Happy Travels...

No, not me! Well, not yet anyway... Hi Guy's, today's post is a rather picture heavy long one I'm afraid. So, grab a cuppa and let’s get started.. Hopefully you are aware that we have Viv from Creative Expressions coming to demonstrate for us on Saturday 28th April? Viv will be with us from 9am - 2pm and will be demoing amongst other things, Spellbinders Dies, the Grand Calibur Machine, Stamping techniques, Inks and Mica Powders... She came to visit us last week and it was great for us to finally put a face to a name. She really is a lovely person, and the samples she brought with her!!!!.. Well, I will leave you to sit in awe on the day... To add our own "Pinnacles" spin to the day, I have been getting some samples ready too.

And here is the first one I am going to share with you. It's using one of the wonderful Stamps Viv will be using on the day, which I've turned into a Suitcase... Well, the stamp is all about travel, so it seems only fitting!

Something you might not be able to see from this first picture is the dimension created with the world images. Hopefully, this picture will show it better...? So, shall we get on with a step by step?!

I started off the project by taking my stamp, Ink and card stock which was cut to the size of the stamp.

I then stamped the image onto the card stock, try and get them all roughly the same, it doesn't matter if some of them are slightly out, you can always trim them down afterwards. Or, if you have one, you could always use a stamp-a-ma-jig to get them perfectly accurate..

I then coloured each sheet using a selection of Distress Inks

to give them an aged, distressed, vintage look.

Next, I took a selection of Circles from the Spellbinders Classic Circles Large (S4-114) and Classic Circles Small (S4-116) sets of dies,

positioning the largest one which fitted inside my world map image

and passed it through my Die Cutting machine to cut out the shape.

Repeating the process on the other world map image

to cut it out.

Next, lay another one of your stamped images onto your cutting plate

and lay your first stamped image, (the one with the Circles now cut out of it) directly over it. Lining up the images as best you can.

Take the next sized Circle and position it through the cut out image.

And then remove the first stamped image as this adds unnecessary bulk to the plate "sandwich". We don't want your machine breaking now do we....?

Pass it through your machine to cut the shape out..

Line the first two images up again

and position the Circle die as before, this time onto the second world map image,

remove the first stamped image

and pass through your machine to cut the shape out.

Just to make sure the images have cut out correctly, line them up by matching the picture, not by the size of the card stock. If the card stock differs slightly then you can cut the excess of nearer the end of the project to make it all neat and tidy..

Oh, and don't forget, you will also gain the positive images to use on another project.

Repeat the cutting and layering process on all of your remaining stamped images.

You can then start to stick each of your layers together. Lining the images up as best you can.

If the layers are not exactly the same size, just trim them down

so that you end up with your layered images all stacked together with nice neat edges.

You will need one more stamped image; this one will have no Circles cut out of it.

All the other layers will be mounted onto it to complete the image.

So, seeing as we have a travel theme going on here, what better than to make this stamp into a suitcase eh?! I cut out the 2 largest shapes from Spellbinders Labels Twenty One (S5-027) in Copper Mirror card, layering one shape inside the other to form a frame.

This was the waste from the cut and it seemed a shame to, well, "waste" it!

So, I layered my stamped images onto it to start to form the suitcase.. Another piece of waste card used.. I'm getting good at this..

To form the handle of the suitcase I attached the frame I had made using Labels Twenty One to the top of the stamped images...

I then added some "Screw" Brads,

which I had coloured with Copper Alcohol Ink,

as the ones I had were the wrong colour for this project.

Whilst I had my Alcohol Inks out

I also coloured my other embellishments

as none of them were the right colours for the project.

I prepped by base card using a great paper from Bo Bunny,

cutting it to size to fit my project

and adding my suitcase.

Finishing off with my sentiment and Key embellishments...

And there we go, a lot of work but very much worth it I think... Thanks for checking us out, see you soon. Andy.