You know it’s really funny the things I think about when I’m crafting. Take this morning for instance. I decided I wanted to use the new Kindest Gnomes Stamp Set that I recently ordered from the July to December Mini Catalogue. I was attracted to this stamp set as soon as I saw it, and the fact that it had coordinating dies didn’t hurt either. But as I reached for the stamps I wondered about whether there were girl gnomes as well as boy gnomes. And suddenly there she was…

KINDEST GNOMES

As well as other images there are four gnomes in this stamp set, three have beards and one doesn’t. So with the non-bearded one in my hand I set to work.

July is World Watercolouring Month and so that was top of my mind as I reached for a StazOn Jet Black ink pad. This ink is waterproof and doesn’t bleed when wet, and I used it to stamp my gnome image three times. First on the front of a Very Vanilla Medium Envelope. Then at the bottom of a 4″ x 5-1/4″ piece of Very Vanilla Card and finally onto a scrap of Thick Very Vanilla Card.

To colour the three gnomes I chose the Watercolor Pencils Assortment 2. For the hats I used Cherry Cobbler, then for the faces, hands and feet I chose Flirty Flamingo. I coloured her dresses next in Gorgeous Grape, with Cajun Craze for her shoes. Finally I coloured her braids with Crushed Curry and then added a little Cajun Craze. Once everything was coloured with the dry pencils I used a barely damp Water Painter to ‘activate’ the pigment.

Before putting away my pencils I had one final task, to add much bolder colour to the buttons, braid binding and shoe buckles. My trick for this was to touch the tip of the Watercolor Pencil onto the surface of some clean water. This ‘melts’ the tip so I could add a heavier, almost waxy colour on the image.

With that done I cut out the gnome from the Thick Very Vanilla Card using the coordinating Gnomes Dies.

CUSTOM BACKGROUND

I’d done all the hard work and now simply needed to create the layers and card base. By now I’d decided I wanted a very simple scene that I could make that really quickly.

I began by cutting a 3-3/4″ x 5″ layer of Very Vanilla Card. Then I took some Saran Wrap and scrunched it up into two loose balls. These would be used to transfer ink from the surface of my ink pads to the card layer. Using a gentle tapping motion I used one of the balls to pick up some Granny Apple Green ink. Then I gently tapped the ball over the bottom of the Very Vanilla layer. Once I was satisfied with my ‘grass’ I picked up the other Saran Wrap ball. This time I gently tapped onto the Balmy Blue ink pad before tapping the ink onto the card to create the ‘sky’.

For my card base I used my Paper Trimmer to cut and score some Thick Very Vanilla Card. Then I folded it along the scored line and sharpened the crease with a Bone Folder. On the inside I used Multipurpose Liquid Glue (Tombow) to fix the gnome decorated Very Vanilla layer.

Next I cut a 3-7/8″ x 5-1/8″ piece of Basic Black Card and glued the background scene on top. Then using Stampin’ Dimensionals I attached the assembled layers to the card base, before adding the die-cut gnome.

Only the sentiment was left and so I went back to the Kindest Gnomes Stamp Set and chose “you gnome me so well”. Using StazOn Jet Black ink I first stamped it onto a 1″ strip of Thick Very Vanilla Card. Then I shaped both ends using the simpler of the two options on the Lovely Labels Pick-A-Punch. Finally I found a Basic Black Stampin’ Write Marker to add some contrast to the edges of the sentiment. This was easily done by carefully running the side of the brush tip around the edges of the punched piece. Once that was done I used a few more Stampin’ Dimensionals to add the sentiment to the card front and my project was complete.

So although this project did take a while, I’m really happy with how it turned out. But what do you think?

PRODUCT LIST

BUNDLE BONUS – I bought the Kindest Gnomes Stamp Set in a bundle with the coordinating Gnomes Dies. Buying the two products using the ‘bundle’ item number meant I saved 10% off the cost of buying them separately. I’ve included a link to the bundle below in case you want to explore that option.