Stampin’ Up Six-Sided Sampler Card 1–New Home

Today I made a New Home card, using for the first time my Stampin’ Up Six Sided Sampler stamps and co-ordinating punch.

Here are the materials and equipment I used to make the card.

Working from top left: Stampin’ Up Hexagon punch, Stampin’ Up Six-Sided Sampler stamps, Water Droplets stamp from Designs by Ryn, Fiskar’s embossing plate (honeycomb) (behind the stamps), Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, black acrylic paint, selection of clear sentiment stamps (manufacturer unknown, stored in CD case), alphabet stamp set in wooden box, Pinflair glue, Glossy Accents, home-made ink blender pad, Inkylicious Ink Dusters resting on clear embossing powder, Ranger Archival Ink (sepia), Wild Honey and Walnut Stain Distress Inks, Versamark embossing ink pad, foam pads, selection of pens, embossing tool. I don’t think I’ve left anything out!

The foundation for this card is an A4 smooshed background from my backgrounds folder, created by smooshing the paper around in spritzed ink on my non-stick craft sheet.

This was embossed using a Fiskars embossing plate – I bought a whole set of these several years ago on Ebay. They are rigid plastic, double-sided, with a different design on each side. I have used this honeycomb one more than all the others.

In the above photo you can see the Cuttlebug sandwich needed to emboss the maximum size with this plate. Starting from the bottom: A Plate, Fiskar’s plate (right side up), cardstock (wrong side up), “No More Shims” embossing mat (thicker than the standard Cuttlebug tan mat), 2 sheets of scrap printer card, B Plate.

This is what the background sheet looks like after being passed through the Cuttlebug. The Fiskar’s plate embosses a maximum of 5” square. At the top of the sheet it is not embossed, and you can see the impressions left by the holes in the embossing plate. I put the sheet on the tan embossing mat and smoothed these out using my bone folder.

Here is the background sheet trimmed to size, and resting on the base card which has yet to be inked.

There was a slight impression left by the edge of the plate, between the embossed part and the non-embossed, and I created an embossed line to cover this, using my Scor-Pal scoring board. This doesn’t show up very well in the photo, I’m afraid.

Using Wild Honey Distress Ink, I stamped a series of hexagons onto the background sheet, from the Stampin’ Up set. (The embossed line shows up a bit better on this photo.)

On a piece of pale yellow scrap card, I selected another hexagon stamp from the set, and stamped three shapes with Versamark, and then heat embossed them with clear embossing powder to act as a resist. This had the effect of darkening the yellow colour.

I inked them with Wild Honey Distress Ink, using an Inkylicious Ink duster, deliberately keeping the colour uneven and random.

These hexagons were then punched out with Stampin’ Up’s co-ordinating hexagon punch.

After this, I used one of my home-made blending pads made from an old wood block from when I unmounted my original rubber stamps, and some cut-n’ dry foam. I used Walnut Stain Distress Ink to darken the edges.

I was about to put the remains of the yellow card away, when it occurred to me that I could use the punched out shapes as a stencil to add dimension to the background sheet. (To the right, you can see the list I made, of the steps to create the card – useful for composing this blog post!)

I used Wild Honey Distress Ink with an Ink Duster to add some random hexagons.

To create a mask over the stamped hexagons, I laid down some greaseproof paper and traced around the edges of the hexagons.

I then cut around the traced line and held the mask down with a couple of small pieces of low tack masking tape.

This is the water droplets stamp from the backgrounds set by Designs by Ryn – one of my favourite stamps as it creates the most realistic three-dimensional water droplets!

For this card, I used sepia archival ink over the background, to simulate droplets of honey.

When I use this stamp, I accentuate the realistic effect by adding a tiny dot with a white marker onto the catch-light of each droplet.

To create the main embellishment for the card, I drew a honeybee, and then outlined it with a black permanent marker pen (one of my Zentangle pens) and used the fine one to create the veins in the wings. To add colour, I rubbed my Wild Honey and Walnut Stain Distress Ink pads onto my non-stick craft sheet, spritzed them with water and picked up the ink with a brush, and painted the bee.

(I picked up the excess ink by smooshing the yellow card stencil piece in the ink – another useful addition to my backgrounds folder.) After a quick blast with my heat gun to make sure it was completely dry, I cut out the bee with a pair of fine scissors, and painted the edge of the cut card with black acrylic paint.

Turning the bee over onto a piece of fun foam, I embossed the body with my large-sized embossing tool.

The wings were painted with Glossy Accents and the bee left to dry.

While it was drying, I attached the three punched and heat-embossed hexagons onto the background using foam pads.

I inked the edges of the base card with Walnut Stain and Wild Honey Distress Inks, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster. I put a piece of scrap paper inside the folded card to protect it from any misplaced ink.

The card mounted onto the base card, with the sentiment stamped.

I used one of a set of clear sentiment stamps, a small amount of hand writing, and my alphabet stamps from the little wooden box – a set I got on Ebay – stamped with the aid of my stamp alignment tool. I used Wild Honey Distress Ink for the stamping, and then accentuated the text with my sepia permanent marker.

The completed card.

The bee was attached using quite a large amount of Pinflair glue filling the embossed body, with some more under each wing to keep them raised above the surface of the card. The legs were stuck down using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive. Both glues were applied with the aid of cocktail sticks, and the card set aside overnight to dry.

The impression I was trying to create is of the new home owner approaching her new home – in this case, her very first home of her own. Her first sight of it is definite and clear, and as she moves forward in time, things become less clear, but there is the promise of sweetness and joy as her life moves forward, into who knows what adventures! Onwards and upwards to a bright future full of hope!