Guesting with Concord and 9th! 

Hello! I have some extra exciting news to share today. I am lucky enough to be guest designing for one of my favorite companies this month….

I’m pretty over the moon about it. Concord and 9th is such an amazing company, with ridiculously innovative and clever products. They just had a new release over the weekend, and I am lucky enough to get to play with their products all month long! For my post today, I’ve decided to focus on their crazy clever (and seriously popular, since it sold out in the first 24 hours!) Triangle Turnabout background stamp. This stamp is so unique… so many ways to create fun and graphic backgrounds! Let’s get started on my projects today.

I wanted to showcase how great this background is for masculine cards. I know I’m not the only one who struggles with creating masculine cards, and this super graphic and neutral background is perfect for those non-frilly men in your life! To start, I heat embossed the Triangle Turnabout background only once using white embossing powder onto some watercolor card stock that I had taped down to my work surface. (I use a bamboo cutting board that I found for a few dollars at TJ Maxx.) Next, I saturated my watercolor paper with clean water and dropped watered down splotches of Distress Inks that I had tapped onto my block: Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, and Cracked Pistachio. This wet-on-wet technique creates some lovely, messy, thoroughly masculine looking blooms on your watercolor paper! I allowed it to dry completely, then spritzed it with some shimmer spray and flicked my clean wet paintbrush at it to get some drips and drops and splatters.

For the greeting, I used one of my all-time favorite Concord and 9th dies: Happy Card Frame and the coordinating stamp set. I die cut the card frame from black card stock and mounted it with dimensional adhesive on my watercolored triangle panel. The Card Frame die set comes with several useful little add-on dies, including the double ended banner die onto which I stamped “birthday” from the coordinating Happy Words stamp set. A smattering of aqua sequins scattered across the card front finished it off and added a bit more shine to it. (Yes, I know, it’s supposed to be masculine. But I can’t give up flowers AND sequins just for a man! Haha!) Simple, but men don’t need or want extra frills, do they? Isn’t that background just perfect for a classy guy’s birthday?

For my next project, I wanted to do something a bit more feminine. I love that, when you use the Triangle Turnabout stamp set to its fullest creative potential, you get this wonderful quilted look. One word of advice: practice. Watch the video. Start with scratch paper. And don’t give up. It took me a few tries to get my paper lined up perfectly to get a properly executed background, but it’s so worth it. To create this peachy project, I stamped the Triangle Turnabout background using several shades of peach and coral ink. (I love that the stamp also leaves completely white spaces. Such a unique, beautiful look!) I trimmed it down a bit and mounted it to a peach card base.

Next, I used the Celebrations stamp and die set to add my greeting and a little gift. I stamped my greeting from the Celebrations stamp set onto a rectangle of vellum. I wanted my full Triangle Turnabout background to be visible, but not overwhelming to the rest of my card front. Some heavyweight vellum would just do the trick! To create my gift, I started with a plain white rectangle of card stock, then stamped the cute polka dots to create my gift box. I trimmed it down, die cut a bow from the Celebrations die set using the same coral colored card stock as the base and adhered it to my vellum. I added adhesive behind my embossed greeting and the die cut gift… adding extra die cuts on top of vellum is a great way to hide the adhesive and prevent it from marring your vellum panel.

Well, that’s all for me today! I could not be more thrilled to be guest designing for Concord and 9th this month. I can’t wait to show you what else I’ve created with this marvelous release! Each piece is just fabulous! Have a fantastic day, friends!