mailing stickers!

A quick, easy project, to funk up your mailers!

if you've been following this blog, you will have seen me using the Chunky Monkey Crafts stamps for a whole range of things- mostly stamping on envelopes (as this was what they were designed for, anyway!)

Today, I'm changing it up a bit, with a time saving hack - for when you want to add a little extra to your mailers, or envelopes, but just don't have the time to stamp it!

I discovered that all but two of the stamps in the set fit perfectly on these printable address labels I have- so I took a few minutes to stamp them, and now have an entire sheet of labels ready to stick on envelopes whenever I need them!

The made with love stickers would also look amazing as part of your packaging for handmade gifts, and crafts !

don't forget you can find this set of stamps and some other awesome sets over on the  Chunky Monkey Crafts website, and if you use code 'rachelcmc10' at checkout, you will also get 10% off!

see you soon!

Water stamping- a Unicorn card with coordinating Envelope

Unicorns, Distress oxides, and water stamping

There was a good reason for this card being a unicorn- and if you read my last blog post, you will know why!

I've been challenging myself to use all of the 'sealed with a kiss' envelope stamps from Chunky Monkey Crafts, and as of last week, there were only two I hadn't used- the fairy and the unicorn!

my belated fairy card post went up yesterday, and this week, I tackled the unicorn! 

that means that I have now used every single stamp in the set, and shown you some fun project ideas- don't worry, there will be more, I'm not done with them yet!

The fairy card (as mentioned previously) had it's challenges- namely technology being.... not the most helpful, and this one's challenges were in the form of me trying to make whilst I have the flu!

this is actually the second attempt, and apologies- I didn't have the energy to try and video the second make, after I totally messed up the first one, by sneezing at the wrong time!

 I used a water stamping technique that I learnt whilst watching a tutorial by Jennifer McGuire ink on youtube for the background of the card- I really love learning new ways to do things, and different techniques, and this one was no different!

The pictures don't pick it up, but I added sparkle to the unicorn with a spectrum noir sparkle pen too- as no unicorn is complete without glitter.

and to change things up a little, instead of stamping my envelope sentiment on the back flap like I usually do, this time I put it on the front!

what is your favourite placement , front or back?

SUPPLIES:

Sealed With A Kiss stamp set from Chunky Monkey Crafts (use code rachelcmc10 for 10% off !)

OTHER:

Visible Image stamp set - believe in unicorns

distress oxides- peacock feathers, fossilised amber, picked raspberry, abandoned coral

versafine onyx black

stazon jet black

spectrum noir sparkle pen -clear

watercolour cardstock

black cardstock

card blank

prima color bloom spray- soft teal

fineliner

Hopefully I will feel a lot more chipper by the time I upload my next make, but hope that you enjoyed this one, and let me know which you love more- Fairies or unicorns!

Sparkly fairy card

Sparkles, Fairies and coordinating envelopes.

There was only two stamps so far from the ‘sealed with a kiss’ stamp set from Chunky Monkey Crafts, one of them being the ‘delivered by fairies’ stamp... when making this sparkly fairy card with a distress ink background, I thought it would be a perfect finishing touch for the envelope!

I can’t resist a bit of sparkle, and I love getting out my spectrum noir sparkle pens. The hard bit is knowing when to stop... in a perfect world it would be used all over everything 😂

This project has a tutorial video available too! please do let me know if you enjoy watching, and I will create more of them!

and here is some pictures of the finished card with it's coordinating envelope ! 

The distress ink colours I chose remind me of a sunset- perfect for the silhouette of a fairy sat on a branch.

This project was not without its issues... my laptop died a sudden death, and Blogger is not the easiest from an Ipad!

therefore- this project is extremely late being blogged, but it did give me time to edit and upload the 'making of' video on youtube... silver linings, and all that. 

Supplies

Chunky monkey crafts ‘sealed with a kiss’ stamp set ( 10% off using code rachelcmc10)

Other

Crafters companion enchanted forest ‘shine bright’ stamp and die set

Distress inks

Spectrum noir sparkle pen clear

Double sided tape

Watercolour cardstock

Black cardstock

A6 card blank

One Sheet Wonder Cards- and a friend to the RESCUE!

or a tale of how Rachel failed... AMAZINGLY!

I have always liked to try new things, and I have known about the existence of one sheet wonder cards since I very first started creating cards. 

For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, 'one sheet wonder' cards are where you use one piece of decorative paper to make multiple cards- with no waste!

there are lots of tutorials out there, and lots of different results, so it makes it easy!

I highly suggest choosing a paper that is double sided, because then you have even more possibilities!

now... here's the FAIL part of my OSW creating....

I found an amazing tutorial, and really liked the look of how she divided the sheet of paper. The tutorial didn't go into card blank size, so even though the tutorial was in inches, I totally forgot that American Greetings cards are usually a different size to those in the uk! 

so I had all my paper cut, and when it got to assembling, there was a big UH OH! followed by a few expletives, as I realised even though I could solve the card blank issue by making my own (which is something I do regularly anyway), I wouldn't have any envelopes to fit them!

Luckily, one of my very best friends, and a fellow creative who lives in the USA came to the rescue, and posted me some envelopes so I could complete the set.

this is the reason that even though the cards were completed quite a while ago, and I'd shown you some sneak peeks over on my Facebook page, the finished project didn't appear!

thank you so much  Lina for saving the day! (if you want to check out her blog, she makes amazing quilts and is a fantastic colourist too!)

The tutorial I followed, by the way is THIS ONE that I found on BluPrint.

One Sheet Wonder cards are a fantastically easy way to make a lot of cards, quickly! 

This set was totally inspired by the Chunky Monkey Crafts 'sealed with a kiss' stamp set- Not only did I want to stamp the envelopes, but I wanted to think outside the box too- I used the stamps in the set on the front of four out of the 14 cards too - masking off the words I didn't need!

Here is the entire set- I used some layout ideas from the original tutorial, but also changed the designs and layouts a bit , to suit my own purposes. All the stamp sets used I will list below, and all images on the cards have been hand drawn, and painted with watercolours (with the exception of the second card on the second row, where I drew flowers directly onto the paper)

and here is the stamped envelopes to go with the cards! I used all but two of the stamps in the set to stamp on the envelope flaps. 

SUPPLIES

Chunky Monkey Crafts 'Sealed With A Kiss' stamp set (use code rachelcmc10 for 10% off your order)

OTHER

staedtler triplus fineliner

Nuvo Dots in Dandelion Yellow
 and Carribean Ocean

Kuretake Gansai Tambi Japanese Watercolour Paints (36 Colour Set)

Visible Image Stamp 'just be happy' from Tomorrow Doesn't Exist stamp set

Stamps from Some Odd Girl ' Everyday Smiles' clear stamp set (retired)

teal cardstock from Papermill direct

12x12 cardstock 

double sided DSP

sequins

Sizzix dies

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these cards, and will possibly give OSW cards a go yourself!

** This blog post contains affiliate links- they will not charge you extra when you shop through the links, but earn me a little revenue so I can keep creating and sharing projects with you all!

Snail Mail Art

Snail Mail art with a Chunky Monkey Crafts Stamp

I'm pretty much a chronic insomniac, and I love to watch youtube and trawl pinterest for inspiration and tutorials when I can't sleep.. and apparently envelope, or snail mail art is a thing.... not that I've EVER received a decorated envelope, or done more than a couple of little doodles on one myself!

Therefore, I decided it would be a fun idea, and once I picked the 'party in an envelope' stamp to work with, I came up with the idea of illustrating a monster party theme on my envelope (which is a  c6 size envelope over here in the UK) 

I originally sketched my doodles on lightly in pencil, inked over them in fineliner, and once dry, erased the pencil. I then coloured in my doodles in coloured pencils, making sure to leave a large enough blank space within the banner to add a name and address, which could either be stamped with individual letter stamps, or hand lettered.

I used a green ink pad to stamp the 'party in an envelope' across the flap, where I'd doodled a banner.

This was a really inexpensive and fun way of jazzing up a plain paper envelope, and because my handwriting is ABYSMAL the CMC stamps were definitely handy in pulling the idea together!

SUPPLIES USED

CMC 'Sealed With Love A6 stamp set (use code rachelcmc10 for 10% off)

OTHER:

white c6 envelope

tombow brush calligraphy pen

Spectrum Noir Colorista Pencils

Avery Elle Ink Pad in 'Jungle'

sepia colouring with alcohol markers and stamping

Sepia Colouring, and Envelope Stamping

Today I’m up with a project for Chunky Monkey Crafts again! I always love to show off the gorgeous stamps on the envelopes, but love to create a project to go with them too!

This time, I have used ‘ made with love’ as a stamp on the back of my card, and ‘warning, opening will induce a smile’ on my envelope flap.

The card I created to go with the stamps is an idea I had recently- it is a technique I also plan on videoing for you in the near future, so please stay tuned for that!

I bought a sepia ink pad from versafine, and wanted to do a play on no lines colouring- many moons ago I coloured a stamp with only my ‘E’ copic markers, but I did it with black lines, and they looked ok, but it could have been better. When my sepia pad arrived, I knew I wanted to give the technique a go again, with the C.C designs rubber stamp ‘ latte kikki la rue’, as a play on the fact she was holding a coffee cup, and coffee is well, brown. (especially the way I drink it!)

I also decided to inject a tiny pop of colour with the red heart on the coffee cup, and the sparkly red hearts I used as embellishments. These I die cut using a little MFT stamps planner die set which includes a heart, coloured with the same copic marker I used for the heart on the coffee cup, and added sparkle with a spectrum noir sparkle pen, and finally a highlight using a white gel pen.

I love to ‘ground’ my images so in the same colours I used for the image, I created her a little patch of ground to stand on.

Because I was keeping this cas with a lot of white space, I finished with a simple doodled border and matted onto kraft cardstock. I was toying with adding a sentiment to the card, but I loved the look of so much white space, and having the only stamped wording being the awesome stamps from CMC!

Don’t forget that you can get any of the Chunky Monkey Crafts stamps from their WEBSITE at 10% off using code ‘rachelcmc10’  while they are available! 

see you soon!

A mixed media feather tag

A mixed Media feather Tag with Visible Image Stamps and a Samantha K crafts mdf feather

I've been really into creating tags recently- I was at a car boot sale a while ago, and there was someone selling off huge piles of crafty goodies, including a huge amount of the Ranger Manilla tags- suffice to say, I now have enough of them to last me a really long time! they are such a great size to work with, and I really enjoy them.

I dug into my Samantha K pile when creating the Jillibean Mixed media star, and rediscovered the feathers I had bought at the same time- so it was only a matter of time before I dug back into the bag to work with one of them!

I gessoed the whole tag, before adding some vintagey papers in random areas, added a quick layer of gesso again,  and then I stamped feathers from the Visible Image 'angels are near' stamp set on top, in versamark ink. 

I then grabbed some stencils and white texture paste, and added that to random areas of the tag. 

once dry, I went in with distress oxides Fossilised Amber and Peacock feathers , which I blended together.

I also used a basic letter and numbers stencil borrowed off the children, which I pounced some ink through, once the oxides were dry. 

to grunge the tag up a little i added some vintage photo and rusty hinge distress ink around the edges.

for an additional layer, I sprayed dylusions ink sprays on top in Lemon Zest and Cut Grass, before adding my feather.

while waiting for the main tag to dry, i had also coated the feather in gesso, then added the same distress inks used on the background to it.

to finish the tag off, I stamped and cut out the sentiment from the stamp set (masking the words off so I could cut them out seperately) and coated them with a layer of vintage photo distress ink. 

I used gold gilding wax on various areas, and antiqued some lace also with the vintage photo ink pad- this I attatched by pulling both pieces through the hole and stapling them in place.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing the process! I really hope to be able to start videoing my makes again soon- I'm in the process of sorting out a room to use as my own work area!

I currently share a table with my husband and two children, so my own space will be a total blessing.