Fintastic Birthday Set

Today's projects were created for the Itsy Bitsy design team using another of the adorable new clear stamp sets they just released earlier this month. This one is called "Fintastic Birthday" and it was so much fun to work with!

I decided to think outside the box a little using the Stitched Square Thin Cut Dies...I layered them and cut the pieces out of a scrap piece of white fun foam two times and then I turned the foam shapes into stamps. Using a temporary adhesive, I adhered the 4 foam shapes to both sides of two small acrylic blocks and then stamped an alternating background design using the Green and Royal Blue Pearl Pigment ink pads on a 6" x 6" white card front. While this design is a rather basic geometric example, any die cut you have can be turned into a stamp this way- And it's so much fun to do!!!

I also diecut a square from a White Glitter Sheet to layer on the card front. Another, slightly smaller, square was die cut from white cardstock and then shaded with the Royal Blue ink using a round sponge ink blender to get that circular, bubbly underwater look behind the octopus. I also used the blue ink on the blending sponge tool to fill in the empty white space at the bottom of the card front.

I stamped the cute little octopus in Black Chalk Ink on white card and colored him using a blending sponge and the Green Pearl ink. I then fussy cut him out and adhered him to the blue square using Mini Adhesive Foam...I did the same with the blue square to add it to the white Glitter sheet to add dimension. I hand trimmed the banner for the sentiment and layered it on more Glitter Sheet paper. I also attached 3 Silver Foil Jewelled Florettes to the top left side using more mini adhesive foam.

On the inside, I stamped the octopus in the middle first, then stamped again 2 times without re-inking the stamp to get the lighter shades of the Black Chalk Ink. I added some soft blue and green ink behind them and then did the same to stamp the sentiment 3 times.

Since I don't like to throw anything away, I ended up with a bonus project using the foam pieces once I was done stamping with them and had removed them from the acrylic stamp blocks. I stamped using the tiny fishes onto a bookmarker and topped it with some matching fancy floss from my stash. I think it will make a cute little tag on the top of a birthday gift.

To make my own envelope for this card, I paired a 12" x 12" piece of patterned paper from my crafting stash with the Envelope Punch Board. I trimmed the paper down to a 9.5" square and followed the printed directions on the Punchboard. It's such a useful tool that I utilize often! Here is a quick video from Itsy Bitsy's You Tube Channel that showcases the Envelope Punch Board, in case you are wondering more about how it works:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2s-7Kbqt2s

Front of the bookmark tag:

Back of the bookmark tag:

Sometimes when making my own envelopes I will put the pattern in the inside so that it is easier to address and then pop in the mail, but I know this will be hand delivered, so I put the pretty pattern on the outside instead.

That's it for me today -thanks for having a look and please let me know if you try making your own stamps from diecuts too! Until next time, happy crafting with Itsy Bitsy~

Planning for a Tropical Get-Away

Hello friends~Kathy here with a little sneak peak and inspiration using a new and upcoming tropical themed clear stamp set from Itsy Bitsy for personalizing your planner/agenda/calendar. Where I live, decorating planners is very popular right now...so I thought I would give it a try...and guess what? I love doing it! Who knew that having a "to do" list could be so much fun, lol?!? Even though we are leaving summer behind here and heading into the cooler weather of the fall season, sometimes we all just need to dream of a relaxing tropical get-away, am I right?

For this project I started with 2 blank planer pages, the new stamp set you can see here, along with paper from the Happy Birthday paper pad, Black Chalk Ink, Green Pearl and Gold Pearl Pigment Inks, thin white card and some washi tapes.

I stamped the images out that I knew I wanted to use in the black and green inks on the thin card and applied the washi tape as borders directly to the pages.

By using the boxes on my planner pages as a guide to trace with permanent marker on a scrap sheet of acetate, I cut my own stencil using a craft knife and then used that stencil to keep my ink blending within the individual rectangles. I used Gold for the middle row and Green for the bottom row. The camera doesn't really capture the beautiful shimmer these inks have because of their Pearl quality, but they are gorgeous in person and blend oh so beautifully!!!

I fussy cut the tropical leaves that I stamped in the Green Pearl and adhered them along the top edge of the page, trimming off the overhang just like you would with a sticker.

I colored the rest of the images using Colored Pencils, but then decided that I needed one more image... so, using a large flat piece of blank red rubber as a mirror image stamp, I stamped and transferred the flamingo image so that is was reversed -that way I had one facing the right and one facing the left. Some of the fine detail gets lost when you do that, but I still like the way it turned out!

Using that same rectangle template from the ink blending step, I traced and cut the patterned paper into the perfect sized rectangle to fill the spaces between my ink blended blocks. Then I glued my stamped, colored and fussy cut out images on top.

I did some ink blending on the left panel, tore a tiny piece of tan paper to act as the sand under the palm tree and glued that on to help ground the image so it didn't look like it was floating. I also stamped and then colored the tiny hibiscus flowers directly on the page in the top squares as bullet points for my organizing my "to-do" list.

The two patterns I chose from the paper pack were perfect for matching with the inks.

And I think the pencil colors blended very nicely to achieve depth and dimension on the hand-made "stickers".

If ya gotta stay organized, why not personalize it and make it pretty all at the same time? Let me know if you try something similar to your daily paper agenda/planner or calendar! Until next time, happy crafting with Itsy Bitsy and be sure to check out all the crafty goodness available both in person or in their webstore online.