Stamp n' Stencil

They say that we only use 10% of our brains, or 5% in my case as many would argue! Sometimes I feel the same about die-cutting. There is so much potential which remains untapped so I thought It would be nice to share a couple of techniques which I haven't used for ages.

I am using  the Bigz Heart Trio die. This is one of eight fabulous Bigz dies that have been designed for Sizzix by Echo Park which are perfect for a huge range of applications, I know that Angela, our textile guru is very excited about them!

I love the shapes of these hearts and they are so big and bold offering a blank canvas ready to be explored. I am using a selection of Distress inks as shown below and at this point I only have a sketchy idea of how they will turn out.

I attached some self adhesive foam to a square of mount board and Die-cut my shape... Aren't Bigz dies great!!!

I applied the ink pads directly onto the foam side of the die-cut shape before gently spritzing with clean water using a mister. Next, I pressed the shape face down onto a square of white card as one would do with a stamp.

 For my next technique I die-cut the same heart from paper and used the negative as a stencil. I placed the stencil onto white card and applied the same inks using foam applicators.

 I removed the stencil and lightly spritzed with clean water before drying with a heat tool. Next, I replaced the stencil and used a text stamp to add a little detail.

Finally, I die-cut a 3-D flower and some leafy foliage from white card before forming the flower and curling the leaves to add a little dimension. Click on the highlighted text to see the dies used.

Here are the finished cards. As you can see I have distressed the edges of the white card and attached each to a kraft base card secured with some suitably wonky stitching very kindly provided by our Angela although I feel I should point out that the 'wonky' stitching was by my request!

I applied PVA to the foliage and dipped it in gold glitter and I used a postmark sentiment stamp from the good people at Lily of the Valley (great set, very versatile!)

One card is for a wedding and the other for a special birthday girl. Hope they like 'em?