Natural Beauties is a beauty!

This is such a fun set to use!  I stamped the flowers in a whole bunch of colours and added the little butterflies afterwards.  I even added a bit of sparkle with some Rock Candy stickles on the yellow flowers.  A super simple card with no sentiment - that is rare for me but sometimes no sentiment is the most useful ....

Supplies:
Paper: PTI Kraft, Staples 110lb white
Stamps: PTI Natural Beauties
Ink: Fresh Harvest, Sky Blue, Merlot, Slate, Navy
Misc: Rock Candy Stickles

September 2012 Papertrey Blog Hop

This month's blog hop over at Papertrey is all about felt and fabric:

Here's the challenge they put forth this month:
This month it is all about wrapping it up.  Whether you are preparing early for the holidays or have an upcoming birthday or two, have fun experimenting with fabric & felt packaging ideas.  Use any of our Favor It dies with felt and a little hot glue gun action or stitching.  Use a pretty piece of fabric like you would wrapping paper and make a custom tag to coordinate with it.  Not into sewing or gluing?  Wrap a kitchen towel or cloth napkin around a special bottle of wine and top it off with a hand-stamped gift label.  Or rip a strip of fabric to use in place of ribbon and finish it with a pretty handmade gift card.  There are so many different things to try, you will love experimenting to see what you can come up with! 

I decided to take some dies and make them be the shapes for the packaging:

This one is for my cousin who has the initials KH.  I am going to stuff this with some Hershey's Kisses as part of her birthday present.  I stamped the Pretty Peonies on the white felt using Fresh ink's Steel Blue.  It actually stamps quite a clear image, which I was pleased about.

I took some Smoky Shadow felt to cut a double ended banner and then Autumn Rose for the alpha cuts.  The larger piece is one of the Mat Stack 4 dies (the largest one) folded in half.

I am adding some better shots in daylight as I made these feltie doodads late last night and the above pictures do not show up that well. :-)

 Next I decided to go with a modern graphic feel using a hexagon die:

 A Simply Chartreuse Turning a new leaf die and the 'happy' from Pretty Peonies in Smoky Shadow.

Super simple but I like this colour combination.  For this one, I am planning on stuffing it with tea bags for a tea aficionado friend of mine. :)  I might add a button latch on top but for now I will leave it as is ...

And the brighter shots:

Supplies:

Stamps: PTI Pretty Peonies
Ink: Fresh Steel Blue
Dies: PTI Mat Stack 4 large die, Double Ended Banner, Alpha
Felt: white from stash; PTI Smoky Shadow, Autumn Rose
Adhesive: FabriTac, scortape

Felt: white from stash; PTI Smoky Shadow, Spring Moss
Dies: PTI Turning a new leaf, Pretty Peonies 'happy'; Lifestyle nesting hexagons
Adhesive: Fabritac, scortape

Papertrey's Impression Plates - samples and extra techniques

A friend of mine wanted to buy some of the impression plates offered at Papertrey so I offered to send her some samples.  I used the Curvy Labels punch and cut a whole bunch to impress.  I ran them through my Big Kick with the various IPs.  I even added some cover plates used as IP's as well as Wplus9's chevron IP.  Take a look if you want an idea of what they look like.  Click the images to enlarge:

I have always had really good luck with them just running them through my Big Kick and with my Cuttlebug when I had it.  I bought the embossing pads from PTI's website and they have served me well.  Some people have better success adding shims or misting the paper with alcohol or water but I haven't needed to do that.  I have used Perfect Pearls mist to add some shimmer but I get an excellent impression without adding anything.

I also love to do the letterpress technique where I use ink directly on the IP and then running it through the machine.  Here are some examples I have shared from this post:

Damask IP with Fresh Ink

Mehndi IP with Fresh Ink

Hexagon Cover plate with Fresh Ink

Cane Print with Fresh Ink

And this post:

Giga IP with Distress Ink

Gina K chocolate cardstock, PTI Diamond IP, Colorbox Frost White Ink

Gina K chocolate cardstock, PTI Moroccan motifs IP, Brilliance Pearlescent Orchid (pink)

Gina K sweet mango, PTI Giga Guidelines IP, Distress Ink Spiced Marmalade

Gina K sweet mango, PTI Sunshine IP, Colorbox Frost White Ink

Gina K chocolate cardstock, PTI In Bloom IP, Colorbox Frost White Ink

And the technique shared on a Make it Monday over at PTI about double embossing is really cool - you use an impression plate with a die so that the die leaves a negative area where the card stock is not embossed.  I made a card in this post using that cool trick!

Just be sure to have the order of your sandwich perfect, otherwise you will cut into the impression plate! :)

Cuttlebug Sandwich for double embossing:

A plate

B plate

Impression plate facing up

Die cutting side facing up

Paper facing down

Embossing mats - vanilla and tan

B plate

Which are your favourite impression plates?  Do you like the more subtle debossing they give rather than embossing folders?  What techniques have you tried so far?