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Living Creatively with Fibro | Bouquet

Testing the Build a Bouquet Set from Simply Cards & Papercrafts 162

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First quick impression

The set of stamps includes a nice selection of flowers with the option of using vases or stems and a bow to create bunches, the fish in the jar caught my imagination too. There is a nice selection of sentiments and the set includes dies from the vases and a flower head.

Build a Bouquet Set
Build a Bouquet Stamped

Stamping the Build a Bouquet Images

As always I stamped the images with my Tim Holtz Stamping Platform, you can find out more about these in my post here. If you wish to purchase your own you can get one here. It is same to say that the purchase of a stamping platform allowed me to keep stamping even though I live with Fibromyalgia (and arthritis if my hands). I used the Tonic Nuvo Hybrid Fusion Ink in Black Shadow, this is a bit of a favourite of mine at the moment, simply because you can use it to work with both watercolour pens and pencils and alcohol inks so depending upon the card stock I have used I can decide after stamping what I may like to colour the images in with, great if you are a bit contrary like me. However, letโ€™s look at the images I stamped. As you can see they all stamped out beautifully, the majority of the area was done in one press. I just had to re-ink the centre of the main bunch of flowers. Another handy tip I can give you if you have pain problems with your hands, like me, rather than trying to press down all over the image using a brayer and rolling that over instead. It is much easier to create a consistent pressure and will result in less pain for you! You can find a selection of brayers here, Iโ€™ve had mine so long I canโ€™t remember which brand it is!

Build a Bouquet Die Results

The Die Cutting Experience

Firstly, apologies that the edge of the image is cut off! Secondly, I have to let you know that when testing dies for testing purposes only I tend to use really cheap paper or card, well us crafters have to attempt to be thrifty and who else uses their best card stock just for the sake of it โ€“ O yes, TV craft demonstrators lol โ€“ If only I had my products provided for me ๐Ÿ™‚ โ€“ Iโ€™m open to offersโ€ฆ

It is fair to say that the dies do the job they are intended for, to be honest, I am far more likely to use my ScanNCut โ€“ more about that later in the post. For a crafter who isnโ€™t lucky enough to have a ScanNCut or other digital cutting machine, the dies are a nice inclusion.

Completing a Card

As I mentioned in my initial thoughts the fish caught my imagination and I thought about a fish in a bowl which led me to come up with the wording I wished to use.

I used Serif Craft Artist (you can get hold of a copy here)  to begin my design. I set the canvas to 12cm and used the quick shape tool to draw a circle that nearly filled the space and used the Align tool to centre it. I then used the Text Tool to type up the sentences at the top and bottom of the card using the pre-set paths top and bottom circle to shape the text and then fiddled with it until I was happy with the size and position of the wording.

I then printed the circle and wording off onto decent cardstock that I could use alcohol markers on and sent it through the ScanNCut choosing to leave a 1mm border around the circle.

In the centre, I used the Stamping Platform to stamp the mason jar and the fish stamp within this then coloured the fish with my Spectrum Illustrator pens (Bright Orange and Canary) you can find out more about Illustrator Pens here and you can purchase them from Crafterโ€™s Companion.

I then stamped 16 flower heads (8 of each style) and coloured them with the illustrator pens (Bright Orange and Peach on half and Cocktail Pink and Dusty Pink on the others)

I cut all of these with the ScanNCut, it literally took 2 minutes for the machine to cut these. I am not exaggerating when I say that it would have taken me well over an hour in not longer if I had to do this by hand.

Iโ€™m guessing you want to see the finished card, well here it is:

Build a Bouquet Completed Card

The Verdict

I like this stamp set, I can see several uses for it in the future. Although I think it is a great idea to include dies for people who do not have electronic cutting machines I donโ€™t know how much use I will get from them.

For now, the whole set has made it into my keep draw (if you are new here you can read about my great crafting de-clutterย here). Ultimately I will probably not keep the dies. There is a good chance I will be keeping the stamps though although eventually, it will depend upon how unique they are compared to all the other floral stamps I have.

2020 Update

I sat with this card in my stash for quite some time, I really liked it but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then 2020 provided the perfect solution, I sent it to my parent’s when the lockdown happened.

Until next time,
Gentle Hugs,
Susan


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