Neat & Tangled / Benzie Collaboration

Hey everyone!  I'm up over on the Neat & Tangled blog today as part of a collaboration we're doing with Benzie Design.  They make really high quality felt in beautiful colors as well as pom poms, die cut felt pieces, all sorts of good stuff.

I had a lot of fun creating with the felt.  For my first card, I selectively cut the large flower from the Succulent Cover Plate from three shades of green.  Before I die cut the pieces, I backed them with white cardstock.  This adds reinforcement and allows you to adhere the pieces easily to your card.

I also cut the flower from cardstock and used the webbing as a guide to get my pattern started.  Once I had the first few pieces in though, I just eyeballed the space between the pieces.



Even though the cardstock does add a lot of reinforcement, the tiny pieces can still be a bit tricky, so you need a die that has large enough pieces, the petals for the succulent were a perfect size.  The only tricky bits were those teeny tiny pieces in the center.  I just needed to be very careful with those and used craft tweezers to adhere them.

The sentiment is from the Gardenia Blooms Journaling Card set and it was stamped on one of the banners from the Scalloped Dies set.



My next card features the Maple Thanks and Oak Leaf Dies.  I cut the solid shapes from felt and the webbing/detail dies from cardstock and woodgrain paper.

The solid felt shapes were stitched to the card itself along the center line.  Then I used spray adhesive to attach the webbed pieces.



The sentiment, also from the Gardenia Blooms set was stamped on one of the skinny tags from the Classic Tag 2 die set and was then trimmed down and stitched on as well.

I thought it would be fun to dress these cards up a bit, so I cut a Doily Envelope wrap from felt for each of them.



Caveat, this is beautiful, but these doily pieces are very delicate in some sections and so you have to be very careful with them or you'll get some tears.  The felt cuts well, but I think because of static cling the pieces need a little help coming out.  I used a largish needle to just poke the pieces out and that worked pretty well.



I love how pretty the details look in felt!



OK, you'll want to head over to both the Neat & Tangled blog, there's a giveaway of some beautiful Benzie products over there, and the Benzie blog, where you can leave a comment to be entered to win a $25 store credit to Neat & Tangled.  Good luck!

Neat & Tangled February Release - Day 4 - Giveaways

Hey everyone!  Welcome back for the last day of release week!  The theme of this month (for me at least) is procrastination.  Today we're revealing Doily Envelope which is something that I have been wanting to create for well over a year now, but it's another of those designs that I just kept putting off because it was going to be hard and take a long time.  Thankfully, Danielle was fully on board with this and has been poking me to get it done, and it finally is!

Fair warning, this one is pretty pricey as it will create an A2 sized card envelope.  As a result, we're not wholesaling it, so we can keep the price down for you all, so it's available exclusively through the N&T store.

The die comes in two pieces.  The main piece cuts the body of the envelope with the upper and lower flap and will just fit the length of an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper.  You could absolutely use this piece on it's own as a wrap for your card if you wanted.  The second piece you cut it twice for the side flaps.  The body of the envelope is solid in case you want to actually mail your card, you absolutely can, but I would probably not do that during the rainy or snowy season since obviously the rest of the envelope has perforations.

To attach the side flaps, I used Scor-Tape, and to adhere the side and bottom flaps I used some liquid Zig 2-way glue.  I put a piece of waxed paper inside the envelope so there wouldn't be any stickage to the inside of the envelope, and then put a book on it to hold it down during the drying process it.

I just love how delicate this envelope is, you get such a pretty look.



The envelope can handle some dimension, as you can see from the card I created using the Wholehearted Cover Plate.  There are a couple layers of patterned paper, as well as the hearts that open up and are held back with mini glue dots.  In addition, the sentiment banner is popped up with foam tape.

Here's a quick look at the card itself for those who want to see the full-up version:



So how do you close this envelope?  Well if you're mailing it, you might want to use mini glue dots or something like that.  You could also use some pretty twine or seam binding if it's going into say a wedding gift bag or card basket.  I chose to seal my envelope with a die cut banner (from the Scalloped Die Set) that was adhered on either side with foam tape.  This allows you to slip the flap in and out to open and close it.



This is probably not an envelope you'll use everyday, but for those very special occasions when you want to elicit a wow, this is perfect.  I love the surprise of it too when you hand someone an envelope and they turn it over and see all the die cutting, it's a great reveal type moment.

Leave a comment here as I'll be choosing a couple random commenters to win some of my new products.  For an extra entry, please share this post or one of my social media postings from today on Facebook or Instagram and leave a link to your share.  Now head over to the Neat & Tanged blog to see what the rest of the girls created and enter Danielle's giveaway there!

Release goes live tomorrow at 8 AM EST!