Time for Tea with The Greetery Garden Party Release

Morning all!

I'm back today with a rather fancy card - even if I say so myself!

I absolutely loved so many items in the new Garden Party collection from The Greetery, but the must-haves for me were the tea set items!

No doubt I will be picking up more items from this release in due course, but those china patterns and coordinating elements went right to the top of my list.

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As soon as I receive an order of craft supplies, I have a little ritual of cutting all the dies to test them out in my machine before snipping them apart and popping them in their new storage pockets.

So there are several elements from various sets used in today's project, simply because they were all cut and ready to go (and still out on my desk!).

Here are the sets I've used:

• Fine China stamps and Fine China die and stencil

• Pours Tea dies and coordinating stencil

• Sips Tea Stamp + Cut combo

• A2 Stitched Scallops

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Tip for the Fine China dies: Before snipping the dies apart, run the fused die through your machine with heavy-weight cardstock to create yourself an alignment template. While the pieces are still nestled in the die, stick them all together on the back using some sturdy tape.
Also, while the die is still in one piece, it's a good idea to flip it over and draw a line down the centre with a permanent pen and ruler, marking the top and bottom of the dies for easy reference.
Once you snip the dies apart, you can simply nestle them into the cardstock template you've made and hold them in place with some low-tack tape so they are perfectly aligned when running the various die combinations through your machine. This makes it super easy to ensure the dotted circle die is accurately centred in the middle of the plates.

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So with all the elements already cut for this card, it was time to get blending, stamping, and adding that gold lustre!

I started out with the Pours Tea teapots, which I blended in a few different pastel shades, one of them being the pink I eventually used on this card.

As someone who doesn't own a foiling system, I was happy to see some tips from Betsy for replicating the lustre of foiling using the coordinating stencils. As luck would have it I still had a refill bottle of Glue Pad ink in my stash (must be 15 years old by now!) and an even older set of Ranger Perfect Pearls (which haven't seen much use until now!), and thankfully one of the shades in that set (Sunflower Sparkle) passes as a fancy gold!

So I am pleased to report, the technique with the Glue Pad ink, finger dauber, and Perfect Pearls was a winner! Thank you Betsy!

Once I'd stencilled and stamped my Fine China plates, I tested out some different methods of adding gold.

For the biggest plate, I stamped the edge and inner detail in Versamark ink and went over this with Perfect Pearls. This initially looked great, but after handling the finished plate, the powder came off a bit - not a problem for a more vintage, tarnished look!

For the other plate, I simply stamped with Brilliance Galaxy Gold ink. The effect is good, but again it comes off easily with handling, and as it is a pigment ink it may easily smudge.

So, now I will be on a mission to see if I still actually own the Glue Pad ink pad - otherwise I will simply use the Glue Pad ink on a finger dauber to ink the stamps rather than using Versamark.

I found the Glue Pad ink easily washed off from the stencils, and it will no doubt easily wash off stamps too.

Once I finished up the three main elements for my card, I grabbed some coordinating papers, to create my card base.

To break up the patterns, I trimmed down the largest A2 Stitched Scallops die to create borders for the pink paper.

Before sticking anything else down, I stamped the For You sentiment from the Fine China set in the top right corner.

There was a little something missing from this card, so I took the teabag label and string from the Sips Tea die and stamp combo to add the Tea Time label coming out of the teapot.

And there we have it, card done!

I'm now looking forward to using the other die-cuts I cut and coloured on future projects.

Until next time, happy crafting!