Summer butterflies

 Good morning and welcome to the first day of summer. It's time for my fortnightly Wednesday blogged design team make for Visible Image. It seemed the perfect day to share the step by step of a card I make using the antisocial butterfly stamp set

with its new coordinating dies.

They cut out the 2 butterfly stamps in the set beautifully. I love fussy cutting but the tiny butterfly is small and these dies make quick work of cutting out.

I also used the gorgeous "Renaissance stencil"

This is what I got up to;

For my background I sprayed squeezed lemonade, twisted citron and broken china distress stain sprays though the "Renaissance" stencil.

I stamped the large and small butterflies in blue ink

and die cut them. I then added some colour using glitter pens and distress pencils.

I stamped the collage into the centre of the background

and added the butterfly sentiment above

I stuck the coloured die cut butterfly over the top.

I placed the small butterflies symmetrically around the background finishing off with some glossy accents in the circles of the collage.

Here is my finished card;

with a couple of close ups

and one final shot;

All the Visible Image links are listed below;

The Visible Image Group page is over on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you join us.  You will be warmly welcomed and see lots of inspiration from the DT and customers to inspire your own creativity. 

 I also organize a monthly artist trading card swap in the group.  We are currently celebrating 2 years of swapping. Whether you are a new stamper or a seasoned one you are most welcome to join us. Over 140 members, worldwide, have taken part since it started. It's been such fun and it's so lovely to receive a unique piece of art from your partner in the post. The details and sign up for each swap are posted in the group on the 23rd of the month. So the next sign up for July, opens this Friday, 23rd June,  if you would like to join us.  There is no "monthly" commitment, just join in when you have the time and if you live in the UK can you choose to post to the UK only if that suits you best.

The main Visible Image Facebook business page is here

Visible Image also has its own You Tube channel here where you can see videos and Lives to give you lots of inspiration and ideas. 

Their Instagram page can be found here 

Pinterest here

and their website is here. 

 You will also find me on Instagram here; @jane.tyrrell where I share many more samples than I have the time to blog.

A little heads up before I go, as I do love to "enable", that if you use the code DIES20 over on the website there is 20% off the 4 new co ordinating die sets. You will need to be quick though as this end on the last day of June or until the first stock runs out. 

The new Christmas in July release is also available to pre order too...for the 1st July release. Do check it out.

 There are 5 gorgeous new stamp sets and 3 fab stencils. I will be sharing a make with the shining star set for my next design team blog post in 2 weeks time. Here's a little sneak peek.

You can pre order them here. In the meantime I have been sharing some of my samples over on Instagram so do pop on over. 

Happy summer everyone,

Bye for now,

 

Jane x

Vintage Christmas post 2

Hi it's time for my 2nd design team make for Country View Challenges to hopefully inspire you to join in our current challenge. The theme for June is "Vintage" so your make must have a vintage vibe to it...so no cute cartoon characters for this one please! You can enter a maximum of 5 times and into a maximum of 10 challenges, including ours. As always there is a fab £20 voucher up for grabs for one lucky randomly selected winner to spend on the website.  You can find all the details of the challenge and more examples made by my talented teamies here.

I love a vintage Christmas, this is one of the many sets of Christmas crackers I have made over the years. 

  Remember that when you buy from the Country View Crafts website UK postage is FREE on orders over £20.00 I have added some live links within my post to take you to some of the products I used. 

Now to me no one does vintage like Tim Holtz and so both of my design team make for this month use Tim products. Also no one does Christmas like Tim so I also decided make a 2nd Christmas card. I do find that having a couple ready made in my stash is very helpful before I start my big Christmas card making in the autumn. 

This is what I got up to;

I sprayed a piece of card using iced spruce and salvaged patina stain sprays. 

I added some background stamping using distress archival inks

I used some of Tim's ephemera and circles 25th December...I wonder why!!!

I then put my design together adding some stars and ribbon and mounted it up and onto a kraft card base.

with a couple of close ups;

and one final shot;

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with the challenge this month? Once again here you can find all the details for our June challenge here;

Enjoy the rest of the month.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Bee-ing tidy

I'm very excited today to be blogging my first design team make using the brilliant new Visible Image bee dies. These coordinate with the awesome existing Bee happy stamp set. Now I am a very keen fussy cutter but these bee dies are just the best and cut out so perfectly and easily that even I might think again about fussy cutting my bees!

These are the dies available here

and this is the stamp set they work with

The bee dies and 3 other coordinating die sets were released last week and available now on the VI website.

I love making art tins by upcycling empty tomato tins and I have shared several on my blog over the years. I decided I would make a new bee pair, one for Visible Image and one for me. I have shared the actual process of measuring and sticking the label to the tin in the past, so if you would like those specific details please check out this previous posts here using the See Everything set.

So this is how I made my bee labels for my new art tins. 

I sprayed the label with squeezed lemonade and twisted citron distress stain sprays. I added extra water and allowed the inks to mix and run down.

Using the honeycomb hex stencil I added some wild honey distress ink randomly around the label.

I also added some extra honeycomb stamping using Versafine clair summertime ink.

I stamped the words bee kind in the centre of one label and bee happy on the 2nd.

 I then stamped the bees, coloured them with distress pencils, die cut them out using the awesome new dies 

and adhered them to the labels.

In the Visible Image Friends Facebook group I was asked to show how to line up the dies on the stamps, so here is the description I gave there too. This is the same process for any of the co ordinating dies but this is smallest bee description. 

I colour the images first as personally I find it is easier to colour on a larger piece of card but it is personal preference, you can colour afterwards too. 

Place the card on your die cutting plate and line up the inside edge of the die with the image. Check the edges of the wings, bottom and antennae are lined up. You should be able to see the full image through the top of the die as shown below.

Add a piece of washi or low tac tape to keep everything in place.

Run through you machine using the correct "sandwich". You only need 1 pass.

This is how it looks after running through the machine and the tape removed. Yes you can see my die cutting plates are very well loved!

The bee pops out of the die very easily

and here is is perfectly cut out. 

They are such fun to make

So here are my finished tins,

1 of which is ready to add to my existing collection.

Here are 4 of my most recent art tins;

A couple of close ups

and some final shots;

All the Visible Image links are listed below;

The Visible Image Group page is over on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you join us.  You will be warmly welcomed and see lots of inspiration from the DT and customers to inspire your own creativity. 

 I also organize a monthly artist trading card swap in the group.  We are currently celebrating 2 years of swapping. Whether you are a new stamper or a seasoned one you are most welcome to join us. Over 140 members, worldwide, have taken part since it started. It's been such fun and it's so lovely to receive a unique piece of art from your partner in the post. The details and sign up for each swap are posted in the group on the 23rd of the month. So the next sign up, for July, opens on 23rd June,  if you would like to join us.  There is no "monthly" commitment, just join in when you have the time and if you live in the UK can you choose to post to the UK only if that suits you best.

The main Visible Image Facebook business page is here

Visible Image also has its own You Tube channel here where you can see videos and Lives to give you lots of inspiration and ideas. 

Their Instagram page can be found here 

Pinterest here

and their website is here. 

 You will also find me on Instagram here; @jane.tyrrell where I share many more samples than I have the time to blog.

A little heads up before I go, as I do love to "enable", that if you use the code DIES20 over on the website there is 20% off the 4 new co ordinating die sets.The offer last for the whole of June or until the first stock runs out. I have lots more new release samples to share over the coming weeks so do check me out on Instagram.  My next blogged DT make for Visible Image will be posted here in 2 weeks when I will be sharing the fun I had with the set.

Bye for now,

Jane x