March Designer Series with Mama Elephant

Hello Crafty Friends! Davina here, with my March Mama Elephant Designer Series project. The March release is in full swing and I just love all the new photo themed products and playfulness of everything. I especially love the Penguin Park stamp set and the whole amusement park vibe! I decided to make a 2nd card for this release using the fantastic castle image surrounded by the penguins, but to make it a little more special, I chose to make a swinging pendulum style interactive card. 

I stamped and colored my images from the Penguin Park stamp set before diecutting them out, and cut two of the little penguin that would be holding the balloons. When making a pendulum on your project, it’s important to remember that the image needs to be heavier at the bottom, to ensure it swings easily and falls back down to the original placement. I used the Spring in the Air Creative Cuts for my grassy hillside and layered it over an ink blended sky. Because I knew the top would be bulky with my swinging balloons, I mounted the grass with some foam tape to add a little weight to the lower half of my card. 

                                                     

I tucked my castle under the hillside and arranged a few images onto the hillside letting them extend off of my matted background. I prepared the panel using more foam tape, to make room for the Snap n Slide disc (available from PearBlossom Press), and used a hole punch to cut the access for my sliding disc. I snapped the 2 piece disc into place and mounted the whole background onto my card base.   

                                                      

Now that everything was in its place I was able to add a large glue dot to the exposed half of the sliding disc, and adhere my ballon holding penguin (with a second penguin added for weight) In the remaining sky, I added a small speech bubble using a little sentiment from Happy Together Sayings, and a few glittery die cut stars.  

I finished the card off by adding some glitter glue to the castle windows for a little sparkle. I love how swishy this is and how freely my ballon penguin swings. Make sure to check out the fun new products from the March release. Thank you for stopping by, Davina 

February Designer Series with Mama Elephant

Hello Crafty Friends! Davina here with you today, to share my Designer Series project for February. This release is chock full of cozy home “feels” but I wanted to focus on one of the new Creative Cut die sets playfully called the Silly Shaker Frames. I made a sweet full sized slimline card, with 3 shaker frames arranged onto the scene. I especially love that the die set includes 2 different sized dies to create custom faux sequins with your colored paper scraps and that they combine beautifully with actual sequins and shaker beads to fill your frames. 

To make my trio of shakers, I cut multiple frames from an assortment of papers. I used a pretty variety of patterned papers for the base, and beautiful glitter cardstock for the top frame. I stamped some of the house images from Little Agenda House and chose to add very faint and minimal coloring to them, before adhering them to each of the shaker bases. I put a little pile of sequins on each base before carefully topping with my foam tape backed frame. 

I arranged all 3 frames to my long slimline panel onto the available space. Then stamped and colored 3 different pairs of animals for the 3 frames. I used the larger animal images from the Stackable Cuties stamp set as well as a little speech bubble from the same set for each pair. Then, I found a teeny version of each cutie in my “Agenda” sets. I used Little Monkey Agenda, Little Unicorn Agenda, and Little Pig Agenda stamp sets. 

I placed a sentiment from the new Home Sweet Home set in the center, then arranged the images onto the frames, making sure to leave some of each house visible, and also making sure my long scene would feel balanced. I really love that I was able to find some floating/flying critters to fill my shaker frames and kind of make a “moving” themed card. 

Thank you so much for stopping by and make sure to check out the new Mama Elephant February release, Davina 

Mama Elephant January Designer Series

Hello crafty friends! I feel like it’s been a while since I shared a blog post for my beloved Mama Elephant projects, but I'm back, with a glittered sparkly birthday card featuring the new Birthday Celebrations Stamps and CC dies. During last weeks Stamp Highlights, you may have noticed that I made all of my cards using matching colors and papers, and I continued the theme to this project as well. I find it easier and quicker to reduce the choices for markers and papers when I match my cards into little collections, especially when i need multiple projects at the same time for releases. Bonus, everything is cohesive and looks beautiful when shared together too.

As always, I made my marker choices for coloring by matching my patterned paper pack. I know that all of the papers with match each other, and the colors will coordinate seamlessly since I'm sticking to a palette that a professional has compiled. After stamping and coloring all of my images I ran them through the die cutting machine using the Birthday Celebration CC dies. I built an arched centerpiece for my scene using the B2B Arches CC die set and adding an additional popped up layer of coppery glitter cardstock for the “floor”. Before assembling I gently inked the edges of my arch with oxide inks and added a splattering of coppery paint. 

I centered my arch onto a stitched panel cut using the largest layer from the Combo Rectangle CC die set then added one more hand cut layer of coppery glitter to layer that upon (I may have cut my little floor layer from the middle of this panel). Wink wink. I adhered my images and the birthday banner to this panel when I decided I would make an additional swag of cardstock circles to layer over top. I had the circles on my desk already from a previous card, so I just glued them to some black thread and taped the thread behind the panel. 

I love stripes and use them all the time, so there are always tons of striped paper scraps at my disposal. I trimmed one to fit along the side of my card back and centered my decorated card panel on top. I really love that the little circle swag moves a little bit. It will lay flat in the envelope but have movement when the card is handled. I also really love the subdued glam that the glittery copper cardstock adds to these cards. It’s all cute enough for a young person but “grown up” for an adult, and to me that’s exactly what I strive for when planning my cards.

I hope you like this card and check out the Birthday Celebration set if you haven’t already added it to your collection.  Thank you so much for stopping by, Davina