Mama Elephant October Stampede!

Hi there, and welcome to day 3 of the Mama Elephant October Stampede! The new release is live and available for purchase in the shop right now! What's your favorite new stamp set? I'm guessing it features these little guys!

Today, I am showing off the new set, Christmas Scene. It features different styles of houses, and some trees and holiday ornaments. Perfect for making snowy christmas scenes! I made a soft pastel card, in non-traditional holiday colors:



I curved the sentiment over the circle cut-out, used embossing paste to show a snow fall in the background, and liquid appliqué to add snowy accents on the trees and house.



Minty green and pink tree trunks! I kept to a tight color scheme to make sure it had a cohesive and stylized feel.

I hope you like it!

GIVEAWAY:  Mama Elephant is also giving away three $25 gift certificates over the 3 Stampede days (today is the last day.) To qualify to win, just leave a comment on this blog post.  Winners will be selected and announced on the ME blog on Monday, October 19th.

Visit the participating blogs today:

Mama Elephant ♥ Nichol ♥ Lisa ♥ Elena (that's me) ♥ Debby ♥ Joy ♥ Sandy 

merci {mama elephant}

Hi there! It's been a long while since I've had the energy to post anything to the blog. There have been germs and coughs and gastros and pneumonias running rampart. ugh.

I did manage to pick myself off the floor to teach a card-making class a few weeks ago. I thought it would be fun to share a card I made with the class.

I couldn't help but use the little owl that I drew for Mama Elephant, part of the Charmed set.

I colored and die-cut the owl and his branch, as well as the "merci" sentiment, and propped all the pieces onto a minty green striped background.



A bit of ink splatter and a wooden heart were all we needed to take the card from basic to wow.  For most of the girls, it was their first time using copic markers and I think they were hooked.

Thanks for stopping by! There will be lots of activity on the blog in the next few weeks!

♥.

bah humbug {lawn fawn inspiration week}

Hi there! It's the last of the September posts for Lawn Fawn's inspiration week (but, I realized that I forgot to post yesterday, so expect a bonus pillow box project on the blog tomorrow!)

Today, we're showing off Baaah Humbug.



I really like how this card turned out! I stamped a lot of the tiny images onto a piece of white cardstock, colored them in red and white and then masked all of the tiny images (yup!) so that I could rub ink over the entire thing for that vintage feel.

I used the stitched rectangle dies to frame out the base layer, and then started on the focal image.

The partial die-cut technique is perfect for cutting out the sheep and his hat as one piece. It gives the image a more polished look (as opposed to seeing the white die-cut edge of the hat on top of the sheep's head.)

For all the red and white and brown on the card, I wanted a punch of something graphic for the sentiment. White heat embossing onto black cardstock does the trick every time.

I hope you like it! There's more to see on the Lawn Fawn blog today - click!

♥.

santa's belly and winter alpaca {lawn fawn inspiration week}

Welcome back to another day of Lawn Fawn inspiration! I have 2 projects to share today.



The first is a different take on the pillow box add-ons, Santa's Belly. I made a Santa face! I used all of the same pieces to create him: the buttons became eyes, the scalloped pieces became beard and hat trim, and the belt was shortened tremendously to become his nose.

I started out with a white pillow box, and added detail to it. First, I grabbed a skin-colored copic marker and marked off a rectangle that would become his face.  I then die-cut a second pillow box in red and cut a piece to glue on top (for his hat) and another for his outfit.  The back of the pillow box is still white.

As a reminder, this is what the pillow box is meant to look like, with the Santa's Belly die-set:

And this is my guy:

I think he turned out so cute!

I also have a card to show off using the new set, Winter Alpaca.



I paired him with an older set, Fanciful Frames. and added texture to the alpaca using liquid appliqué. When you heat that stuff up, it bubble a bit and is so perfect for fuzzy alpaca texture.

My kids loved this set so much! They've been giggling "alpaca my scarf" for weeks now!

I hope you like it! There's more to see on the Lawn Fawn blog today - click!

♥.

ready, set, snow {lawn fawn inspiration week}

Hi there! I'm back with more for Lawn Fawn's September inspiration week.  Today, we're showing off the snowglobe set, Ready, set, snow.



I had some leftover gingham stamped cardstock (from yesterday's card) so I used it to create this banner-shaped card. I hope you don't think I'm lazy. I just loved the gingham so much!



I used the shaker add-on dies to create this fun shaker element on the card. I used the puffy cloud border to create a waving snow bank behind them, and paper from the let's bokeh collection for the dreamy snowy background.



If the extra effort of a shaker card isn't your thing, the same exact stamping works without the add-ons dies. I stamped the same snowmen inside the snowglobe and just used the regular die to cut out the outline. It's still so cute! I dressed up the top of a little gift box and it's ready for gift-card giving in the holiday season. As long as I remember that I made it and where I put it. Does that happen to anyone else? Last year, after I spent a frenzied week making things for the kids' classes, I opened a cupboard to find that I had already made a bunch of stuff earlier in the season. {facepalm}

I hope you like what I created today! Visit the Lawn Fawn blog for more amazing projects - click!

♥.

Toboggan together! {lawn fawn inspiration week}

Hey there! I'm so excited to be joining the Lawn Fawn design team for this month's inspiration week! Get ready for a whole lotta cute Christmas stuff.

Today, we're showing off my favorite set of the entire winter release, Toboggan Together.

I paired the images with a gingham background, stamped in black ink onto red cardstock. I can't even tell you how much I love it stamped like that! A little buffalo plaid never hurt nobody.

Let's talk about layering stamped and die-cut images. If I'm going to layer images, I usually mask and then try to do the finicky die-cutting to get the whole thing cut out together (example.) Because, to my eye, I really don't like seeing the white outline where it's not supposed to be.  Does that make sense? It will in a second. Look at the reindeer, and the rope that he's pulling the sled with. I made it look more seamless by stamping the reindeer image again onto the rope die-cut, coloring it to match, and lopping a tiny part off so that it sits snuggly under his reindeer head.

What do you think? Worth the effort? For me, it totally gives an extra bit of polish to the images.

Visit the Lawn Fawn blog to see what the rest of the team created with Toboggan Together!

♥

you remind me of...me! {mama elephant}

Hi there! I'm popping in with a little almost-one-layer card today, using the Mama Elephant Birthday Wishes set.

I paired it with the critters from Woodland Gifts. The bear's blank expression says it all. What'd you say to me? haha.

The bunny and the mouse are being a little cheeky, stacked to hand him the extra large candle. I stamped the solid candle with a black ink, and then added polka dots by way of a white gel pen to match the patterned paper flag.

Once the critters were colored, I masked them and splattered blue ink like confetti onto the card front.

I hope you like it!

♥.