Randomly stamp across the right side of the card with different stamps and 2-3 different shades of green ink.

Fold up the sides and glue in place to form a box.

Cut a strip of kraft card measuring 3cm x 21cm and stamp the same as the gift box. 

Attach the handle at each side with a little strip of hi tack tape and some glue for extra grip.

Die cut/ hand cut a tag shape, stamp the sentiment and a plant onto each one and colour with the alcohol markers. Add a length of twine to each.

Tie to the handle of the gift box.

Now, you can think about making a beautiful card to go along with the gift

I hope you enjoy making this as much as I did 

Take a sheet of blue frost cardstock and cut it into a 3.5” x 8” panel. Then use your small blending brush or paintbrush to brush on some Nuvo deluxe adhesive (or use the flat tip glue pen). It doesn’t have to be in a particular pattern, you are just applying a light layer of glue in random shapes. 

 Add your gilding flake over the sticky bits and leave for about 20 seconds so that it adheres and dries slightly. 

Grab a hard bristle paintbrush or one of the Tonic surface sweep brushes and brush off the excess gilding flakes. TIP: use a sheet of copy paper to collect the excess gilding flakes so that you can put them back in the bottle.

Grab your vellum, stamping platform, and embossing ink. Take the leaf stamp from the stamp club set and start stamping it onto the vellum with the embossing ink. Don't forget to use your anti-static bag before you stamp. In total I made 3 leaves for each colour of embossing powder so 18 leaves in total. 

Fussy cut out all your leaves. I'm sorry this leaf doesn't come with a die because that would make things easier. Just pop on a tv show and get cutting you will be done in no time.

Grab your blue frost panel and start figuring out how you want to arrange your leaves but don't glue anything down yet.

Once you have a design you like, start sticking down your leaves. I worked from the bottom going up but you can work from the top going down. The trick is to add a dab of glue to the bottom inch or so of your leaf then stick it down.

 Once you’ve done about three or 4 leaves the first ones should have adhered so you're going to give them a bit of a lift off the page by bending the vellum upwards slightly. I think this adds a beautiful dimension to the card and really gives it that wow factor. Just imagine what a showstopper it's going to be on the mantle.

Die cut a sentiment three times with the word dies from the stamp club set. I went with Merry Christmas. Take all three dis cuts and stick them on top of each other to give your sentiment some dimension and stability. Then stick it onto the bottom bit of your card. Remove the protective layer from the acetate and then glue on your sparkly top layer.

Now add some gold sequins wherever you would like for some extra pizazz. Once everything is dry take your panel and add it to your card base. To make a card base you need a piece of cardstock that is 8” x 7” which you are going to score at 3.5 then fold it. Now stick your complete panel over your card base and you have made a festive slimline card!

Thank you so much for crafting along. Hopefully once you've had one go, then you can make plenty more. 

Hi there! Today is all about the NEW Stamp Club release –Sunshine and Sunflowers! My project focuses on colouring with Nuvo Alcohol Markers and composition. I am in love with this set and it sets my soul to happy.   

This is a coloring tutorial and we will go through each step so you can create a beautifully colored card. These Alcohol markers take some getting used to as they are layering pens. I hope to provide an informative tutorial filled with easy steps that will set you up for success.  

Stamp out the largest sunflower and lay out 449,451,453, 473.

Add a layer of 473. You can colour a few petals at a time, but I thought it would be more beneficial to show you individual coloring steps. 

Add a layer of 449 over the top part of your petal and the bottom part, leaving a clear gap in the middle. 

Add a slightly smaller layer of 451 to the top and bottom of your petal, leaving a gab between each color.

Use 449 to blend your pinks but remember to leave the centre. 

Add 453 at the very top and bottom of your petal for the darkest shading. 

Blend the centre with 473 into the lightest pink. You can repeat the steps for added depth but remember Alcohol markers dry lighter and look different when dry. 

Repeat the steps above as color each petal. I find it easier to color the inside layers first but that’s my personal preference. 

Once your finished with your inner petals use your blender pen to fix any outside the line mistakes. These do take some time to color and don’t rush the process, enjoy it. 

Now color in the top layer of petals. I’ve colored some the same way as the steps above and others I’ve left the top lighter. Either way looks beautiful. 

Use 473 to color in the middle of the flower. 

Use 453 to create a dark circle on the outer ridge of your centre. 

Blend through with 451. 

Stipple 381 around the outer edge of the centre to create the darkest part of your flower. 

Add 453 and then blend out with 451, leaving the centre as yellow as possible. 

Stamp out three leaves and colour using 360, 363, 369 in layer the same way as the petals, but you can play around where you want the darkest parts. There are three different examples where you can put light and shadow, and they all look great. 

Cut your white alcohol friendly paper to 5.25 x 4 inches and stamp out one of the stalks. Clean and bend the stamp in another direction and stamp again. Color in using 360, 363, 369. 

Stamp out the ladybird. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to use so I stamped and colored both in 374 and 391. White heat emboss your sentiment onto black card. 

Repeat coloring on a second sunflower then die cut your elements. 

Take a moment to consider composition – where will my leaves sit, what about the sentiment, do I need to cut my panel down, etc. 

Trim your stamped panel down to 3.5 inches by 4.75 inches. Mat and layer a black piece of cardstock 3.75 inches by 5 inches. Place your die cuts into position, some with foam pads and some with wet adhesive. 

Attach your sentiment and ladybird then mount onto an A2 card blank.

Take a photo to catalogue your work or you might forget what your colored. 

Let’s take it to the next level...

White Heat emboss an additional sentiment onto black card. Stamp out a bee and color with 391 and 403. Attach these extra elements to your card and splatter with white and black ink.

Pick 3 colours of Aqua Flows, something that you want to show through the galaxy, they can be analogous colours too, but I chose primary colours as they all come in the same set, Surprise Party. 

Start with your lightest colour and add random blobs all over your A5 piece of white card. 

Repeat with the next colour

Then fill in the final places with the darkest colour, I know it looks like a mess, but it will all come together in the end.

Spray your background with water to help the colours moved and meld together a little.

Once dry, cover the whole background with a light layer of Black Soot Distress Ink. The Large Nuvo Ink Blending brushes are fabulous for applying Distress Inks and for coving large areas too. 

Take small paint brush and some water and splatter all over the background to create some ‘stars’. The water will react with the Distress Ink and when you blot the surface lighter speckles will appear giving that star look. 

You can also splatter on some Mica Mist too, I think the Apsen Gold works great as it’s a nice subtle gold colour. 

Repeat steps 6-8 again to deepen the bacground. Or you can leave it like step 8 if you prefer seeing more of the colours, but this picture in step 9 has a second layer of everything. 

Use some of the star stamps and the constellation stamp over the top of your background with some white embossing powder. And don’t worry if extra powder sticks to any slightly damp places (as mine did) as I think it adds to the galaxy look

Die-cut your background using your chosen tag die, I have used the one from Kit #44 as it was a nice large size and the hole is already incorporated into the cut. Or alternatively you can cut the background into smaller rectangles and clip the corners to look like a tag if you don’t have any tag dies. 

Die-cut a load of elements for your tags from a mixture of White card, vellum and Golden Mosaic specialty card too. 

Place everything you’ve cut onto your tags to check you have all the pieces you want. Then decide what sub-sentiments you need for the scripty words and white heat emboss them onto dark card. 

Glue everything in place and embellish with bakers twine and organza ribbon, which ever you prefer, or both like I’ve used 

And for a final touch, add some Honey Gold Glitter Nuvo drops too 

You can create this same galaxy background with all sorts of different underlying colours, tailoring them to you recipient too 

Create a circular design with a couple of the whale images, (the left hand side one could also be the third whale too if you’d prefer) focusing the circle towards the top of the card panel (10x13cm) 

Create masks for your stamped whales, while you have your stamp on your stamping platform, simply place the post-it over the image you just stamped, and stamp again to get the image on the post-it.

Cut out all 3 masks, and place them back over the stamped images, I chose to fussy cut my images right up to the line, but if you don’t mind your images having a white halo, you could use the coordinating dies to cut out your masks. 

Use the circular fishes die to create a stencil from some scrap white card. 

Add some light patches of ink blending onto your background (the masks will protect the whales for you) in a couple of shades of blue as the starting point for your background. 

Use the stencil we cut earlier along with a precision blending brush to add the fish design to the centre of the stamped whales. 

To give the water a bit of ripple motion, use the bendy line stamp to add a few horizontal lines to the background. 

Build up more of a scene by adding some stamped fish and also some seaweed/coral towards the bottom of the card panel. 

And for some extra visual texture, add some splashes of Aqua Flow/Water/Aqua Shimmer, whatever you have on hand, you could even water down the ink from one of the ink pads you’ve used too. 

Finally remove your post-it masks to reveal your 3 protected whales. 

Now it’s time to colour your Whales :D If you’re struggling to know what colours to use, these are the colours I chose 

To give the Whales a slightly more blue grey look, rather than the brighter blue of the 425,427,428 pens simply colour over the blues with the 485 marker, this will add that grey tone, and you can come in with the next grey tone to deepen any shadows too. 

Finally chose one of the punny sentiments from the set and add it to the centre of the card (If you’ve chosen a longer sentiment, you could snip it into 2 so you could stack the 2 parts inside the circle too). 

And there you have your finished card.