Put A Bird on it!

It’s a new month with new challenges!  This week’s challenge is put a bird on it.  There’s 3 on this card!  I recently acquired Art Impression’s Holiday Mansion 4926 and HM Garden Set 5096: 4926 – Holiday Mansion   5096 – HM Garden Set

Both of these sets include the stamps and matching dies.  Ai also has a “Holiday” themed stamp and die set, as well as a Valentines Day set too, giving you so many different looks.

4927 – HM Accessory Set:   4927 – HM Accessory Set

4977 – HM – Valentine Set: 4977 – Valentine Set

I am nuts for this set because it looks different depending on however you color it or decorate it.  Here’s a picture of the same two sets but in a different color scheme:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blue one I made right away and gave it to my best girlfriend.  The pink one I made for this challenge and went a little nuts with the decorating.  I do have some tips that will help you get better results with stamping and cutting these adorable stamp and die sets.

The Steps:

Step 1:  First stamp the “house” stamp on white cardstock.  I knew I wanted to fussy cut the house to be adhered to a hand made background.  Also, there is no die in the set that cuts out the outline of the house.  This is what the house dies do:

They cut out the windows and doors.  There are two shutter stamps and matching dies.  So here’s TIP #1:  If you look close at the stamped house on the right above, when I taped the dies to the stamped image and ran it through my cutting machine, I was off just a little bit.  In particular, the arch on the door.  You’ll see, at the top of the arch, I cut off part of the bottom of the stamped “porch cover”.  So the tip is to tape these dies to a strip of white cardstock in order to make a template.  This allows you to use this template to see exactly where to tape the dies.  It’s hard to see when the die is upside down on your projects because you know longer can see the blade

Tip #2:  You can stamp the house on white cardstock as well as the accessory stamps on this same layer and create a scene using only the stamps.  Or, a combination of both, like only cutting out the house dies but not the accessory stamps in the scene.  In this case you will REALLY want to use a template.

Step 2:  I stamped the “flower pot” accessory stamp a bunch of times on white cardstock.  This gives you lots of options for not only how many you’ll actually use, but what colors you like best with the rest of the scene.  Any you don’t use you save for another project!  I stamped colored and cut all the rest of the accessories once.

Step 3:  This step is optional but I think is what makes it so fun, is to have a little surprise behind the two doors that open, and also that you see through the windows.  For this I used Ai: 4745 – Talk Much Set

I stamped this little tea scene and then cut the colored scene in pieces so I could place the table scene through the front door and the Chandelier through the top left window.

Then I put a couple of stamped, colored and cut flower pots in the other two.

Step 4: I used this set from Elizabeth Craft Designs:992 – CountryScapes – The Woods 1

I only used the left side of the tree.  I cut the trunk from brown cardstock and the leaves from green.

The fence was cut with an Elizabeth Craft Designs 1134 – CountryScapes Nantucket Arbor & Picket Fence.  As of this day they didn’t show it available now.  However, I cut two of the fences out of white cardstock.

The last thing is to cut two “grass edges” from this set that is also no longer available but is a set by Karen Burniston 914 – Outdoor Edges – 3 die set

From green cardstock, I cut one edge with the wavy one and one with the Grass edge.

The last step is to assemble your little scene as shown below:

Thanks so much for taking a look.  I just think this set is adorable and I will be buying the other two decorator accessory sets because I can’t wait to use this set for Christmas, Halloween, and Valentines Day!

Other Products Used:

Michael’s Craft Store: All cardstock

Beacon’s Kid’s Choice Glue

Sizzix Big Shot Plus

CutterPillar Pro