DT Inspiration - Where do you get your inspiration?

Good morning and welcome.

It's Julie here today with an idea on how to use your Uniko stamps and dies.

How do you kick start your mojo? I must admit that sometimes I need to make a card for a DT and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to make. Sometimes I might go look around on Pinterest but mostly I look to challenges to kick start my thoughts. I have my favourites that I bookmark and usually I manage to find something that starts the synapses firing. If I can link a few together then all to the better, I love it when one idea sparks off another.

It was a colour challenge that gave me the first clue, I knew what my palette would be, then when I saw a photo challenge featuring butterflies, I knew I should get my English Country Garden set out!

Here is my finished card.

The picture I had in my mind of the finished card was of a spotlight technique, with the colourful butterflies popping up against the grey background, but how to do it?

I started by inking up both the small and large detailed butterflies with Altenew's Limestone and stamped an A5 panel of white card. I then die cut the centre away with a pierced rectangle die.

Because I wanted to use my Zig watercolour brush markers to colour, I needed to make the out lines waterproof, slight problem.

To solve this, I decided to die cut some blank butterflies in both sizes using the matching dies and then stamped and heat embossed them. I could now place the die cut rectangle back into the panel and use the pale grey butterflies as a guide to place the now watercoloured die cuts. Once Happy with the placement, I popped each butterfly and part butterflies up with foam pads. When stuck, I removed the centre panel and trimmed away the excess, glued the large panel onto a slightly smaller piece of white copy paper then adding back the die cut rectangle. This secures the loose panel and the front could then be added to a base card. A small strip of black card was stamped with Happy Birthday from Birthday Sentiments and heat embossed with fine white EP and placed to one side of the design.

So that's it from me, hope I've inspired you to get out your stamps and dies. If you are in need of a kick start why not check out the Uniko challenge?