As you know from the last post my friend Michele and I challenged each other to use a previously unused die set to make a card. The last post showcased Michele's lovely weather themed card and this time it's my turn to share what I made. Michele chose a die set by Xcut called Bee Keeping (bought because it was a bargain as so many items in my stash are.) It's been lurking in my stash for absolutely ages mainly because I wasn't sure what to do with it. We were allowed basic craft supplies and up to five additional items but the dies had to be the main focus of the card.
I used three of the nine dies in the set, from my basic craft supplies I used white card, a Dovecraft white card blank, an ink blender, scissors, various adhesives and black ink and my five additional items were a typewriter alphabet stamp set, yellow cellophane, frosted thin acetate taken from the packaging from some felt embellishments, a gold Spectrum Noir Shimmer brush pen and distress inks in stormy sky, fossilised amber and a tiny bit of walnut stain. If you've been counting it would look like I went over my allotted five extra items but we'd agreed that colouring mediums would count as one item so if we used three alcohol markers for example it would count as one item but if we added a different medium such as a white gel pen to add highlights then that would count as an additional item. Every now and again I'll spend an hour or so just cutting A4 card stock down to A6 size (so cut the card in half then each half in half so you get 4 pieces of pretty much the same size out of each sheet) so I have a good stock of card the perfect size for making card toppers, for this card I used Sheena's stamping card as it's really good for ink blending and it is 300gsm - it feels thicker than that though. I took one of my pre-cut pieces and ink blended stormy sky ink completely over the card, I wanted it to have a textured look so splattered it with some water and mopped it with kitchen towel, I allowed it to dry then added more ink and water until I was happy with the result. Next I took seven sheets of my pre-cut card and for the first five, I ran them through my die cutting machine with the honeycomb die one at a time. I kept the hexagons to one side to use later. For the remaining two sheets of card, I ran them through the machine together so the die cut out the first layer but just impressed it's design into the bottom piece. I now knew how much of the card to colour with the fossilised amber distress ink. I coloured over the impressed area with the ink and a blending tool and put it to one side to completely dry. I wanted my honeycomb to have lots of depth to it so I stuck four of die cuts together using wet glue - I found it helpful to weigh the glued pieces down with an acrylic block to stop them from shifting before they were totally dry. I wanted the honeycomb to look full of honey so stuck a sheet of yellow cellophane behind the stacked layer with wet glue, it was quite tricky and the cellophane went a bit crinkly in places as it dried. Once it had I added the remaining two die cuts behind it and cut off the excess cellophane. I coloured the top and the sides (but not the interiors of the combs)with the fossilised amber ink then went over it with a gold Spectrum Noir Shimmer brush pen. Once it was all dry I coloured two of the hexagon shapes with walnut stain distress ink and added them to the back of the honeycomb as I wanted them to look like empty chambers waiting to be filled with honey then I lined the piece up to the impression on the remaining piece of card and glued it into place. Once it was completely dried I trimmed around the honey comb with a pair of scissors. I stamped 'bee happy' onto the hexagon pieces left over from die cutting out the honeycombs and coloured over them using the gold shimmer marker. I die cut the honey dipper four times out of the scraps of card left over from the honeycomb die cutting and stuck three of them together, I replaced the negative part of the dipper onto the fourth die cut and held it in place with some double sided tape, then blended over the dipper with fossilised amber ink, I allowed it to dry then added it to the bottom of my stacked die cut. I went over the top of the dipper with the gold shimmer pen. Next I die cut the bee out of a scrap of frosted thin acetate and then out of a piece of white card. I trimmed the card so only a body and head shape remained and carefully coloured it with fossilised amber and walnut stain ink so it looked like a fuzzy bee's body and I added this over the frosted acetate with wet glue - it took ages to dry. Now that the die cutting was all completed I assembled the card as shown on the photos using a mixture of wet glue, foam squares and double sided tape.
This wasn't the quickest card to make due to all the die-cutting but you could get a similar effect just using one layer of die cuts instead of the stacked version I've made. I think the die set may have a matching stamp set because the bees in particular are hard to use on their own (they look weird just die cut) so I may have to try and find it online. I hope you've enjoyed my challenge card - I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in it and I'm looking forward to our next one. If you'd like to take part (just for fun, no prizes I'm afraid) then please let me know and I'll be announcing our next challenge shortly.
As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places, please take a few minutes to check out Michele's lovely creation (it's the post preceding this one) and until next time - keep crafting!
Love and crafty hugs,
Sarah xxx
