Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

Honey Bee Stamps

Simon Says Stamp STAMPtember Exclusive: Honey Bee Stamps!

Hi friends! I am back with another STAMPtember Collaboration Release today, and we’re celebrating Honey Bee Stamps in all of it’s gorgeously vintage glory today! I have gotten to know Melissa, the owner and caretaker of Honey Bee Stamps, as a member of her Design Team and as a friend over the last several years, and she is genuinely one of my favorite people in the crafty world. She is so kind and warm and such a talented human in so many ways! The STAMPtember collaboration product is just like her: filled with beautiful details and with a touch of vintage charm. Here’s a sneak peek:

The Holly Jolly Frames (click HERE to check it out!) product suite features a variety of intricate frames and holiday imagery with which to fill the openings. I thought that the gorgeous filigree frames would be absolutely perfect to create some elegant gift tags, and so pulled out my deepest Christmas red cardstock, gold embossing powder, and some jewels and created these pretties:

Don’t the gold embossed frames just look stunning against that vibrant red cardstock? Talk about festive and oh, so elegant! For each frame, I stamped the image on Rainbow Splash Scarlet cardstock using embossing powder, then added the luminous gold embossing powder and heated it. I love how those details pop so perfectly against that deep red. After embossing each frame, I used the coordinating dies to cut them out.

Because the dies come with detachable center circles, you can cut the detailed frames with a center opening or you can leave the center circle out and cut the solid image. I die cut one more of each frame from the same Scarlet cardstock, this time leaving off the center circle die and cutting a solid backer that would fit perfectly behind the frames. I used a blending brush to blend Cherry ink on the edges of each solid die cut, adding some vintage “distressing” to the background.

To adorn the center of each frame, I heat embossed some of the holiday imagery included with Holly Jolly Frames with the same opulent red and gold color palette and die cut them with their coordinating dies. I adhered the frames to their solid, blended backers with thin foam adhesive squares, then added the holiday icons in the center of each frame, turning the frames on the diagonal so that they were diamond-shaped instead of squares. I used my Crop-A-Dile to cut a hole at the top of each diamond, then threaded some sparkling gold twine through to create the loop to easily attach the tag to a gift. Finally, I added some sparkling Cherry Pawsitively Dazzling Gems for extra sparkle and luxury!! I think these look like they came directly from the North Pole!

Well, that’s all for my projects today. Wouldn’t these be so pretty in a variety of Christmas colors and given as a gift? Or as a collage on an A7 card front? So many possibilities with these pretty frames!!

Important note: these fabulous and exclusive STAMPtember collaboration sets are limited edition, meaning that once they sell out, they won’t be restocked. Don’t wait on these! You won’t want to miss out! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy STAMPtember!!

Holiday Fun With Felt: Day 4- Gingerbread!

Hi friends! I have some more felt projects to share with you today, featuring the sweetest little gingerbread houses around! My first three projects were created using dies intended for stitching, with convenient little holes punched through to make the stitching process as quick and simple as can be. But, I have been collecting a variety of dies over the last 18 months~ that work beautifully for felt projects. All you need to turn a papercrafting die into a felting die is a little felt, some felt glue, and some imagination! I love a good gingerbread house filled with exquisite details, and luckily for me, gingerbread houses are super trendy right now, so these projects will fit right in to both modern and classic decor. Let’s get started with the details on my projects!

*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links at no extra cost to you. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

This first project is a little bit simpler, with the majority of the work being done by the sweet chateau from Honey Bee Stamp’s Alice’s Gingerbread Lane. I die cut each of the pieces for the chateau from felt from Benzie Design and Poshta, including a gingery brown, petal pink, white glitter, and shining metallic felts in copper and red. I find that, when using smaller, more intricate dies like those of the windows and other accents, using 100% wool felt achieves good results, and metallic or coated 100% wool felt achieving the best results, as they hold their shape when die cut with minimal fraying. When working with larger die images, however, the felt blends work very nicely! I adhered all of the components with felt glue, using the fine end of a die poker tool to add glue to the delicate lines of the windows and doors.

Once I had adhered all of the felt components to the gingerbread house, I added it to my oval embroidery hoop, which is about 4.5″ x 6″ and filled with a minty green fabric from my stash. These small embroidery hoop projects are a great way to use up fabric remnants that are frequently in the clearance bin! I also have thrifted old cloth napkins, tablecloths, and handkerchiefs to use in my embroidery hoops. Once all of the felt glue had dried, I added lots of sparkling seed bead and bugle bead embellishments for snow, Christmas lights, and the pathway, stitching them individually using coordinating embroidery floss. I also added a few glass gems to my bunting and stitched a few freehand snowflakes. The final touch was a silky ribbon loop for hanging and a brown velvet bow!

My second project is a bit larger in scale, featuring the Yuletide Lane die set from Concord and 9th! This die set is intended to create a shaped accordion style card, but I decided to modify it a bit to create this detailed gingerbread house hoop. I thought that the simple and clean images would work perfectly with felt!

Before beginning my project, I selected a beautifully festive tartan fabric from my stash and filled an 8″ round embroidery hoop with it. I then selected coordinating felt shades, with a gingery brown for my house, metallic red for the door, white glitter for the snow, and three different shades of green for the greenery. I die cut the individual pieces for the house and adhered them with felt glue, again using the fine tipped end of my die cut release tool to precisely place the glue on the more delicate pieces. I arranged the assembled felt die cuts on my plaid embroidery hoop and adhered them with more felt glue.

After I had finished adhering the felt pieces to the hoop, it was time to begin embellishing with beads and other bits of sparkle! I die cut gold metallic bells and green wreaths, added different types of ribbon and trim, metallic thread bows, snowflakes, and lots of individual bugle and seed beads. I made sure when adhering my felt pieces to the hoop to use small drops of glue around the edges of the images so that my beading needle could easily pierce through the felt and fabric, making it easy to add these shimmering embellishments! I just adore how colorful and yet still elegant this project is, not to mention incredibly festive. It fits perfectly with that “Ralph Lauren Christmas” theme that I’ve seen going around social media!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! I wish that I could spend the next several weeks letting out my creative energy in felt form, because these hoops and ornament projects are just so much fun. If you haven’t looked through your standalone dies yet to see if they will work with your felting projects, I highly encourage you to do so! It’s a great way to get double duty out of your papercrafting stash! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Simon Says Stamp STAMPtember Collaboration 9/18/25: Honey Bee Stamps!

Hi friends! I am back today with more inspiration using today’s STAMPtember Collaboration release! Today, we’re spotlighting Honey Bee Stamps, a favorite company of mine with an owner good as gold and sweet as honey! The new stamp set, called Holiday Greetings, is a large cling stamp set with a gorgeous, wintry outdoor scene with a lovely and detailed birdhouse filled with sweet birdies and beautiful foliage, accompanied by poignant holiday sentiments. Check out the full set HERE.

If you are new to STAMPtember from Simon Says Stamp, throughout the month of September, Simon Says Stamp will have exclusive collaborations with some of our favorite stamping companies, releasing an exclusive, limited edition stamp set designed in collaboration with a different company nearly every day! (Click HERE to see the Collaboration Sets page, and be sure to bookmark it!) 

For my cards today, I chose to allow the exquisitely detailed illustration do a lot of the work for me, stamping and embossing the image on both white cardstock as well as vellum, to create two completely different cards with the same stamp!

For my first card, I stamped the image from Holiday Greetings on a panel of plain white cardstock using Juniper ink, then stamped again directly over the top of the stamped image with embossing ink and added Hero Arts Iridescent Purple embossing powder, creating a lush, iridescent sheen on the stamped image. I then used a blending brush to blend Jade and Morning Pawsitively Saturated Ink on bottom and top, respectively, adding a hint of “foliage” and “sky.” Once I had finished blending, I applied Multi Medium Matte to the birdhouse and branches, sprinkling Rock Candy Glitter over the top of the wet adhesive to create gloriously sparkly, textured snow. I added a double bow tied with Simon Says Stamp’s Silver Cord to the top of the bird house, then added a couple of the greetings to the bottom of the card, created with the same ink/embossing technique used on the card itself. Some iridescent watercolor splatters and a few gems finished it off!

For my second card, I decided to emboss the beautiful image on some vellum, keeping the imagery botanical by adding some additional die cut foliage and a large die cut greeting. I heat embossed the image from Holiday Greetings onto some vellum, then adhered it to a panel of deep navy blue cardstock, adding dots of liquid adhesive behind the solid embossed areas. I die cut some foliage from the Honey Bee Stamps Lovely Layers Candy Cane using two different shades of soft sage green cardstock, as well as a shiny foil bow. I created a swag with the die cut pine boughs, arranging it around the die cut Joyeux Noël die cut and tucking the bow beneath. I added some slim strips of navy glitter cardstock around the edges of the card front to add a touch more sparkle, then tucked a few gems on the card front for a simple and elegant card!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! You can find more Honey Bee Stamps products HERE. Melissa’s designs are exquisite with intentional details and gorgeous imagery. Her holiday products, especially, are some of my absolute favorites!!

If you love the STAMPtember Collaboration Sets, don’t wait to purchase them, because these limited edition sets will NOT be restocked. Once they’re gone, they’re gone! (Click HERE to see the Collaboration Sets page, and be sure to bookmark it!) Each day holds new surprises, so be sure to check out the Simon Says Stamp social media at noon ET every day throughout STAMPtember so that you don’t miss out. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy STAMPtember!!!

Fun With Felt: Baking Spirits Bright with Honey Bee Stamps + SALE!

Hi friends! I am back with another couple of felt projects today created using some absolutely darling products from the  Cozy Christmas release. I will admit that I have a felt and embroidery obsession right now; after my mom’s accident in November, I found it a very therapeutic way to channel my anxiety into something a bit more tangible than my normal projects. (Also, the shopping was a great distraction, lol) I also love giving Christmas gifts, and handmade Christmas gifts are the best ones to give, don’t you think?

*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

I don’t normally do “cute” very well, but I made an exception to create this adorable banner for my mom to give as a gift to her boss! I knew that I wanted to create some holiday kitchen decor using the adorable Lovely Layers: Christmas Cookies images, but needed to create a larger scale sentiment to fit the blank canvas banner that I had purchased. I decided to create a custom message by pairing some alphabet dies with the “bright” portion of the Merry & Bright die, die cutting the individual letters for the first two words using an older alphabet die set and some metallic bronze felt, then die cut the “bright” from some more bronze felt and using my sharp scissors to snip the extra letters off, creating a completely custom die cut word. I love it when a little extra creativity stretches your supplies even further! It doesn’t hurt that the font for “bright” is totally stunning.

After adhering the sentiment in the center of my black canvas pennant banner using felt glue, I began die cutting and assembling the sweet little cookies from the Lovely Layers: Christmas Cookies, keeping my color palette bright and very traditional. I made gingerbread men and ladies as well as some shaped sugar cookies, all in a vivid red, green, and white color palette! I adhered all of the components together with more felt glue, then used needle and thread to add some seed bead accents to each cookie

I adhered the finished cookies in a whimsical arrangement around the felt die cut sentiment, then used needle and metallic thread to create seed beads, sequins, and bugle bead “snowflakes” (or are they stars? I can’t decide.). These additional bits of sparkle help to add extra texture and fill in some of the larger gaps left between the cookies. Finally, I sewed on a little coordinating metallic thread bow for one last bit of shimmer and texture! So cute, right? I hope that my mom’s boss loved it as much as I do!

With my newfound felt obsession, I am now on the lookout for any dies that might be useful with felt, even if they are maybe not used for what I see in my head! Hey, that’s called “thinking outside the box,” right? I used the Christmas tree from the Lovely Layers: Window Holiday Add-On die set to create a sweet embroidery hoop ornament, as well as some ornaments and pine boughs from the Postcard: Holiday Add-On. Pairing these images with some simple stitching and beading allowed simple shapes to become super special and elegant!

I die cut a couple of pine boughs from the Postcard: Holiday Add-On using kelly green felt and adhered them to my neutral linen embroidery hoop, then used some lovely shades of red, magenta, lilac, and royal purple felt to add ornaments and bows to my Christmas tree branch. To embellish my plain felt shapes, I used needle and thread with seed beads to make the ornaments more ornate and add some fabulous sparkle! Finally, I added a pretty pink bow and loop, as well as some sparkling Prism gems from Simon Says Stamp.

For my last, miniature ornament, I used the plain Christmas tree from Lovely Layers: Window Holiday Add-On, cutting the tree from some beautiful muted teal felt and embellishing it with iridescent seed beads and sequins. I used the same simple stitches to add some silver stars and a few more floating seed beads (snowflakes?) around the tree, finally finishing it off with some sparkling silver ribbon!

Well, that’s all for my felt projects for this holiday season. I am contemplating continuing to make them throughout the year, just because I enjoyed it so very much, and I have so many fun dies with which I could put to work with the felt!

Now, for something even more amazing, my friends at Honey Bee Stamps have their entire store on sale for a whopping 30% off in honor of Melissa’s birthday! You don’t have to even enter a coupon code; the discount is automatically applied at checkout! Click HERE to start shopping! But don’t wait, because the sale ends on 12/31/24 at midnight PST.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and happy shopping!

Fun With Felt: Feliz Navidad with Honey Bee Stamps!

Hi friends! Merry Christmas! I have a few more holiday felt projects to share with you using beautiful new dies from the Honey Bee Stamps Cozy Christmas release. I made so many felt gifts this year and enjoyed myself so much; I am contemplating giving myself some time to just sit and sew each week. It’s good to try new things, isn’t it? Especially when they’re so therapeutic and relaxing! While many companies make dies specifically for stitching with handy dandy little holes to make the stitching as foolproof as possible, I wanted to create these special gifts with some non-stitching dies. Let’s get started on the details for my projects!

*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

For my first project, I thought that I would combine two of my favorite nostalgic memories from my childhood: my Grammy’s ceramic Christmas tree and my mom’s love of the song “Feliz Navidad.” I feel like every 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s kid had one of these ceramic trees in their family heirlooms, and my Grammy’s, while not pink like this felt tree, was absolutely iconic. The Grandma’s Christmas Tree die set from Honey Bee Stamps is an older set, but no less fabulous for it’s age. The details, the generous size, the coordinating embossing folders and stencils…. perfection! I used some pale pink felt to die cut the tree, then used the coordinating Grandma’s Christmas Tree embossing folder to run the image through my die cutting machine. Even though the embossed details didn’t stay on the springy felt, they were impressed deeply enough that I was able to use some coordinating pink embroidery floss to stitch some larger seed beads onto the edges of the different layers of the tree.

After I had added the beads, I adhered the colorful die cut felt lights with some felt glue, then used the same pale pink embroidery floss to add some stitched details in approximately the same spots as the embossed details. I adhered the tree to an 8″ embroidery hoop to which I had added some neutral linen material using more felt glue. For a greeting, I used the Great Greetings: Holiday dies, cutting the shadow layer from the “Feliz Navidad” sentiment from some hot pink felt, then cut the detail layer from some metallic iridescent silver felt. The metallic coating on the iridescent felt cuts these super detailed letters beautifully. I adhered the greeting beneath the tree with felt glue, then added some embroidered metallic red snowflakes and seed beads for some additional texture and shine!

For my second project, I used the absolutely spectacular Lovely Layers: Mini Holiday Florals to create a felted holiday wreath. I die cut the poinsettias, anemones, and foliage from a variety of red, peach, and teal felt, adhering the different layers of the flowers together using felt glue. Because there are so many layers on the anemone blooms, I did end up trimming some of the center out of the last couple of layers to keep the felt layers from becoming super thick. I think that’s one of my favorite things about felt: you can manipulate the felt a little to get the angles and images just perfect!

Once I had finished adhering the different layers together on the flowers, I decided to embellish the flower centers with some sparkling seed beads. I mixed two different shades of yellow on the center of the anemones, creating lots of interest and texture. Once I had finished embellishing my flowers, I die cut the beautifully intricate Merry & Bright die from some metallic charcoal felt. I adhered the sentiment in the center of a 6″ embroidery hoop, which I had filled with some glittering aqua fabric. To ensure that the glue spread evenly and cleanly, I flipped the embroidery hoop over and placed a glass weight in the center of the hoop, similar to how I weight paper adhered with liquid glue to ensure smooth drying.

After allowing a bit of dry time for the sentiment die cut, I flipped the hoop back over and began arranging my floral die cuts and foliage. I first placed the flowers and adhered them with the felt glue, then began arranging the foliage, tucking some beneath the flowers and arching others around the perimeter of the circular embroidery hoop. Finally, I added a few seed beads and sequins as well as a coordinating satin bow to the top of my hoop. The colors are a bit non-traditional, but I absolutely love how modern and fresh the coral, red, and aqua looks with the traditional floral Christmas imagery!

Well, that’s all for my projects today. These felt gifts have been such a joy to create, and I am looking forward to playing with textiles and embroidery even more after things calm down from the holidays! I hope that you and your loved ones had a restful, yummy holiday filled with lots of love and a few treats, including crafty ones! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and Merry Christmas!