzzy bees, along with Y35, Y18, Y5, Y13, Y11. The same yellow combination is used on the letters and flower centres. Plus C3, C1 and C0 to add shadow to the flower petals and wings. You could cut the top layer of the letters from yellow or patterned cardstock too, which would be a fun result.


When colouring with Copic Markers, it is important to use the right cardstock – Neenah or Copic X-Press It are my top choices and they give smooth results, making it easier to blend your colouring as the cardstock can handle the amount of ink being laid down.

I start with my darkest colour and colour from the outside in with little flicks. The next colour is added by using the same small flicks over the dark colour and extending it out and same again with the lighter shade. Do the same from the other side of the section you’re colouring. If you leave gaps between your flicks, you can achieve a more textured look (think hair or fur), but in this case I wanted a smooth blend.

Copics are a bit of an investment, and it can be daunting when you’re just starting out with your collection. When adding a new colour family to your collection, try to add in groups of 3 – a dark, medium and light shade of colour. I will link here to some online colouring resources, (including free and paid) classes and charts for your reference.

There are a number of Copic suppliers in New Zealand – Gordon Harris, Ribbon Rose, Scrapbook Central are the main retailers that I personally purchase from – all three have online shopping facilities. Check your local craft supplier or art store too.

I also have further information about Copic Markers, plus other ways of adding colour to your projects here.


A close up of the stacked letters and their shiny, sparkly glory!

I added some sparkle with the Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Gloss pen and a layer of Nuvo Crystal Glaze for shine.

Wink of Stella pens and Ranger Glossy Accents or Nuvo Morning Dew Drops would give similar results if that’s what you have. I have linked both options below.

I stamped and white heat embossed the Just and Cause to add above and below to complete the sentiment.

The letters and sentiment additions are glued directly to the card front. The bees and flowers are attached to the card front with foam squares within the hexagon gaps. I glued the flower stems to sit underneath my flower heads, cut down to size – there was plenty left to spare from the two stems I had prepared.

Final touches include glaze pens and fineliner for the eyes, smile and tops of the antennae.

PRO TIP: Wait for your sparkle pen to dry before adding black glaze – I ended up with a bit of a feathered look on one of the bees and one of the antenna. Whoops!

I also added sparkle and glaze to the flower centres.

This completes my bright and cheerful card today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.

https://linkdeli.com/widget.js?id=f5e8378456858c916708

If you have any questions regarding the putting together of this card, please feel free to message me – I’m only too happy to help!

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day! Here in New Zealand, we are still in Level 3 Lockdown – meaning we can’t travel out of our region, retail shops are not open although online retailers are shipping. So today’s plan is to have cake with both mine and my husband’s mother via a Zoom meeting. Sounds fun right? Three cakes were ordered, but only one has made it to its destination so far – the couriers in New Zealand say their current workload is like Christmas on steroids!!

Anyway, back to the card my mother received in the post (sent in plenty of time for arrival prior to today!).

Close up of the rainbow sunflower – can you see the shine?
Adding colour to the die cut sunflower, this doesn’t need to be tidily done as it will be hidden by the layers.

I was inspired by Laura Bassen @laurafadora and her card made with the sunflower stem from Simon Says Stamp. I loved the rainbow idea and bought this die solely to create my own.

I cut the sunflower five times, and left the petals intact in one of them so I could colour my rainbow for the bottom layer. I used copic markers, but you could use any medium you prefer.

Three die cuts, with the petals punched out were glued on top. I used my Art Glitter glue for this as I really like the super fine tip. If I had thought ahead, I could have applied stick it adhesive to my cardstock first to make the job of sticking the delicate die cuts together easier!

I also coloured the petals with my Nuvo Glimmer pen, and then added Nuvo Crystal Glaze for extra shine.

The final die cut sunflower was added to the top for a nice clean and crisp finish.

The background is the Simon Says Stamp Festive Berries stamp, heat embossed with Hero Arts Satin Pearl embossing powder.

The sunflower panel is raised with craft foam. I used the MFT stitched rectangles on both the card front and sunflower panel to get a nice stitched border.

I added the sunflower to the front and found a suitable Happy Mother’s Day sentiment in Mama Elephant’s Mini Messages. I heat embossed in white on Hero Arts Pitch Black cardstock and carefully cut the ends to create the little banner.

If you have any questions regarding the putting together of this card, please feel free to message me – I’m only too happy to help!