October Leading Lady Keren Baker | Take Two

Our October Leading Lady, Keren Baker is back for her second sensational performance!  If you missed her smashing debut you must see it...CLICK HERE.  Keren will surely inspire you to try some fancy cutting with her incredible projects today!

Ladies and gentlemen, Keren Baker....

Hi! Great to be back with you all!

Thank you for all your lovely comments so far, it's been so encouraging that you've enjoyed what I've done.

This week, as I mentioned, I wanted to focus on what I think are often forgotten about, but were one of the things that really impressed me about Winnie & Walter; their digi / cut files.

Before some of you get turned off and think this is not for you.. it is! 

Ok, you might not have a electronic die cutter ( think Silhouette Cameo, Circuit, Pazzle, Black Cat Cougar etc.)  ...yet! but lots of these files can be simply printed and then trimmed out, and anyhow, hopefully there's a little inspiration for you just using the techniques with stamps and dies.

Phew, that was a long intro! Onto my first card, which is the more complicated of the 3 (it gets easier after this point ;-) )

I've combined two cut files...Scenery: Rectangled & Triangled Cut Files and The Big, the Bold & Party Digital Elements

For those of you who dabble in svgs, I've simply traced around both the birthday and triangle files. I've welded them and added a outer layer. I designed it so the birthday is cut out from the back and therefore one piece.

You can hopefully see the little individual shaker triangles in the photo beneath

They were all in a colour order..but, I had to stack foam pads around each triangle (which looking back was a silly idea- but I hadn't got any thin enough foam to go through my Silhouette Cameo) and I obviously didn't quite get every gap covered. Those sneaky little micro beads escaped into the triangles next to them!

I coloured in the 'birthday' with Copics and then added some fun dots with a thin black marker. This detailing (which I've used on all my projects) really lifts the individual elements and makes them more cohesive too.

For the flowers I stamped out In Bloom: Lola's Bouquet with Joni Andaya, and used the foliage from Winter Woodland. Add some little sequins and you're done!

This next card was created using a simple cut file to create a soft textured background. I love the way that the cut vellum almost drapes onto the card. 

This was using Winter Woodland, In a Word: Hugs Cutaway and the cut files Scenery:Rectangled & Triangled Cut Files

To create the background I traced and used a section of the woodgrain element. You could easily print this out onto the vellum and then use scissors to cut out instead.

To tie the 'wood' theme, I die cut the sentiment out from wood veneer and added some white gel pen detailing onto the wood trunk slice and the letters.

You can see some of the simple details- some gold gel pen and red Copic marker onto the foliage and some green Copic to pick out the edges of the leaves. It might seem unnecessary but it does add more dimension to the leaves.

And last, but not least, I thought I'd create a shaped card (it was actually my friend who suggested it and I thought it was great idea). I've used one of the free files that Winnie & Walter gave out during their 1st Birthday Bash

This was super easy, just mirror the elements, overlap and weld them (removing the extra dots that weren't needed). You could easily create this by just printing it out, cutting around to create a template and adding to a folded piece of cardstock.

I loved playing around with the In Bloom: Maggie's Roses Cutaways die set. Rather than cutting it out in coloured cardstock, I die cut in white and only coloured in the central elements (with Distress inks). This gives a really clean look to the die cut leaves. I also only glued down the centre stems so I could lift each outer leaf part to give a real 3D feel to the project.

I wanted to add some little details and rather than hunt for an hour for the right shade of sequin, I thought I'd stamp my own using the versatile Scenery: Big Bang Bling set. 

Hope there's some inspiration for even the non-digi users amongst you!

Can't wait to be back next week.. this time with some fun 3D projects! xx

In Bloom: Lola's Bouquet with Joni Andaya	Scenery: Big Bang Bling	Winter Woodland	In a Word: Hello Cutaway	In a Word: Hugs Cutaway	In Bloom: Maggie's Roses Cutaways
1st Birthday Bash Digital Elements	Scenery: Rectangled & Triangled cut files	The Big, the Bold and Party Digital Elements

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