New Products – New Challenge!

This is my entry to Freshly Made Sketches challenge #246

The above is the sketch we were given for this week’s challenge!

I had just received some new “toys” from Elizabeth Craft Designs and like all of us paper crafters, I couldn’t wait to use them!  One of my new die sets is “909 Hoppy the Frog“.

He is one of the adorable character dies designed by Karen Burniston for Elizabeth Craft Designs.  I also just received “711 – Lady Bugs” from the same company and designed by Els  (the owner of Elizabeth Craft Designs).

I needed a “Tag” to put the frog and lady bugs on. So I chose a set I had just bought from The Scrapbook Outlet by Gina Marie Designs.

An idea was beginning to form.  The challenge for me was to create something that would fit onto an oval that would be placed on top of the banner or tag.  I had already cut and assembled the “frog” and the “lady bugs” using a product from Elizabeth Craft Designs called “Velvet Adhesive”.  I had just bought the sample pack that has one of each of the 10 colors that this product comes in.  See picture below:

I wanted to try this product because Els had featured it in her “Friday Technique” video. Here is the link to this video:  https://youtu.be/ahYpwfwvWRE

I used one with open wings and two with the closed wings.  You can actually open the closed wings slightly like I did.  They were cut from the “red velvet” in the above pack.  The silhouette layer was cut from black generic cardstock.

 I cut the silhouette die (the outline) of the frog and the “eyes” piece in white cardstock.  I cut the “over-lay” piece out of the darker green in the velvet sampler pack. I layed the detailed “over-lay” over the white silhouette piece to determine where to add a stripe of Pink Copic marker color R83 so that his mouth would be pink.  Then I used the Black Copic #100 to color all the rest of the white cardstock silhouette. One of the features I love about the frog die is that the eyes are a separate piece.  You can decide where you want the frog to be “looking” by where you position the dies. As you can see in the picture of the die package “Hoppy” looks as though he is looking straight ahead.  But, on my card, he definitely looks like he is looking at the “Lady bugs”. I also took a white gel pen and sort of narrowed the “iris” part of his eyes.  I was trying to give him a more sinister look, like he’s about to stick out his tongue and grab one of those lady bugs for a meal!

I cut the “Banner” from the largest die in the above “Gina Marie” set.  I used Elizabeth Craft Designs “Soft Finish Cardstock”.  It comes in a ton of colors.  They also have 4 different sampler packs of this cardstock.  I bought all 4 so I would have samples to refer to when I wanted to buy a pack of 10 of a single color.  I have to admit I was slow to try this cardstock because it seemed a little pricey for solid colored cardstock.  I was used to buying packs of colored paper from Michaels or Joanne Fabric & Crafts.  I just couldn’t see that my projects would be better with the more expensive paper.  Well, I was wrong.  First of all, it’s 100lb. cardstock.  This makes it a sturdier cardstock.  A sturdy cardstock can be very important with interactive cards like pop ups, step, explosion boxes, pivot boxes and so  on.  When you spend the time making one of these cards you assume the recipient will probably display it for awhile and be opened and closed numerous times!  If your interactive mechanisms tear or break, the card is no longer magic.  It’s trash!

The other thing I noticed about this cardstock is one side of it is very subtly textured.  You can feel it but it isn’t highly visible.  I don’t know if this slight texture is what makes your die cuts better or not, but they are better! They look thicker, feel puffier and seem to have more dimension.  They emboss like no other!  I love the way your images seem so much crisper when you stamp on this paper.  It also is fabulous to color on with whatever mediums you use.

The last feature which seemed like a “what ever!” feature to me is NOW one of my favorite things about this cardstock!  It’s only colored on one side!  What? I know!  Well, here’s what I love about this feature.  If you use this cardstock as the base for your card, the inside of your folded card is white!  Yay!  Soooooo, you can first put it through your printer to print a sentiment you created or stamp on the white inside.  I love that!  There are so many other reasons that this is a great feature.  It creates more opportunities to decorate pivots, pull-cards and the like.  I recommend trying out one of the sampler packs.  You’ll be glad you did.  Your welcome.  Commercial over.

I also cut out of white cardstock 4 of the little “Lily pad”die that comes with “Hoppy”.  I colored them with Copics RV00 and G21. Using the tools in Susan Tierney Cockburn’s Susan’s Garden Tool Kit I added some dimension.  Then I glued two together offsetting the two pieces.

I cut a circle from a nested set by Sizzix using the 3rd smallest.

I cut one (3rd to the smallest) of the “Beaded Circle Frame” set, out of white cardstock and colored it with Copic BG000 which is an exact match to the Elizabeth Craft Designs Soft Finish Cardstock – “Soft Sky”.  I used that cardstock for the light blue layer behind the tag.  The piece measures 5″ x 6.5″ and was adhered to the white cardstock base.  The base was made by scoring an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of white cardstock at 5.5″.  Then it was trimmed to 5.5″ x 7″ finished card.

I created the sentiment on my computer and printed it out on white cardstock.  I then cut the sentiment out using the long rectangle die at the bottom of this Spellbinders” set called “Matting Basics”.

Once all my elements were created, all I had to do was to assemble them as pictured in the finished project.  The last step was to attach a piece of knotted ribbon to the top of the banner to make it look like more like a “tag”.

Here’s a picture of the inside.

I created the sentiment on my computer and printed on colored copy paper from Walmart “pastels”.  I cut it out with a die set from QuickKutz using the largest die.  See below:

Thanks so much for taking a look!  I love reading your comments and will reply to any questions you may have.  I also want to say that the products I recommend or review are my honest experience and recommendations.  I am not compensated in any way by any of the manufacturers of these products.