Sheena Douglas World Launch at the CHA!!

Good evening crafters!!! well what an exciting week we have for you!! This Monday the 12th of January showing on Create and craft at 3pm  Sheena Douglass will be bringing you live from the CHA in California BRAND NEW stamps and dies!! woo hoo! Oh my days they are just totally amazing!!, I am an extremely lucky crafter at the moment to be joining the very talented Inkoids for a while and when I heard what was coming up I just couldn't wait to see! the day my parcel arrived with all these fabulous goodies was just like Christmas!! I had no idea what the range was going to be so you can just imagine my excitement when opening it up! 

 beautiful beautiful!! stamps and dies that work together just perfectly! and what makes them even more amazing is you don't need to use one with the other as the dies work simply fantastically on their own! I have so many ideas with this range, my mind went into a crafters EXPLOSION! seriously...where to start! so many options my mind just raced!, so ..I thought calm down Nic...take a deep breath your a tad excited here! so I started by stamping everything out quite roughly on to plain white copier paper and spread it all out in front of me so I could truly take in the whole range! look to see what stamp sets could go with another stamp set...how I could build up scenes etc, then I jotted down my design ideas and set to work...I havent even half got through what I had planned! it goes on forever, and if there was ever a complete stamp and die set i would say crafters had to have...it would be this one without a doubt!, so for now I will share just 3 samples I made 11 and each day I will share a couple more to lead us up into the launch day.

and heres my first one!

I created a beautiful muted background using my Aquatints, which I adore! you can check the range out on line just HERE! they blend together seemlessly giving the most amazing effortless backgrounds, I use a wash brush to create the background and chose the same paintbrushes Sheena uses which are Royal and Langnickel Crafters Choice brushes, 

I then added a little distress ink to the edges for a little extra depth.

 Then for this card I used the Tree stamp and the hanging bird house stamp, these are two seperate stamp sets  the bird house I stamped twice and I think you can just see it is decoupaged which gives a lovely effect, then using one of the new die sets "Hedgerow corner" I cut a large and smaller corner piece to finish, 

Onto the most adorable Squirrel stamp!

how irresistible is he!! so to start with I stamped him out and covered him up with Pebeo Drawing gum ...this stuff is amazing!!! you can pick it up on line just HERE! its truly fantastic! I've only recently discovered this stuff and its changed my crafting, I LOVE it, so once dry I set to creating my background, using my Aquatints and wash brush I created an Autumn pallet background then whilst still wet I sprinkled a fine sea salt over and left to dry, once dry I rubbed away the salt and then went over the edges with a distress ink pad, It gave a worn kind of leathery look to the paper which was great! I then distressed my edges inked a bit more and curled two opposite ends. Then using the Oak leaf and acorn stamps that BOTH have matching dies I created the corner embellishments, the photos don't really do these cards justice as these leaves once die cut and curled really look fantastic on your cards!

ok and last one for this evening...

even though this card may not be the most fancy....or have lots of embellishments and die cuts etc, I have to say it is my favourite. This card is quite a large long card that I created using a few different stamp sets, and by covering up my layers with drawing gum, I was able to add extra layers of hills to create my beautiful countryside view, I kept it all covered in drawing gum while I created my sky and clouds using the bleaching effect. once dry I simply rubbed the drawing Gum away and coloured my hills and fields, a simple fence in the fore ground that is cut using the matching die and a simple sentiment in the corner. Once I had finished this piece I just looked at it for soooo long, I loved it....simple but the stamps are so beautiful, I could really imagine myself standing right by that little fence looking out...silence...beautiful...is is sun set? or sunrise...I'm not sure but I do know I will definitely be creating this again and popping it on my wall in my craft room . 

I do hope you have liked what I have created so far!! Please do check out the rest of the Design Team as they have come up with some beauties! .. I will be sharing more tomorrow!

As always thank you so much for stopping by it really does mean a lot and I would just love it if you left me a comment..

Love

Nicole

xx