Focus on Free as a bird

 Welcome to my blog for those who are coming here for the first time & welcome back to those who've been here before!

Well, Melbourne is back in lockdown, again! 4.0 & fingers crossed there's no more to come. The up side of a lockdown is the streets are lovely & quiet & I get lots of time to play around with my stamps & papers. Yay!

My cards this week have focussed around the Free as a bird stamp set & Bird Ballad DSP.  I tried to mix things up a little this week with a variety of different card folds & techniques.

My first card is an easel fold card using the gorgeous Real Red card stock. 

 I wanted something simple but still able to be stunning. I started by embossing half of some Basic White card stock with the Bricks & Mortar embossing folder. I then die cut some vines from the beautiful new Big Cats dies (which will be featured in a few weeks time) from Granny Apple green, Pear Pizzazz & Old Olive card stock & placed them to look like they were trailing down the wall. I stamped some flowers from the Free as a bird stamp set in Cherry Cobbler & sponged some with Polished Pink, some with Blushing Bride & others with Cherry Cobbler before layering them in different dimensions on the vine. I stamped the sentiment from the Fancy phrases stamp set in Staz-on directly onto the card front & finished the detailing with some 2021-23 In Colour jewels in the centre of the flowers & a cute little bow in Old Olive. Love how the colours seem to make each other pop.  

The next card I decided to use a fancy fold for something a little different.

The card base uses one of the new colours, Evening Evergreen which I trimmed on the front to allow a strip of DSP to show when the card is closed. I cut up some of the lovely floral DSP from Bird Ballads & fussy cut a few of the flowers out to use as a feature. I cut a piece of Calypso Coral to 7cm x 7cm & turned it sideways, stamping the leaves from Free as a bird on some Basic White which I raised the fussy cut flowers onto plus some small flowers from the stamp set, stamped in the new Pale Papaya as well as in Pool Party. To add another dimension to this piece I die cut some leaves from the Cherry Blossom dies in Old olive & detailed the veins of the leaves with a black fine liner. This piece was then raised with dimensionals & finished with some pearl centres for the flowers. Simple but lovely.

The final card used different techniques again. 

I started with a base of Old Olive, added a layer of Fine Art Floral DSP then die cut a piece of Cherry Cobbler using one of the Ornate Layers dies. I used this as a background to highlight the birds stamped onto the branches. The stamp has a number of small birds on the branch but I wanted to have a different look so I masked the birds out then added the larger bird stamp, twice, using the same masking technique & Basic gray ink. I'm not very confident with alcohol markers so I used coloured pencils to give a softer finish to the birds. I stamped the sentiment from Free as a bird directly onto this piece in Basic black. After adhering it to the Diecut Cherry Cobbler I mounted it with dimensionals & added some Fine Art gold thread ribbon for a little accent. I'm very happy with how the old, the new & the ongoing colours & papers all sync nicely together.

This latest lockdown has given me time to look at what stamps, papers & dies I want to play around with over the next few weeks so I hope to have lots of lovely things to show you soon. I will be upgrading my listings of cards for sale on my FB page so if you would like to purchase anything from my shop or order any of the materials I used today then please head over to my page on FB (crafted by Alison) or visit my online store at alisonculliver.stampinup.net. 

Next week I'll be featuring some creations using one of the card kits available from Stampin' Up so I hope you have time to pop in and see what I make. Thanks so much for stopping by, take care til next time. Bye for now, Alison. XXX