Wishes Sprinkled with Love

Inspiration: Freshly Made Sketch #374 + ColourQ #150

I have been meaning to use my Oddball Sprinkle Fairy for a long time and when I saw the Freshly Made sketch, I knew she would look really cool floating over a background of dots. I wasn't sure if I'd punch out cardstock or inked circles so while I was pondering, I went looking for a colour combo to work with and found a bright and fun one in an old ColourQ combo: Poppy Parade + Daffodil Delight + Lucky Limade + Bermuda Bay. I decided to made circle stencils by punching out circles of various size out of print paper and ink blend colours using Distress Oxide inks and my blender brushes.

I'm happy with the result, but there were a few issues while creating the background. My purple tape ripped the cardstock in some spots when I pulled it up. (I know people have been raving about the purple tape, but I find you have to use it very carefully - it tends to take some of the cardstock with it when you pull it back.) Because I only have four blender brushes of different sizes, I initially washed the ink off on a baby wipe and dried the brush on a microfiber cloth and went back to my second ink colour. That was a mistake - the brush was still wet and not only made the colour muddy, but also made the cardstock pill! Once I realized that, I stuck to one colour per brush and only washed them at the end. (Something to keep in mind if you don't have enough brushes for the number of colours you are using - let them dry thoroughly before you blend with them again.) Then, because my paper had pilled, it created problems for me when I went to stamp my sentiment. Thankfully, I was using my stamp platform, which allowed me to go back and reink and restamp, but I quickly found out that it was not for lack of proper pressure or ink that I was not getting all of the letters down - it was the pilling and also the texture of the Oxide ink that was making getting my ink down tricky. In the end, I had to use my Tuxedo Black Memento marker to fill in the missing letters. The stamping is messy - some of the letters are wider than others and there are speckles of ink around it, but I decided I could live with those imperfections. The next one will have better craftmanship because I'll have learned from this experience, but this card still turned out good enough to use. The sentiment reads, "Wishes Sprinkled with Love." It's from the Hello Cupcake stamp set currently offered as a Sale-A-Bration freebie from Stampin' Up! I made the sentiment a bit shorter by omitting ink on one of the words (the full sentiment reads, "Sweet wishes sprinkled with love"). I took out my confetti mix and started putting those here and there on the card. I quickly realized that it would look better if they were all falling from the fairy's hand, like she's sprinkling her wishes. (Doesn't she look thrilled to be doing that?)

I never used to buy the matching dies for the Stamping Bella stamps when they started coming out, but the Bella images are always quite large and I found it difficult to make my cards interesting because the images were taking so much room, there was not a whole lot of room for patterned paper or embellishments (which are my trademark creative tools). I started buying a few dies and quickly realized that they allow me to float the images over other elements, opening a lot of doors creatively. This is a good example of that. While I've resorted to hand cutting in the past, this is a tricky image but if you look closely, you'll see that the die cuts out the little openings between her wings, her hair and arms, and there's no way I would have been able to do such a neat job with a craft knife. So this die was a good investment.

 

 

 

A little more info on the different temporary tapes I've tried:

I was mentioning some riping on my cardstock during the making of this card. Because we pretty much die-cut the majority of our colored images nowadays, I've invested in a few different tapes over the last few years to try and find the perfect one for me. The first one was Scotch 3M's Matte Finish Removable Tape, which I purchased at my local office furniture store. I liked it and never ever ripped a single image with it. It's also a tape that I was able to use more than once before throwing it away, which is an important factor for me as it seems wasteful if I can't do that. The only downside of this tape for me was that it's very thin and would sometimes get cut while going through the machine, which meant that I had to fiddle to pick up small slivers off my cardstock, my die-cut image and my metal die. Not a big deal, but just an annoying waste of time.

When I saw 3M Post-It Masking Tape being used in videos, I gave it a try. This option is easy to use, peels off easily, rarely gets cuts by the die while going through the machine but unfortunately, it rips the cardstock easily. The pressure of the machine really binds the Post-It in place and I would say that of all the options I've used, this is the one that most consistently ripped the cardstock up. Not only that, if you reuse the tape, it transfers ink or color really easily to your second piece of cardstock! I gave up on this option pretty fast because it ruined too many a pieces for me in a short period of time. (Keep in mind that some of those problems can be avoided by always throwing away the tape after use, but the roll will not last very long if you do that.)

The third option I tried was 3M Micropore Tape. I was eager to try this one, as on paper, it seemed like the option that might fit my needs the best. The price initially gave me pause, but I was curious enough to finally go for it. The microtape comes in a blue plastic dispenser and I find that the tape is hard to rip using the dispenser only. The microtape would also sometimes gets cut apart by the die while going through the maching so that annoying problem happened again, and I got some rips, although not as often as with the Post-It tapes. On the positive side, I liked that the microtape was narrow, which made it easy to hold small dies (like the Lawn Fawn ones, for example) in place. The Post-It tape in comparison is quite large and I often had to tear it in smaller sized by hand. I liked that the microtape was already of my preferred width. This tape can also be reused a few times, but you get more rips and tearing of the tape when it's been used more than a couple of times.

Recently, the purple tape (Therm-o-web Purple Tape Easy Release) became all the rage in crafting videos and when my online store started carrying it, I used a sale to get a roll. (Again, the price was a little prohibitive.) This is the widdest of all four tapes I've tried, so you definitely have to tear this one in smaller sizes if you want to get your money's worth. It's just as easy to tear as washi tape, though, so you don't need scissors. I have ambivalent feelings for this one. It can easily be reused, it rarely cuts in half when die-cutting (it only does when I wrap it around a die and cut it on both sides of a die - then I end up with three different pieces that are really glued in place and hard to pick up) and it usually lifts up nicely. I have read a tip to pull the tape back on itself slowly - it helps, but it has not prevented tears 100% of the times. Again, there's nothing more frustrating than spending time on inking or coloring and messing up your finished piece just as you were about to be done.

It looks like I will go back to using my Scotch removable tape after all! You can buy rolls to refill your dispenser, which cuts down on the price, it's readily available since it is sold in office supplies stores and the roll last for a long time! (The original dispenser holds 16 m and the refill roll has 32 meters on it.)

 

 

Supplies
Stamps: Oddball Sprinkle Fairy (Stamping Bella); Bonjour sucré (Hello Cupcake - Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Thick Whisper White
Ink: Tuxedo Black (Mementp); Twisted Citron, Peacock Feathers, Candied Apple, Squeezed
Lemonade Distress Oxide (Ranger); Bermuda Bay Classic Ink (Stampin' Up!)
Accessories: Outside In Stitched Rectangle Dies (Lawn Fawn); Blender Brushes (Picket Fence Studios);
Oddball Sprinkle Fairy Cut-Out Die (Stamping Bella); Mini Stampin' Dimensionals, Circle Punches,
White Medium Envelope (Stampin' Up!); Markers (Copic); Glitter Gloss Aqua Shimmer Brush (Nuvo);
Sparkling Clear Confetti Mix (Pretty Pink Posh); A2 Seafoam Envelope (envelopes.com)

 

Comments

[Cécile Ribon]

Quelle jolie interprétation du sketch, pleine d'humour en plus ! Cette petite fée malicieuse est absolument craquante! Bravo aussi pour le superbe travail de colorisation (que ce soit pour la fée ou pour les "bulles"). Un grand merci pour cette superbe participation au défi Freshly Made Sketches de cette semaine.

[Lee Ann Barrett]

Despite your issues (we have all been there!) this turned out adorable! Love the color palette and I LOVE the confetti! So clever! So glad you could join us at Freshly Made Sketches!

[Jen Brum]

This is such a fun card! I just love that image and the sprinkled confetti! Great circles too! Thanks for joining us this week at Freshly Made Sketches!

[Kim S]

Sounds like it was a struggle - but so worth it! I'm with you on the purple tape - thanks for the info on other options. I also have a love/hate relationship with dies. They add a lot of cost to a stamp (so I can buy less) but as you described, it's really nice to float them. Thank you for playing along with us at Freshly Made Sketches.