A bit of Steampunk

 

Hi there... It's almost the end of the month... just a few days left to enter our challenge this month...Just click on the post at the top of the blog.  A big thanks to all who have entered so far.  I'm so pleased I don't have to chose a winner (Random.org does that for me!) as everything is just awesome.

 

Today I'm sharing a card I made when I was on the DT for LBBS.  This is  Steampunk Jessica  The embossed background is a Spellbinders folder which has had black paint and distress stains in bronze added.  I coloured Jessica with Copics and fussy cut her.  The black doily is a die from MFT and finished with some mesh and a flower.

Please do come and join us.

Dawn & The Divas

A Bit of CUTE!

Little Blue Button Stamps has some very cute images and I love this one.  I would never have thought of die-cutting this house or cat in that flowery cardstock if I hadn't already had it out on the desk.  The dry embossing folder was backward when I put the paper in, but I rather like the unusual indentations for this card as well as the whimsical patterns, colors, and papers.  Hope you think this is fun too..

Close-up

Have a great day out there!

Arlene and the Die Cut Divas

A pretty in pink gift card.

Nothing pretty than a pink card and this one from Hannah is a perfect example.

  

Hannah has used a Little Blue Button stamp "Miss Lily Coffee break" so of course she decided to make a little gift card holder for a Starbucks gift card.  

Beautifully embossed Hannah.

Dawn and the Divas

Sunshine and Spring

Welcome to another Little Blue Button Stamps day with the Die Cut Divas.  I love the way this cute paper reminds me of spring and sunshine and happiness.  A little, no scratch that, a LOT of dry embossing gives the backgrounds lots of depth without adding pop dots until the very top panel.  

I guess you could say this little gal is a favorite of mine.  Hope you are enjoying your stamping time and would like to try a Little Blue Button stamping too.  Here's a bit of SUNSHINE to add to your day!

Close-up of Sally loves me

As ever, we at Die Cut Divas enjoy our stamping and playing with our stamps.

Arlene and the Die Cut Divas

It's not BLUE MONDAY

It's Blue Thursday. here at my house,  not because I'm feeling blue, but just because I've colored so much BLUE!  I felt like coloring this Little Blue Button Stamps image in BLUES. with a little red heart in her hands.  Then I found this blue sparkly background paper and oh no, BLUE birds.  The birdies are die cut from the same paper background panel.

 You can find Sally loves me here

Close-up of the paper and images

Maybe you can have a BLUE stamping day too!

Arlene and the Die Cut Divas

Paper Casting... a different type of embossing

Have you heard of Paper Casting?  It is a technique that looks a bit like embossing.  I found out about this a year or so ago and made a card.

 

Isn't this pretty.   You make this by moulding paper tissues over a stamp and use some glue to moisten it.  Hero Arts have an awesome tutorial HERE 

I have framed my panel with a Spellbinders die and mounted on an embossed background. 

Looking forward to seeing more of your wonderful creations.  I'll be sharing some of them soon.

Dawn and the Divas

A Little Blue Button Scrapling

Here is a scrapling from one of Little Blue Button Stamps, our March 2014 sponsor.  I cut one 2 3/4th inch by 4 inch piece off a card I didn't like and bingo!  A scrapling was born.  Remember, this is not a full size card.  I love little card so much I don't want to give it away.  I created the brick wall on which she is sitting by coloring Copic marker T1 across and then creating bricks by using Copic marker T2 and then continue T2 across the entire bottom of the card panel.  I used a white pen to put froth on her drink. I think she's adorable.

From ABOUT.COM:
"Question: What is a Scrapling?

Crafters come up with all sorts of cool names for little bits of paper (such as the inchies, twinchie, and rinchie trio). Scrapling is another such term.

Answer: A quarter-size greeting card is typically 5.5 x 4.25 inches (the folded size). To make it into a square card, some crafters would cut 1.25 inches off the bottom. That little scrap of paper became known as ascrapling. Instead of throwing it away (it is usually very pretty, decorative paper), it is often used to craft mini cards, tags, and labels."

I see that the origin is none other than Hero Arts, here.

Arlene and the Die Cut Divas

A card set from Sally

Hi there.  I'm back to share a gorgeous card set from our guest designer, Sally.

Can you see the amazing embossing together with Sally's use of die cuts.  And what stunning colours too.

Thanks Sally for such delightful examples of your work.

Dawn and the Divas

Talking to the Birds

What a sweet image from Little Blue Button Stamps.  She's lots of fun to color and add little die-cut birds.  I think they are my little blue birds of happiness.   Hoping you're having a glimpse of spring in your eyes.  Lots of fun in blue hair and bright red clothes.

VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE

Many fun cards ahead of us.

Arlene and the Die Cut Divas

Introducing our guest designer.... Sally Sherfield.

I am so pleased to introduce to one of our regular contributors..... Sally Sherfield

• Tell us about yourself.   

My name is Sally Sherfield and I live in a small village called Milford in the South of the UK. I have been a crafter all my life and have tried most things from jewellery making to sewing and crochet but my real love is card making.  I find it very relaxing after a hard day at work.  I have been married to Jeremy for 32 years and we have two grown up children Tristan (29) and Francesca (26), they both still live at home but hopefully one day they will move out and then I can have a bigger craft room!!!

• How long have you been a cardmaker.  

 I started card making in 2007 when a friend who had been to a card making class gave me a few lessons and I was hooked!!

• Do you follow sketches or just dive in.  

 I am not really a sketch follower, I actually find it quite hard to stick to the sketch!! I prefer to dive in and play with a design or some images till they feel right.

• How many projects do you make a week. 

 I usually try to make 2 or 3 projects a week, it really depends on how much spare time I have and also if its great weather I like to be outside in the garden.

• What is you favourite tool. 

My favourite go to tool is always my Big Shot,   I love all the new die cuts that are available now, the market is bigger than ever and its so hard not to spend lots of money on them!!

• What at the moment is your most favourite thing to do on a project.  

At the moment I am really in to the CAS style of creating, at first I found it really hard as I just wanted to keep adding bits to my design. After a lot of practice I am finding it easier and love the look of white space on my cards.

Stunning use of the white space here Sally 

• How would you describe your style.  

 I am a real girly girl and love things pretty and feminine, Flowers and butterflies are always top of my list. I am not really keen to put images of people on my designs ( for one I find them hard to colour)!

• What about your style would you change (or not) and why.  

 I really wish I was better at colouring, especially with Copics.  I would really love to colour my stamped images with better shading.  I also love the collage style but always find it hard to achieve.

• Have you been published or on a design team.  

I have been lucky enough to be published a few times, my blog was featured in Craft Stamper Magazine in March 2012, I had a card published in Papercrafts in Nov 2012 and I was also featured in the DoCrafts magazine in 2010. I was also on the Design Team for Tiffany Doodles in 2011 and although its not a design team I was thrilled to be asked to be a Hero Arts Hostess in spring of 2011.

• Describe your crafting area. 

 I craft in little room be call the office!!! Its a bit of a grand word for a tiny little room that fits a desk and our home computer.  Its a shared space but I fear my craft supplies are taking over lol.  I would really love a bigger space but will need to wait till one of my kids move out!

 Looks like a nice place to craft

• Do you have a blog.   

 Yes I do have a blog its called Designed by Sally and you can find it here.
I also have a flickr photo stream here 
 
Thank you Sally for letting us get to know you.

And pop back on the 14th to see some more of Sally's beautiful designs.

Dawn and the Divas

Embossed Patterned Paper

I love the idea of adding some texture to background pattern paper and today I'm sharing a card where I did this using some images from our sponsor - Little Blue Button Stamps.

 

This is a card I made for Little Blue Button Stamps Blog.  The background is one that Olga designed and which I have recoloured in blues.  I stamped the Kaisercraft sentiment  and then added some blue ink all around and in places with a stencil or two.  The whole panel was then embossed with a folder.  I printed out the Vintage Dress form (Available here as a digital stamp or here as a rubber stamp) and used some Copics to colour.  The blue wasn't quite right, so I smeared some Gesso over it to tone it down.  Then I added Stickles to the wings and some Glossy Accents to the hat.  The finishing touch was some twine and a vintage button.

Hope this inspires you to try embossing PP. 

Dawn and the Divas

Hair of a Different Color

Little Blue Button Stamps is our sponsor for March.  A big thanks goes out to Little Blue Button Stamps.

Dawn shared Sally Loves Me with you yesterday and I thought I would share the same image, just with hair of a different color.  I just couldn't help but think of this cute gal with purple hair.  I thought it was a fun twist and made for a fun card.

Arlene and the Die Cut Divas

A different type of embossing....using paste

Hi there.  Today I want to share a card I made using some embossing paste and an image from our sponsor Little Blue Button Stamps

I used a stencil from My Favorite Things called Petal Pattern  and some paste by Wendy Vecchi White paste.  Once it dried I added some black Wink of Stella to the flower centres.  I used an MFT Di-Namics Sentiment Strips die to cut my banner and stamped with a Hero Arts sentiment.    The little LBBS image is called Sally with Heart.  I coloured in pinks to match the matting.

Don't forget to add your creations to our challenge here

Dawn and the Divas

Double Embossing - a tutorial

I thought I would I do a little tutorial showing how I did the double embossing on my card from the other day

I started by embossing with a Die-Namics Oval Doily.

This is what it looks like once you have embossed

Next I used a Tim Holtz diffuser ( but you can make your own) and an embossing folder. With the diffuser you don't need another B plate as the diffuser is the correct size.  If you make your own you need to ensure that it is thick enough.  There are a lot of ideas on You Tube or Google if you want to DIY
 

 Here is the result of the double embossing

And finally a look a the card I made 

and the one from a couple of weeks ago

Hope this has encouraged you to try out this Double Embossing Technique.

And if you are interested in using Tim Holtz Diffusers... go watch this video from Britta Swiderski 

Dawn and the Divas

Introducing Little Blue Button Stamps

Our lovely sponsor this month is Little Blue Button Stamps.  I have been working with Olga Ishenko, the owner of LBBS, over the past year on her design team.  So I asked Olga a few questions to get to know her and her business

How did your company come about?

I always loved to draw since I was a kid. My grandpa was an artist so I inherited this love from him.  I always wanted to connect my life with this type of art so once I decided to start producing digis, and after that I came up with some rubber stamps.

How long have you been in business?

I’ve been in business for a year.

Where can we find you?

http://lbbstamps.com and also rubber stamps on http://www.ccdesignsrubberstamps.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=361_1550 and http://www.zibbet.com/Not2Shabbyshop/section/little-blue-button

Can anyone shop with you?  In other words what happens for overseas visitors?

Anyone can shop with me. Our company base is in USA but you can get digis from any country you like, as well as rubber stamps.

What is one of your favourite products that you carry & why?

I carry only my own designs of digital stamps and printables. My fave line is Miss Lilly and Rag Doll Sweetheart.

Do you craft & how often do you get a chance to do so?

Yes I love to craft. I craft not so often lately but I really love to do this. 

Do you have a blog or Face Book page showcasing your products?

This is LBBS blog http://lbbstamps.blogspot.com and my personal blog http://boxoftreasure.blogspot.com

Thank you Olga for your generosity as our sponsor this month.

And here are a couple of cards I've made over the past year with some LBBS digis using embossing. 

  

Dawn and the Divas

And the Grand Prize Goes To.....

It's here! The moment you've all been waiting for, the question everyone has been wondering! Who has won the Grand Prize!


Our lucky winner of this prize is...... JennyH

 

Congratulations Jenny!

please email us at thedcdivas@gmail.com with your postal address, and please note I'll not be mailing the prizes till I have all the winners addresses, so if I don't get your email right away I must wait till I have all 4 in order to ship,

 

Thank you and I hope you enjoy your new stencils.

 

 Hannah and the DCD Team

Let's Emboss It. March Challenge is under way

Hi there.  Dawn here for my month on Die Cut Divas.  And I've got a nice and easy challenge for you this month.   EMBOSS IT.... any sort of embossing... dry, heat, pastes etc.  Just as long as you use your Die Cut Machine for something on you card.  Of course if you dry emboss... your in!

And this month our sponsor is Little Blue Button Stamps

And Olga has been very generous and we will draw two winners  -

One gift voucher to the value of $10 to spend in her shop 

One gift voucher to the value of $20 to spend in her shop

Thanks Olga

The Divas got to work with Olga's March release and here is some inspiration for you

 Arlene at A Bit of This and That....

 Dawn at DawnsworldNZ

I'll be back later in the week to do a tutorial on my Double Embossing technique I used.  

Looking forward to you projects.  Our rules are quite simple....

• Limit of 4 entries for each challenge per month
• The winner will be selected randomly on the last day of the month & announced on the 1st of the following month
• All cards/projects must be made using at least one die cut or  embossing folder, using any die cut machine you may own
• Only new entries will be accepted, no back linking please
• You may combine this challenge with up to four other blog challenges
• Please link to the blog post & not to your entire blog.  Or if on Flickr please link to the picture & not your photostream
• Please turn off word verification on your blog it will make it easier for us to comment 
• Most importantly have fun :o) 

An InLinkz Link-up