Jen Kray

Hi there *waves* Today I'd like to share a fun gift card/voucher that is an alternative to your standard card. The gift card fits perfectly inside your mini card with room for a personal message. It is then encased in sealed plastic using a fuse tool. The recipient must cut the pocket open to retrieve the gift card. Super fun, right?! 1. Stamp the hat, presents, rosette and teddy all from Marmalades World by Tonic Studios. 2. Brush colour in with the Aqua Flow Pens and a water brush. 3. Die cut the accessories and fussy cut the teddy; cut out a small shaped tag (or use a die cut if you have one small enough, which I didn't) 4. Die cut a Birthday sentiment (I used some scrap mixed media paper which had random colour already on it).  5. Using Brusho, make a simple background on mixed media paper (or any you have). 6. Attach your background to a small card blank (card is Papermill Direct) 7. Using a  toothbrush, spray some white acrylic fluid over your card on one side.  8. ...

Hello there! Today I've dipped into my watercolours and die cuts to create a large tag card, 15cm x 7.5cm.  This is the first time I've die cut into watercolour card and all I can say is...why have I not done this before?! I'm sure you've been doing this for years but to me it's new and I'm EXCITED!  So, I started off with a basic watercolour background for my tag, using  Kuretake Gansai Tambi Japanese Watercolours. I then die cut the  Tonic Beautiful Blooms and again used my watercolours on them. Then I hacked into a Tonic sentiment topper, added a few embellishments and popped it all together. A closer look at the watercolour background and some of the detail.  I used cord, watercolour paper and flower buds to make the centre of this flower. Isn't it lovely? I also used multiple layers of watercolours for a little depth on each flower.  I then cut out a Tonic sentiment topper and layered it with black card to make it pop. The finished tag card is lovely a...

So yeah, I've had family intervention. After using my Tonic Twisting Veranda and Beautiful Blooms dies over the past few days, my husband says all we need is a monorail and some fireworks and the house would look like Disneyland! I admit it, I've gone a little overboard on my recent makes. They are large, dimensional and pretty darn cool! The dies are now safely tucked away until my next inspirational moment.   Now, I've die cut in the past but nothing intricate or fussy. It's mainly been for apertures or the odd leaf or sentiment. But I've recently bought some Tonic die sets - first was the Beautiful Blooms and then Twisting Veranda.  I'm not gonna lie, it was tough getting to grips with this sort of die cutting. I intentionally stayed away from social media as I needed to figure it out myself and wanted to create something totally me.  It took nearly 5 hours to get to grips with these dies - but you have to remember I had no idea what I was doing and it's...